Ian Smith

Published on Tuesday 8 January 2008 20:19

Former head of Scottish Office agriculture department

Born: 22 April, 1924, in Leicester. Died: 2 December, 2007, in Oxfordshire, aged 83.

JAMES Ian Smith – always Ian – was born in 1924 to parents from Aberdeenshire, but brought up in Leicester and educated at Alderman Newton's School. At 18 he entered the bursary competition at St Andrews and was awarded a coveted Harkness residential scholarship.

Arts students then had only one year at university before being called up. Ian was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and served as a lieutenant in an Indian mountain artillery battery near the North West Frontier. He became familiar with the famous screw gun, and managed the battery's enormous mule-train. His unit was posted to Burma to see the last of the Japanese war.

In 1946 Ian returned to St Andrews. He married Pearl Myra Fraser in 1947, but Pearl contracted tuberculosis and had to spend a lengthy period in a sanatorium. He graduated with a first-class degree in economics in 1949, and joined the Scottish Office in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. Pearl had recovered, and they set up house in Edinburgh, with their newly born son, Brian, who was to be their only child.

Ian served as private secretary to William McNair Snadden, parliamentary under-secretary of state for agriculture in 1953, before being quickly promoted to principal. His abilities led to further promotion and to wider duties as an assistant secretary in 1959. His seniors relied on him not only as a "safe pair of hands" but as someone who could see to the bottom of the most complex questions and devise effective solutions.

He was drafted in 1965 by Douglas Haddow, the permanent under-secretary of state, to reinforce the Scottish Development Department, where he served for three years. He found the work enjoyable; but he was an agriculture man and happy to return to that department, which now embraced fisheries, as an under-secretary in 1967.

Ian became secretary (head) of the department in 1972, and the farming community quickly saw a change of approach. In the entrance hall of the department's Edinburgh HQ was an enormous painting by John Bellany showing a group of farm workers. The figures were unflatteringly bucolic; their tools were antiques, and farmers' representatives had fruitlessly objected to being greeted by this piece on entering the office. Ian had it removed to another Scottish Office building.

He headed the department for 12 years until his retirement at 60 in 1984. His ability, his commitment, his courtesy and kindness earned him the high regard of his staff. He was a fair and open-minded chief, if sometimes disconcertingly quick for slower colleagues. He disliked elaborate paperwork, preferring to resolve problems in discussion. On the fisheries side he followed established practice by leaving matters almost entirely in the hands of John Cormack, the appointed fisheries secretary, a close colleague and friend of long standing.

Successive ministers quickly came to know they could rely on his advice and his understanding of the issues, and they valued the excellent relations he maintained with the industry.

John Cameron, president of the National Farmers' Union of Scotland from 1979-84, records that Ian had a deep understanding of Scottish farming. Mr Cameron had been elected as the first five-year president of the union, to help the industry cope with the complex questions arising from entry into the Common Market.

He appreciated Ian's diplomatic approach, saying: "Even when we were on opposite sides, his open and courteous way of dealing with controversial issues helped to resolve many difficulties. My colleagues and I enjoyed our meetings with him, and always came away, no matter the outcome, feeling that our case had been properly heard and fully understood.

"I liked going with him on farm visits, where he was always his own man, listening with the same attentive ear to the farmer directing a large-scale enterprise and to the small farmer with not many acres from which to earn a living.

"He liked meetings with farmers and on occasion, in the right company, he would claim some expertise in the management of numbers of large animals, though, he said, 'I admit I have yet to meet a mule on a Scottish farm'."

Ian enjoyed two spells as a member of the Agricultural Research Council. In retirement, he served on the panel of chairmen of the Civil Service Commissioners and on the Potato Marketing Board. He became a member and later chairman of the St Andrews Links Trust. Golf was a great pleasure, though football had been his sport at university and he was a keen Hearts supporter.

In her later years Pearl became a virtual recluse. Ian cared for her patiently, latterly able to have essential breaks only by taking her for respite care in a nursing home. Some time after Pearl's death, Ian developed Parkinson's disease, which later became severe.

He was happy to have renewed an old friendship with Jill Smith, a widow, whom he had known since his school days. She came to Edinburgh to care for him. They married and returned south to Oxfordshire, where Ian later became seriously ill and where he died.

He is survived by his second wife and only son.