Obituary: Lord Merlyn-Rees

* Lord Merlyn-Rees, 1970s British cabinet minister, Northern Ireland secretary of state. Died age 85.

Lord Merlyn-Rees, a Cabinet minister in British Labour governments of the 1970s, has died at age 85.

Merlyn Rees was best known for his role as Northern Ireland's secretary of state from 1974 to 1976, when he was heavily criticised for failing to save the province's first Catholic-Protestant Administration.

When Protestants opposed to power-sharing shut down roads and electricity throughout Northern Ireland in May 1974, Rees refused both to negotiate with the protest leaders and to deploy the British Army against them, dooming the power-sharing experiment.