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Lieutenant Colonel Edward James Augustus Howard Brush, (5 March 1901 – 22 July 1984), known as Peter Brush, was a Northern Ireland unionist politician and paramilitary leader. In later life Brush was also known by the nickname "Basil", as a joke based on the television puppet Basil Brush.Ian S. Wood, Crimes of Loyalty: A History of the UDA, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 34
He had a distinguished career in the British Army and during the Second World War he was wounded in France in 1940 before being held as a prisoner of war for three years.W.D. Flackes & Sydney Elliott, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory 1968-1993, The Blackstaff Press, 1994, p. 107 He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his actions during the defence of Calais in 1940.
By the time he retired from the army he had reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Settling in County Down he took up farming but remained involved in military activity with the Territorial Army. He also served as deputy Lord Lieutenant of Down until resigning from the position in 1974.Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th century, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, p. 213 While a prisoner of war Bush wrote a textbook about horses which was later published. In civilian life he was a member of the Irish National Hunt Steeplechase Committee and a committee member of Down Royal Racecourse. Belfast Telegraph, 4 October 1976.
Brush first received public attention in 1973 when stories appeared in the press that he had been drilling his own right-wing Ulster loyalism private militia force. Claiming 5,000 members, the group, known as Down Orange Welfare, became involved in the Ulster Workers' Council strike of 1974, with Brush taking a leading role in planning the stoppage as a member of the Ulster Workers' Council's Co-ordinating Committee.
Brush claimed in 1976 that he and his deputy in Down Orange Welfare Herbert Heslip had tried unsuccessfully to join the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve (RUC). Belfast Telegraph, 9 March 1976. Brush was also president of the South Down Ulster Unionist Party Association and represented the constituency in the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. His political associates describe him variously as "evasive," "shy," "gentlemanly," and as having "the mind of a Rhodesian planter."
In February 1977, Brush "shocked" his unionist colleagues with a speech suggesting that they should come to an agreement with the Fine Gael government led by Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, arguing that unionist and Fine Gael votes combined would outnumber Fianna Fáil and "Irish Socialist republicans" in a United Ireland. Brush believed the British government was seeking to withdraw from Northern Ireland, and a 32-county state in NATO would be preferable to a power-sharing administration with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland as it was then constituted. Belfast Telegraph, 17 February 1977. He left the public eye after a second less successful loyalist strike in 1977.Ciarán Ó Maoláin, The Radical Right: A World Directory, Longman, 1987, p. 334
Interviewed in 1980, Brush said he "liked" Ulster Defence Association (UDA) chairman Andy Tyrie but disagreed with the idea of an independent Northern Ireland, believing it could be exploited by the Soviet Union to undermine Britain's western seaboard ("a plum for Leonid Brezhnev"). He also believed if the Republic of Ireland joined the Commonwealth then unionists would be obliged to come to an agreement with the Irish government. Belfast Telegraph, 28 May 1980.
In 1935, he married Susan Mary Torbett; they had one daughter, Maureen Rosemary Brush (born 1940). He died, aged 83, in Dublin.
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