British prime minister Theresa May has led tributes to former Conservative minister and secretary of state for Northern Ireland Lord Prior, who has died aged 89.
Jim Prior served for five years in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, where he was regarded as one of the leading “wets” who opposed her economic policies.
Originally appointed employment secretary when she became prime minister in 1979, Mrs Thatcher moved him to the post of secretary of state for Northern Ireland two years later.
Ms May praised Lord Prior’s “years of public service” and said he was part of the “long line of people who worked to bring peace to Northern Ireland”.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said Lord Prior “engaged positively” with the Irish government in the crucial period before the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
He showed a “strong commitment to engaging with both sides of the community including efforts to introduce ‘rolling devolution’”, the Minister said.
His appointment to the Northern Ireland job was seen at the time as a sign of Mrs Thatcher’s frustration at Mr Prior’s refusal to press ahead more quickly with her trade union reforms.
Opposite wing
First elected to parliament as MP for Lowestoft in 1959, Mr Prior rose to prominence under Edward Heath – then leader of the opposition – who picked him as his parliamentary private secretary in 1965.
When the Conservatives gained power in 1970, Mr Prior was rewarded with promotion to the cabinet as agriculture minister, before becoming leader of the Commons two years later.
Following Mr Heath’s downfall in the wake of the Tories’ 1974 general election defeat, Mr Prior stood for the Conservative leadership but gained the votes of just 19 MPs.
Although on the opposite wing of the party from Mrs Thatcher, who emerged triumphant in the leadership contest, she nevertheless kept him in her top team, handing him the key employment portfolio.
The tensions between the two came to a head in government, as he resisted her programme of reforms which were designed to break the power of the trade unions following the industrial chaos which brought down the Heath government.
Unafraid to stand up to her, Mr Prior publicly resisted her attempts to force him out of the employment brief into Northern Ireland, before finally succumbing in September 1981 in return for a token seat on the economic policy committee.
“I was playing for high stakes and I got it wrong,” he later said.
He nevertheless immersed himself in his new role before finally resigning from the government in September 1984. He stood down as an MP at the 1987 general election and was subsequently made a life peer.
His eldest son, David, was the Conservative MP for North Norfolk between 1997 and 2001 and is currently serving as a junior health minister, having been made a peer in his own right by David Cameron in 2015.
