Major James Chichester-Clark, Lord Moyola, who died on May 17th aged 79, had been prime minister of Northern Ireland for only three months when he was forced to call for troops in August 1969 because the exhausted police could no longer contain the worsening disturbances.
Thereafter, pressured by the British Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, and his home secretary, James Callaghan, he pushed through a number of long overdue reforms designed to benefit the Catholic minority community.
The changes infuriated his own unionist hardliners, who plotted hard to overthrow him, but out of a strong sense of duty he stood his ground.
With the Provisional IRA engaging in street violence and intensifying its bombing campaign and emerging groups of loyalist paramilitaries murdering Catholics by way of reprisal, he finally resigned of his own accord in March 1971 because he said he could see no other way of "bringing home to all concerned the realities of the present constitutional, political and security situation".
The last of the "big house" landed gentry to be prime minister, James Chichester-Clark was a reluctant leader who had little chance of success.
Praised on all sides for his efforts to contain a conflagration that was already out of control when he became prime minister, he retired to his ancestral home at Moyola Park, in Castledawson, Co Derry, where he lived in comfortable retirement: farming, constructing a golf course and enjoying the shooting and fishing in his own extensive grounds.
Born on February 12th, 1923, at Moyola Park into a traditional unionist family, he was the youngest of three children, two sons and a daughter, of Captain James Chichester-Clark and his wife, Marion.
His father retired from the Royal Navy in 1929 and soon after became the MP for South Derry, just four years before his death. James was educated at home by a French governess before being sent to Selwyn House School in Broadstairs, Kent, and then, in September 1936, to Eton where one of his contemporaries was Ludovic Kennedy.
In 1942, he decided not to follow his father into the navy, but instead joined the Irish Guards, his grandfather's regiment. During the second World War he served in North Africa and Italy, where he was wounded in 1944 during the breakout after the Anzio landings. In 1947, he was appointed ADC to Earl Alexander of Tunis, a fellow Irish Guardsman who was then governor-general of Canada. After further service in Germany and Egypt, he left the army in 1960 having attained the rank of major.
The same year he succeeded his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker, who had been a member of the Northern Ireland cabinet, as MP for South Derry, becoming the ninth member of his family to serve as an MP. As there was no challenger - the unionists had vast majorities in one third of the constituencies - he had been elected without having to fight for the seat.
Three years later, the new prime minister, Captain Terence O'Neill, a distant cousin, appointed his kinsman chief whip, leader of the Commons in 1966 and minister of agriculture in 1967. As O'Neill became progressively more discredited over the winter months of 1968-'69, fighting off right-wingers opposed to reform and calling for tougher action against civil rights marchers, James Chichester-Clark emerged as the front-runner to succeed him.
In April 1969, protesting opposition to the timing of the introduction of the "one man, one vote" franchise (the local government electorate was composed of ratepayers) - but not the reform itself - he resigned from the government precipitating O'Neill's own resignation.
James Chichester-Clark was then elected prime minister by a 17-16 vote. In a bid to defuse the deteriorating situation, one of his first acts was to order an amnesty for those convicted of, or charged with, political offences since the previous October. Among the beneficiaries was Ian Paisley, who was released from prison.
With demands for more far-reaching political reform continuing to grow, the violence intensified to the point in August 1969 where the police could not contain rioting in Derry and Belfast, forcing James Chichester-Clark to ask the Westminster government to send in troops.
The arrival of the troops weakened the position of the prime minister and at talks in Downing Street with Wilson he was forced to agree that the army should take control of and direct security operations. Later he was pressed into accepting reform of the police, the abolition of the B Specials, the establishment of a central housing body and the creation of an ombudsman to investigate cases of discrimination against Catholics. "There were more reforms pushed through in 50 days than in the previous 50 years," a senior British official reported in a dispatch at the end of 1969.
The situation continued to deteriorate however and James Chichester-Clark faced a loyalist backlash and opposition within his own party. He received strong support from London. At this time it so feared a coup or the emergence of a hard-line administration, including William Craig and Paisley, that it began planning for the introduction of direct rule.
Following the murders of three teenage soldiers in Belfast in March 1971, unionists called for tougher measures to restore law and order and demanded that James Chichester-Clark resign. He went to London for talks with prime minister Edward Heath calling for the introduction of curfews and thousands of troops to cordon and search Catholic areas, where the IRA was based, seal the Border and impose a major crackdown.
Lord Carrington, the defence secretary, was sent to Belfast to try to head off James Chichester-Clark's threat to resign after only an extra 1,300 soldiers were sent but, weary and frustrated, he resigned in March 1971.
James Chichester-Clark was made a life peer in 1971. He married Moyra Maud Haughton in 1959, a widow. She survives him together with their two daughters and his stepson.
Lord Moyola (Major James Dawson Chichester-Clark): born 1923; died, May 2002