Sir Richard Dawson Bates (1876-1949), first baronet, lawyer and politician; was born at Strandtown, Belfast, on 23 November 1876, the only son of Richard Dawson Bates, solicitor and clerk of the crown, and his wife Mary Dill. His grandfather John Bates was also heavily involved with the Conservative party and served as town clerk for many years. The young Dawson attended Coleraine Academical Institution and was admitted as a solicitor in 1900. He went into partnership in a law firm with his uncle Edward in 1908. Like his grandfather, Dawson Bates preferred politics to law. The Ulster Unionist Council has employed a full-time professional organisation since 1905. When the first Secretary of the Council Dr. T. H. Gibson resigned due to ill-health he was succeeded by Bates. He was an excellent organiser devoted to the Unionist cause. He remained Secretary to the Council until 1921, when on the foundation of the Northern State he became Minister of Home Affairs. Bates was a close friend of Craig’s and had helped him between 1912-14 by organising the major anti-Home Rule demonstrations at Craigavon and Balmoral. Bates made no secret of his prejudice against Catholics. G.C. Duggan, a former Northern Comptroller and Auditor-General revealed that Bates had:

‘Such a prejudice against Catholics that he made it clear to his permanent Secretary that he did not want his most juvenile clerk or typist, if a Papist, assigned for duty to his ministry.’

Bates was simply of the opinion that Protestant ascendancy and Unionist dominance were the best ways to preserve Ulster and took the hardline. The Anglo-Irish Treaty in the South had little impact on the sectarian tensions in the North. Bates made a speech scathing the British government over the truce and criticized them for still placing restrictions on the use of Northern troops. He was Minister for Law and Order and was convinced that the IRA were rearming and reorganizing in the North. Consequently he declared war on them and announced that the only way to peace was by ‘breaking the power of the IRA in the Six Counties.’ Whilst he claimed that justice should be administered impartially, his claim was somewhat hypocritical since he did not acknowledge that anyone other than the IRA was causing trouble. In March 1922 he introduced the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Bill. It prescribed flogging for firearms offences and allowed the authorities to ban inquests, prohibit organizations, newspapers, meetings, seize properties without warrants and to prosecute people who were believed to be causing disaffection. Bates was to make plenty use of the power that this Act delivered. After 1921 he could travel nowhere in Northern Ireland without a police escort.

Earlier in January 1922 Bates had appointed a committee of inquiry on police reorganization in the North. The committee was asked to consider changes in the existing organization which would be necessary to accommodate the establishment of a police force. Issues under examination included recruitments and conditions of service; the extent to which the new force should be comprised of RIC and Specials; the strength of the force and the cost. The committee proposed a 3,000-strong single force for the whole province and rejected the concept of local forces as in Great Britain. It was to be known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary. RIC and Specials were granted permission to join the new force and the committee suggested that one-third of the force should be Catholic. In May the Belfast Parliament passed the 1922 Constabulary Act and the RUC officially came into existence on 1st June. Members of the RIC had been forbidden to join politico-religious organizations like the Orange Order. But at the request of the Belfast Orange Lodge and after consulting Craig, Bates circulated a memo on 11th August 1922, allowing members of the RUC to join the Orange Order, a policy that is still very much in force. When the Peel Lodge held its first AGM in April 1923, it had membership of almost 300, or about 10% of the RUC. Bates attended and made a highly political speech criticizing the British Government’s agreement to the Boundary Commission.

The RUC was barely in existence when Bates and other hardliners began to take a ‘paranoid’ interest in the number of Catholic members, reflecting their distrust of Catholics in the RIC. Indeed it must be said that the Catholic quota was never quite as generous as it looked at first glance. Initially there were practical reasons behind the Catholic quota—Catholic police would be more aware of the situation within the Catholic community. Over time, however, the Catholic proportion steadily declined, as distrust of Catholics increased.

The violence that the celebrations for the 1935 Silver Jubilee of George V provoked was so serious that Bates announced a ban on all parades, including the Orange Marches in July. This, however, resulted in public outcry so it wasn’t long before Bates changed his mind. The Orange marches that followed degenerated into communal rioting and the city once again faced fighting from both sides of the sectarian divide.

Bates trained in the front line of party politics and proved to be an extremely loyal minister, successfully defending the partition settlement from the IRA onslaught of 1921-1922: he was a keen proponent of the Civil authorities (Special Powers Act 1922). He was awarded a baronetcy in 1937 but clung to office until 1943. But outside Unionist circles Bates proved unpopular. Stephen G. Tallents, who was sent to investigate the failure of Clause III of the Craig-Collins Pact in July 1922, was highly critical of the Minister of Home Affairs in some of his personal correspondence. He maintained that Bates had little enthusiasm for the conciliation and police committees set up under the Pact. Tallents wished for the speedy removal of Bates, which would satisfy everyone in the Six Counties except Bates and Craig ‘who strongly upholds him.’ In his diary he described Bates as ‘a weak man and a political hack. His two assistants [his junior minister, R. D. Megaw and his Permanent Secretary, S. J. Watt] also violent partisans.’ Bates survived a parliamentary vote censure in July 1942, but was increasingly regarded as a political liability. He remained vigorously suspicious of Catholics right up to his death in Somerset, on 10 June 1949. He was buried in Ballywillan cemetery, Portrush.

Writings, Biography, & Studies. John W. Blake, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast 1956). Brian Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast 1995). Louis McRedmond, Modern Irish Lives: Dictionary of 20th-century Irish Biography (Dublin 1996). Brian Lalor, The Encyclopedia of Ireland (Yale 2003). The Ulster Unionist Council archive comprises 200 volumes and c. 60,000 documents and contains a lot of correspondence to and from Dawson Bates: http://www.proni.gov.uk/

Tomás O'Riordan