Jack Lynch
Jack Lynch won six All-Ireland medals in a row for Cork, became Taoiseach as the compromise nobody thought would last, and was in office when Northern Ireland went up in August 1969 and two of his own ministers were tried for running guns to the nationalists; he sacked them, was acquitted by his party, took Ireland into the European Community, and won the largest majority in the state's history, which then destroyed him. He was born in Cork in 1917, was a hurler and a footballer of a kind the country still talks about, qualified as a barrister, and was elected for Fianna Fáil in 1948 with the popularity that came with the medals. He was minister for education, industry and finance under Lemass, and in November 1966 was chosen to succeed him because the two men who wanted it, Haughey and Colley, could not have each other. In August 1969, with Derry and Belfast burning, he said on television that the Irish government could no longer stand by, moved field hospitals to the border, and did nothing else, which was the right answer and satisfied nobody. In May 1970 he dismissed Haughey and Neil Blaney on information that they had used government money to import arms for the northern nationalists. Haughey was tried and acquitted and stayed in the party. Lynch took the country into the Community by referendum in 1972 with eighty-three per cent, lost the election of 1973, and won that of 1977 with a manifesto that abolished rates and car tax and gave Fianna Fáil twenty seats more than anyone had thought possible, at a price the next decade paid. The oil shock, the borrowing, two by-elections lost in his own Cork in November 1979 and the back-benchers Haughey had been cultivating ended him in December. He resigned and Haughey beat Colley for the succession. He was the gentlest man to hold the office and the only one whose memoirs nobody expected and did not get; he died in Dublin in October 1999.
- Lived: 1917 CE – 1999 CE
- Nationality: Irish
- Roles: taoiseach, politician
