Peter Brush
Lt. Col Peter Brush was the leader of Down Orange Welfare, a paramilitary group that was prominent in Northern Ireland for a period in the 1970s .[1]
Contents
Name
Col Brush is referred to in various sources as 'Peter' or 'Edward' Brush. For example, Peter Brush is the name given by Robert Fisk in The Point of No Return , his book on the 1974 Ulster Workers Council strike.[2] The Imperial War Museum lists his memoirs as those of Lt. Col ‘Peter’ Brush CB DSO, suggesting that was a nickname that he was commonly known by.[3]
He is listed as Lt-Col. Edward James Augustus Howard Brush (1901-1984) in Sydney Elliot and W.D. Flackes's Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, and this is almost certainly the correct version of his full name.[4]
Career
War Record
Brush was wounded in the defence of Calais in 1940.[5]According to Fisk, he became acquainted with Airey Neave, who was also captured at Calais.[6] He subsequently spent three years in POW camps.[7]
Post-war career
After the war, Brush took up farming in Co. Down where he became Deputy Lord Lieutenant and a leading figure in the Territorial Army.[8]
Down Orange Welfare
In 1973, it emerged that Colonel Brush had built up a paramilitary group known as Down Orange Welfare over the previous two years.[9]
Ulster Workers Council
He was brought on to the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) in early 1974 in his capacity as leader of Down Orange Welfare.[10]
During the UWC strike in May that year his men blockaded parts of North Down.[11]
William Craig claimed later that Brush was in touch with senior Army officers at Lisburn during the strike.[12]
Brush neverthless believed he was under Army surveillance and claimed to have spotted a plain-clothes patrol tailing him in the second week of the strike.[13]
Brush was one of a number of UWC leaders who took part in a rally at Stormont following the collapse of the power-sharing executive on 28 May.[14]
After the strike
In October 1974, Brush resigned as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of County Down.[15]
In the 1975 constitutional convention elections, he was elected to represent South Down for the Ulster Unionist Party.[16]
Notes
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, pp 44-45.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, pp 44-45.
- ↑ The Northern Ireland Conflict Related Artefacts Database, CAIN, University of Ulster, accessed 4 August 2009.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.67.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.227.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, pp 44-45.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.94.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.102.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.102.
- ↑ Robert Fisk, The Point of No Return, The Strike which broke the British in Ulster, André Deutsch, 1975, p.223.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
- ↑ W.D. Flackes, Sydney Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-88, Blackstaff Press, 1989, p.86.
