OBITUARY

SIR ALAN HITCHMAN

Distinnuished Civil Servant

Sir,,A;lax Rlitchnmsi, tCB, ' Id died in London on July 2 aged 76, was a civil servant withi a long -record of activity in. a wide range of taslcs.'

He played. an important role alike during the war years and the aftermath of past-war reconstruction, when he was 'close to the cenitr-e of economic policymaking, and subsequently in such varied spheres' as agriculture and atomic energv.

The son of E. B. Hitchman, he was born in Newbury, Berkshire, on November 16, 1903 and educated at St. Bartholo'mew's Grammar School, Newburv, and Downing' college, Cambridge, w-here he read history. He took a First in each part of the Tripos and. after an academic vear in Paris at the Sorbonne and the Ecole des Sciences Polhtiques, entered the ad.ministrative class of the Home Civil Service.

As an assistant principal be was posted to the Ministrv of Labour w-here as loanr ago as the late 1920s, part of his training involved attachment to what is now the regional organization in the north-east. He served in the ministry up to and throughout the war in part as principal private secretary to Ernest Broxwn and Ernest Bevin as successive war-time Ministers of Labour and National Service.

In May 1940 Bevin beean mobilizing the country's manpower and other industrial resources for the war effort. His reputation as a war-time Minister of Labour rests not onlv upon the speed with which he acted to reorganize industry but upon his concern for every aspect of the factory and living conditions of workers. Inevitably he made enormous demands upon his civil servants not least his personal staff, but accordina to Hitchman he inspired also continuous enthusiasm-n in his suiport.

In October, 1941. Hitchman was promoted principal assistant secretarv in the Labour supply departmnent and until the end of the war was in charge, under the DirectorGeneral of Manpower, of the supply of labour for the iron and steel. chemical engineering and munitions industries.

Soon after the first postwar Labour government took office it embarked upon a series of planning experiments. The machinery set up in Whitehall for the purpose in 1947 took the form of a central planning .staff under Sir Edwin (later Lord) Plowden and Hitchman was transferred to the Treasury in order to serve in it, first as under-secretary and subsequently as a third secretary and deputy to the chief planning officer.

Thus he was concerned with a series of "economic survevs" that started in 1947, with the preparation of the programme of reconstruction for the Organization for European Econo-nic Cooperation that was part of the condition for Marshall Aid, and with the handling of the balance of payments crisis that resulted in the abandonment of sterling convertibility in 1947 and devaluation in 1949.

In 1950 the outbreak of war in Korea created a world-wide shortage of materials and many of the United Kingdom controls removed after...