BORN: 26th October, 1912, Glasgow.
PARENTS: Daniel Douglas MacDougall, Glasgow and Beatrice Amy Miller.
FIRST MARRIAGE: 1937, Bridget Christabel Bartrum (daughter of George Edward Bartrum) (marriage dissolved 1977); one son one daughter.
SECOND MARRIAGE: 2nd, 1977, Laura Margaret Hall (daughter of George Edward Linfoot) (died 1995) who was the former wife of Robert Lowe Hall (later Baron Roberthall, d 1988);
DIED: 22nd March, 2004.

SCHOOLS

Kelvinside Academy Glasgow
Shrewsbury

BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD

First year, Second Class in Honour Mathematical Moderations (tutor: Hubert Linfort).
Second-fourth years, Second Class in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (tutor: Maurice Allen & A.B. Rodger).
1934, George Webb Medley Junior Scholarship in Political Economy. Graduate supervision by Roy Harrod.
1935, George Webb Medley Senior Scholarship in Political Economy. Graduate supervision by Roy Harrod.

JOBS

1936-1939, Assistant Lecturer (later Lecturer) in Economics, University of Leeds.
1939-1940, First Lord of the Admiralty's Statistical Branch.
1940-1945, Prime Minister's Statistical Branch, (Chief Assistant, 1942-1945).
1945, Work on Reparations and German Industry, Moscow and Berlin.
1945-1950, Official Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.
1946-1948, Domestic Bursar, Wadham College, Oxford.
1947-1950, Faculty Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.
1948-1949, Economic Director, Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, Paris.
1950-1952, Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.
1950-1952, Nuffield Reader in International Economics, Oxford University.
1951-1953, Chief Adviser, Prime Minister's Statistical Branch.
1952-1964, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford.
1958-1964, First Bursar, Nuffield College, Oxford.
1959, Visiting Professor, Australian National University.
1961, MIT Center for International Studies, New Delhi.
1964-1968, Director-General, Department of Economic Affairs.
1969-1973, Head of Government Economic Service, and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury.
1973-1984, Chief Economic Advisor, CBI.

ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES

1946, Member, Heavy Clothing Industry Working Party.
1959-1962, Director, Investing in Success Equities, Ltd.
1962-1964, Economic Director, NEDO.
1963-1964, Member, Turnover Tax Committee.
1968-1977, Vice-President, Society for Strategic and Long Range Planning.
1977-1985, President, Society for Strategic and Long Range Planning.
1974-1987, Chairman, Executive Committee NIESR, .
1974-1975, Member, EEC Study Group on Economic and Monetary Union, .
1975-1977, Chairman, EEC Study Group on Role of Public Finance in European Integration.
1978-2004, Vice-President, Society of Business Economists.
2001-2004, Member, New Europe Advisory Council.

PUBLICATIONS
MacDougall, D. (1936). "The definition of prime and supplementary costs." Economic Journal XLVI: 443-461.

MacDougall, D. (1938). General Survey 1929-37. Britain in recovery. B. Association. London, Pitman.

MacDougall, D. (1940). Interwar changes in the location of industry. Chapter " of Memorandum by J.H. Jones. Report of the Royal Commission on the geographical distribution of the industrial population. London, H.M.S.O.: 264-280.

MacDougall, D. (1940). "Interwar population changes in town and country." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Part 1 CIII: 30-51.

MacDougall, D. (1946). "Britain's bargaining power." Economic Journal LVI: 35-37.

MacDougall, D. (1947). "Britain's foreign trade problem." Economic Journal LVII: 69-113.

MacDougall, D. (1947). "Notes on non-discrimination." Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics.

MacDougall, D. (1948). "Britian's foreign trade problem: a reply to Mr. Balogh." Economic Journal LVIII: 86-98.

MacDougall, D. (1949). "Notes on Britain's bargaining power." Oxford Economic Papers 1: 18-39.

MacDougall, D. (1950). "The use of home resources to save imports: a comment." Economic Journal LX: 629-631.

MacDougall, D. (1950). "Western European economic cooperation." London and Cambridge Economic Service Bulletin CCVIII: 70-78.

MacDougall, D. (1951). "British and American exports: a study suggested by the theory of comparative costs, Part 1." Economic Journal LXI: 697-724.

MacDougall, D. (1951). The Prime Minister's Statistical Section. Lessons of the British War Economy. D. N. Chester. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 58-82.

MacDougall, D. (1951). "Some practical illustrations and applications of the theory of comparative costs. In: the problems of long term international balance. Proceedings of a round table discussion by the International Economic Association." International Social Science Bulletin III(1): 59-64.

MacDougall, D. and United Nations. Department of Economic Affairs. (1951). Measures for international economic stability : report. New York, United Nations Department of Economic Affairs.

MacDougall, D. (1952). "British and American exports: a study suggested by the theory of comparative costs, Part II." Economic Journal LXII: 487-521.

MacDougall, D. (1954). "Flexible exchange rates." Westminster Bank Review (August).

MacDougall, D. (1954). "A lecture on the dollar problem." Economica (August): 185-200.

MacDougall, D. and R. Hutt (1954). "Imperial pretence: a quantitative analysis." Economic Journal LXIV: 233-257.

MacDougall, D. (1955). "Product-elasticities of substitution in international trade: a rejoinder." Economic Journal LXV: 447-449.

MacDougall, D. (1956). "Does productivity rise faster in the United States?" Review of Economics and Statistics XXXVIII: 155-176.

MacDougall, D. (1957). The world dollar problem: a study in international economics. London, Macmillan.

MacDougall, D. (1958). "Bold or cautious?" Social and Economic Studies (University College of the West Indies) 7: 75-84.

MacDougall, D. (1958). The changing Commonwealth: economic consequences of the emergence of the new Dominions. Chambers of Commerce Manual. A. Shonfield.

MacDougall, D. (1959). "Inflation in the United Kingdom." The Economic Record: 371-388.

MacDougall, D., Commission to Study the Fiscal System of Venezuela., et al. (1959). The fiscal system of Venezuela; a report. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press: xiii, 491.

MacDougall, D. (1960). "The benefits and costs of private investment from abroad: a theoretical approach." The Economic Record (March): 13-35.

MacDougall, D. (1960). The dollar problem : a reappraisal. Princeton, N.J, International Finance Section Dept. of Economics Princeton University.

MacDougall, D. (1961). "Britain and the Common Market." Rotterdamsche Bank Review (December): 5-28.

MacDougall, D. (1961). "India's balance of payments." Bulletin of the Oxford University Institute of Statistics 23: 153-177.

MacDougall, D., M. Dowley, et al. (1962). "British and American productivity, prices and exports: an addendum." Oxford Economic Papers 14: 297-304.

MacDougall, D., G. Richardson, et al. (1964). Report of the Committee on turnover taxation. London, HMSO.

MacDougall, D. (1969). National economic planning. Lecture to Society of Long Range Planning, London.

MacDougall, D. (1970). The short-term regulation of the national economy: A Civil Service view. Paper given to the Symposium of the Foundation for Business Responsibilities, June 1970.

MacDougall, D. (1974). "In praise of Economics: presidential address to the Royal Economic Society." Economic Journal 84: 773-786.

MacDougall, D. (1975). Report of study group on Economic and Monetary Union. Brussels, EEC.

MacDougall, D. (1975). Studies in political economy. London, New York, Macmillan Press.

MacDougall, D. (1977). "Economic growth and social welfare: twelfth annual lecture of the Scottish Economic Society." Scottish Journal of Political Economy 24: 193-206.

MacDougall, D. and Commission of the European Communities. (1977). Report of the study group on the role of public finance in European Integration. Brussels, s.n.

MacDougall, D. (1978). The machinery of economic government. Policy and politics: essays in honour of Norman Chester. D. N. Chester, D. Butler and A. H. Halsey. London, Macmillan: 169-181.

MacDougall, D. (1987). Don and mandarin : memoirs of an economist. London, John Murray.

MacDougall, D. (1988). "Fifty years on: some personal reflections. British Academy Keynes lecture in economics." Proceedings of the British Academy LXXIV: 285-309.

MacDougall, D. (1990). Some random thoughts on the reparations discussions September-November 1945. In: Germany and Western Europe 11 August - 31 December 1945. Documents on British policy overseas. M. E. Pelly and H. P. Jasmone. London, HMSO. V: 519-530.

MacDougall, D. S. (1992). "Economic and Monetary Union and the European Community Budget." National Institute Economic Review 0(140): 64-68.

MacDougall, D. and R. Hutt (1996). Imperial Preference: A Quantitative Analysis.

Copyright 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (London)

March 25, 2004

SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 27

LENGTH: 1523 words

BYLINE: Michael Posner and Alan Budd

BODY:

Almost to the end of his 91 eventful years, Donald MacDougall would appear at the annual party of the London-based National Institute of Economic and Social Research - glass in hand, ready smile on his lips, anxious to receive and transmit gently ironic jokes about economic policy, and only slightly malicious gossip about economists and politicians.

His career - as an Oxford don, a London "special adviser", a mover and shaker in Whitehall and Westminster - started before the second world war, and wound down with skilful "letters to the editor" against the euro. Like many others, I knew him quite well for a couple of decades, but was uneasily aware that his experience of economic affairs had started when I was a wartime evacuee, and was still going strong when I had retired.

The first peak he ascended was with Professor Frederick Lindemann, serving Winston Churchill throughout the war years, in the first lord of the admiralty's statistical branch (1939-40), and in the prime minister's till 1945; then against chancellor of the exchequer Rab Butler and the proposed floating of sterling at the beginning of Churchill's peacetime premiership in 1951; and at the National Economic Development Office (1962-64) and the Department of Economic Affairs, under George Brown and prime minister Harold Wilson, working on a "national plan" as director-general (1964-68). Brown and chancellor James Callaghan sought his advice during the 1966 sterling crisis, but the immediate devaluation he advocated was not taken up, and he later maintained that he had been right.

By the time he arrived at the Treasury, to head the Government Economic Service and as chief economic adviser (1969-73) to chancellors Roy Jenkins, Iain MacLeod (for just a fortnight at the start of Edward Heath's incoming Conservative government in 1970) and Anthony Barber, he had strongly opposed and/or strongly supported, at one time or another, almost every other player in the London policy game.

However, the arguments and campaigns he conducted were not those of self-interest, or bigotry, or political manoeuvre; what moved him was genuine conviction, aided by tough and sustained economic reasoning, about the public good. He may sometimes have erred, but they were errors of reasoning or understanding, not of motive or intent. And, in his conduct of argument, he was prepared (almost always) to credit his opponents with the same honesty of purpose as he had himself.

At the time I knew him best, in the years from Wilson to Thatcher, his main sparring partners were at first the ex-Hungarians Thomas Balogh and Nicholas
Kaldor: he would not be bullied, but did sometimes bend his views to the vigour of their arguments. He was also skilled at puncturing their more elaborate contentions with a well-placed, kindly joke. With his fellow Scot, the equally tenacious and determined Sir Alec Cairncross (obituary, October 24 1998), public dispute was rare, but we were all aware that if these two were to differ, lesser mortals were well advised to stand aside.

At the peak of his influence, in the 1960s, MacDougall espoused the moderately radical views of the then establishment: a spot of "indicative planning", a la francaise , asking all key decision-makers to follow mutually consistent commitments to an agreed, modestly increased, growth rate; a consistently applied effort at incomes policy; an exchange rate which could be moved, but not too rashly or freely; and sober and restrained fiscal policy.

On planning, incomes policy and the exchange rate, he was a little more radical than Cairncross and the Treasury mandarins, and this difference was embodied bureaucratically for most of the period in MacDougall's titles and departmental postings. With Balogh, Kaldor, Robert Neild and two or three other temporary advisers, from the platform of our weekly sandwich lunches he exercised more influence than from his participation in mainstream Whitehall committees. Cairncross, by contrast, made his mark chiefly through the mainstream machine: these differences of style and title were perhaps more important than any difference in policy advice.

When it came to the monetarism of the Thatcher government and all that went with it, MacDougall, by then working for the Confederation of British Industry
(CBI) and sitting on various professional committees, was not a passionate contestant; but I believe that he came to accept, in his 80s, with his old friend from the days of the Department of Economic Affairs, (Lord) Eric Roll, that an active monetary policy, pursued by an independent Bank of England, was a valuable instrument of economic management. But by that time, MacDougall himself was a fully "naturalised" pillar of the establishment.

Despite his long and many-faceted participation in the conduct of economic policy, MacDougall had an unchallenged position in academic economics, based chiefly on his authoritative book on The World Dollar Problem (1957). He was an international trade economist, and his title page announced him as fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, which he was from 1947 to 1964; from 1945 to 1950 he was also a fellow of Wadham College. The deep, continued, global (although that adjective was not used) and seemingly intractable problem of the time was the mirror image of the problem that now preoccupies his successors; today we have a dollar glut, then they had a dollar shortage.

MacDougall's bulky, detailed, closely argued text still impresses: 47 appendices, 55 tables, 28 diagrams, all with only one research assistant. My abiding memory of MacDougall, Cairncross and other holders of the top Treasury posts is of their unerring statistical insight - "there seems to be a slip in table 15 on page 49, my boy" - the sort of nose developed only by hard work. It is arguable that Whitehall needs more in the way of MacDougall-type virtues, and fewer flights of brilliant but erratic originality.

Born in Glasgow into a family with a china business, MacDougall studied at the city's Kelvinside Academy, Shrewsbury school and Balliol, Oxford, where he read mathematics and politics, philosophy and economics. Graduate work under Roy Harrod led, in 1936, to John Maynard Keynes accepting a paper for the Economic Journal, and a lectureship at Leeds University followed till the onset of war, and the Admiralty post.

His work on U-boat attacks, German oil consumption, postwar reconstruction and full employment without inflation brought him a CBE in 1942; his knighthood came in 1953. Oxford University appointed him reader in international economics (1950-52), and further government service (1951-53) reunited him with Lindemann (from 1941 onwards, Lord Cherwell), now paymaster general.

Until his recall in 1962 by chancellor Selwyn Lloyd, MacDougall lectured at Oxford, continuing his involvement there until 1964. After leaving government service, he was chief economic adviser to the CBI from 1973 to 1984.

MacDougall had a mischievous sense of humour. On one of those dark days in the late 1960s when the monthly overseas trade figures obstinately refused to display the post-devaluation upturn that we all eagerly expected, I found MacDougall chuckling over an idea for a new form of "correction" that we could apply to the raw data (after seasonal correction, correction for the timing of the Rotterdam diamond shipments, correction for the delayed arrival of defence equipment from the US, etc): "Then we'll apply a secret, final correction which will make the figures conform precisely to forecast, and everyone will be happy! "

He is survived by the son and daughter from his 1937 marriage to Christabel Bartum, dissolved in 1977. His second wife, Margaret Hall, died in 1995.

Michael Posner

Alan Budd writes: Donald MacDougall embodied the open, democratic spirit that was typical of the Treasury of his day. As a junior official in the early 1970s, I would be summoned to meetings in his room, where I would be listened to courteously and, if necessary, politely corrected. Later we disagreed fundamentally about economic policy; but he patiently tried to understand where I had gone wrong, and it never affected his friendly treatment of me.

He had a wonderful ear for a story, telling of the day he met Kaldor in Whitehall soon after the Labour government came to power in 1964. "How's it going, Nicky?" Donald asked. The emigre economist replied, "Terrible; I'm too late. All the big mistakes have already been made."

Donald also related how he had turned up at his Oxford finals with a slide rule, but was forbidden to take it in with him. It was a statistics exam, and Donald was handed a set of logarithmic tables. He had to work out how to use them from first principles. (He said that 30 years later, Roy Harrod conceded that he really should have been awarded a first.) Thereafter, he continued to carry a small slide rule which could be used to check any dubious numerical claim.

George Donald Alastair MacDougall, economist and civil servant, born October 26 1912; died March 22 2004

Copyright 2004 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)

March 24, 2004 Wednesday
London Edition 1

SECTION: NATIONAL NEWS; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 598 words

HEADLINE: Economist who helped defeat Hitler OBITUARY SIR DONALD MacDOUGALL:

BYLINE: By DAVID KYNASTON

BODY:

For nearly 50 years Sir Donald MacDougall, who has died aged 91, played a vital role in shaping the economic life of the nation.

He moved between academia and the heart of government, advising successive prime ministers and chancellors as they wrestled with exchange rates, "growthmanship" and the uncertainties of economic planning. As a young economics don he was plucked from Leeds University in 1940 to advise Winston Churchill. MacDougall showed a brilliance for taking dry, detailed figures, whether on production or shipping losses, and distilling from them the life and death issues that held the second world war in balance.

Had he and his colleagues failed to get their sums right, Britain might well have been starved into submission by the Nazis, or might have lost the tank battles in North Africa. As it was, the bespectacled young man argued with astonished generals that they should remove wheels from military vehicles to cram more on to each ship. Years later Roy Harrod, the economist who proposed MacDougall for the job, wrote: "I regard my choice of man on that occasion as a stroke of genius and my best contribution to the defeat of Hitler."

After the war MacDougall became a fellow at Wadham College, Oxford but he was soon back in Downing Street, becoming involved in a Whitehall battle over Operation Robot - a Bank of England plan to make sterling convertible and float the pound. MacDougall was aghast. He realised devaluation would not lead to an increase in exports because the bombed-out British economy was incapable of producing any more. After fierce exchanges the majority of the cabinet - including Churchill - was persuaded.

MacDougall will be associated with an attempt in the 1960s to achieve higher growth by creating a planned corporatist economy. Harold MacMillan set up the National Economic Development Council to link government, management and unions.

It was to be served by the National Economic Development Office, where MacDougall was appointed economics director. In his autobiography he explained: "This consisted of thinking of a number for the growth of the economy . . . everyone would work on the assumption that it would happen and lo and behold, it would happen." In the event, the target chosen was barely three-quarters met. "Growthmanship" was stepped up in 1965 when Harold Wilson's Labour government created the Department of Economic Affairs with MacDougall as director-general. The aim was to balance the power of the Treasury but it was probably doomed from the outset and fatally wounded by the sterling crisis of 1966. Donald MacDougall was far from bowed by the reverses of the 1960s. Indeed a streak of deep resilience laced with Scottish humour ran through his career. Born in 1912 and raised in Glasgow, he read modern greats at Oxford before becoming a university lecturer in 1936.

A series of top economic posts culminated in him becoming chief adviser to the Treasury when Labour's Roy Jenkins was chancellor. He remained there until 1973 during the disastrous "Barber boom" when he was identified as a prime gambler on growth, willing to take risks to break the spiral of economic decline.

His last job as chief economic adviser to the Confederation of British Industry was a success. For 10 years the CBI's voice on economic policy became respected and coherent as never before.

MacDougall married Christabel Battrum in 1937 and they had two children. The marriage ended in 1977 and he married fellow economist Margaret Hall. She died in 1995. MacDougall was knighted in 1953.

March 30, 2004 Tuesday
London Edition 3

SECTION: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 409 words

HEADLINE: Recollections of an economics guru from Whitehall of 1960s

BYLINE: By TUDOR MILES

BODY:

From Mr Tudor Miles.

Sir, Your obituary of Sir Donald MacDougall (March 24) does not mention his important time after the war at the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in Paris. You mention his association with Winston Churchill. I heard him recount how he advised him while on the ship to meet the US president to plead for aid to say to Roosevelt that the British were reduced to "eating the seed corn" to survive. This phrase became part of our language.

I can add some explanation of his time at the National Economic Development Office and the Department of Economic Affairs. When Selwyn Lloyd, the then chancellor of the exchequer, set up the National Economic Development Council he selected his friend, Sir Robert Shone, to be director-general. On accepting, Shone strongly pressed for MacDougall to be his economic director. Shone had just read and admired MacDougall's new brilliantly argued book in which he wrongly forecast a US dollar famine. I had been on Shone's staff at the Iron and Steel Board and was seconded to work with him at Nedo.

MacDougall at Nedo was always a stimulating and charming person who would always find time even for the most junior economists to explain fully what he wanted. Senior staff, impatient for more of his time, would describe this as Wadham tutorials. Your obituary aptly refers to his wish-fulfilment theory of faster economic growth, a belief he shared with Robert Shone. Other less mystical members of the Office, namely John Garlick, Elwyn Jones and myself, were critical. The theory was later tested to disaster at the DEA in George Brown's ill-fated national plan.

MacDougall's move from Nedo to the DEA the day after the 1964 general election was a shock. When Sir Robert Shone turned up that morning at Millbank he found that MacDougall and all but two of the economics division had moved out to Whitehall.

Shone had no previous notice of this from MacDougall. The director-general was unaware of the usual civil service custom of pre-election talks with the opposition and he would have considered it disloyalty to the chancellor.

Shone was shattered by MacDougall's conduct; I was the only one in the office that day he felt he could trust to discuss his dismay. His departure followed soon afterwards.

I used to meet MacDougall to discuss the economy again when he was at the Confederation of British Industry. He was as interesting and kind a person as ever.

Tudor Miles, London SE10 8RY

April 1, 2004 Thursday
London Edition 2

SECTION: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 224 words

HEADLINE: A protege pays final respects to Oxford mentor

BYLINE: By BRIAN READING

BODY:

From Mr Brian Reading.

Sir, I cannot let your obituary of Sir Donald MacDougall pass without comment. Here in the New Zealand, bush news travels swiftly or slowly, depending on whether you read the FT web version every day or wait for hard copy.

Mr Tudor Miles' letter (March 30) brought me the sad news.

Sir Donald was my mentor, my tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, my supervisor at Nuffield and my boss in the National Economic Development Office (briefly) and then in George Brown's Department of Economic Affairs 1964-66. In 1970-72, when I was special economic adviser to the prime minister and he was chief adviser to the Treasury, we crossed swords.

Sir Donald gathered round him young proteges, of whom I was one. He brought us together to discuss issues without any hierarchical inhibitions. The most junior could contradict the most senior. He was not concerned with who was right, but what was right. He would pick your brains, always open to reason. He gently punctured pretensions. He would ask seemingly simple and naive questions. Foolishly you answered without thought. Next thing you knew, he had demolished your whole argument. He was intellectual honesty personified.

What I want to add to your obituary is personal; if Sir Donald could not say a good word about you, he never said a bad one.

Brian Reading, Coromandel, New Zealand

March 23, 2004

LENGTH: 2578 words

HEADLINE: OBITUARIES: SIR DONALD MACDOUGALL

BYLINE: D. R. Thorpe
BODY:

DONALD MACDOUGALL first came to prominence as Winston Churchill's Chief Assistant in the Prime Minister's Statistical Branch during the Second World War; for 45 years he was to hold an influential place in British public life.

After two decades in Oxford, first at Wadham and then at Nuffield, MacDougall returned to Whitehall in the 1960s, as Chief Economic Adviser successively to two fledgling dirigiste institutions, the National Economic Development Council and the ill-fated Department of Economic Affairs. His Whitehall career culminated with a four-year spell from 1959 as Head of the Government Economic Service and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury. He then became Chief Economic Adviser to the CBI, at a fraught time in that body's relationship with Government. He was also prominent internationally as Director of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in Paris. In Britain, he moved effortlessly between Oxford and Whitehall and his memoirs Don and Mandarin (1987) reveal the intellectual stimulus he received from this double harness. His personal involvement in the corridors of power, with figures as diverse as J.M. Keynes and George Brown, as well as in dramatic events such as Churchill's first meeting with Franklin Roosevelt in May 1943, and R.A. Butler's attempt to float the pound in 1952 ("Robot"), was reminiscent of a C.P. Snow novel, though for MacDougall "the Abominable Snowman" was one of his betes noires, after Snow's disparaging assessment of Professor Frederick Lindemann, one of MacDougall's mentors, in Science and Government (1961). MacDougall was not in the traditional civil-service mould, but he became one of the indispensable public servants of his generation as a trusted and objective outsider who could always see problems in a new and unprejudiced light.

Donald MacDougall was born in Glasgow in 1912, younger son of Daniel MacDougall, who worked in the family's china business. The young Donald went first to Kelvinside Academy, where, in the traditional Scots manner of hard-working probity, he received a sound educational grounding, before moving on to Shrewsbury School, which he did not particularly enjoy. MacDougall's father died when he was 17 and with the Great Depression gathering pace only his grandfather's trust enabled him to go on to Balliol.

Oxford was for him a sight of previously unglimpsed horizons. He took a second in Maths Mods, and was disappointed not to get a First in PPE, which one of the examiners, Roy Harrod, believed he deserved. With the George Webb Medley Scholarship in Political Economy, he continued at Oxford as a graduate student, now under Harrod's supervision, producing original work on the definition of prime and supplementary costs. In July 1936 Harrod submitted MacDougall's paper to J.M. Keynes for inclusion in the Economic Journal. Keynes, who was about to publish the General Theory, not only accepted the article, but engaged in a lengthy correspondence with MacDougall on his definitions of price structure.

On the back of this success, and recommended by Harrod, MacDougall secured his first academic post at Leeds University as a lecturer in economics. In 1937, whilst at Leeds, MacDougall married Christabel Bartrum, whom he had met two years earlier on holiday in Austria. His travels to Europe had left MacDougall in no doubt as to what lay ahead on the international scene, and with the outbreak of war he was drafted by Lindemann ("the Prof") and Harrod into the First Lord of the Admiralty's Statistical Branch.

For a 26-year-old economist, this was a heady first taste of official life at a crucial turning point of British history. As the first Lord was Winston Churchill, MacDougall now found himself swept onwards and upwards, next serving for five years in the Prime Minister's Statistical Branch, the last three as Chief Assistant.

MacDougall's charts analysing the circumstances of successful U-boat attacks on Allied merchant shipping was one of his most significant contributions to operational research. He also worked on assessments of German oil consumption, but by 1944 was given important responsibilities on problems of post-war reconstruction, including how the commitment to full employment could be achieved without accompanying inflation, one of the central economic and social concerns of his later period as Chief Economic Adviser.

In 1945, shortly after the end of the war, MacDougall was in a British delegation to Moscow, headed by Walter Monckton, to discuss reparations and German industry with the Russians and the Americans. It was almost entirely staffed by Balliol men. From Moscow, MacDougall flew to the Potsdam Conference, where he was part of the Prof's civil-service team, advising on German economic questions. He was appointed CBE in Churchill's Resignation Honours.

With the disbandment of the Statistical Branch, and after a temporary placement in the Economic Section of the Cabinet Office, MacDougall resumed his academic career. He was beaten to a post at Balliol by Tommy Balogh, a later sparring partner during the first Wilson government but through Lindemann's advocacy secured a Fellowship at Wadham. His lectures, mainly to mature ex-servicemen, who were concerned with real issues, such as Britain's foreign-trade problem, on which MacDougall became an expert, rather than economic theory, were immensely popular and, when he lectured in Wadham Hall, even the gallery was filled to overflowing. Although he was only at Wadham for five years, he was immensely happy there and formed fruitful professional links with A.J. ("Freddie") Ayer and William Deakin, later first Warden of St Antony's College, not to mention Wadham's legendary Warden, Maurice Bowra, who became a close associate. During his Wadham years, MacDougall maintained his Whitehall links by joining Sir Stafford Cripps's industrial "Working Parties" at the Board of Trade, a forerunner of the "Little Neddies" MacDougall was later involved with in the NEDC.

In 1950 MacDougall was appointed Reader in International Economics, which necessitated a move to Nuffield College as a Professorial Fellow. In October 1951, the Prof, now Lord Cherwell, was appointed Paymaster General in Churchill's new administration and he asked MacDougall to join him. Reluctant to leave Nuffield so soon after his appointment, MacDougall compromised by taking unpaid leave. It proved one of the most fascinating periods of his life.

As Rab Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer, continued to live in his own house in Smith Square, the Prof and MacDougall were accommodated during the week in flats at 11 Downing Street. One of MacDougall's first missions was to provide Churchill's brief for the economic part of his talks with President Harry Truman in January 1952, to which he travelled with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and the Prof, on the Queen Mary, glad that, unlike in 1943, there was no danger of U-boats.

On their return to Britain, the Prof and MacDougall were shocked to receive Butler's assessment of the critical level of Britain's reserves; they were even more shocked by Butler's plan ("Robot") for the floating of the pound, a limited form of convertibility, and the blocking of overseas sterling balances in London.

The next eight days were in MacDougall's own words "the most exciting I spent with the Prof", as he was a first-hand witness of the realpolitik that overturned Butler's plans for what MacDougall thought would "have had appalling economic and political consequences for the country". A vital part of the strategy was getting Anthony Eden, previously neutral, on the Prof's side. When the dust had settled, MacDougall published a paper on "The Risks of Convertibility", which led a devout Scots lady to ask his mother in shocked tones of her recently knighted son, "Is it true that Sir Donald is against conversion?"

When MacDougall returned to Nuffield it was as a University Lecturer and Fellow. In a strange twist of fate, Roy Harrod succeeded to MacDougall's former post as Reader in International Economics, and the two, mentor and protege, gave graduate seminars in international economics for the next eight years. MacDougall travelled widely on behalf of the college and was successful in establishing Nuffield's investment income.

The lure of Whitehall, however, remained strong and MacDougall was desperately disappointed when his friend Alec Cairncross beat him to the post of Chief Economic Adviser in 1961. In retrospect, however, he saw this as a blessing, the post eventually coming his way in 1969, as it enabled him to be in "on the ground floor" in two fascinating posts. Selwyn Lloyd, Chancellor the Exchequer, asked him to be first Economic Director of the NEDC in 1962, where he proved a great advocate of the expansion of demand, and was successful at recruiting bright young economists to government service.

With the narrow Labour victory in the 1964 general election, MacDougall made his final break with academe when he was appointed Director-General of the Department of Economic Affairs under George Brown. The birth pangs of the DEA have gone into Whitehall legend. When Brown arrived at his new office on his first day just before 8am, MacDougall was one of three staff, all of whom sat on the floor as there was only one chair, which Brown had appropriated.

Less than 36 hours after the election victory, MacDougall was one of the three senior civil servants summoned by James Callaghan, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and George Brown to 11 Downing Street, to be asked advice on devaluation. MacDougall was the only advocate of immediate action; Wilson's subsequent failure to bite this particular bullet, in MacDougall's view, dominated and distorted economic policy for the next four years. After his experience on the "Robot" crisis in 1952, MacDougall was keen on the idea of an "Opposition" to the Treasury view from within the government, but the much-vaunted "creative tension" Wilson had hoped for proved illusory in an unequal battle in which the big battalions were always on the side of the Chancellor.

MacDougall was reluctantly drawn into preparing George Brown's National Plan of September 1965, based on an over-optimistic predicted average growth of 3.8 per cent, sustained over six years. MacDougall's diplomatic skills were sorely tested by his liaison responsibilities over Brown's pipe dream with the CBI, his next employers, and his former colleagues at the NEDC. George Brown's advocacy of devaluation in the summer of 1966 also fell on deaf ears.

MacDougall's time at the DEA with Michael Stewart at the helm from August 1966 proved calmer and more productive. Nevertheless, MacDougall appreciated Brown's good points and was generous to him in his memoirs, describing him as a formidable minister, whilst admitting that "sadly, on occasion his effectiveness declined as the day progressed".

On 1 January 1969 MacDougall moved to the unprecedented double job of Head of the Government Economic Service, which expanded during his tenure, and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury. He served three Chancellors, Roy Jenkins, Iain Macleod (briefly) and Tony Barber, at a crucial transitional stage in the development of the post-war economy. Jenkins had become Chancellor in 1967 after devaluation and MacDougall regarded Jenkins, unlike Wilson, as having been proved right on this issue. Their partnership was ended by the unexpected Conservative victory at the general election of 18 June 1970.

MacDougall had high expectations of Iain Macleod, the new Chancellor, and in the short fortnight that was granted to him before he entered hospital and his premature death, Macleod endorsed MacDougall's recommendation that the abolition of investment grants to industry should be balanced by reduced company taxation, a policy introduced by his successor, Tony Barber. By 1971 MacDougall was predicting in his monthly economic reports to the Prime Minister and Chancellor that the headline total of unemployment could possibly top the sensitive figure of one million by the winter.

In November that year, as part of an expansionary policy, he was instructed, in a return to his concerns of 1944, to produce a plan for reducing unemployment by 400,000 during the following year. By then the Government's difficulties were multiplying in other areas and, although MacDougall's tenure as Chief Economic Adviser was extended until his 61st birthday in October 1973, he was not sorry to miss the period leading up to the February 1974 election.

To some raised eyebrows MacDougall moved almost at once on leaving Whitehall to an equivalent post at the CBI. With the hike in oil prices by the Arab producers in full swing, and then Edward Heath's imposition of "the three- day week" MacDougall's baptism at the CBI was a difficult one. Following the return of a minority Labour government in February 1974, the CBI had many meetings with Denis Healey, the new Chancellor, and his Treasury ministers.

During MacDougall's tenure, the CBI adopted a higher public profile, its annual conferences being covered live on television, but it is arguable about whether this actually increased its direct influence over government, even after the return of a Conservative administration in 1979. In MacDougall's own words "scant attention was paid" to their views and there was "frustration and irritation". He was particularly disenchanted with the Howe Budget of 1981 He finally retired in March 1984.

Donald MacDougall published several economic books, many of which became standard texts, including The Dollar Problem: a reappraisal (1960) and the two-volume Studies in Political Economy (1975).

In 1977 he divorced his wife Christabel; subsequently he married Margaret Hall, Economics Fellow at Somerville College, whom he had known for 30 years, and former wife of Robert Hall, government Chief Economic Adviser in the early 1960s.

Oxford, to the end, remained an important thread. Sir Herbert Samuel, sometime leader of the Liberal Party, once said that life was one Balliol man after another. MacDougall's career in all its myriad patterns showed that he was not an exception to Samuel's sense of collegiate pride.

George Donald Alastair MacDougall, economist and civil servant: born Glasgow 26 October 1912; Lecturer, Leeds University 1936-39; staff, First Lord of the Admiralty's Statistical Branch 1939-40; staff, Prime Minister's Statistical Branch 1940-45, Chief Assistant 1942-45, Chief Adviser 1951- 53; OBE 1942, CBE 1945; Fellow, Wadham College, Oxford 1945-50, Domestic Bursar 1946-48, Honorary Fellow 1964-2004; Economic Director, OEEC 1948- 49; Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford 1947-64, First Bursar 1958-64, Honorary Fellow 1967-2004; Nuffield Reader in International Economics, Oxford University 1950-52; Kt 1953; Honorary Secretary, Royal Economic Society 1958-70, Vice-President 1970-72, 1974-2004, President 1972-74; Economic Director, NEDO 1962-64; Director-General, Department of Economic Affairs 1964-68; FBA 1966; Head of Government Economic Service and Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury 1969-73; Chief Economic Adviser, CBI 1973-84; President, Society for Strategic and Long Range Planning 1977-85; married 1937 Christabel Bartrum (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1977), 1977 Margaret Hall (nee Linfoot, died 1995); died London 22 March 2004.

Copyright 2004 Telegraph Group Limited
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

March 29, 2004, Monday

SECTION: Sport; Soccer: Pg. 21

LENGTH: 1168 words

HEADLINE: Sir Donald MacDougall Economist who worked for Churchill and later became chief adviser to three Chancellors of the Exchequer

BODY:
SIR DONALD MACDOUGALL, who has died aged 91, was chief economic adviser to three Chancellors of the Exchequer, having earlier served on Winston Churchill's staff and under George Brown at the short-lived Department of Economic Affairs.

MacDougall began his career in public service as an assistant to Churchill's trusted adviser Professor Frederick Lindemann, known in Churchill's circle as "the Prof". Having first worked for the Prof in the First Lord of the Admiralty's statistical branch in 1939, MacDougall rejoined him when, as Lord Cherwell, Lindemann was appointed Paymaster General in Churchill's 1951 government.

The new Chancellor, R A Butler, had conceived a plan - codenamed Robot - to avert a run on the pound in response to a continuing balance of payments crisis by floating it on the foreign exchanges and making a number of other radical policy changes. Butler had Bank of England support, but parts of the Treasury were appalled. He presented the scheme to a group of ministers in a secret paper in February 1952, asking for all copies to be handed back at the end of the meeting.

Cherwell failed to comply, instead passing his to MacDougall for analysis. Usually known for his courtesy and gentle wit in economic debate, MacDougall recalled that "long before I had finished it I was verging on hysteria". He and Cherwell lobbied against the proposal until Butler backed down.

After an interlude at Oxford, MacDougall returned to Whitehall in the early 1960s as one of a group of economists which wielded powerful influence during an era in which centralised planning and state intervention were very much the vogue.

After the Labour victory in October 1964, MacDougall was appointed director-general of the new Department of Economic Affairs - so new that, at the first meeting, he and his officials sat on the floor while Brown took the only chair. Their urgent task was to form a view on devaluation: MacDougall was in favour, but the decision went against, in his opinion storing up trouble for later.

The DEA's longer term role was to mastermind the creation of a "national plan". In August 1965, when Brown was about to present an advanced draft of the plan to the National Economic Development Committee, they got wind that representatives of the Federation of British Industry (forerunner of the CBI), which had been consulted in the drafting, was about to withdraw support.

The industrialists concerned, led by Frank Kearton of Courtaulds, were in private conclave at Sunningdale. Brown immediately invited himself and MacDougall to join them, telling Kearton on the telephone on no account to allow anyone to leave. The pair arrived at 10.30pm and weighed into the discussions until they secured agreement that the plan would not be torpedoed.

But as they returned to London in the early hours, Brown's government limousine broke down, and MacDougall set off at a trot to try to find a policeman. Happily for Brown - who was still clutching the only complete copy of the draft national plan - a young couple recognised him and asked if he needed a lift. "Not half," he replied, hopping in and leaving MacDougall to make his own way home in the dark.

Nevertheless, MacDougall formed a good opinion of Brown, except on the occasions when "his effectiveness declined as the day progressed".

At the beginning of 1969 MacDougall was promoted to chief economic adviser to the Treasury and head of the Government economic service, the first time the two jobs had been combined. He served under Roy Jenkins as Chancellor until the June 1970 election, then under Ian Macleod and Anthony Barber in Edward Heath's government. It was a period in which a favourable shift in the balance of payments and a brief boom gradually gave way to rising inflation, industrial unrest and financial crisis. MacDougall retired in 1973 to become economic adviser to the CBI.

George Donald Alastair MacDougall was born on October 26 1912 in Glasgow, where his family had a china business. He was educated at Kelvinside Academy, Shrewsbury School, and Balliol College, Oxford. There he won the junior and senior George Webb Medley prizes in political economy and was disappointed not to take a First in PPE - though one of his examiners, Roy Harrod, believed he deserved one. Under Harrod's supervision, MacDougall continued with postgraduate work on the definition of price structures, on which he corresponded at length with J M Keynes.

MacDougall took up a lecturership in economics at Leeds in 1937, but on the outbreak of war in 1939 he was drafted into the Admiralty statistical branch to work with Harrod and Lindemann. The team became the prime minister's statistical branch, and, as its chief assistant from 1942 to 1945, MacDougall provided analyses of U-boat attacks on Allied shipping and assessments of enemy oil consumption, as well as forward planning for post-war reconstruction. At the end of the war he was part of the British delegation to Moscow to discuss reparations, and to the Potsdam conference.

After the war he took up a Fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford, and became a popular lecturer on practical, rather than theoretical, economic issues. In 1950 he moved to Nuffield College as professorial fellow and reader in international economics, until he returned to Whitehall on two years' unpaid leave to work with Cherwell. The pair accompanied Churchill and Eden to America for talks with President Truman in 1952.

For the remainder of the decade MacDougall taught at Nuffield, where he was also bursar. He consolidated his academic reputation with the publication of The World Dollar Problem in 1957, and held visiting professorships in Australia and India. He was disappointed not to be chosen by Selwyn Lloyd as chief economic adviser to the government in 1961 (the job went to Alec Cairncross), but became the first economic director of the National Economic Development Office in 1962.

He was chief economic adviser to the CBI from immediately after his retirement from the civil service until 1984 - though he was frustrated at what he saw as the "scant attention" paid to the organisation's views, not only by Labour ministers but also by the incoming Thatcher administration.

MacDougall was president of the Royal Economics Society in 1972 and chairman of the executive committee of the National Institute of Economic & Social Research from 1974 to 1987. Among his published works were two volumes of Studies in Political Economy (1975) and a memoir, Don and Mandarin (1987).

He was appointed OBE in 1942, and raised to CBE in Churchill's resignation honours list in 1945; he was knighted in 1953.

Donald MacDougall died last Monday. He married first, in 1937, Christabel Bartrum; they had a son and a daughter. The marriage was dissolved and he married secondly, in 1977, Margaret Hall, who was a Fellow in economics at Somerville College, Oxford, and the former wife of another government economic adviser, Sir Robert Hall; she died in 1995.

Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Limited
The Times (London)

March 29, 2004, Monday

SECTION: Features; 26

LENGTH: 1781 words

HEADLINE: Sir Donald MacDougall

BODY:
Sir Donald MacDougall, CBE, economist, was born on October 26, 1912. He died on March 22, 2004, aged 91.

Economic policy adviser relied upon by Churchill during the war and still influential at the Treasury under Gordon Brown

Donald MacDougall spent 45 years close to the centre of national decision making and was among the most notable figures in modern British economics.

Glasgow-born and Balliol-educated, he had an exceptional instinctive quantitative ability -a priceless asset before the era of electronic calculators. His skill at judging practical economic necessities propelled him at 26 into Winston Churchill's S Branch, assessing wartime shipping priorities. Later he drafted the first Wilson Government's National Plan, the UK's boldest overt attempt to direct its economic destiny. He then served three chancellors as the Treasury's Chief Economic Adviser, before joining the CBI, where he continued to wield a noticeable influence on public policy.

Personally warm and lacking in social pretension, MacDougall was witty and excellent company, relishing good living and intellectual interplay until his nineties. A mathematician so agile that he might begin to calculate the financial cost of the Second World War as a breezy mental exercise, he had debated with Churchill and Keynes in his youth, and in extreme old age he assisted anti euro campaigners and senior new Labour policy-makers.

During the 1990s he helped Gordon Brown's adviser Ed Balls to develop new Labour's new stable macroeconomic framework. From 1992 he advised Balls -who was more than fifty years his junior -on how the UK could draw lessons from sterling's failure to maintain a fixed parity within the Exchange Rate Mechanism, and on how new Labour could avoid repeating the errors committed by the Wilson Government. Before the 1997 election he was consulted on the best model for an independent Bank of England. He continued to attend Treasury meetings even after turning 90.

From being an economics lecturer at Leeds University in his twenties with undoubted intellect but not, given Depression conditions, outstanding prospects, MacDougall saw his career transformed by the war and the intervention of his former Oxford examiner, Roy Harrod.

Harrod had been requested by Churchill's "Prof", Frederick Lindemann, to find a clever economist to work in the Admiralty's statistical branch. Summoned to the common room at Christ Church, MacDougall was introduced to Lindemann, the two "clicked from the start". He was hired, and in one early foray asked the Ministry of Food for figures to determine whether sugar rationing was necessary. The response was "What the hell has it got to do with you?"

But he persevered, practising "the gentle art of wheedling" to get from officials "information which as often as not was going to be used against them". A combination of patience, tact, an instinct for making friends and, as time passed, being proved right helped him along. He became a signal success, assessing the nation's priorities given its strictly finite shipping capacity, and using welldesigned charts to guide Churchill through the complexities.

In 1940 he warned that over-restrictive civilian rationing, might depress morale unduly. He also lobbied hard to shift resources to munitions production; otherwise, he cautioned, rather than preparing for eventual victory Britain might simply lose the war that year. In 1942 he successfully argued for transfers of shipping from military purposes to boost convoys bringing food, averting domestic starvation. He later reflected that the loss of some naval resources had not apparently damaged the North African campaign.

MacDougall travelled with Churchill and Lindemann to negotiations with Roosevelt, and subsequently to the 1945 Potsdam Conference. Having been appointed OBE in 1942, he was advanced to CBE in 1945.

Between 1946 and 1962 MacDougall spent most of his time in Oxford, with fellowships at Wadham and Nuffield. Having developed a strong expertise in international trade, he served a year in Paris, 1948-49, as the first economic director of the OEEC, the forerunner of the OECD.

Later, for two years after Churchill's return to Downing Street he had a second tenure working alongside Lindemann back in government; the period was notable for a wearing battle with Treasury officials over exchange-rate policy. MacDougall was knighted in 1953.

MacDougall became a professorial fellow at Oxford in 1952, and was first bursar of Nuffield College from 1958 to 1964. He enjoyed his time as a full-time don, continuing to concentrate on trade issues and publishing The World Dollar Problem in 1957. Yet by the early 1960s he wished to return to active policy-making, and from 1962 to 1964 he was Economic Director of the newly created National Economic Development Office.

Nedo planning had at best mixed results, but Labour's return to government in 1964 prompted MacDougall's appointment as Director-General of the new Department of Economic Affairs, intended to emphasise long-term strategy over Treasury short-term tactics. MacDougall initially supported the creation of the department as a means of offsetting Treasury power, but he soon discovered that the appeal of "constructive tension" had been exaggerated. The consequence was, more prosaically, serial conflict.

MacDougall strongly urged Wilson to devalue the pound on taking office, but was ignored. He was also concerned about George Brown's unwillingness to "bother about facts and figures". Yet despite the sometimes shambolic personal dynamics, MacDonald won admiration as the author of Labour's long-awaited National Plan.

This was Britain's only attempt to ape French dirigiste policies -which were in effect not far removed from Soviet Five Year plans. Despite these overtones, however, even free-market economists noted the precision of MacDougall's arithmetic and the fine judgment behind the plan's assumptions.

It failed largely due to sterling's continued weaknesses, overmighty trade unions, and a pre-Thatcherite inability among officials to countenance unemployment, even when it was the consequence of economic failure. The Depression was still a strong memory.

In 1969 MacDougall moved at Roy Jenkins's request to the Treasury, occupying for nearly five years the posts of government Chief Economic Adviser and Head of the Government Economic Service. He enjoyed working with Jenkins and his ministers, and again used charts to simplify economic decision-making for non economists.

MacDougall was saddened by Iain Macleod's death just a month after becoming Chancellor in 1970. He had friendly relations with Macleod's successor, Anthony Barber, but was alarmed when his advice against a return to substantially interventionist industrial policy was ignored. Matters deteriorated further when Edward Heath instructed him to prepare a plan to cut unemployment by 400,000 in 12 months. The Heath Government's subsequent policy failures distressed MacDougall, who left the Civil Service when he turned 61 in 1973.

Seeking further full-time employment, he joined the CBI as its chief economic adviser, which again gave him a voice in national economic debates. In 1975 he helped to negotiate the pay restraint deal that almost certainly saved the UK from hyperinflation.

He was to remain at the CBI for more than a decade, extending his original plan to stay for four years so much that he felt, he said, like The Man Who Came to Dinner. He maintained strong links with TUC counterparts -he was delighted that Len Murray attended his CBI retirement party in 1984 -and relished opportunities to "educate" industrialists in economics. He will be fondly remembered by younger economists whose careers he encouraged.

But for the CBI the period was one of frustration. MacDougall had no part in formulating Terence Beckett's controversial call for a "bare-knuckle fight" for business interests, and he had little time for economic policy as practised in the first Thatcher term.

George Donald Alastair MacDougall was born in 1912, and educated at Kelvinside Academy and Shrewsbury. He claimed little academic success at school, apart from a maths prize in a year when there were, he said, "several to be handed out". He aimed to go to university, but this was impeded by his father's early death and tight family finances. A special outlay from his grandfather's trust fund enabled him to go up to Balliol in 1932.

Moderate early results persuaded him to switch from maths to philosophy, politics and economics, and he soon specialised in economics, winning a university prize. Although he took a second-class degree, a further university prize provided solace, as did the fillip of a research paper being conditionally accepted by Keynes for publication in the Economic Journal. Strong references and his correspondence with Keynes then helped to secure his lectureship at Leeds.

Keynes's influence remained strong throughout MacDougall's life; he believed that economists have a moral duty to devise ways for society to avoid the human deprivations of unemployment and unused capacity.

In retirement he published his memoirs, Don and Mandarin, and was substantially engaged in the affairs of various organisations, including the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. Most remarkably, he remained involved even in his late eighties and beyond in the "no" campaign opposing British entry into the euro. In the 1970s he had chaired the EEC's group reporting on prospects for economic and monetary union, advising that to be viable a currency union would require a Europe-wide budgetary authority. Two decades later, the "no" campaign contacted him after reading letters he had written to the newspapers on the issue.

A meeting followed at his Pimlico flat, and he was assiduous in his subsequent support.

In his final years, when his eyesight had all but failed, MacDougall impressed many with his clear determination to live as full a life as was feasible. He used technology to scrutinise correspondence and had daily help with his e-mails. He also had the newspapers read to him, and listened to talking books to gain for the first time a panoramic knowledge of English literature, from Jane Austen to J. K.

Rowling. Earlier this month he contributed to a meeting of the Political Economy Club evaluating the Budget.

His first marriage, to Christabel Bartrum in 1937, was dissolved. In 1977 he married Margaret Hall (nee Linfoot), with whom he had been friends for nearly 30 years. She predeceased him. He is survived by his son and daughter.

Copyright 2004 Scottish Media Newspapers Limited
The Herald (Glasgow)

March 26, 2004

SECTION: Pg. 20

LENGTH: 1013 words

HEADLINE: Sir Donald MacDougall;Adviser to Churchill and five chancellors of Exchequer

BYLINE: Gordon Casely

BODY:
Sir Donald MacDougall, Churchill's statistician in the Second World War, played a key backroom role in the Battle of the Atlantic. His task as a 26-year-old economist was to brief the prime minister on a daily basis with projections of the results of losses of shipping from U-boat attacks.

His assessments showed tonnage of the merchant fleet vanishing daily down a declining graph, though the wily Donald maintained another graph

nearby, showing tonnage being completed in shipyards around the UK. It was supposed to show a rising line, but no-one ever asked him what would happen when the two lines crossed.

Sir Donald squirrelled away in his corner of the War Rooms under the Treasury in London, surrounded by mountains of data - collecting, collating, interpreting. When in 2001 he appeared in a three-part BBC series on the Battle of the Atlantic, he showed the same relentless dedication to facts.

His political nous and strategic contacts landed him the post of chief economic adviser to the CBI in 1973, a stint that lasted 11 years, until he retired for a second time aged 72; and he became a familiar figure on the daily journey from his home in Warwick Square to the CBI's then head office in Tothill Street, Westminster, stern of visage and sporting the round-framed spectacles he had affected from youth.

But his brilliance was never in doubt. His advice was valued by prime ministers and six chancellors of the Exchequer, and, appropriately enough, his home for a time was No 11 Downing Street, vacated by Rab Butler - who preferred to use his own house in Smith Square.

Thrust into the front line from an early age, MacDougall's brilliance was acknowledged by being appointed OBE at 30, promoted CBE at 33, with the accolade of knighthood by the time he was 41.

George Donald Alastair MacDougall was born in Glasgow, younger son of Daniel Douglas MacDougall, involved in a family china business, and his wife, Beatrice Miller. He first attended Kelvinside Academy before being sent to Shrewsbury School. He read maths and political economy at Balliol College, Oxford, thanks to a family trust. He shone at Oxford to the extent that one of his papers was submitted to John Maynard Keynes for inclusion in the Economic Journal. Keynes not only relished the article, but engaged in correspondence with MacDougall on MacDougall's definitions of price structure.

MacDougall flitted easily between academia and the civil service, and was seen as thoroughly objective by both. After concluding the war as Churchill's chief assistant in the statistical branch, he was a player in the UK delegations to Moscow and Potsdam, advising on German reparations and economic issues, before returning to Oxford as a fellow at Wadham. He was at this time already mapping out his future, joining industrial working parties under Sir Stafford Cripps at the Board of Trade - forerunners in their own ways of the curious "Little Neddies" of the 1960s.

Politically astute, though impartial in party politics, his upward path was marked by names of a lifetime ago - Harry Truman, Anthony Eden, Harold Wilson's economic guru Thomas (later Lord) Balogh and Sir Alex Cairncross. The lure of Whitehall won him again when Selwyn Lloyd, chancellor of the Exchequer, asked him to be first economic director of the National Economic Development Council in 1962. Not for the first time, MacDougall appointed around him only the brightest young people, energetically displaying government service in such a branch as economics could be far from grey.

Two years later, George Brown appointed him director general of the Department of Economic Affairs, with James Callaghan, then chancellor, quick to use him as a regular conduit of advice. In later years, MacDougall spoke chivalrously of Brown, describing him as "a formidable minister", though admitting of his foibles that "on occasion his effectiveness declined as the day progressed".

When in 1969 Sir Donald took on the unprecedented double of head of Government Economic Service and chief economic adviser to the Treasury, he served three chancellors in turn - Roy Jenkins, Iain Macleod and Tony Barber. His advice was not always heeded, as the unemployment total in 1971 headed towards a million. Governments, however, were grateful to have him on board, and retirement was put back for a year until his 61st birthday in 1973.

These final years had not been easy for him, yet, when an offer reached him from the CBI to head up a similar post, he put retirement firmly on indefinite hold, brusquely sweeping aside inevitable comparisons about leaping from government frying pan into the employers' organisation fire. Certainly his was a difficult baptism given Edward Heath's three-day week and the necessity for the CBI to indulge in tight balancing so as not to offend traditional allies.

MacDougall's donnish appearance belied the fun of the man. He relished company, strewing laughter in his wake, a smile rarely crossing the face from which so much dry wit emanated. Parties at his London home attained near-legendary status, packed with ferociously clever young men and women.

At the daily briefing - "morning prayers" - his dedicated work ethic came forth, urging his pupil colleagues to think strategically and logically. He devoured policy documents, summarising in a few crisp annotations in red ink in indecipherable hand in the margin.

Though his sight failed slightly, he continued actively into his 92nd year, having had, as one colleague remarked, "a good innings, scoring lots of runs", providing stimulating company, attending receptions, and meeting a one-time pupil for lunch only last week.

Among his many honours was an honorary doctorate from Strathclyde University in 1968.

He married first Christabel Bartrum, and then, in 1977, Margaret Hall (nee Linfoot), who predeceased him in 1995. He is survived by a son and daughter.

Sir Donald MacDougall CBE FBA LLD LittD DSc, economist; born October 26, 1912, died March 22, 2004.

Presentations from the
Memorial Meeting

Saturday 9 October 2004
Nuffield College
Oxford

Tony Atkinson, Warden of Nuffield College
Opening Remarks

Welcome to this meeting in memory of Sir Donald MacDougall. In particular, I would like to welcome Mary, Donald’s daughter, who has travelled from Scotland to be with us.

The College is very proud of its long association with Donald, who first became a Faculty Fellow in 1947. I believe that he, conversely, was proud of his membership of the College. He used to say that he has been every kind of Fellow of the College. Faced with a general claim of this kind in economics, I know that he would have subjected it to close empirical scrutiny to see whether it accorded with the facts as he observed them. In this case, you have the empirical evidence in front of you on the Programme. He has indeed been a Faculty Fellow, a Professorial Fellow, an Official Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow (at his death he was the longest-serving Honorary Fellow). But he does not appear to have been a Prize Research Fellow, nor an Emeritus Fellow. So his statement was like most statements by good economists – concentrating on the essential and ignoring a few minor objections.

Of course the reason that he was not a Prize Research Fellow is that, at the age when he might have been a junior research fellow, he was already embarked on his academic career. Indeed, he was only in his mid-twenties when he joined Professor Lindemann in what became the PM’s Statistical Branch and was at the centre of government during the Second World War. This is all described in his autobiography Don and Mandarin. He kindly gave me a copy when it was published, and I wrote to thank him saying that I had been struck with how much more exciting the life of an economist was in those days. I still have his reply, and this morning I was struggling to decipher his minuscule handwriting. Part of his reply was that working for Winston Churchill was indeed considerably more exciting than reading today’s Economic Journal!

Donald’s career spanned academia, government and the private sector in the form of the CBI. This span of interests is very much line with the purposes of the College. What is more there was a personal link too, in that Audrey Skeats, whom it is very nice to see here this afternoon, was Donald’s secretary for 18 years, both in College and at NEDDY and at the Department of Economic Affairs. She will no doubt be able to read the letter with which I struggled!

We shall be hearing more about his career in a moment. I would simply like to express appreciation of two major contributions that he made to the College, and end with a personal recollection. The first major contribution is that which he made, along with the other early Economics Fellows – some of whom are here today - to building up the College’s academic reputation in the 1940s and 1950s. Looking back, it may seem to have been inevitable that the College would succeed, but that it did so was due to the academic reputations of the early Fellows and their emphasis on serious research. This meant that Nuffield made its impact on a landscape dominated at the time by Cambridge, which still enjoyed the mantle of Keynes and had Richard Stone at the Department of Applied Economics.

The second is his role as Investment Bursar. Jointly with Ian Little, he took over responsibility from the University when the College became fully independent in 1958, and they made some crucial decisions, including the concentration on equities and not to hand over the funds to a merchant bank to manage. This was important both because they did very well, but also because it instilled confidence that the College could manage its own endowment. This has been crucial in allowing the College to weather recent storms.

I would like to end with a personal memory. I first met Donald about 30 years ago, in his capacity as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. I was then a very young academic and I felt very much at sea in discussions about the British economy carried on by other members of the committee, many of whom – like Donald – had been running it for decades. But I remember that, while he was a brisk chairman, who did not hesitate to cut short his contemporaries when he disagreed with them, he was very kind to the less experienced members and made sure that our views got a hearing.

We are now going to hear from those who knew him better than I did. I have asked them to introduce themselves in turn.

Maurice Scott

September 11, 2001 is now a memorable date, but for me, and still for many others, September 3, 1939 is more memorable. That was when Britain and France declared war on Germany. Not long after it, when he was only 26 and a Lecturer at Leeds University, Donald MacDougall received a telephone call from Roy Harrod asking him to take a train to Oxford as soon as he could for a purpose which would be explained to him later. The purpose was to meet Professor Lindemann, afterwards Lord Cherwell and known as ‘The Prof’, who urgently needed an economist to help him in his work for Churchill, who had just joined Chamberlain’s Government as First Lord of the Admiralty. The Prof had asked Roy, his colleague at Christ Church, to find him a suitable person. Roy had examined Donald in PPE, supervised his post-graduate work at Balliol, and kept in touch with his later work, and was convinced that he would be suitable, the essential being his flair for ferreting out and handling quantitative data. He could identify the key magnitudes in a problem, and then, having worked out their implications, follow them through and not be deflected by counter-arguments relying on authority, appeals to general principles, or just bluff. The Prof had the same flair, and a great deal more self-confidence, not to say intellectual arrogance, than a young man of 26. They clicked. Donald became his right-hand man, heading a team of half-a-dozen economists in the First Lord of the Admiralty’s S-Branch, and continuing in a similar role when Churchill became Prime Minister, but with greater clout and earning increasing respect from the rest of Whitehall.

Churchill wanted an independent scrutiny of the war effort (excluding military strategy), and that was what the Prof provided. I will illustrate its importance by just one example. The Allies planned a major offensive late in 1942 in North Africa, with landings in Morocco and Algeria, and an advance westwards from Egypt, all imposing heavy demands on our shipping. Donald worked out that the ships left to bring imports into the UK were so few that there could be severe food shortages and factory closures for lack of material. At that low ebb of the war, with a string of defeats to our credit and victorious German armies sprawled across Europe, including Russia, the danger to morale at home was serious. He kept warning the Prof who kept warning Churchill, but the latter was preoccupied with military strategy. Donald argued that the ships heading round the Cape to Egypt and the East should be cut from the previous 120 a month to 60 and that military supplies in Egypt were adequate (some said for a 100 years war). The Prof accepted this but told Churchill that a cut back to 40 or 50 a month was required, expecting to have it argued up to 60 by the military. At last Churchill listened and ordered a cut back to 40. The result was that the military campaign was successful, with no shortage of supplies, and that stocks of food and materials in Britain fell about as low as they could, but consumption was maintained. Donald described this as ‘the most momentous macro-economic decision in which I have been involved.’

Donald was a great public servant. He made his biggest contribution to his country, I think, in those war years. Roy Harrod thought that his, Roy’s, best contribution to the defeat of Hitler was his recommendation of Donald to the Prof. So in this sense the war was the peak of Donald’s career. But those of you familiar with the Lake District will know what I mean if I say it was a peak like Bow Fell in relation to the Crinkle Crags. It was higher, and set somewhat apart, but there were other pretty high peaks too.

One of these was a time when I was working for Donald in the resurrected Branch under the Prof. I should explain that I first met Donald in 1946 when he was my tutor in economics at Wadham. Subsequently, he got me into Nuffield as a Student in 1948, and then, in 1949, I worked for him when he was Director of Economics at the OEEC in Paris, helping to obtain Marshall Aid for war-ravaged Europe. When the Conservatives returned to Government in October 1951, at a time of foreign exchange crisis, the Prof was given a seat in Cabinet by Churchill, and Donald once again became his right-hand man. The Prof’s most notable achievement in economic affairs was to resist, at first alone amongst Ministers, a wild scheme cooked up by the Bank and the Treasury, to float the pound, block nearly all the sterling balances held abroad, and otherwise make overseas sterling convertible into dollars. This scheme, known as ROBOT, would have been a slap in the face for the Commonwealth, Western Europe and even the United States. The attempt was made to rush it through with scarcely any consultation or discussion, and very probably it would have succeeded but for the Prof and Donald. Of course a floating rate and convertibility (although not blocking balances) look quite normal now, and some have argued that this frustrated dash for freedom was an opportunity missed. But there are horses for courses, and things were very different then. In the end, the weight of opinion in the Cabinet, and most of the senior civil servants concerned, agreed with the Prof and Donald, and I think they were right to do so. It was this episode that gained Donald his knighthood at the unusually young age of 40.

Let me conclude with a few personal remarks. I worked a lot for Donald and the discipline was severe. He gave you your head, but you knew he would subject your work to a barrage of horribly penetrating questions. He was, himself, prepared to continue long into overtime when the occasion demanded, so you had to be ready for that too. He was open-minded, and would listen to any cogent argument. He was never overbearing or remotely bullying, treating his juniors as academic equals, and doing his best to keep everyone in his office informed of what was afoot. His memoirs are full of amusing stories, and, if they have a failing, it is because of his steadfast politeness, due in turn to the fact that he was such a nice and lovable person. Conversation with Donald, not at work, was a rare pleasure. I say ‘rare’ because it was so different from conversation with most people – or most men at any rate. Such conversation may approximate to what is happening now – one person holds the floor and everyone else must listen. Alternatively, it may be like a tennis match with each side trying to outplay the other. With Donald it was more like free trade. He told you about his own doings and interests of course, but he asked you about yours, and not perfunctorily but following up with more questions as if he really wanted to know. Apart from immediate family, I can think of no-one who has helped me more, from whom I have learned so much, or whose company was so enjoyable.

Rachel Lomax

The last time I saw Donald he was over ninety. But he is firmly fixed in my mind as he was in his late fifties, when he was Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury. I see him as he is pictured on the back of his memoirs – chuckling over a copy of the National Institute Review.

I was his first research assistant when he came to the Treasury in 1969; and he was, if not my first, at least one of my earliest bosses.

I have always been convinced that I got the job because of the spectacular success of the Christmas party I organised for him. Alec Cairncross, his predecessor, had been a hard act to follow in this respect – the parties at his family home in Putney had been a social highlight for treasury economists. Donald wanted a different sort of party, in the treasury itself, and as the youngest Treasury economist I was asked to design it.

I consulted a friend who worked in advertising, then at the heart of the sixties swinging London scene. After giving the matter serious thought, he drew up a drinks order that started with 4 different kinds of spirits. I remember telling Donald that we would need 1 bottle of whisky for every 4 people. On top of that we would need wine and beer, in equally generous proportions.

‘That sounds about right’ agreed Donald. The party cost a fortune, which he paid for out of his own pocket. But everyone had a wonderful time – thus establishing a long tradition. Long after we had both left, the economists’ continued to throw the party of the year in the treasury.

Donald enjoyed parties into his nineties. And he went on being very good company. Back then, he loved to sit around in his office after work reminiscing about George Brown and the DEA, and his wartime years with the Prof, over a glass of good whisky.

Most of those stories made their way into his excellent memoir – Don and Mandarin. Sadly though, most of the doggerel with which he used to enliven his treasury minutes seems to have perished. I particularly mourn the loss of one lengthy exchange with Claus Moser, then head of the Government Statistical Service, which began

A trend is a trend is a trend
The question is does it bend…….

I was very struck by the exuberant pleasure he took in his work. I remember thinking that he didn’t need paying - though, as a shrewd Scot, I’m sure he would not have agreed. Certainly, he was fascinated by the way the economy behaved, he devoured every scrap of statistical information he could lay his hands on, and his enthusiasm for policy making was unabated, though never naïve.

Looking back, I suspect that I worked for him at a particularly good time. He had enormous respect for Roy Jenkins, then Chancellor. The economy was recovering nicely from the 1967 devaluation. After George Brown and the failure of the National Plan and the DEA, the treasury in around 1970 must have felt like heaven. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the oil price hike and the great inflation of the 1970s still lay ahead.

In this pre-Lapsarian world, I happily drew – by hand – endless charts for Donald’s monthly notes for the Chancellor; and helped him to devise cardboard cut outs (we called them ellipses or flying saucers) to illustrate the uncertainties and tradeoffs that would be important in reaching the Budget judgement. Our only real disagreement was over the use of new technology – electronic calculators were just appearing but Donald insisted on sticking to his beloved slide rule. When he went to Japan, he brought me back an abacus.

There was one final excitement: the Wilberforce enquiry into an electricity supply pay dispute. It was set up on December 29 and Donald had to give evidence, both written and oral, in January. We worked like fury, six days a week, over the New Year holidays, culminating one chilly Saturday in a rather rough public hearing in Church House. Donald performed well but the outcome wasn’t quite what we had hoped for – a harbinger, perhaps, of rockier days ahead.

Things were changing for me too. I was only a few weeks away from the birth of my first son, and bearing an increasing resemblance to an asthmatic elephant. I told Donald that I would have to start tapering off at work.
He looked at me sympathetically. ‘ You’re going to get awfully bored’ he said, ‘but you can come in any time you want and we’ll find you something to do.’

I didn’t exactly get bored. But when I did feel like coming back to work, I did know that the treasury would be a fun place to work – thanks to Donald.

Douglas McWilliams
Sir Donald MacDougall as I knew him

Sir Donald MacDougall had already retired once when I first met him. But he was just starting the job that he held for the longest of any of the jobs that he had done in his life – his eleven years as Chief Economic Adviser to the Confederation of British Industry.

I think that the senior industrialists who ran the CBI at that time felt that they had lost touch a little with the Treasury (then as now the key government department for economic and implicitly industrial policy) and wanted someone who could speak the Treasury’s language. It was a rare coup for them to manage to attract Donald.

Donald joined the CBI at the height of the corporate state period. It was a world of inflation, strikes, 3 day weeks, trade union power. I remember one CBI president telling the then Chancellor, Denis Healey, that ‘inflation on the present scale will bring about the end of civilization as we know it….but inflation without profits is even worse’.

The Marxists (Andrew Glyn for example) wrote that because the real return on capital employed had in the post-war period been squeezed down from over 10% to just 2½% in 1975 that capitalism was indeed on its last legs. The CBI’s analysis of the profits trend was essentially Marxist, though naturally we differed from them on whether the downward trend was a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing.

Donald’s obituarist in the Financial Times wrote ‘His last job as chief economic adviser to the Confederation of British Industry was a success. For 10 years the CBI's voice on economic policy became respected and coherent as never before’. And I remember a leak to the Observer in the 1970s alleging that Denis Healey had complained that Donald MacDougall and his team of 6 (a slight understatement) at the CBI were running rings around his entire Treasury team of over 400.

But Donald himself was more modest about our achievements. In his memoirs he described putting an argument to one Chancellor of the Exchequer as being ‘sometimes like poking one’s finger into a sponge and then, when you took it out again, finding the sponge exactly the same shape as before’.

At the CBI Donald continued his habit of reaching out to economics experts across a wide spectrum of economic beliefs but he added to his extensive knowledge the ability to cross check the official figures with the CBI’s own survey data and with a rigorously maintained database of anecdotal information from CBI regions and other groups.

Today when business surveys receive as much attention in the financial media and City as official data it is perhaps hard to remember that in the 1970s and 1980s we had to struggle to persuade people that data received directly from top businessmen was not only useful as an advance indicator of official figures but as a valuable cross check on whether an unexpected statistical movement observed in the official statistics was just a blip or meant something more serious.
Donald, apart from being very good at sorting the wheat from the chaff when interpreting survey and anecdotal data, brought a prestige to its analysis without which it might never have been taken as seriously.

One of the results was that because of this, the CBI could make representations to government backed by its own data. Because Donald was taken seriously, the data which backed the representations was also taken seriously. And this helped tremendously when making the case for stock relief in 1975, the relaxation of price control from 1976 to 1979, and the abolition of the National Insurance Surcharge in stages in the early 1980s.

Donald’s prestige and his links with economic opinion formers across the political spectrum also helped him be perhaps the key moving force in putting together the incomes policies of the mid 1970s which helped get inflation down temporarily from the high 20 percents to high single figures. Even if the achievement started to break down towards the end of the 1970s, it helped bring Britain back from the brink of ungovernability in the mid 1970s.

After the 1979 election under Lady Thatcher, there was a sharp move away from the corporate state and working for the CBI became more problematic. At one level, CBI members, though generally not party political in an explicit sense, were more uncomfortable about public criticism of a Conservative government that was doing many things that they liked than they would have been with a Labour government that was doing many things that they not only disliked but thought bad for the country. At another level, Lady Thatcher and her Ministers found it politic when they were being accused of union bashing to try to give the impression that they were bashing the CBI as well. And many of them genuinely felt that the CBI represented the collaborationist corporate state – big business that was perfectly happy with a status quo that protected them from competition from dynamic small businesses.

Donald was less happy in this newer world but adapted well. He masterminded the CBI’s campaign to get the National Insurance Surcharge (NIS) - a payroll levy that peaked at 3½ % of payroll – abolished. He never went to the lengths of wearing a lapel badge saying ‘NIS OFF’ as one of the more populist CBI PR chiefs encouraged him to do. But he worked at the argument persistently and I remember him telling me that he thought that he might have made the point when he had had a rare moment with Lady Thatcher when he was allowed to get in a few words and had explained to her that cutting the national insurance surcharge had all the benefits of a devaluation without the inflationary side effects.
Gradually NIS was cut and then abolished just after Donald retired. When the CBI held a party to celebrate its demise Donald was the guest of honour.

One of the reasons that Donald was held so much in awe was that despite his reputation and experience he was totally down to earth with young people working for him. As far as he was concerned, it was what you said rather than who you were that counted and we were all encouraged to speak up in meetings.

But even more than that, he would go through all papers and reports prepared by the CBI economists however junior and add his marginal comments.

And since he accepted that his handwriting was almost illegible – a sort of joined up morse code – we always had the opportunity to go back and take him through the comments in person and even debate them with him. Most ex-dons delight when they move on and no longer have to give undergraduate tutorials. Donald in effect continued marking our essays in great detail – correcting our grammar, our punctuation and spelling as well as our economics - right up to the moment he retired more than quarter of a century after leaving academia.

Donald was a very social person and did not feel that differences of political or economics views should stand in the way of social intercourse. His 90th birthday party at the Reform Club was a wonderful occasion. He loved reciting both poetry and doggerel and with his voice loud and clear he recited a poem he had written for the occasion – at least 4 stanzas and all recited from memory since by this stage his eyesight had faded nearly completely. It ended by inviting us all back in 10 years time.

Sadly it was not to be. But the last week of Donald’s life continued the pattern of keeping in touch. He was out most evenings that week including making some cogent points at the Political Economy Club’s annual Budget Night Dinner. And I was lucky enough to take him and Margaret Morrell, the widow of James Morrell, one of Donald’s former pupils, to the Goring Hotel for lunch a few days before he died.

The lunch was a great success – a happy atmosphere. Donald drank champagne and quite unusually accepted the offer of a second glass. We discussed who had been the best peacetime Prime Minister. Quite surprisingly to me he said Tony Blair. When asked why he said that previous Labour Prime Ministers had always failed to combine redistribution of income with prudent economic management and that Blair had achieved this.

When I said over lunch to Donald that he seemed to be in good form he said he felt fine but that his doctors were saying the opposite. Sadly on this occasion the doctors were right and he died 5 days later.

Sir Donald MacDougall – one of the greatest applied economists and a wonderful mentor to many young economists. He will be missed.

Douglas Wass

It is right, I think, that the main tributes to Donald today are being paid by his academic friends, for we are meeting in the college which he was associated with – and loved - for over 50 years. But as the title of his memoir made clear there were two facets to his life, the academic and, for want of a better word, the bureaucratic, and it is his contribution to life in Whitehall, and its environs, that I want to salute today.

I cannot speak from first hand experience of Donald’s work in the Cabinet Office during the War, and I had only intermittent and casual encounters with him when he returned to public service as the first Economic Director of Neddy in 1962. It was different when he moved to the Department of Economic Affairs two years later. That was where I first came to see a lot of Donald for I was posted in 1967 to the Division in the Treasury which was concerned with fiscal policy, and though the Treasury had other thoughts, I found that this was something which Donald, to put it no higher, decided had certain implications for his Department. He was, in particular, much exercised by the effect of the newly introduced Selective Employment Tax on the service sector generally and on distribution in particular. My role, meantime, was to act as a sort of administrative foil to the architect of this particular impost, Nicky Kaldor, and at the same time, insofar as this was possible, to make it work in practice. Donald quickly perceived that I was a much softer touch than Nicky and I became the target of his representations. But of course anything that I thought might be done to affect the purity of the intentions of the Tax had to be cleared with Nicky – so I was the unenviable ‘piggy in the middle’. It would be invidious of me - on this occasion at any rate – to make comparisons between the dialectical or diplomatic capacities of the two disputants. I will only say that Donald was invariably the first to appreciate the difficulty I had in reconciling two such opposing positions and it was he who enabled me to come to some sort of synthesis.

My gratitude to Donald for his help on these occasions never died, and there were many subsequent episodes in our association which caused it to flourish. But chiefly I, and I think all of his lay colleagues, will remember him for the painstaking efforts he made to put across the economic factors and arguments which entered into policy choices. He never fell back on jargon and paid his listeners the compliment of assuming that they could understand a precise logical – and numerical – argument, and that their pre-Fulton disposition to generalisation could be overcome. I call to mind three illustrations of this.

The first was Donald’s challenge to the proposals put by the IMF in, I think, 1968 that the Government should commit itself to numerical limits to the growth of what they called Domestic Credit Expansion. This was a concept entirely new to the policy makers in the Treasury who by then had just about completely converted to planning in real rather than financial terms. I think that it was pretty new to Donald too, but he wasted no time in explaining to his lay colleagues what DCE was, what it identified with, and, most important for him, why it was an absurd variable to attempt to control. If his efforts did not succeed in converting our IMF colleagues, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that the Treasury had its collective tongue in cheek when it accepted the quantitative commitments the Fund insisted on. In this episode we saw clearly where Donald was going to come out in the debate which developed a year or two later about the role of the money supply in determining the rate of inflation.

My second recollection of Donald’s ability to educate his lay colleagues is of the concern he showed that we should understand the perils of embracing policies which severely damaged corporate profitability. As I have said, the Treasury was in the 1970s, mainly concerned with real variables, rather than financial ones. The idea of looking at income as a monetary variable was not much in vogue. But Donald looked beyond the figures produced by the Treasury forecasters and in particular was very concerned by what they implied for business profits and in turn for business planning and development. I can picture now a seminar of Treasury economists and laymen sitting at Donald’s feet while he alternately manipulated his pipe and his breast-pocket slide-rule (no calculators then) and demonstrated the incompatibility of the financial outcome of the forecast with what it said about the real outcome.

Thirdly, I recall the refreshing way in which Donald approached the whole business of economic forecasting. When he succeeded Alec Cairncross as the Chief Government Economic Adviser he inherited what was very much an in-house approach to forecasting. I think he found the Treasury just a little bit too inbred. He thought that other opinions ought to be heard by the policy makers and decided to ensure that this happened by calling in 6 or 7 outside forecasters several times a year and by giving them the opportunity of presenting their views to the Chancellor himself. This did not go too well with some of the Treasury team, but it was not long before they saw that the discipline of having to justify their position in the teeth of serious criticism was a healthly one. It wasn’t long before this practice came to be regarded as a standard requirement.

Right at the end of his spell as Chief Economic Adviser the UK joined the European Community. By 1972 we had signed the Treaty of Accession, though most of Whitehall didn’t know precisely what we had signed up to – at any rate in procedural matters. Donald and I were deputed by Douglas Allen to go over to Brussels and find out how the Community in general, and the Commission in particular, functioned in the field of macro-economic coordination and forecasting. We had an interesting tour of the various institutions of the Community and sat in on some of the meetings of the policy bodies. What I think struck both Donald and myself was not the professional approach of the bodies but the utter humourlessness of their deliberations – certainly compared with Whitehall where a little mockery and a deflation of self-importance was part of the stock-in- trade. One discussion we participated in was about price stability in the Community – not by any means an important issue at the time. When Donald was invited to make a comment, which of course he was delighted to do, he began, as he might have done in Whitehall by adapting Mark Twain’s epigram ‘Everybody talks about inflation but nobody does anything about it’. The response was a stony silence and rather disapproving looks. When we got home and debriefed our interdepartmental colleagues on our visit the representative of the Foreign Office produced an introductory booklet on guidelines to membership of the Community one of which was ‘In no Community discussion ever make a joke or a light-hearted remark’.

Europe proved to be a fertile field for Donald to till right up to his last days. In his memoir he mentions that he was never an opponent of our entry and I think that all his subsequent actions bear this out. But he had a number of concerns about the institution and not only with regard to its capacity for self-importance. The most serious reservation was of course about monetary union. It was the idea that you could secure a successful union in the monetary field without a substantial expansion of the Community’s fiscal role. For an explanation of this, one has to go no further than the introduction he wrote in1977 to the report of the seven European economists on the role of public finance in economic integration. This seminal document became the source of his contribution years later to the lobbying campaign ‘Europe Yes – Euro No’ – a contribution which in turn led him to recruit as many of his old friends and colleagues – myself included – to the cause he had espoused.

No catalogue of Donald’s contribution to public life and public thought can adequately capture the real nature and stature of the man. That he figured in so many important events and movements in the economic field is on the public record. But to those who knew him well he was a good deal more than a big public figure. A lesser man might have become pompous and self-important. Not Donald. A puckish figure, witty, amusing, never taking himself too seriously and above all kind and considerate to all his friends and – a sign of his magnanimity – to those who, perhaps for idealogical reasons, were his opponents.

His final years were marked by disability and pain. He lost most of his physical vision and became very immobile. But he did not for a moment think of giving up either intellectual or social activity. He read what he could with the aid of a large magnifying glass and he greatly enjoyed listening to the audio tapes of books. I lunched regularly with him right up to the end and each occasion was a delight.

At his last birthday party – his 90th – we saw the man in all his aspects as he combined reminiscence with a delightful adaptation of a Bellocian Cautionary Tale. At the end of his discourse as he bade his guests farewell he said that he hoped we would all be around in ten years time to come to his centennial party. Many of us – myself included – took him seriously, but alas our hopes and expectations were not to be realised. This memorial meeting is perhaps the nearest we can come to such a party. I am grateful to the Warden for giving me the privilege of saluting this remarkable man.

David Schmitz

Those of you who have looked at the programme may have noticed that after my name there appear the letters MOBL. For those of you who have wondered what those letters mean, I can tell you that they form a distinction of my own invention and stand for ‘Member of the B List’.

In adopting this title, I am hoping to make a serious point, which is that there is a very large number of people to whom Donald even was more than the man who increased the capacity of allied shipping, who saw to it that we did not run out of coal or who prevented the pound from going into freefall in 1952.

Like many great men he knew how to enrich the lives of everyone with whom he came into contact, whatever their background or station in life, and in particular he could, and did, make everyone feel that they and their opinions mattered. He achieved this, not by any facile technique; rather, he achieved it quite simply because he cared about people and because with his great intelligence he could master and recall the details of the lives and preoccupations of every single one of us. To those of us who had the privilege to know him, he showed a kindness which was always sincere, never intrusive and always accompanied by his sense of fun. It is as a spokesman for those hundreds of minor players that I hope to make my contribution this afternoon.

Donald’s family and mine first came into contact in 1938. Donald had already arranged to get various students out of Germany and Austria so that they could continue their studies at Leeds, and not being content with that, he and Chris decided to take several refugees into their home as lodgers. My father was one of those lodgers, and for all of his life he remembered the cheerful household where he was able to pick up the threads of his life at a time when he was cut off from everything that he had known.

For my father, this happy interlude ended with his internment after the fall of France, but the friendship continued after my father moved on to the U.S. and now continues into the next generation.

I am told that Donald always was as I remember him - friendly, approachable and never stuffy. My mother says that when, shortly after the war, he came to New York to work in the United Nations at Lake Success, this distinguished public servant, still aged only 34, visited my parents in their tiny university apartment, and cheerfully spent the night on a fold-out camp bed in the living room, which must have been something of a comedown for someone who had just been helping to run the German economy post Potsdam under the title of Brigadier. One thing which my father remembered from this visit was that because of the rigours of rationing, Donald was obliged to wear suits that had been patched. When my father offered to treat him to a new suit, Donald politely refused. As my father recalled, ‘Donald wore those patches like a badge of honour.’

I first met Donald in the 1970’s, when he invited me to dinner while I was here on a visit before coming here to live. Having heard many stories about this great man, and being not too far removed from those colonials who believe that a knighthood confers a suit of armour on the recipient, I was somewhat overawed by the occasion and no doubt said a great many foolish things. I’ve always suspected that when Donald invited me back for the following evening, it was because he wanted to give me some reassurance. Being thus put at ease, I was able to enjoy many more of these evenings over the next 30 years.

For some time I had wanted to do something to repay, in a small way, Donald’s many kindnesses to me and my family. A few years ago I sort of got the chance when, with his failing eyesight, he needed some help in going through his papers. I say ‘sort of’ because going through papers with one such as Donald was scarcely a hardship. I remember three things about this experience. First of all, there was Donald’s astonishing degree of recall. He could tell me not only what papers were in what files; he could also say precisely where the files were to be found. Secondly, there was some good natured tension as our separate agendas revealed themselves. Put briefly, he wanted to dash through papers which 30, 40 or 50 years after the fact he still knew well, whereas I preferred a more leisurely pace punctuated by his reminiscences when I could get him to talk. Thirdly, he was always very gracious in thanking me for my help, as if he were unaware of what a treat it was to undertake this task with him, even when it was on his terms.

One thing that stood out in these papers, among the analyses of Norwegian shipping, the memos to Prof, the instructions on how to prepare oneself for a transatlantic trip in a converted bomber and the mock-serious rules of a dining club, were evidences of his many kindnesses. There were thank you letters from undergraduates whom he had helped through the usual difficulties of that time of life and there was correspondence relating to financial help which he had organised for some people in need.

In his later years, Donald came to need the assistance of nurses and carers. As with everyone else who ever got to know him, friendships blossomed. One of these carers had a birthday just three days before Donald died. Of course, Donald gave a party, and the picture of him there, beaming with the happiness of the occasion, is about as wonderful a last photograph as anyone could hope to have.

In his eulogy, John MacDougall began by saying that like many others, he had thought Donald to be immortal; and so it seemed. Donald used to make light of the inevitable, however, and according to one of his closest friends he once asked, ‘What do you suppose I’ll look like when I’m dead?’ He then he pulled face and asked if he had got it right.
Donald once said to me that he found it difficult to believe that he really was the same man as the one who had achieved all that he remembered having achieved. This struck me as odd. His intellectual curiosity, his good natured application of the Socratic method, in the manner of ones favourite tutor, to anyone who was foolish enough to make a flat and unsupportable assertion and his showman like repartee with old friends like Steven Bonarjee, Mary’s godfather, remained with him until the end.

A few days before he died, I telephoned Donald and he told me that he had been feeling unwell. When I asked if he would like me to visit him, he said that it would be best to wait a few days, and he invited me to come to dinner the following week. Unfortunately, that was not to be. What I did hear, however, was that he had done me one final kindness by insisting, on the very last day of his life, that I should be asked to read one of Belloc’s cautionary tales at his funeral, which of course I did. How appropriate it was that this great fighter against the evils of unemployment should think to comfort a friend by finding him a job to do.

Donald ended his memoirs with the words, ‘I am thankful for having had such an interesting and varied life which I have greatly enjoyed, and I hope I have conveyed this enjoyment to my readers.’ I hope that my words this afternoon will have conveyed some of the enjoyment which all of us derived from the company of this wonderful man.

David Hendry
Closing Remarks

The closing speaker risks having his anecdotes pre-empted by all the earlier talks, especially for someone like myself who probably knew Donald least well of those addressing you today. Fortunately, that has not happened, so I may add somewhat to the picture developed so far. ‘Closing’ is anyway the wrong phrase, as Donald’s important intellectual contributions will influence us for many years to come.

I first discovered Donald’s economic ideas in 1965 when I was an undergraduate at Aberdeen, and had become interested in floating exchange rates—well before they became the flavour of the month. I had been directed to his famous books The World Dollar Problem (1957) and The Dollar Problem: a Reappraisal (1960). These were the epitome of how carefully to marshal evidence, filled with tables and graphs, as Donald was insistent that theory must be backed by facts to be credible. After a balanced appraisal of the available evidence and likely trends, Donald concluded that there would be a ‘dollar shortage’, and also felt flexible rates did not offer a solution. Nevertheless, at that time, I concluded that floating would be better than the fixed-adjustable peg approach which the UK used. This was undoubtedly the only time in my professional career in which I sided with Milton Friedman rather than Donald. Events in the 1970s – and for many other countries since – have confirmed that some problems at least are reduced, although floating is far from a panacea.

Our first meeting occurred when Donald was Director General of the Department of Economic Affairs (1964–8). I had a summer job in 1967 at the DEA as an econometrician, employed to model the demand for cars, and in particular the second-hand car market, working to David Smyth. The policy issue concerned the registration letter on number plates, which seemed to distort the timing of purchases. Because it was an accurate indicator of the true age of the vehicle, an ever increasing percentage of sales was occurring in the month during which the registration letter changed, distorting annual production of motor vehicles.

Donald held regular Friday afternoon meetings at which we had to present our findings. These were somewhat challenging affairs for his juniors, many unused to addressing ‘high-level’ meetings. I faced the additional difficulty that Donald did not seem overly impressed by econometrics. To quote from his Economic Record paper of 1959: ‘It is hard to be entirely convinced by the statistical calculations’. Worse, I too had serious doubts about the standard approach to modelling which was being used here as usual. That took the following form: the economist did some theoretical reasoning about what should determine demand, namely the relative price of cars, consumers’ incomes, credit restrictions–which were widespread at the time–the age distribution of the stock of cars, and so on. Then the econometrician was expected to estimate the quantitative effects of these factors using a statistical model. Unfortunately, the resulting models rarely fitted well to the data, so a series of corrections was needed to remove, or indeed camouflage, the gap. I have spent most of my career trying to work out better approaches, but at that time could only see the problems not the solutions. Donald sympathized with the theoretical model we had developed, but immediately saw all sorts of flaws in the econometrics, so I doubt if he was greatly impressed by my attempts to explain what I was doing!

In retrospect, Donald was brilliant at ocular econometrics, namely the ability to discern from graphs or even tables the pertinent relations, without using statistical techniques. His instant grasp of issues and models was most impressive, and I later used as an analogy that econometrics should strive to capture the cognitive models that world-class economic advisors like Donald clearly used to great effect.

Many years later, after I became a Nuffield Fellow, I reminisced with him about the DEA years, though without really mentioning that I had temporarily been one of those juniors. I was interested in the key role Donald had played with Ian Little in establishing the Nuffield endowment by skilled investment, as others have described today.

I also heard about his wartime experiences as an advisor, and recently reread his 1951 chapter in the National Institute volume edited by Norman Chester, evaluating the lessons learnt. In it, Donald remarked on the composition of the group working for Churchill, which included ‘some half a dozen computers’. I only hope future readers realize that this term then referred to humans, and do not falsely conclude that the UK was far ahead of its time!