Brendan Bracken was an Irishman with total loyalty to his adopted country and to Churchill, writes CHARLES LYSAGHT
BRENDAN BRACKEN, minister of information in Winston Churchill's wartime government, who died 50 years ago yesterday, was the only person brought up as an Irish Catholic to have served in a British cabinet, prior to the more recent elevation of transport minister Ruth Kelly, a Northern Ireland-born Catholic who lived briefly in the Republic.
Bracken, in his efforts to shed his identity, was the prototype of many Irish in England. He also exemplified the rejected child who retaliates by repudiating his background.
Bracken's father, a monumental sculptor, a Fenian and one of the founders of the GAA, died in 1904 when Brendan was only three. The family moved to Dublin from Tipperary and he spent four years at O'Connell School. He once threw a schoolfellow into the Royal Canal. When packed off to Mungret, a Jesuit boarding school in Limerick, he absconded.
In despair, his widowed mother shipped him off to Australia. He was not yet 15. After three years of nomadic existence there he returned to England and applied for a place at Sedbergh, a public school in Yorkshire. He claimed that his parents had died in a bush fire in Australia. He gave his age as 15 when he was, in fact, 18. He was admitted, but remained only for a term. It was enough to make him a public school man.
Posing as an orphaned Australian, this large red-haired Irishman set out to become part of the British establishment. He volunteered to organise Churchill's election campaigns and the two men were soon so friendly that it was rumoured they were father and son. When questioned by his wife about the rumours, Churchill teasingly offered to check the dates.
Bracken established himself in publishing and brought together a group of quality newspapers including the Financial News (later to merge with the Financial Times) and the Economist, for whom he devised a model charter of editorial independence. At the age of 28 he was elected MP for North Paddington, helped, he said, by the ladies of easy virtue who were all Tories.
The Britain Bracken idealised prized adventure and independence above all. He opposed lush doles, self-government for India and the surrender of the Irish ports. The most loyal of men, he was in the 1930s Churchill's sole consistent supporter in the House of Commons. "Dear Brendan", as Churchill always called him, was the only person who could lift Churchill out of the depressions that assailed him during his long years in the political wilderness.
In 1937 Churchill faced bankruptcy. Bracken got Jewish friends to help out. In those days such transactions did not attract the attention of tribunals.
When war came, Churchill joined the government with Bracken as his right-hand man. Bracken was a master spindoctor years before the term was invented, briefing the press in his master's interest. He had a crucial role in Churchill becoming prime minister in May 1940.
Bracken moved in to live in the prime minister's bunker. As Churchill's midnight confidant he wielded immense influence. Conscripted by Churchill to a languishing ministry of information, Bracken presided over British propaganda.
He stood up to Churchill to ensure that the press and the BBC had reasonable freedom. With his master's voice he condemned de Valera and "those lousy neutrals" claiming that people of Irish stock overseas were heartily ashamed.
In opposition after Churchill's defeat in 1945, Bracken was a relentless critic of nationalisation and the retreat from empire. In 1951, pleading ill-health, he declined to be colonial secretary in Churchill's last government, and retired. He was created Viscount Bracken.
The unmarried Bracken became a lonely reclusive figure, and died of cancer at the age of 57. "The blackshirts of God are after me," he said, rejecting the efforts of Irish clerics (including his own nephew) to reconcile him to the church. His last act as a trustee of the National Gallery had been to oppose the return of the Lane pictures to Ireland.
Although he turned his back on his homeland, Bracken remained totally devoted to his mother and, after her death in 1928, supported needy members of his family. For his handwrought personality and his singular contribution to his adopted country, he deserves to be honoured, even if not totally revered, in Ireland.
• Charles Lysaght is author of a biography of Bracken, entitled Brendan Bracken.