One of Ireland's most prominent Quakers and a former member of the Irish Times Trust has died aged 90. Desmond G. Neill cut a tall, dignified figure during a long life that was marked by a deep commitment to social reform.
Born in September 1913 in Madras (Chennai), India, the son of an Ulster Methodist minister, Desmond Gorman Neill was educated at Kingswood School in Bath, England, before entering Trinity College Dublin in 1931 where he would become Auditor of the College Historical Society.
In Dublin he joined the Religious Society of Friends and lived by their founder George Fox's advice "to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every man".
In 1938 he returned to England as Warden of York Settlement, an adult education project, and in 1943 moved to become Warden of Swathmore Settlement in Leeds.
He and his wife Joyce (née Davies), whom he had married in 1941, moved to Belfast in 1946 following his appointment as director of social studies at Queen's University, Belfast. He served in that post for 20 years before becoming the first full-time secretary to the Academic Council until what he regarded as premature retirement at 65 in 1978. It was a powerful position, some would argue second only to that of the vice-chancellor.
He also briefly acted as director of Queen's renowned Institute of Irish Studies. His publications included A Survey of New Housing Estates in Belfast and Devolution of Government: The Experiment in Northern Ireland.
For a period Neill was a member of the now-defunct Northern Ireland Labour Party, but it was as chairman of the BBC Northern Ireland radio panel discussion programme Your Questions that he gained public prominence. Regular panellists included the editor of the Belfast Telegraph, Jack Sayers, and the constitutional nationalist J.J. Campbell.
Education was an abiding interest of Neill's and he served on the board of governors of Friends School in Lisburn for over 40 years, chairing it for three years. Founded to provide "guarded" education for the children of a numerically small Christian community in the 1770s, Quaker children nowadays make up only a tiny proportion of the annual intake.
Neill was a founder of the South Belfast Meeting of the Society of Friends in Marlborough Park North and travelled all over Ireland through the various committees of the society on which he served. Cricket, too, took him around Ireland. He was a member of the Leprechauns, Mourne Monsters and Queen's Staff clubs, the last of which he founded.
Peace and reconciliation between the warring Irish tribes was another long-term focus, and he was a member of the Irish Association for many years, always on hand to provide an entertaining and impromptu vote of thanks for a speaker. Mutual understanding between North and South was a cause dear to his heart.
It was entirely appropriate, therefore, that he should have been asked to join the board of the Irish Times Trust in 1975. The trust has as one of its key objectives "The promotion of peace and tolerance and opposition to all forms of violence and hatred so that each man may live in harmony with his neighbour considerate for his cultural, material and spiritual needs." Desmond Neill was perfectly suited to uphold such an ideal.
It was on his return by train from a meeting of the trust in Dublin that he discovered he could not find a taxi at Belfast Central Station because of President Clinton's first visit to Belfast. He decided to walk but unluckily tripped, suffering a bad fall that restricted his mobility in his latter years. He retired from the Irish Times Trust in 1997.
Desmond Neill is survived by his widow, Joyce, a social reformer in her own right and the founder of the Northern Ireland Family Planning Association. He is survived, too, by their four devoted children, Virginia, Meg, Rachael and Paddy. He will be remembered as, very simply, a good man.
Desmond Gorman Neill: born September 23rd, 1913; died March 16th, 2004