Merlyn Rees

Rees was born in Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd, Glamorgan, the son of Levi Rees, a war veteran who moved from Wales to England to find work.[1] He was educated at Harrow Weald Grammar School, Harrow, England and Goldsmiths College, London where he was president of the students' union from 1939 to 1941. In 1941 he joined the RAF, becoming a squadron leader and earning the nickname "Dagwood". He served in Italy as operations and intelligence officer to No 324 Squadron under Group Captain WGG Duncan-Smith (father of the future Tory leader). One of Rees's Spitfire pilots in Italy, Frank Cooper, became his Permanent Secretary at the Northern Ireland Office. He attended the London School of Economics where he received BSc(Econ) and MSc(Econ). He was appointed schoolmaster at his old school in Harrow in 1949, teaching economics and history. He taught for eleven years, during which time he was three times an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Harrow East, in 1955, 1959, and in a 1959 by-election. He was a member of the Institute of Education at the University of London from 1959 to 1962.

At a by-election in 1963, he stood successfully as the Labour candidate for Leeds South, succeeding Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who had died in office. He held the seat until he stepped down from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. The constituency was renamed as Morley and Leeds South in 1983. He was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from March 1974 until September 1976,[1] when he was appointed Home Secretary. For two years before the Labour government came to power in 1974 he had been Labour Party spokesman on Northern Ireland. Rees wrote of his views on Northern Ireland in: Northern Ireland: a Personal Perspective.[2] One month after his appointment as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Rees lifted the proscription against the illegal loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in an attempt to bring them into the democratic process,[3] however, the organisation was implicated in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings on 17 May 1974 and the group was once more banned by the British Government on 3 October 1975. Rees’ decision to permit the Sunningdale power sharing arrangements to collapse in Northern Ireland was described as ‘supine’ by former SDLP leader, Seamus Mallon.[4]

Retirement

Merlyn Rees Avenue, street sign in Morley, West Yorkshire

When he retired from the House of Commons in 1992, he was created a life peer as Baron Merlyn-Rees, of Morley and South Leeds in the County of West Yorkshire and of Cilfynydd in the County of Mid Glamorgan[5] and entered the House of Lords, having changed his name, on 23 June 1992, by deed poll to Merlyn Merlyn-Rees[6] to allow his title to be Merlyn-Rees rather than Rees.[7]

He was president of the Video Standards Council from 1990 and was the first Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan, a position he held from 1994 to 2002.

He suffered injuries in a number of falls, and failing to recover from these, fell into a coma, dying at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife Colleen and three sons.

• BBC News (5 January 2006). “Peer's roots in 'gifted' street”. Retrieved 15 January 2006.
• "Belfast years remembered for vacillation in face of loyalist strike" (5 January 2006). The Irish Times, p. 14.
• Wakefieldtoday.co.uk."Your Online Guide to Yorkshire People". Retrieved 15 January 2006.

• Merlyn Rees, "Northern Ireland: a personal perspective", London: Methuen, 1985.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Merlyn Rees
• Merlyn Rees (The Second World War Experience Centre)
• Catalogue of the Merlyn-Rees papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.