Obituary: Allan Blacklaws OBE, personnel management moderniser who straddled the industrial relations divide

Allan Blacklaws was a pioneering industrial relations expert who was equally respected on both sides of the employment divide.

Elevated to the status of a high court judge through his appointment to the government’s industrial relations court, he was honoured by the establishment with an OBE and praised by the trades unions for his contribution to good working relationships.

The roots of his interest in industrial relations lay in the Clyde shipyards, where he was apprenticed during the Second World War, and which remained his first love.

He grew up in Glasgow’s east end with his parents Alexander and Mabel and younger sister Maisie, and was educated at Whitehill Secondary School. His training with shipbuilders Stephen of Linthouse began when normal schooling was disrupted following the declaration of war with Germany in 1939.

It was during that period that Blacklaws also became a goalkeeper with St Mirren FC, then a First Division side.

But in 1946 he left both the Clyde and the professional football field behind to study youth leadership at the University College of Swansea. Back in Scotland after graduation, he spent four years in social work in Edinburgh’s Craigmillar area before returning to what he loved best, shipbuilding.

At Stephens he managed the training of 500 apprentices and acquired the fundamentals of industrial relations. Among his self-confessed recruitment failures were the comedian Billy Connolly, Puppet on a String songwriter Bill Martin and the future Labour minister Gus, now Lord, Macdonald.

It was a challenging environment, to say the least, but many new schemes were initiated there, including the establishment of technical training colleges within the works and, in a bid to overcome suspicions fuelled by the war, an exchange programme with apprentices from a yard in Hamburg.

His experiences on Clydeside led to a pioneering appointment in 1962, in what was then Scottish & Newcastle Breweries, when he had the chance to set up the company’s personnel function from scratch.

He retired 21 years later as group personnel director, leaving the company in the forefront of the personnel field, recognised as a leader in management/employee relations and one of the top ten in the country for its adoption of modern personnel policies.

He was one of the original members of the National Industrial Relations Court and was awarded the OBE in 1980 for his services to the court. On retirement in 1983 he was also honoured by the trade union movement with a citation as a pioneer in good industrial relations.

His success in straddling the divide between workers and management was undoubtedly his innate sense of fairness, his trustworthiness and the ability to be as hard as nails when required, while remaining a gentleman.

He was also public spirited, a champion of the young since his own youth and a kirk elder for more than 50 years. Most of his church service was at Liberton, where he was heavily involved with fundraising, particularly for the Kirk Centre and to support the appointment of the church’s first professional youth worker.

One fundraising wheeze involved selling completely worthless youth bonds. He sold them for £10 each, marketing them as totally worthless but with a certain charm that persuaded people to buy into local youth work. He made £4,000 that day out of the venture.

He created the post of kirk youth worker, meticulously ensuring that every detail was in place to ensure its smooth running, including setting up the contract, formulating the post’s aims and objectives, organising annual appraisals and a pension plan. He even handed over his books on youth work from the 1940s to Andy Chittick, the youth worker appointed, and with whom he shared an enduring love of St Mirren.

Blacklaws also served as chairman of the then Scottish Association of Youth Clubs and a variety of other voluntary bodies involved with young people.

His other interests included hillwalking and, latterly, bowling. He mainly enjoyed the hills of Scotland and the Lake District but had also made two trips to Nepal, where he fell in love with the people and supported a Gurkha family until the day he died.

An incredibly busy man, no matter how much he did, he always ensured that he had quality time for his family, of whom he was most proud. He revelled in their achievements, as he did with all those whom he inspired to succeed throughout his years of voluntary and personnel work.

Predeceased by his wife Sylvia, whom he married in 1948, he is survived by their daughters Sheila, Isobel and Allison, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Alison Shaw