Sir Richard Dawson Bates Appraised

The Prime Minister, Lord Craigavon, second left front and Sir Dawson Bates, Minister of Home Affairs, fourth left front, with members of Lisburn Urban Council at the War Memorial in the Castle Gardens about 1930. Text and photo from: http://lisburn.com/war_memorials/lisburn_memorial.htm

The Oxford Index characterizes Dawson as a Unionist apparatchik, and summarises the final years of his career as follows:

He was awarded his baronetcy in 1937, but clung to office until 1943. An unpopular and inefficient wartime minister, Bates retained the enervated style of the Craig administration; he survived a parliamentary vote of censure in July 1942, but was increasingly regarded as a political liability. He remained vigorously suspicious of Catholic influence to the end.

Dawson died in 1949 at Butleigh House, near Glastonbury, Somerset. He had come under financial strain in later years and constantly needed police security. He is buried at Ballywillan Church of Ireland.

Meanwhile, the Republican view of Dawson Bates is represented in this 2005 entry by an Irish blogger:

'Sir' Richard Dawson Bates was a known bigot, and apparently took it as a compliment when it was said of him in Stormont (by a Senior Civil Servant) - " (He) has 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 (Catholic) assigned for duty to his ministry ." In 1935 ,however , he seemed to believe that he could treat everyone like shit (pardon the language) regardless of their religion - 

- on 18th June that year (1935) , 'Sir' Bates issued an Order banning all parades , not just those with a Republican/Nationalist 'flavour' : the Orange Order objected and told Bates and his people that it was their intention to hold a parade on the 23rd June (1935) and that said parade would be going ahead . Bates was not pleased - it was one thing to trample over the rights of the 'Papists' , but the Orange Order were his own people ....... 

That, at any rate, is one perspective on Hetty Jane Owen's fourth cousin, and direct descendant of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor.