Brush was born in
Fermoy,
County Cork, the son of Major George Howard Brush and May Florence Farrell. Educated at
Clifton College and the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Brush spent his early teenage years at his father's citrus plantation in Canada, later returning to Drumnabreeze House,
Magheralin,
County Down. 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. 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. 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. Brush first received public attention in 1973 when stories appeared in the press that he had been drilling his own
right-wing loyalist 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 was also president of the
South Down Ulster Unionist Party Association and represented the constituency in the
Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. He left the public eye after a second less successful loyalist strike in 1977. 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
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. In 1935, he married Susan Mary Torbett; they had one daughter, Maureen Rosemary Brush (born 1940). He died, aged 83, in Dublin. ==References==