David Hughes Parry: A Jurist in Society

David Hughes Parry

David Hughes Parry

A Jurist in Society

R. Gwynedd Parry

© R. Gwynedd Parry, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

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.

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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’

2The Path to Power

3Law and Economics

4Academic Leadership

5The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

6Welsh Affairs

7The Aberystwyth Controversy

8The Challenges of Federalism

9The Legal Status of the Welsh Language

10 ‘Teach Me Good Judgment’

Photo Section

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

THIS 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

VISITORS 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 copy by the author because, at the time, my father was the minister of the chapel at Llanuwchllyn where Hughes Parry worshipped and served as elder. I later discovered that my father had officiated at Hughes Parry’s funeral in January 1973.

I subsequently presented other papers and lectures on the subject of Hughes Parry’s life at the Welsh Legal History Society’s seminar held at the University of Wales Swansea, on 29 November 2003, to the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion at the British Academy on 18 October 2006 and at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 4 November 2008.⁶ An article was also published in the Welsh History Review, which forms the basis of chapter 8 of this book.⁷ Subsequently, a thesis on his life was successfully submitted for the degree of Ph.D. of the University of Lancaster in 2008. These lectures, papers and articles and the doctoral thesis provide the background to and foundation for this study.

This book has set out to answer a number of basic questions. Who was David Hughes Parry and what did he achieve? What sort of lawyer or jurist was he? Why has he become a forgotten figure, and should he have a place in history? If so, what should be the context for that place? Do his life and achievements have any significance for law in contemporary society?

The aim is to answer these questions by, first, providing an account of Hughes Parry’s career as a lawyer. Because the greater part of this career was spent in the realm of legal scholarship, a key objective is to place and locate Hughes Parry and his work within the broader jurisprudential canvas. By legal scholarship I mean the teaching of law, research and publication on the law and the provision of academic leadership through administrative roles and other offices that contribute to the maintenance and promotion of law as a subject of scholarly pursuit. This study measures Hughes Parry’s contribution to the teaching of law and to the development of the discipline within the academy. It surveys his main academic writings and seeks to assess their impact at the time of their publication along with their long-term significance. The focus is on Hughes Parry’s work as it is relevant to the development of legal scholarship in its broadest context.

This study also examines his industry as an administrator and policy-maker within legal and wider academic circles, and seeks to establish the potentially enduring effect of his work in that direction. Of course, the dry and arid business of university management and governance is not something that normally inspires great enthusiasm or fascination, whatever the context. Yet, this portrayal must incorporate an appreciation of his career as university policymaker because, in many ways, Hughes Parry came to embody the notion of the don as administrator. Of course, there has not been an attempt painstakingly to record each and every turn of event through a tedious trawl through committee minutes, but, rather, to focus on the truly significant and enduring episodes which merit historical record.

The most interesting, notable and, in the long term, significant feature of Hughes Parry’s life was the way in which he influenced so many spheres of human activity. Moreover, throughout his life, and regardless of the particular circle in which he turned, Hughes Parry was instantly identifiable as a Welshman. His Welshness was the very foundation of his identity. Indeed, his service to Wales, its language, institutions and culture was to prove to be as important and enduring as any of his other achievements. For many reading this book, it is not Hughes Parry the lawyer that fascinates, but Hughes Parry the president of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, the president of the Court of the National Eisteddfod of Wales and the moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. This study evaluates his contribution to the public life of Wales and discovers Hughes Parry’s legacy as a public servant in Wales.

In assessing this aspect of his career there must be consideration of his role in the promotion and protection of the Welsh language and, in particular, as a facilitator of legislation for achieving those objectives. After all, the subject brings together the dominant concerns of Hughes Parry’s life; the law, on the one hand, and the language and culture of his native land, on the other. As the narrative focuses upon the character of David Hughes Parry, the task has been to discover the values that guided his individual judgement and to establish the way he brought his personality to bear on events, thus introducing new perspectives to the reader’s understanding and appreciation of these important episodes in the history of Wales.

In summary, this book aims to provide a holistic assessment of his work and legacy, including his contribution to the development of legal education and legal scholarship, the history of higher education in the United Kingdom and, potentially, further afield, the development of the legal status of the Welsh language and the social history of Wales in the twentieth century. It is the aim of this holistic overview to reflect on how Hughes Parry the lawyer played a part in the public life of Wales and, conversely, how Hughes Parry the Welshman brought his personality to bear on the affairs of the law.

Having delineated the main objectives, an important task has been to determine the methodology that will deliver these objectives. It is easy to appreciate why Nicola Lacey, in her biography of H. L. A. Hart, expressed the view that ‘biography is not a genre distinguished by any one methodology’.⁸ Notwithstanding the absence of a standard methodological template, it became clear that there needed to be both empirical and contextual approaches in the process of research and authorship.

Biographies necessarily emphasize the role of the individual in history and thus require a detailed investigation of the individual’s life and work. Therefore, an important aspect of the undertaking is to try to understand the subject through an investigation of evidence found in primary sources. In this case, research has been undertaken at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, the British Library of Political and Economic Science (that is, the LSE), the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Senate House Library of the University of London.

At the National Library of Wales there are Sir David Hughes Parry’s personal papers, deposited by his executors from 1973 onwards. Hughes Parry was typically Victorian in his habit of keeping and retaining even the most trivial of personal documents. In his personal papers there is material as diverse as the boarding tickets for ships that took him to Canada, Israel and New Zealand, old travel brochures and receipts for various items of stationery that he had once purchased. These papers also contain drafts of student lectures and other papers that most individuals would have thrown away without ceremony.

Of particular significance and value is the personal correspondence, which casts considerable light on the human interaction surrounding key events. In Hughes Parry’s personal collection there are the letters which he received from others, as one would expect. However, occasionally, there are also drafts of his replies and other letters which he had written. In the age before the word processor and photocopier, Hughes Parry took great care to retain draft copies of the letters which he sent to others. Whereas many if not most of the letters were written in the English language, this is not the case with the entire body of correspondence. Much of the correspondence that is retained in Hughes Parry’s personal collection at the National Library of Wales is in Welsh, especially that which was written to family and friends in Wales. Some of the Welsh-medium correspondence was also transacted in the course of carrying out public duties in Wales.

Hughes Parry’s personal papers have thus provided an important evidential basis for this study. Of course, reliance on personal papers must be done with an awareness of the fact that the papers may have, potentially, been carefully selected for the benefit of a future biographer, and that the papers so deposited are those which the subject wishes his biographer to see. It cannot be ruled out that David Hughes Parry’s papers have been purged, either by himself or others, so that only the story that he would have like to have been told can be told. Even the most committed empiricist has to be aware of the danger of the primary sources’ being manipulated and contaminated.⁹ However, by drawing upon a range of archival material, including the personal papers of others, newspaper articles and official reports, it is possible to mitigate this potential defect and to obtain some degree of corroboration.

The archives of the British Library of Political and Economic Science, that is, the LSE’s library, hold very valuable material concerning Hughes Parry’s early years at the LSE. Various internal memoranda, letters and recorded minutes cast interesting light on Hughes Parry’s relationship with his colleagues, and in particular his relationship with Lord Beveridge, who was his mentor at the beginning of his career. Understanding the later period of his career, and in particular his tenure as director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, has been facilitated by consultation with the directors’ papers archive at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and other papers at the Senate House Library of the University of London. These archives contain valuable correspondence which cast light on his hopes and ambitions for the institute, along with various reports and other minutes that makes it possible to trace the growth and development of the institute during his period as its director.

Consideration has been given to other potential sources of evidence and in particular oral evidence. Sir David Hughes Parry died in 1973. If he were alive today, he would be well over a hundred years of age. Almost all of his contemporaries, and in particular those whom he would have regarded as his peers and with whom he would have had a close working relationship, have now died. He retired as professor of English law in 1959. Even the very last cohort of students that he would have taught would have been born in or before 1940.

In view of this, at an early stage it was decided not to draw on personal interviews as a further source of information. This decision was taken on grounds of both practicality and principle. It is arguable that relying upon the oral evidence of elderly people in order to extract detailed and accurate accounts of events that transpired, perhaps fifty or sixty years and more ago, is both impracticable and methodologically unsound. Moreover, this is arguably unnecessary where there is an abundance of archival material. Indeed, a contemporaneous record in the form of a letter or memorandum can be a more reliable source and is less likely to fall victim to the sort of revisionism and memory lapse that occurs with the passing of time. I have, therefore, concurred with Anthony Howard in his biography of R. A. Butler when he said that ‘there is no more flawed source for recalling the events of yesterday than human recollection’.¹⁰ Accordingly, there has been a decision that this account should be founded not on oral recollection, but on the contemporaneous, written archive.

If empiricism has been a key dimension in this biography’s methodology, it has not been the only dimension. One historiographer said that, ‘for historians, the essential requirement in a biography is that it understands its subject in his or her historical context’.¹¹ This study has taken a contextual approach in the belief that it is the hallmark of the scholarly or intellectual biography (as contrasted with the popular biography) that the subject is related to his or her broader social and historical canvas. Another way of making the point is to say that, in this particular case, whereas we are observing Hughes Parry as a player in the course of history, we are also trying to see the world through Hughes Parry’s eyes. Hughes Parry thus becomes a conduit through which we can see more clearly the world around him. The process of contextualization requires consideration of the secondary literature, including books, book chapters and journal articles, and in particular those on modern Welsh history, the history of legal education and scholarship and the history of New Zealand. Legal sources have also formed part of the enquiry, particularly those concerned with Hughes Parry’s literary output. These sources have facilitated the interpretation of the primary sources and contextualized the micro-events in Hughes Parry’s life.

One important matter of detail that required a decision on my part was whether to refer to the subject as ‘Parry’ or ‘Hughes Parry’. Because the double-barrelled surname was unhyphenated, there is some inconsistency in both primary and secondary sources on this point. However, on the basis that his own signature would alternate between ‘David Hughes Parry’ and ‘D. Hughes Parry’, I have taken the view that the ‘Hughes Parry’ form is the more accurate.

Turning to structure, the book has been structured by taking into account both chronological and thematic dimensions. Much of the biographical narrative will, inevitably, conform to the natural chronology that comes as a result of tracing the span of an individual human life.¹² But human life can also fall into distinctive periods, and those periods may be a consequence of the subject being more preoccupied with certain events than others at key stages in his life. As such, themes emerge which require consideration that results in a departure from the strictly chronological narrative.

By way of example, whereas David Hughes Parry’s career in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s was dominated by legal affairs and with developing his career in the law, the latter part of his life, beginning in the early 1950s, saw him increasingly turning his attention to the public life of Wales. His life, therefore, falls into a series of phases when certain activities and interests dominate. Accordingly, a slavishly chronological structure was not always appropriate and, occasionally, thematic considerations have required the text to review events that have occurred over long and separate periods but which contribute to the particular subject or theme being examined.

It has been my experience that, whatever may be the biographer’s preexisting methodological beliefs and ideas, the subject of the study dictates the course of the endeavour and leads the biographer along the course of his own individual life story. This is why every biographical study is to some extent unique and the very activity of writing biography is distinctively humane and personal. Indeed, the subject of a biography reveals much about the biographer in the same way that a portrait reveals much about the painter. After all, the nature of the exercise is necessarily a declaration that the subject is significant and worthy of study and examination.¹³ This betrays the biographer’s own interests, values, priorities and perspectives. As one biographer put it: ‘There can never be a definitive biography, merely a version, an attempt, an essay which in time reveals how completely all such attempts bear the impress of the age in which it was written.’¹⁴

The implication of this is that, as with any portrait, there is no need meticulously to record every single fact of note, every significant incident, or to have the last word.¹⁵ If a biographer sets out to record every noteworthy fact about his subject, then he is doomed to fail and is securely on the road to the biographer’s equivalent of a nervous breakdown. It is probably impossible to condense a human life in all its complexities into any piece of writing and it is important to recognize and accept the limitations of the exercise. Accordingly, it has not been the aim of this book to chronicle in laborious detail the many deeds of David Hughes Parry. This book is no more than a portrait, a version which attempts to portray his essence and to encapsulate his character.

Biography as a form will always have its champions and its detractors. For its champions, ‘Biography seeks to do what only the greatest art has ever done: to convey the feel of an individual’s experience, to see the world as a single person saw it’.¹⁶ This book is not a discourse on the historiography of the biographical form. In as much as it takes a historiographical position, it seeks to demonstrate that a detailed and specific study of an individual lawyer’s life and career is crucial if we are fully to understand the impact of the individual agent and, as a result, the complex range of psychological desires, ambitions, fears and prejudices that, through the choices and actions of the individual agent, can steer the course of wider legal, historical and social development. Its wider aim, in presenting this portrait of David Hughes Parry, is to demonstrate that the legal biography has a valid contribution in developing our understanding of legal and social history.

Abbreviations

1

‘From the Village of Llanaelhaearn’

THE FIRST volume of John Grigg’s biography of David Lloyd George claimed that Lloyd George

was a privileged child, born not to rank or riches but to a special historic opportunity. At the time of his birth Wales was experiencing a national revival, and the class to which his family belonged was providing the national movement with most of its leaders.¹

It is among the Welsh-speaking, Nonconformist, rural class that provided the nineteenth-century national movement with its leaders, a class from whose ranks emerged one of the most mercurial and dynamic political figures of the twentieth century, that we must also search for David Hughes Parry’s beginnings. As with Lloyd George, those beginnings are to be found in rural north-west Wales during Queen Victoria’s reign. Of course, a generation separated Lloyd George and Hughes Parry, but the antecedents are strikingly similar. These antecedents contain the source of the key elements in Hughes Parry’s character. They would also provide the motivation for his later work and achievements.

Hughes Parry’s story begins on 8 January 1893 in Uwchlaw’r Ffynnon, a farm in the parish of Llanaelhaearn in the old county of Caernarfon. Llanaelhaearn lies at the foot of the southern slopes of Yr Eifl mountain range on the Llŷn Peninsula, facing Cardigan Bay and on the main road from Pwllheli to Caernarfon. It is, as the crow flies, some four or five miles north-west of the village of Llanystumdwy, where Lloyd George was brought up.

A rather shabby, clumsy cluster of houses, a public house, a church and a chapel constituted the architectural heritage of the small village of Llanaelhaearn during Hughes Parry’s childhood.² The economy could be described as a microcosm of Caernarfonshire’s economy in that, although it primarily derived its sustenance from agriculture, the ancient trade of the district, there was also considerable mercantile commerce at the small ports of Nefyn and Porth Dinllaen. There is nowhere in Llŷn that is further than 6 miles from the sea. In the course of the nineteenth century came the new economic enterprises in slate and granite quarrying, which had brought some industrialization to the area.³ It could be said that Llanaelhaearn stood at the junction of the main economies of the region, being a traditional farming community, close to the sea and the small fishing ports, but with significant industrial activity centred upon the granite and slate quarries at the neigh-bouring villages of Trefor and Llithfaen.

Hughes Parry’s father was a tenant farmer who, like many others, struggled to make his living on the land.