Gordon Lucy: Hero to ordinary unionists, but Bates polarised opinion

His father, whose full name he shared, was a solicitor and clerk of the crown and peace for Belfast.

His mother Mary Dill was the daughter of Professor R. F. Dill of Queen’s College, Belfast. He certainly had Ulster-Scots ancestry on his mother’s side of the family.

His paternal grandfather was town clerk and town solicitor of Belfast 1842–55 and the lynchpin of the Conservative Party organisation in Belfast.

One uncle was crown solicitor for Belfast, another a judge. Educated at Coleraine Academical Institution, Bates became almost inevitably a solicitor in 1900 and entered the family firm. Like his paternal grandfather, he preferred politics to the law.

Almost from its inception, he was secretary to the Ulster Unionist Council (1906–21) and joint secretary of the Unionist Associations of Ireland from 1907. These positions gave him great influence within Unionism.

Effectively, he was Ulster Unionism’s chief apparatchik. He was heavily involved in the organisation of the Ulster Covenant and the Ulster Volunteer Force.

During the Great War he was the founder and Honorary Secretary of Ulster Volunteer Force Hospitals and the Ulster Volunteer Force Patriotic Fund. In recognition of his efforts, he was knighted in 1921. He was later made a baronet. County Down.

In the first elections to the Northern Ireland Parliament he was elected as one of the MPs for East Belfast. After 1929 he became MP for Victoria.

Sir James Craig, with whom he worked closely during the third Home Rule crisis, appointed him Northern Ireland’s first minister of Home Affairs, a position which he retained for 22 years.

Then and now, Bates polarises opinion. Craig thought Bates ‘knew the mind of Ulster better than almost anyone else’ (and as Secretary of the UUC he probably did know the mind of ‘unionist Ulster’ better than anyone else) but Lord Londonderry believed ‘that Bates’s previous work was no training for the duties of Home Secretary and his support and standing … was not high enough to give him that general support and confidence which are such factors in successfully controlling a Government office’. This may of course just be patrician disdain.

It could also be viewed as criticism from the most liberal member of the cabinet of the least liberal member.

However, Londonderry was far from Bates’ only critic. In 1922 Stephen Tallents, the secretary to Lord FitzAlan, the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, thought ‘Bates has the most difficult task in Northern Ireland [ surely a perfectly fair point], and appears to be the least competent of all the present ministers to rise to the occasion [a view others broadly shared]'.

J R Fisher, a staunch but liberal unionist, a former editor of the Northern Whig and a member of the Boundary Commission (appointed by the British government to represent unionist interests) perhaps unfairly considered Bates an ‘ass’ and regarded his ‘not an inch’ rhetoric as unhelpful. (Bates, like many border unionists, viewed the work of the Commission with trepidation.)

Wilfrid Spender, the cabinet secretary before becoming head of the Northern Ireland civil service, did not rate Bates ministerial abilities highly but Spender could be and was critical of most ministers.

Nor were two of Bates’ closest aides impressed by their ministerial chief. Edmond Warnock, his parliamentary private secretary (and successor as Minister of Home Affairs) was so unimpressed by his administrative capacity

that he resigned. William Lowry, an able barrister, considered resigning on a number of occasions but never actually got round to doing so.

In early 1922 Michael Collins, somewhat hypocritically, told Winston Churchill that Bates was ‘notorious for his antipathy to our [nationalist] people’. If so, objectively Michael Collins’ deceitful and duplicitous policy of talking peace and simultaneously waging a terrorist campaign against Northern Ireland ought to be regarded as a major factor in shaping Bates’ outlook, reinforcing his perhaps jaundiced view of nationalists formed during the campaign against Home Rule.

Home Affairs was a ministry with a very wide remit, including sensitive and potentially controversial matters such as electoral arrangements, local government and law and order.

The historian Patrick Buckland contends that Bates was ‘a small man physically and intellectually’ and ill-equipped to give these matters ‘the careful and sympathetic handling’ they required because he regarded all Roman Catholics as ‘nationalists and all nationalists not just as political enemies but as traitors’. If so, this was unfortunate but in mitigation one might suggest that he was the minister most directly confronted with the grim reality of the IRA insurgency and the existential threat it posed to the state. Other ministers could attend to their respective portfolios because Bates took the strain.

Furthermore, Bates’ views were shared by Richard McGaw, his first parliamentary secretary, a Co. Antrim MP and a barrister, and Sam Watt, a no-nonsense Ulsterman who was the permanent secretary at Home Affairs.

Even if Bates’ performance as a minister left something to be desired, ordinary unionists viewed him as a hero who had ensured the survival of the state which for them was the main thing.

His role as a minister in the Second World War is more difficult to defend, especially the shortcomings in civil defence revealed by the Belfast blitz in 1941. (In the autumn of 1942 he survived a parliamentary vote of censure by 20 to 4 with a significant number of abstentions.)

Like too many of his Cabinet colleagues, his health deteriorated, and he remained in office far too long. In 1943 he was culled from Basil Brooke’s cabinet. He should have stepped down in November 1940 (when Lord Craigavon died), if not considerably earlier.

After leaving office (which he did with bad grace), Bates neither spoke in parliament nor stood for re-election. In 1947 he retired to Glastonbury, where he died in June 1949. He was buried near his former home, Magherabuoy House, near Portrush.