February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Some blamed Lord Merlyn-Rees, as he was later known, for the failure of the 1974 executive after he rejected calling in the British army to take on the Ulster Workers’ Council strikers who’d shut down Northern Ireland in protest at power-sharing.
Others said he had been given an impossible job in Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s cabinet and pointed out that he did phase out the detention of suspects without trial, or internment. This, however, was replaced by the construction of the H-blocks, which led to the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes.
Former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said he had found Merlyn-Rees to be “ready, engaged and eager to enter into political discussion.” The politician had, said Trimble, “handled the issue of the IRA ceasefire in 1975 skillfully.”
Republicans, said Trimble, “later conceded that the British government in the mid-70s brought the IRA close to defeat.
“Merlyn came to Northern Ireland as secretary of state at a time of crisis,” he said, adding that after the collapse of power-sharing he had “shown a willingness to explore other ways forward.”
In a Guardian obituary, former Labor MP Tam Dalyell said Merlyn-Rees “had always had a particular interest in Ireland sparked initially by his father, who had been stationed there during the First World War.” Dalyell added that the former secretary of state would continue to visit Ireland several times a year with his wife.
Sinn F