Documentary examines Irishman's role in helping Churchill become leader

IRISHMAN BRENDAN Bracken’s played a critical role in ensuring that Winston Churchill became British prime minister in 1940, a new documentary has claimed.

Templemore-born Bracken counselled the normally loquacious Churchill to say nothing when a meeting to decide the successor to Neville Chamberlain was held in May 1940 when Britain was under its greatest threat from Nazism.

The documentary Churchill's Irishman, which is being broadcast tomorrow night, maintains it was Bracken's idea that Churchill say nothing in a meeting which would decide whether he or the foreign secretary Lord Halifax would become British prime minister. Halifax was known as wanting to appease Germany.

Churchill had been expected to back Halifax, who was the favourite for the position, but Bracken advised Churchill to keep his counsel when the issue came up for decision.

When the meeting started and Halifax was proposed as prime minister, Churchill said nothing, Halifax interpreted it as meaning that he would not have the support of Churchill.

He therefore stood down and allowed the premiership to pass to Churchill. It was, as Lord Beaverbrook, said the “great silence that saved England” and lasted a full two minutes.

The documentary, which is made by Bracken’s distant cousin, Adrian Bracken, also says that Bracken was one of a couple of wealthy businessman who saved Churchill from bankruptcy in 1938, without which he could never have become prime minister.

The documentary has managed to find all the existing live footage of Bracken and the only footage of him speaking. Bracken, who died in 1958, ordered all his papers to be burned after his death.

The documentary says Bracken was the one of the most influential Irishmen of the 20th century. He rose to the top of the British Establishment by subterfuge, faking who he was, and concealed the fact that he was the son of a Fenian and a founder of the GAA JK Bracken.

However, he was also a brilliant businessman and his enduring legacy has been the foundation of the Financial Timesshortly after the second World War.

He was Minister for Information in Churchill’s cabinet, but only came to Ireland once during the war when his flying boat had to put in at Foynes for repairs on his way to a conference in Canada.

According to the documentary, Bracken took the high-powered delegation on a tour of his previous life but, such was his well-known tendency for fantasy, none believed him even though this time he was telling the truth.

Brendan Bracken – Churchill's Irishman is on RTÉ1 tomorrow night at 10.15pm.