I did not know Max very well in person, but as an historian I have spent many
hours reading his voluminous written records.
I was appointed as an historian to the Nature Conservancy's Monks Wood
Experimental Station in 1967, shortly after Max's retirement as
Director-General. Max told me on several occasions that Monks Wood was one
of the few initiatives which he could claim as entirely his own - a fact
borne out entirely by the Conservancy's own archive and that of the Minister
for Science.
Many were the stories I was told on my arrival at Monks Wood of Max
summoning scientists to Belgrave Square. He ran the Conservancy and its
committees on Cabinet Committee lines. As an item came before the
Conservancy, those with the relevant specialist knowledge would be brought
into the room, questioned by Max, and then dismissed. Although they were
grateful that their views were sought, it was clearly something of an ordeal
to appear before such eminent figures under Max's very stern direction.
My own first meeting with Max was in the early 1970s, when I was
writing Nature in Trust. Richard Fitter had kindly shown me the papers he
had amassed as Secretary to the Wild Life Conservation Special Committee of
1945-47, but I had not seen the Cabinet Committee minutes and papers as to
the establishment of the Nature Conservancy. They had not then been
released. Max had kindly read a draft of the book, and I recall pressing him
closely as to whether I had accurately covered the decision to appoint the
Conservancy. He looked at me fixedly, and said 'you've got it about right',
adding that he had written the Cabinet paper and drafted the minutes of the
meeting.
With the release of the relevant files in the Public Record Office, I
found myself later reading Max's briefings to Herbert Morrison on the
likelihood of a third world war, and so much else. Individual ministers took
credit for such significant pieces of post-war legislation as the
Agriculture and Forestry Acts, the Town and Country Planning Acts, and the
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. The significant
contribution of Herbert Morrison and, therefore, Max and his small office
should not be overlooked, in giving the measures priority and smoothing
their passage through the machinery of government and parliamentary process.
Max's memoranda were always notable for their powerful advocacy of the need
to take some forrm of action. They put forward a range of options, but there
was never any doubt as to what Max thought was the right course to take. One
of my favourite submissions was Max's paper of July 1948 on Rabbits and the
Balance of Payments. On the premise that rabbits consumed as much food as
the equivalent of the entire wheat crop, or one-and-a-half times that eaten
by the sheep population, he argued the case for eradicating the rabbit in
order to reduce the amount of foreign exchange needed to import meat and
dairy produce, grain and timber. Officials of the Ministry of Agriculture
were appalled at both the resource implications and anticipated public
outcry at the extermination of the rabbit.
Much is made of Max's radicalism. It was something very precious to
him. In writing Nature conservation in Britain: the formative years
(Stationery Office, 2002), I had occasion to work through large numbers of
Cabinet, Treasury, Minister for Science, and Scottish Office files. Max's
assertiveness could cause considerable exasperation and resentment, but
there is equally evidence of a profound respect among those departments for
his policy-making and administrative abilities. He received comparatively
few honours not so much through upsetting the Establishment, as by refusing
what were offered him.
Some ten years ago, I was amused to come across firsthand evidence that
Max never lost a chance to compile bird lists. The papers of my wife's aunt,
the late Kathleen Pitcher, were shown to us. She had been a secretary to
Lord Leathers, the Minister of War Transport, and had attended the Potsdam
conference. And sure enough, we found among the papers an 'Interim Bird
List: Babelsberg, nr Berlin, July 15th 1945', compiled by Max. A Black Kite
was seen 'from York aircraft over Potsdam: another over Griebnitz See'. A
family of fledgling Black Redstart was observed at 42 Ringstrasse. Re-united
with his list, Max told me it had been compiled 'mainly for the eye of Lord
Alanbrooke, who suffered from being made to attend highlevel meetings at the
expense of bird-watching'. So too did Max!
Max was a giant in that heroic age of nature conservation, when so much
was achieved by so few, in establishing a foothold in the corridors of
power, the scientific community, and among the voluntary bodies. Max was the
first to acknowledge the support of others. A large proportion of his
papers, now to be found in archives, bear the reference 'EMN/TBS'. Max spoke
, in his last letter to me, of how much he owed to Teresa for her almost
sixty years of loyal support.
