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Profile: Stratton MillsAuthor(s): Brian BellSource: Fortnight, No. 10 (Feb. 5, 1971), pp. 10-11Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25543323 .

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10 FRIDAY, 5th FEBRUARY, 1971

PROFILE

Stratton Mills

by Brian Bell

Stratton Mills, elegant and

debonair, mixes with the well dressed members of the Con servative Party. He was always considered to have good prospects and there was speculation last

year that he might be in line for a junior job at the Treasury.

All the more amazing, then, that it was he, . together with

Robin Chichester-Clark, who re fused to support the Government in a major vote on the Industrial

Relations Bill. Both were consid ered to be well-in with the Tory establishment.

The answer probably lies in Mill's growing irritation with the attitude that tends to make

people like Maudling glance frequently over their shoulders

when talking publicly to an Ulster Unionist. It is the same attitude which may well account for Heath's studious avoidance of

appointing Ulster Unionists to

anything after the election.

Mill's sense of urgency about Northern Ireland's problems con

trasted dramatically "with the

Tory priorities which took Lord

Carrington to the Province nearly a fortnight after Chichester Clark's desperate

dash to London. His general irritation led him to miss quite a few divisions over the last six months as a means of protesting about the Con servatives allowing Stormont to

carry the can for any trouble.

Unfortunately nobody noticed his absence ? until now.

His misfortune is that of his

colleagues. As a group, the Ulster Unionists may be larger than the Liberals, but they have little influence and no great

opportunities for getting into

debates. During Labour's reign they reacted to Wilson's real or

imagined hostility to the Stor mont regime by going very much on the defensive.

Not that Stratton Mills was ever all that aggressive anyway.

His manner is mild and gentle manly and he puts his points with a slightly scholarly reserve which doesn't exactly set the House alight. His thin voice doesn't help either: the occasional

roar might do wonders for his

image. As it is, he is recognised at Westminster as hard-working and is listened to with interest but, although he is chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary

Party's important broadcasting and communications committee, he is not seen as front-bench timber.

He'd j>robablv like to be tougher and is trying. His "Fidel

Castro in a mini-skirt" crack about Bernadette Devlin is all that survives in the memory from a predictably futile exercise in mud-slinging between them last year.

But it was an uncharacteristic

jibe. More typical was his

reference, in an attack on the West Ulster Unionist Council, to Bill Craig and Harry West as "some of their more effervescent leaders."

His style was set by his

magnanimous attitude towards his Labour opponent in his first election in 1959: "I have every reason to believe that he is an honest and sincere man and I don't claim to be any better than him, but I do feel that his party is wrong on a number of fundamental issues."

He won, though,, and at 27, the Old Campbellian, Young Unionist

and member of LOL 1919 Co. Down, found himself Member of Parliament at Westminster for North Belfast. He would be

representing the mean little streets of the Shankill and

Ardoyne and the more rarified

atmosphere of the Antrim Road. The

prospect didn't daunt him. For Stratum Mills was an excellent

specimen of his type.

Although there was no political background in the family

? his father was a Belfast

* resident

magistrate ? he came up

quickly through the Young Unionists, taking over the Queen's University Association after it had been going through a fairly inactive phase.

In 1953 he acted as election

agent for Edmund Wanrock. By 1959 he was ready himself for the limelight. His first stab at a nomination failed by 237 votes to 234 and by a hairs breadth Co.

Armagh missed being represented by Stratton Mills.

He was helped along by his

Juvenile

lead looks ? his Cupid's Jow mouth and wavv hair ?

and by Tiis immaculate clothes sense "? even if he were down to his last penny, someone once

said, he'd still turn up jm a

superbly tailored suit. And two months before winning the North Belfast seat, he married Merriel.

They were the sort of good looking successful young people

who would have a dachshund about the house, and did.

But Mills didn't fit totally into the traditionally Unionist mould.

While reading law at Queen's, he had taken the opportunity to travel widely by youth hostelling and attending tne endless confer ences beloved of student politi cians. This broadened his outlook and strengthened views which, in a Unionist context, were unusual

ly liberal. He fitted in quickly to West

minster and became interested in

economics, shipbuilding and the Post Office. A few days after his maiden speech, he drew a ticket for seats at Princes Margaret's

wedding. His speeches and ques tions were worthy and his concerns ranged over economic

aid, the playing time of LPs, the desirability of less emphasis on

Shakespeare in schools, British Standard Time and the possibility of stiffening the spines of phone books.

He still travelled widely, adding Africa, the Middle East, the Far East and the United States to his globe-trotting. And he picked up the directorships that any young Tory likes to have.

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FORTNIGHT 11 But he didn't ignore his

political base. In 1964 he criticised the Unionist Party for failing to keep up with the rate of change. He sensed that his friends in business and the

professions were lost to the

Party, he said: it had no

intellectual appeal for them or for the young.

With this credo in mind, Stratton Mills became the staun chest supporter among the Ulster Unionists at Westminster of Terence O'Neill and his policies. In 1967 he refused at tne last

minute to propose a resolution at

the Twelfth demonstration at Enniskillen because he was not

assured that a tribute would be

paid to the Prime Minister. Given this background, perhaps

his strong stand against Paisley ism during last year's election

wasn't as surprising as it seemed at the time. The only Unionist candidate to spell out unequivo cally the incompatibility of a Paisley-dominated Ulster and the

maintenance of relations with Westminster, Stratton Mills deci

sively defeated the Protestant Unionist Rev. William Beattie in a contest which many predicted

would split the Unionist vote and give North Belfast to Labour. Even his political opponents concede it was a courageous stand.

On the whole, though, Stratton Mills would probably be much happier

in an English con

stituency. But he's stuck with Ulster and at 38 must be thinking of where his future lies.

But even if Heath decides he can

safely promote Ulster Union ists, Mill s lack of forcefulness in

manner and speaking would stand against him. And if he

went for the leadership of the

weakly-led Ulster Unionists, he would have to contend with Robin Chichester-Clark who

regards himself as the born leader. The next year or two will be interesting ones for Stratton

Mills.

Why Segregation?

MICHAEL TREVOR in the first of two articles puts the

case for integration in education) at all levels: in the next

issue he answers the question HOW INTEGRATION?

This is a subject that has received some airing of late, a

subject that is much in the minds of educationists and indeed the general .public as a result of recent events. The suggestion has been made that our education

system should be an integrated one; in simple terms, that children of a district regardless of religious denomination should attend, from their earliest years, the same school built to serve that district.

A simple proposition you may think ? but easier said than

done. For linked with the

proposal is a built-in suggestion of a

system that is so far not

generally acceptable to many

people in this Province, i.e.

^'comprehensive" education. True

integration /does not mean only the merging of Protestant and Catholic to be educated in the same building or on the same

campus. It also means, in my view, the merger into the system of

types of schools ? the prep,

school and the so-called "public" school, or

private school, or, if you like, the institution where

children receive preferential treatment because their parents are able to afford certain fees.

Let me first deal with the generally accepted idea of what

integration means and sketch in

a little of the background in our

education system. Schools were

oroginally provided and operated by the churches; occasionally by some benevolent gentleman or

Society, perhaps by a Firm for

the children of their employees. For this reason they were

denominational and it was a

common thing to have in the same town or in the same

district four separate schools run

by the three main Protestant

denominations, Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian and by

the Roman Catholic Church. It

was inevitable that each denomi nation should belong to its own

school and be governed and

managed by the Clergy. The Church was the centre of

organised education and it was

natural that the Church should

take the initiative in making provision for its people.

With the advance of democracy and the growing rights of citizens to exercise the franchise, the State began to take over the function of providing, amongst other services, the basic neces sities for education. Thus the "National School" and here in

Northern Ireland the Public

Elementary School came into

being, albeit the various religious denominations retained a large

measure of control. This must be said for the State, or the Gov ernment of the day

? it

guaranteed religious freedom in its schools and the right of denominational clergy

to go into schools to impart religious know

ledge. Indeed Religious Instruction

was compulsory on the time-table.

It still is and, incidentally, it is the only subject not examined by the Government's Inspectors. It is still the prerogative of the clergy to examine and inspect religious teaching in day schools.

In course of time, for economic reasons mainly, Protestant deno

minations began transferring their schools to the care of education committees ? once

regional, now on a county and

county borough basis. By so

doing they were relieved of a

heavy financial burden and also of a

responsibility. Here the

barriers or Protestant denomina tions began slowly to disappear for all non-Catholics were

brought together in the same school.

Not so the R.C. Church. Its

policy, required by Canon Law

was to keep R.C. children in R.C. schools. Only in a few cases has the State provided a school in a

predominantly R.C. district at the

request of the R.C. authorities on condition it was staffed by Catholic teachers.

So the system of County and

Voluntary Schools side by side

developed. New Voluntary Ele

mentary Schools appeared only where Farishes had tne money to

provide their portion of the cost

(V3) ? the rest came from the

Government. * In the north of Ireland 'National' Schools re

mained largely in the control of the R.C. Church.

Consider then the two parallel systems, destined to. continue the

separateness, born, no doubt, of the Reformation?certainly in

this country dating at least from 1690 and in this Province

particularly from 1921 Separate

buildings, separate pupils, sepa rate teaching staff, and never the twain could meet! Here and

there, of course, there were

areas where a tiny minorty of

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