OBITUARY

SIR HAROLD EMMERSON

Industrial relations and

social welfare

Sir Harold Emmenoo, GCB, KCVO, who died on August 2, was Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Works from 1946 to 1956 and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour from 1956 to 1959. He was 88.

His death severs one of the few remaining links with the early years of modern government involvement in industrial relations and social welfare.

Harold Corti Emmerson was born on Aptil 7, 1896 and brought up in humble circumstances in industrial Warrington where his father worked in a wire mill. He felt compelled by financial circumstances to turn down a university scholarship in order to accept a job in the civil service as a junior clerk.

During the First World War he served in the Royal Marine Artillery and on his return joined the newly formed Ministry of Labour where he was to spend the bulk of his working life. In 1919 the Ministry of Labour was given power for the first time to appoint a Court of Enquiry into any trade dispute and one of the first to be dealt with in this way was the dock dispute at which Ernest Bevin acquired the title of "the dockers K.C.". Others followed and Emmerson acted as secretary to several including the Buckmaster Inquiry into the mining industry, a position which gave him a unique insight into the problems and attitudes of both side of the industry.

In 1926, following the General Strike, he was appointed secretary to the Government Mission sent to the USA and Canada to study industrial relations under the chairman of Lord Amulree with Ernest Bevin as one of the trade union members. He spent nearly six months with the mission visiting all the main areas of industrial North America. Then for two years he was secretary to the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance which was followed by work on improving working conditions and employment opportunities as secretary to the Office of the Commissioner for Special Areas.

The outbreak of war in 1939 found him a Principal Officer, Civil Defence, for the Northern Region in Newcastle as part of the planning for regional "selfgovernment" thought to be necessary following the chaos anticipated from air bombardment. In 1940 he was recalled to London and following rapid promotion was appointed Chief Industrial Commissioner under Ernest Bevin who was then Minister of Labour and who he much admired. As such he was intimately involved with the peculiar problems of industrial disputes in war-time and the conflicting rights and obligations of worker and state.

Hisaccount of his experience over the prosecution of illegal strikers during the miners strike in Kent in 1941 was published years later as part of the report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions in 1965 and is of particular relevance to-day.

In 1944 as Director-General of Manpower he became responsible for the mobilisation

of manpower for the competing demands of...