James Dillon (politician)

James Mathew Dillon ( Irish Séamus Maitiú Diolún ; born September 26, 1902 in Dublin , † February 10, 1986 in Ballaghadeerreen , County Mayo ) was an Irish politician of the Fine Gael and several ministers .

biography

Dillon came from an Irish family of politicians who had made a contribution to Ireland's independence . His grandfather, John Blake Dillon , was a member of the Young Ireland movement in the 1840s . His father John Dillon was 1880 to 1883 and again from 1885 to 1918 a member of the British House of Commons ( House of Commons ). One of his siblings was the Celtologist Myles Dillon .

Dillon himself began his political career in 1932 when he was elected as a member of the National Center Party for the first time to the House of Commons ( Dáil Éireann ), where he initially represented County Donegal until 1937 . In September 1933 the National Center Party merged with the Cumann na nGaedheal and the Army Comrades Association to form Fine Gael . As early as 1933 he was together with William Thomas Cosgrave deputy of Eoin O'Duffy , the chairman of the Fine Gael, and thus one of the most important opposition politicians against the Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera .

In the general election of 1937 he was elected member of the Monaghan County and represented it until 1969. In 1942, however, he resigned from Fine Gael in protest against de Valera's neutrality policy supported by the Fine Gael during the Second World War .

Nevertheless, he was appointed as an independent Prime Minister ( Taoiseach ) John A. Costello in his government in February 1948 as Minister of Agriculture. He held this office until the end of Costello's tenure on June 13, 1951. In 1951 he also rejoined the Fine Gael and belonged to the second government of Costello from June 1954 to March 1957 again as Minister of Agriculture.

When both the chairman of Fine Gael, Richard Mulcahy , and Costello resigned as their leader in the House of Commons in 1959 , Dillon succeeded in both positions and combined these functions for the first time since 1944. As party chairman, he succeeded in particular with the results of his party in the 1961 elections in which the Fine Gael rejected the Fianna Fáil's plan to make the Irish language compulsory in schools and public service exams.

Although the Fine Gael was able to maintain its result of 47 seats from 1961 in the 1965 elections , Dillon resigned as chairman of the Fine Gael after the Fianna Fáil government under Prime Minister Seán Lemass achieved an absolute majority of exactly 50.0 percent. Successor as party chairman was William Cosgrave's son Liam Cosgrave .

In 1966 Dillon renounced the nomination for his party's candidate in the presidential election in favor of former Health Minister Thomas F. O'Higgins , who only narrowly lost to President de Valera with a difference of 1 percent.

Web links

• Irish Ministries
• Short biography on rulers.org