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Terence O'Neill was born on September 10, 1914 in County Antrim. He was the son of Capt. Arthur O'Neill, the first MP to be killed as a result of World War 1. O'Neill was educated at Eton College and then joined the army. During World War 2 he served in the Irish Guards. In a by-election in 1946 he was elected as a Unionist MP for the Bannside constituency in the Stormont parliament.
O'Neill served in a series of junior postions. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and Local Government from February 1948 until November 1953, when he was appointed Chairman of Ways and Means and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. He was Minister of Home Affairs from April to October 1956 when he was appointed Minister for Finance.
In 1963 he succeeded Brookeborough in becoming Prime Minister. He introduced new policies that would have been unheard of with Brookeborough as Prime Minister. He aimed to end sectarianism and to bring Catholics and Protestants into working relationships. He also had great aspirations in the industrial sector. In January 1965 O'Neill invited the TaoiseachThe Taoiseach (plural: Taoisigh or, more formally, An Taoiseach is the head of government or prime minister of the Republic of Ireland and the leader of the Irish cabinet1. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dail Eireann (t of the Republic of IrelandThe Republic of Ireland ( Irish: Poblacht na hEireann is the common term for a state which covers approximately five-sixths of the island of Ireland, off the coast of northwest Europe. It is the western-most state of the European Union. The remaining sixt, Sean Lemass, for talks in BelfastThis article is about the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. See also: Belfast (disambiguation). Belfast is the largest city in Northern Ireland and the Irish Province of Ulster, with a population of 277,391. It is the seat of government for Northern Ir. O'Neill met with opposition from his own party mainly because he informed very few of the visit and from Ian PaisleySee also Ian Paisley, Jr. The Reverend Ian Richard Kyle Paisley (born April 6, 1926) is a politician and church leader in Northern Ireland. The Rev. Ian Paisley, MP, MLA Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church., who rejected any dealings with Dublin. In February O'Neill visited Lemass in DublinThis article is about the city in Ireland. For other uses of the name, see Dublin (disambiguation). Dublin ( Irish: Baile Atha Cliath is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Ireland, located near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mou.
In 1968Events Undated Booker Prize for Fiction is established by Booker plc. 1968 is known as the year of the Prague Spring and also the year of the Paris riots. The ASCII character code is standardized as ANSI Standard X3. Nauru adopt his national anthem of the the Northern Ireland civil rights campaign began street demonstrations. The march in Derry on 5 October 1968, banned by William Craig, the Minister of Home Affairs was met with violence from the RUC. This violence was caught by television cameras and broadcast worldwide. The date of this march is taken by historians as being the start of the Northern Ireland troubles.
In February 1969 O'Neill called a surprise general election. In reality the calling of the election was more to do with the turmoil inside the Ulster Unionist Party caused by 10 to 12 anti-O'Neill dissident members of the Unionist Parliamentary Party and the resignation of Brian Faulkner from O'Neill's Government than it was to do with direct civil rights agitation.
The electorate was faced with a simple choice: pro- or anti-O'Neill. However, from O'Neill's point of view, the election results were inconclusive. O'Neill in particular was humiliated by his near defeat in his own constituency of Bannside by Ian Paisley. He resigned as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and as Prime Minister in April 1969 after a serious of bomb explosions on Belfast's water supply brought his personal political crisis to a head. He retired from Stormont politics in January 1970 when he resigned his seat. In that year he was made a life peer, Lord O'Neill of the Maine , in the House of Lords.
Lord O'Neill died in Hampshire in England on June 12, 1990.