Lord Crickhowell
Tory Welsh Secretary who championed inward investment and the regeneration of Cardiff Bay
LORD CRICKHOWELL, who has died aged 84, was an effective Welsh Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, and later a determined fighter against pollution as chairman of the National Rivers Authority. Mild, cultured and a liberal on social issues, Nicholas Edwards took up his portfolio just after Welsh voters rejected Labour’s devolution plans. He faced a slump in the principality’s traditional industries, yet handed over to Peter Walker in 1987 an economy reviving as new jobs he had travelled the world to attract were created.
The dearth of Conservative MPS in Wales guaranteed that one with Edwards’s talents would receive preferment. But he was fortunate that his politics lay midway between those of Edward Heath, who appointed him to the front bench, and Mrs Thatcher, who put him in her Shadow Cabinet; by her victory in 1979, there was no question that he would be Welsh Secretary. Of her first Cabinet, only Lord Hailsham would survive as long – eight years – in their original post.
A non-welsh speaker said by his wife to be a “hopeless linguist”, Edwards represented Pembroke, “little England beyond Wales”. Yet he increased funding for the Welsh language and finally gave in to pressure for a separate Welsh television channel.
Edwards never let his failure to learn Welsh cause embarrassment, as would John Redwood, but it made him a target for extremists. They removed road signs in English, burned holiday homes, then bombed more than 40 targets – including in 1980 Edwards’s home near Crickhowell. An unexploded device was found in the bedroom of his 16-year-old son.
The closure of Shotton steelworks and major job losses at Llanwern, then the traumatic 1984-85 miners’ strike, all heightened unemployment and imposed severe social strains. Edwards worked energetically to secure investment, especially from Japan. While he failed to land Nissan’s car plant he did attract enough employment, largely in electronics, to leave an atmosphere of hope.
His travels irked Mrs Thatcher, who upbraided him in 1981 for flying to America two years running. Her letter of reproof came to light when spotted in a portrait of Sir Nicholas Henderson, ambassador to Washington, who had left it on his desk.
He was caused greater embarrassment by a “Dear Nick” missive from the prime minister’s husband Denis complaining of delays in holding a public inquiry into a resort scheme at Harlech in which he had an interest. Edwards’s scribbled note instructing his officials to come up with an answer was seized on by Labour MPS, but the Ombudsman rejected charges of wrongdoing.
Edwards’s zeal to attract foreign investment shortened his ministerial career. He was not the most robust of men: in 1982 he was airsick while viewing storm damage from an RAF helicopter. On one Far East mission he picked up a debilitating virus. At the 1987 election, aged 53, he left the Commons with a life peerage.
One of his last initiatives was to set up the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, which transformed a run-down harbour area into a thriving national centre. It was ironic that this development, which now houses the National Assembly for Wales, should have been facilitated by a leading opponent of devolution. More so that the futuristic home for the Welsh National Opera, whose promoters he chaired, would be stymied on cost grounds in 1995 then realised in less dramatic form by Labour’s devolved Assembly.
Edwards secured more social funding, notably for the NHS, than his English counterparts and resented his successor’s claims to be securing a better deal, sarcastically praising Walker’s “supreme political skills as a trumpeter”, adding: “The ability to proclaim success does not constitute an economic policy.” Unfortunately he made these remarks days before a by-election in the Vale of Glamorgan. His apology to Walker for a “terrible mistake” was publicised, and amid the ensuing row the seat was lost.
Roger Nicholas Edwards was born on February 25 1934, the son of Ralph Edwards, keeper of woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Marjorie (née Brooke). He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read History and debated with John Nott.
He went into insurance, becoming managing director of William Brandt’s, and for almost four decades was a member of Lloyd’s.
Edwards won Pembroke in 1970, ousting the Labour Right-winger Desmond Donnelly who had broken away to found his own party, the United Democrats.
Edwards opposed Pembrokeshire’s absorption in the new county of Dyfed. Holding his seat against the swing in February 1974, he became an Opposition Welsh affairs spokesman. That October his majority was cut to 772.
Ousting Heath in 1975, Mrs Thatcher promoted Edwards to the Shadow Cabinet. As Labour embraced devolution, he warned that it would lead to an “insatiable demand for full independence”. He urged a separate Bill for Wales – denouncing it as a “colossal fraud” when it appeared – and castigated Labour for rising unemployment. “Generations have voted Labour because of unemployment,” he said. “Now they are unemployed because of Labour.”
Edwards did not embrace the full Thatcherite agenda. He urged Conservatives to engage with the trades unions, and voted for proportional representation in elections to a Scottish Assembly. But his leader respected his sincerity and ability to get things done, and put him in charge of a committee to examine what issues a Conservative government might put to a referendum. Edwards reckoned the real danger was of Labour abolishing the Lords, and recommended the use of referendums to safeguard the constitution.
On St David’s Day, 1979, Welsh voters rejected devolution by almost four to one. At the ensuing election Mrs Thatcher came to power and Edwards increased his majority to 7,468. He entered the Cabinet as Welsh Secretary.
Attending his first Eisteddfod as Secretary of State, Edwards was pilloried by Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Wigley for “not having bothered to learn a word of our language in four years as Shadow Welsh affairs spokesman”. Weeks later, the Eisteddfod asked him for funds; courteously, he agreed.
Edwards’s most traumatic moment in the Commons came late on February 10 1983, when his junior minister Michael Roberts dropped dead at the Dispatch Box in midspeech. The sitting was suspended as Edwards, sitting next to Roberts, and two doctor-mps tried to revive him.
Edwards valued the Welsh landscape, rejecting several coniferplanting schemes, and in 1986 the Ramblers’ Association awarded him its “Golden Boot” for confirming the Clwydian Hills as an area of outstanding natural beauty despite resistance from farmers.
After the Chernobyl disaster, he banned the movement and slaughter of sheep in parts of North Wales – then made a point of eating lamb for his Sunday lunch.
In May 1988 Nicholas Ridley, the Environment Secretary, appointed Lord Crickhowell, as he had become, to chair the new National Rivers Authority. Launched to regulate the privatised water industry, its prime responsibilities became pollution and flood defences.
He set a cracking pace in the fight against pollution, being aghast to discover that some water authorities had no means of measuring it other than lowering a bucket. He gave early warning that polluters would be prosecuted, and in 1990 announced charges against five of the 10 privatised companies.
His grip on the running of the NRA was less sure. It was censured by the Public Accounts Committee after the cost of moving its headquarters to Bristol rocketed from £1 million to £2.7 million; the chief executive was paid £125,000 to leave. Subsequently Crickhowell convinced John Major that the NRA should be merged with HM Inspectorate of Pollution.
As a director of Welsh National Opera Crickhowell fought a running battle over funding with ministers and the Arts Council. Chairing the Cardiff Bay Opera House Trust, he selected Zaha Hadid’s dramatic design and, after the funders’ rejection, accused Michael Heseltine and Virginia Bottomley of “a lack of vision, leadership and courage”.
His hobbies included collecting English drawings; he was a frequent contributor to Connoisseur. One of his first actions as Welsh Secretary was to help the National Museum in Cardiff to buy four cartoons by Rubens.
Nicholas Edwards married Ankaret Healing in 1963; they had a son and two daughters.