689 DAYS IN POWER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32561, 22 March 1971, Page 15

689 DAYS IN POWER

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BELFAST, March 21. When Major James Chichester . Clark took over as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland noone expected him to last more than a few months. Yesterday he resigned after having survived 689 of the most turbulent days in Northern Ireland’s 50-year history. In fact if his moderate regime is to be remembered it will probably be for its having survived as long as it did. For Northern Ireland’s recurring Roman Catholic-Pro-testant strife has not abated during his rule, instead it took on a more dangerous turn, sectarian riots continuing and armed Republican gunmen roaming the streets. Major Chichester-Clark, an Irish aristocrat with an upper class English accent, tried his best to stem the tide and to bring the province’s Protestant majority and one-third Roman Catholic minority into harmony. The 48-year-old former Irish Guards officer embarked on the biggest social reform programme in Northern Ireland’s history against stiff opposition from within his own ruling Unionist Party; But each reform announced failed to bring peace to Belfast’s troubled streets. And

, they antagonised the more militant sections of Protestant opinion. Major Chichester-Clark’s upbringing and career ran the classic course of the landed gentry of Northern Ireland. He was educated at Eton, and served in the Irish Guards during World War 11. He was aide-de-camp to the Governor-General Of Canada, Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis from 1947 to 1949. After a period at the Army Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, he retired from the Army in 1960. In 1954 he had been appointed Deputy Lieutentant for County Londonderry. In July, 1960, he begun his career in Northern Ireland's Parliament with his election as member for South Londonderry, a seat formerly held by his father and his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker,' who was reported worried about his future.

In 1963, he was appointed Assistant Whip and in May of the same year he became Chief Whip. In October, 1966, he was appointed leader of the House and in May, 1967, he took on the additional job of Minister of Agriculture, resigning on April 22, 1969. He married Moyra Maud Haughton (nee Morris) in

,1959 and they have two daughters, Fiona, aged 10, and ] Tara, aged eight, and a stepson, Michael, aged 17.

Major Chichester-Clark’s recreations are shooting, fishing, and ski-ing.