Prime Minister Sean F. LeMass
Prime Minister of Ireland, 1959-1966
Irish revolutionary and politician. A founder of the Fianna Fáil party, Lemass was the chief architect of the republic’s economic programs.Born the son of a hatter. At age 15 he joined the Irish Volunteers, a nationalist paramilitary force. His captain was the nationalist leader Eamon de Valera. Lemass fought in the 1916 Easter Rebellion against the rule of the United Kingdom and later was an officer in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the war of independence. As a member of the Dublin brigade of the IRA, Lemass took part in the operation of November 21, 1920, known as Bloody Sunday, which executed 11 supposed British agents and destroyed the British counterintelligence system. He was imprisoned for a year by the British in 1921. Lemass opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, a compromise that established the Irish Free State within the British Empire. He fought with de Valera and the IRA against the British before being imprisoned again during 1922 and 1923. After his release, he became a dynamic and pragmatic political thinker within the anti-treaty Sinn Fein party. Elected to the Dáil Éireann (lower house of the Irish parliament) in 1924, he, like other treaty opponents, refused at first to take his seat. However, in 1926 he played a key role in persuading many treaty opponents to take their seats in the Dáil. Lemass represented Dublin in the Dáil until 1969. Lemass’s mentor de Valera became chief executive of the Irish Free State in 1932 and appointed him minister of industry and commerce. Lemass held that post for 19 of the next 27 years and became one of the most able ministers in the republic’s history. Pursuing a policy of protectionism for Irish industry, he raised industrial employment by 50 percent in his first five years. He also started several semipublic companies, including Aer Lingus, the national airline.