Brian Faulkner: a lesson from history

Hopes - even his own - weren't particularly high when Brian Faulkner became Northern Ireland's sixth prime minister on this day 50 years ago: March 23, 1971. His two immediate predecessors, Terence O'Neill and James Chichester-Clark, had resigned within the previous two years, unable to command, let alone exercise the authority required to deal with a deteriorating political, security and societal crisis: not to mention the civil war which had broken out across unionism.