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Contact details:
Arthur Dafis
Development & External Affairs
Tel: 01970 621763
Mobile: 07811 412295
E-mail:aid@aber.ac.uk
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Obituaries
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SIR GORONWY H DANIEL
1914 - 2003
Teyrnged gan / A tribute by Professor Derec Llwyd Morgan
Sir Goronwy Daniel will be remembered as one of late twentieth-century Wales's necessary men, powerful in educational, cultural and commercial circles, and influential in Whitehall. He will also be remembered as a character and revered for his own uninhibited self, proud, gruff, intellectually tough and more than slightly eccentric. The day he died, news programmes on Welsh television broadcast mid-sixties film footage of him coming down the steps of the Welsh Office smiling, carrying a small briefcase, wearing a long overcoat and a bowler hat, striding not to a sober saloon car but to a hard-driven Land Rover. The piece of film captured him splendidly. The man who happily sported the conventional badges of the civil service led his audience to the unexpected, to something reliably robust and quirkily sensible.
Before his appointment as the Welsh Office's first Permanent Under-Secretary in 1964, he had spent seventeen years in the Ministry of Fuel and Power, first as Chief Statistician, then as Assistant- and Under-Secretary. He had been drawn into the civil service in 1943, to work in the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. He had spent the previous two years as a Temporary Clerk in the House of Commons. No doubt he was chosen to head the Welsh Office because of his excellence as an administrator and his intimate knowledge of Wales. But the appointment makes an interesting footnote to the political history of Wales. In 1940 Goronwy Hopkin Daniel had married Valerie, daughter of the (later) second Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor. So the man appointed as the chief servant of the first-ever Secretary of State with devolved responsibilities for Wales was the grandson-in-law of the most potent of all modern politicians who championed Home Rule for the Principality.
In 1969 Sir Goronwy - he was made KVCO that year - became Principal of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, returning to the College where between 1932 and 1937 he had gained a First-class degree in Geology and diplomas in Anthropology and Education. Introducing him to the College Council the members of the Selection Committee said that it 'counted itself fortunate to have secured its first choice so expediently, and did not find it necessary to disturb the peace of mind of any other gentleman.' As a boy Goronwy had attended schools in the Swansea and Amman Valleys where his father, David Daniel, had been employed as a colliery official, for many years as manager. The Daniel children were in a small way the aristocrats of the anthracite coalfields, but even they had to depend on scholarships to attend universities. From Aberystwyth Goronwy was granted a University of Wales Fellowship to enter Jesus College, Oxford, where, as a Meyrick Scholar, he prepared a DPhil thesis on aspects of economics and statistics.
His years as Principal coincided with the post-Robbins expansion of higher education. Working to principles and ideals enunciated in his subtle and erudite Inaugural Lecture, First Impressions of the University Scene (1970), Sir Goronwy presided over many new developments in Aberystwyth, some of which - for instance, the establishment of Pantycelyn as a Welsh-medium hall of residence - caused anguish amongst the majority of his staff. He thrived on debate, loved a fight, and often conducted Senate meetings which lasted for several hours, haranguing colleagues and deflecting attacks with gumption and gusto. His style of chairing committee meetings (which, because of his ascetic attitude to heat, were often overcoated committee meetings) became the stuff of legend, as did some of his public pronouncements. Although fervently international in outlook - 'our campus is open to the winds of thought and culture from all lands' - he was just as fervently Welsh. The Aberystwyth Arts Centre is a lasting memorial to his insistence not just on good town/gown relationships but also on promoting cultural events in College for the benefit of all. The part of the Centre called Theatr y Werin (The Ordinary People's Theatre) was named by him.
His sailing boat became as famous as his gait (he was a tall, angular man not easily accommodated in sailing boats). In the seventies he bought a farm in Letterston, Pembrokeshire. But retirement was anathema to him. Already Lord Lieutenant for Dyfed and President of the West Wales Association for the Arts, he became in 1982 the first Chairman of the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority (the previous year he had been one of a small delegation that helped to secure the Channel). He also became Vice-Chairman of the Commercial Bank of Wales and of the Prince of Wales's Committee. During 1988 and 1989 he chaired an important Working Group on the reformation of the powers and functions of the University of Wales.
Lady Valerie, as gifted and stimulating as he, died in 2000. Sir Goronwy is survived by his daughters Anne and Gwyneth and his son David.
Sir Goronwy H Daniel, civil servant, university Principal and inaugural Chairman of the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority, was born in Ystradgynlais on 21 March 1914. He died in Cardiff on 17 January 2003, aged 88.
February,
2001
LORD CLEDWYN OF PENRHOS
(1916 - 2001)
A tribute to the late Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos by
Lord Elystan Morgan
In the partisan realm of Politics, there are a few people
whose qualities and personality are such as to allow their
appeal to transcend party boundaries. Cledwyn Hughes was such
a colossal figure.
In Wales, he was an epitomy of that which was noblest in
the life of our Nation, and he never allowed to pass an opportunity
of pleading its case in a dozen different fields. The Welsh
Language, our Culture, our history, the future of Wales both
as an organic and constitutional entity, were all central
to his life. Amongst so many of the institutions which he
served was our own University at Aberystwyth and the Federal
University of Wales, both of which he presided over in turn
with great distinction. He always revelled in the fact that
he had graduated in the Law Department under Professor Thomas
Levi's tutelage.
He was one of those within the Labour Party who had sedulously
campaigned for the establishment of the Office of Secretary
of State for Wales which was ultimately achieved in 1964.
As the holder of that Office from 1966-1968 he had laid rock
solid foundations which were over the next 30 years to bear
the weight of the steadily increasing functions of that department.
He also gained the most honourable reputation for ability
and competence as Minister of Agriculture from 1968-1970.
As Chairman of the Labour Party he played an invaluable role
in guaranteeing James Callaghan's government a majority during
the fragile years of late seventies. His charming diplomacy
seldom failed to achieve its purpose.
As Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, he was
not only an inspiring spokesman for his party but was also
a very greatly respected and universally trusted figure on
all sides of the House.
Public life will undoubtedly be the poorer with the passing
of this 'honest broker' of Politics.
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Friday
4 February, 2001
SIR MELVYN ROSSER (1926-2001)
A tribute to Sir Melvyn Rosser,
former President of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth,
by Professor Derec Llwyd Morgan
Sir Melvyn Rosser, who died on the 4th of February, was born
on the 12th of November 1926, the son of David John and Anita
Rosser, and brought up in one of the numerous industrial Welsh-speaking
villages that fringed the town of Swansea. After leaving Bishop
Gore Grammar School in 1949, he qualified as a chartered accountant,
and in the following year joined the staff of Deloitte Plender
Griffiths & Co. After a period of nineteen years as partner
in Swansea and Cardiff, from 1980 he served as one of five
senior partners in Deloitte's London headquarters. He retired
in 1985.
The company gave him much leave to pursue other interests
in public and commercial service. Between 1965 and the mid-nineties
he served as a director of many corporations and companies,
including the Development Corporation for Wales, the Land
Commission, the National Bus Company, the Wales and Marches
Telecommunications Board, the British Steel Company, British
Coal and the West Midlands and Wales Board of the NatWest
Bank. He was a leading member of the Welsh Council from 1968,
and between 1971 and 1980 was its chairman. He also chaired
the Manpower Services Committee for Wales between 1976 and
1988, and, between 1989 and 1995, the HTV Group, Wales.
To those who know about Welsh public life it seems as if
Sir Melvyn - he was knighted in 1974 - had been around for
generations. He appeared in the best sense aged, because he
oozed a kind of ancient wisdom, but at the same time appeared
boyish. The splendidly proper and vastly experienced public
servant was also in a way bashful. Fellow committee- or board-members
would see wise experience in those eyes, but see in them too
something akin to incandescent innocence when he was pleased
with things. If someone made a powerfully entertaining and
enlightening speech, or said a good joke at the dinner table,
or sometimes just pulled his leg, his spectacles would swell
with that pair of boyish eyes smiling as if he had discovered
serendipity. Perhaps it was this mixture of the ancient and
the innocent that made him so modest, so nobly humble.
Of all the people I have come to know in public life Melvyn
Rosser was the most tender and the most conscientious, and,
often, the most contentious and stubborn. He took his time
to come to any decision, for he always wanted to understand
and digest the facts and figures of every case and cause.
This sometimes stubborn man was generally such a fine gentle
man that it was surprising to think of him as an accountant.
No, that of course is grossly unfair to accountancy, for accountancy
like history or botany or any branch of the humanities or
science has its great souls as well as its personae non gratae.
Sir Melvyn was a great soul drawn to finance. There are still
in the Swansea Valley and beyond pensioned concert-goers who
say that in his youth he was also drawn to music. When he
joined Deloitte's, the semi-professional stage lost a good
tenor.
His achievements would have made other, lesser men vain.
He retained that sense of gweriniaeth, that love of the common
people instilled into him in boyhood by his socialist, chapel-attending
upbringing. He didn't enter university until 1977 when the
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (as it was then called)
invited him to become Vice-President of its Court, and then,
from 1986 until early 1998, President. Via Aberystwyth he
also served the federal University of Wales, as a leading
member of its Court as a chairman of one of its working parties
on restructuring its structured governance. Aberystwyth named
a hall of residence after him. The Federal University has
a Report named after him.
Bill Shankly, the legendary manager of Liverpool Football
Club, used to say, "I never went to College; therefore I must
use my brains." Sir Melvyn never harped on that, and did not
need to, for he had (as I have noted) a momentously distinguished
career. Rather than tell you that he never studied at university
he would boast about the early doubling of his wages when
he was a trainee accountant in the town, and then he'd add,
"Ond dim ond hanner coron o'n i'n ga'l, ta beth." [= "The
original wage was only half-a-crown, anyway."]
When I first met Sir Melvyn he was Chairman of the National
Assembly's only modern precursor, that is, the Welsh Council.
It was Mrs Thatcher who terminated that Council's existence.
Even so, she retained him as a member of her Advisory Committee
on Outside Business Appointments, but there is no truth in
the rumour that she used to blow him blue kisses in the Cabinet
Office, or that, on the steps of 10 Downing Street, he serenaded
her with Welsh love-songs. He reserved them for another Margaret,
who survives him with their son and two daughters, Neil, Betsan
and Mari.
Professor Derec Llwyd Morgan
Vice Chancellor and Principal, The University of Wales, Aberystwyth
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