David Hughes Parry , livre ebook

David Hughes Parry
David Hughes Parry
A Jurist in Society
R. Gwynedd Parry
© R. Gwynedd Parry, 2010
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN     978-0-7083-2292-5 eISBN   978-1-78316-425-7
The right of R. Gwynedd Parry to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover image: David Hughes Parry reproduced by kind permission of National Library of Wales Cover design: Olwen Fowler
I Meinir, Ifan a Tomos, ac er cof am fy nhad
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Abbreviations
1 ‘From the Village of Llanaelhaearn’
2 The Path to Power
3 Law and Economics
4 Academic Leadership
5 The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
6 Welsh Affairs
7 The Aberystwyth Controversy
8 The Challenges of Federalism
9 The Legal Status of the Welsh Language
10 ‘Teach Me Good Judgment’
Photo Section
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
T HIS BOOK has been made possible with the support and encouragement of a number of individuals and organizations which I must acknowledge.
I would like to thank Professors David Sugarman, David Milman, Thomas Glyn Watkin, Iwan R. Davies and Sir Ross Cranston for their helpful suggestions, advice and comments on earlier versions of the text and at various stages in the book’s development. I am particularly grateful to the Reverend Professor J. Tudno Williams, whose mother was a sister of Sir David Hughes Parry, for his support and advice and for his permission to include a number of family photographs in his possession in this book.
I am grateful to the editors of the Welsh History Review for their permission to include in chapter 8 of this book an amended version of an article I published in the journal as ‘Federalism and university governance: Welsh experiences in New Zealand’, Welsh History Review , 23 (1) (2006), 123–57. I am also grateful to the editor of the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion for permission to include in chapter 3 an amended version of a paper previously published as ‘Sir David Hughes Parry as lawyer and economist’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion , 13 (2007), 193–212.
I have also benefited from informal conversations with a number of people who, during my researches for this book, gave advice or made suggestions which were later explored and investigated. I am particularly grateful for conversations with Lord Morris of Aberavon and for correspondence with the late Professor J. A. G. Griffith.
I am indebted to staffs and archivists at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London, the Senate House Library of the University of London and the British Library of Political and Economic Science of the London School of Economics and Political Science for their generous assistance in allowing me to access the archival materials which have provided the foundations for this biography.
I should also like to record my considerable debt to staff at the University of Wales Press for their confidence in the project and for preparing the manuscript in readiness for publication.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Meinir, and my sons, Ifan and Tomos, for their patience, support and understanding over the years. The academic vocation is sometimes selfish. Without their support, completing this project would have been impossible.
This book is dedicated to them, and in memory of my father, whom I am sure would have enjoyed reading this book.
Photographs are reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Wales and the estate of the late Sir David Hughes Parry.
Preface
V ISITORS TO London walking out of Euston Station and heading in a south-easterly direction will shortly arrive at Cartwright Gardens. There stands a tower block, a red-brick, functional and rather ugly building bearing the name Hughes Parry Hall. Its purpose since its opening in 1969 has been to provide shelter and accommodation for students of the colleges of the University of London during the period of their studies. It is the individual to whom this rather uninspiring edifice is dedicated that forms the subject matter of this book.
Leaving aside its architectural limitations, it is not surprising that the University of London should have deemed it appropriate perpetually to commemorate the name of Professor Sir David Hughes Parry QC on one of its student halls of residence. Between 1930 and 1959, he was professor of English law at the University of London, and served a period as vice-chancellor of that university. Simultaneously, he was the head of the Department of Law at the London School of Economics (LSE), and presided over a period when the LSE’s Law Department established itself as a recognized centre of excellence in legal scholarship. He was the key figure behind the establishing of the University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) in 1947. Between 1947 and 1959, he served as its founding director and continued to exert influence over the IALS as chairman of its management committee between 1959 and his death in 1973. In retirement, between 1962 and 1970, he served as chairman of the Court of the University of London. During his lifetime, he had acquired a reputation as a lawyer, legal scholar, university administrator and policymaker of international standing and renown. He was Queen’s Counsel, honorary bencher of the Inner Temple, sometime president of the Society of the Public Teachers of Law, held a raft of honorary doctorates and was an honorary fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.
These bare facts, easily found in Who Was Who or a similar biographical directory, should provide some indication of his importance and stature within the world of lawyers and legal scholarship. Yet, he seems something of a forgotten figure. Until now, a biography has never been written and only a short autobiography which was published shortly before his death exists as a chronicle of the early part of his life. It tells the story of his upbringing and formative years, is written in Welsh and, although it is an informative and readable account of that period in his life, it does not explain how he became such a prominent figure within the world of legal scholarship. 1 An essay he wrote for a volume published towards the end of his life recounts his early years at the LSE, and may have formed the beginnings of an autobiography in English. 2 However, it would have no sequel. Of course, there were the obituaries and other tributes at the time of his death. Those are, by and large, reverential, and, besides being necessarily short and succinct, perhaps lack that quality of detachment and objectivity to amount to reliable historical records of the man’s life and career.
D. Martin Clitheroe, in a project prepared for Hughes Parry Hall in 1974 (but not actually published – it can be found in the British Library and the LSE’s library), brought together a collection of reminiscences of and tributes to David Hughes Parry at the time of his death. 3 This collection provides some useful information and interesting impressions by those with whom Hughes Parry had collaborated at close quarters. Indeed, it provides the researcher with a number of leads to further avenues of research. But this collection is brief, fragmentary and focuses only on certain aspects of Hughes Parry’s life. Perhaps the project’s main flaw is that it does not always systematically record its sources. There is a collection of unsourced anecdotes in a section of the project where he seeks to describe ‘Hughes Parry – the man’. This section is particularly intriguing as it appears that some of Hughes Parry’s detractors had sought to put him down, having been given the advantage and security of anonymity. Since 1974, however, nothing has been written about David Hughes Parry’s life and career. A detailed study, therefore, seemed timely and appropriate.
The initial incentive for researching his life came in the wake of a paper at the Welsh Legal History Society’s session at the Legal Wales Conference held in Cardiff on 19 September 2003. The society had issued a call for papers on the theme of ‘Welsh contributions to legal development’. A number of papers came to light, many of which were concerned with the lives and careers of judges from Wales, or with a Welsh connection, men such as Lord Atkin of Aberdovey and Lord Elwyn-Jones of Llanelli. The only proposal to present a paper on a legal academic was, therefore, received with some enthusiasm. 4
Perhaps the conference paper was merely the catalyst for pursuing a long-standing but dormant interest in the subject’s life. As a child, I had come across a book in my father’s library presented to my parents by Sir David Hughes Parry. That book was Hughes Parry’s autobiography. 5 My parents had been given a signed co