Lord Moyola

Reluctant Stormont prime minister

James Dawson Chichester-Clark, politician: born 12 February 1923; MP (Unionist) for South Derry, Northern Ireland Parliament 1960-72, Assistant Whip 1963, Chief Whip 1963-67, Leader of the House 1966-67, Minister of Agriculture 1967-69, Prime Minister 1969-71; PC 1966; created 1971 Baron Moyola; married 1959 Moyra Haughton (née Morris; two daughters, one stepson); died 17 May 2002.

Lord Moyola was, as James Chichester-Clark, Prime Minister of the old Belfast Stormont government 1969-71, at a critical time, as Northern Ireland slipped from mere civil commotion to bloody war on the streets. Although he struggled manfully to restore some semblance of order, it was clear from the start that he lacked the political skills to halt the decline. It is doubtful whether anyone could have done so, but he was judged particularly ineffectual in his attempts to stem the tide of history.

A Protestant official sympathetically described him as slow, phlegmatic, honest and sensible; a Catholic official called him, with less charity, "a very limited and extremely wooden man who had been far out of his depth as a minister and was a cruel caricature as a prime minister".

Politics was in his bloodline but not in his blood. He came from ancient Anglo-Irish landed gentry, living in some splendour in an 18th-century stately home at Castledawson in Co Londonderry. His background was Eton and Sandhurst and 18 years in the Brigade of Guards before returning to Castledawson to farm and dabble dutifully in politics. His aunt Dame Dehra Parker had held a Stormont seat through five elections since 1932 and in 1960 Chichester-Clark took over her seat after an uncontested by-election.

There was not much to politics in those pre-troubles days: he rarely had to fight elections, since a sectarian headcount gave an infallible indication of the result. Major Chichester-Clark, as he was known, would arrive at Stormont in a battered Land Rover, holding a variety of undemanding positions, such as agriculture minister in 1967-69. Stormont was in the hands of the Unionist party, and the party was in the hands of the landed gentry, with Chichester-Clark's cousin Terence O'Neill at its head.

O'Neill's struggles to reform the system ended in tears as Catholics took to the streets in the civil rights movement and the police were seen to attack them with batons and water-cannon. O'Neill resigned in despair in April 1969 after a series of jolting setbacks, one of which was Chichester-Clark's resignation from the cabinet after losing confidence in his cousin.

Following O'Neill's resignation, Chichester-Clark found himself thrust into the top job, pushed blinking and reluctant into the unwelcome limelight. His approach to politics was dutiful, rather than ambitious, and he seemed as surprised as anyone else to find himself Prime Minister. But the landed gentry could not bring itself to give up its control of the Unionist party and refused to hand it over to the natural candidate. This was Brian Faulkner, who had far greater political skills but, alas, a despised mercantile background.

In office Chichester-Clark never stood a chance of calming the whirlwind. August 1969 brought major riots and the first deaths of the troubles, leading Harold Wilson and James Callaghan to send in the first British troops. The London intervention was inevitably political as well as military, so that Chichester-Clark found himself pummelled by Wilson to bring in more and more reforms. The paramilitary B Specials were disbanded and a series of measures to combat discrimination against Catholics were enacted, but on the streets the rioting and the deaths continued. The sense of deterioration was strong.

From the Unionist grassroots, meanwhile, Chichester-Clark faced huge pressure not for political reform but for repressive measures. He was to say: "They could not grasp the fact that the army could not go in with enormous force." A senior British official said of Chichester-Clark and his cabinet: "In my view they were not evil men bent on maintaining power at all costs. They were decent but bewildered men, out of their depth in the face of the magnitude of their problem."

After three young off-duty British soldiers were shot dead by the IRA in north Belfast, Chichester-Clark flew to London to demand tougher security measures. Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister, offered more troops but it was not enough and Chichester-Clark resigned in March 1971. He was created Baron Moyola later that year.

He stepped down with relief rather than reluctance, never having come close to coping with the disparate forces which applied so much pressure to him from so many different and ultimately unreconcileable directions. "It was only a matter of time before there was a vote of no confidence," he said later, "so I got out, thinking that a new man might be able to get more out of London."

A week after his resignation he was pictured on television, relaxed, chatty and smoking a long cigar, his manner that of a man who had done his duty and was now content to leave the whole affair to someone else. Rarely can a politician have so relished his own fall from office.

David McKittrick