Jack Andrews

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The Rt Hon John Lawson Ormrod (Jack) Andrews DL KBE (15 July 1903 – 12 January 1986) was a member of both the Northern Ireland House of Commons and the Senate of Northern Ireland.

Son of Prime Minister John Miller Andrews he entered Parliament as MP for Mid Down in 1953, a seat which he represented until his resignation in 1964, when he was elected to the Senate where he sat until the Parliament was suspended in 1972. His election to the senate was following a cabinet reshuffle, in which Andrews accepted demotion to the politically unimportant position of Government Leader in the Senate.

He held several Cabinet positions including Minister in the Senate from 1964 and Deputy Prime Minister from May 1969. He was a contender for the position of Prime Minister on the retirement of Sir Basil Brooke, however when it became clear that Terence O'Neill had a comfortable lead over both Andrews and Brian Faulkner in the Parliamentary Party, no contest was held. He became Deputy Prime Minister however.

During the 1970 Bannside and South Antrim by-elections, Andrews was at the centre of the UUP's pluralist campaign against Ian Paisley's Protestant Unionism, declaring "What does Protestant Unionism mean? Does it mean that you have to put a sign over the door of the Unionist Party saying "Protestants only?""

[edit] References

Ireland since 1939, Henry Patterson (2001, Oxford University Press)
A history of the Ulster Unionist Party, Graham Walker (2004, Manchester University Press)
Memoirs of a statesman, Brian Faulkner (1978, Weidenfeld and Nicolson)