Jack Lynch A Biography Author:Dermot Keogh Jack Lynch is one of the most important and most underrated Irish political leaders of the twentieth century. A sportsman who won six All-Ireland medals in a row with Cork, he was also a civil servant in the Department of Justice and a barrister on the Southern Circuit before being elected to Dail Eireann in 1948. During his thirty-one unbroken ... more »years as a parliamentarian, he was first a junior minister and then, between 1957 and 1966, held the ministries of Education, Industry and Commerce and Finance. Those neglected years of his life are examined in detail in this book. Succeeding Sean Lemass as Taoiseach in 1966, Lynch became the first post-revolutionary leader of Fianna Fail. He held office during the critical years of the late 1960s and early 1970s when Northern Ireland disintegrated, precipitating one of the worst crises in the history of the Irish state. Based on eight years of work in archives in Ireland and abroad, Dermot Keogh s book shows that Lynch was a more complex, determined and adroit political leader than his avuncular, soft-spoken, pipe-smoking image might suggest.
The new evidence shows how he kept his nerve during the Kafkaesque months of early 1970 when efforts were made by cabinet ministers to import arms for use in Northern Ireland. He stood firm in defiance of those who wanted the state to become complicit in the use of violence. The debt to his courage and determination in the defense of democracy in Ireland has not yet been acknowledged or discharged. Lynch upheld the parliamentary democratic tradition at great personal and political cost, even to the point of fracturing the unity of his government and his party. He helped rebuild the Fianna Fail Party in opposition after 1973, and return them convincingly to power in 1977 only to be virtually forced out of office two years later. If you want to know what happened during his years as a politician, read this book.« less