Wilfred John Neden (1893-1978), civil servant, was born on 24 August 1893 at 27 Kimberley Road, Kennington, London, the son of John Neden, a commercial traveller, and his wife Margaret (née Hulme). After attending St. Olave’s Grammar School, Neden took a regular commission in the army in 1914. During the Great War he was promoted to lieutenant but his hopes of a regular army career were dashed when he lost a foot in the Gallipoli landing, for which he was mentioned in dispatches. He subsequently left the army in 1922 and embarked on a career in the Ministry of Labour. On 10 September 1925, he married Jean Kate Lundie (aged 31), a printer's reader, and they later had a son and a daughter.

Neden spent his early years in the Ministry of Labour in its employment exchanges, which were then confronted with the human problems of mass unemployment. His experience of the exchanges at this testing time gave him confidence in their ability in the Second World War to take on the task of conscription, which he directed. In 1946, he was appointed an Under-secretary in the ministry and in 1948 became its Director of Organisation and Establishments, overseeing the ministry’s staff and premises and its extensive regional and local organisation.

In 1954, Neden was unexpectedly switched to the ministry’s top industrial relations post when he was appointed Chief Industrial Commissioner. He served in this post until 1958 and was knighted in 1955. The appointment was surprising, for Neden had no industrial relations experience. The job required him to run the ministry's Industrial Relations Department and, on behalf of the minister, to provide conciliation in negotiations that could be exacting, frequently frustrating and at all times difficult. However, Neden’s rigorous sense of fairness won him respect from both employers and unions and served him well in his new job. His robust personality led him to take a more assertive attitude than any of his predecessors and he rapidly became a figure to be reckoned with; one who was not afraid to lose his temper, nor averse to lecturing and even bullying negotiators if he thought that it would achieve his aims.

Neden’s period as Chief Industrial Commissioner was a difficult one for it coincided with a worsening in British industrial relations. It was made more so by a shift in strategy by the Conservative government which, alarmed at the pace of inflation, began to move away from conciliating the unions and to resist, and urge employers to resist, wage claims. This brought into question the Ministry of Labour’s traditional function of impartial conciliation. The problem was faced by Neden in its most acute form in the London bus workers’ dispute during the winter of 1957-58. Having been asked by the two sides for his help, Neden was telephoned by Harold Watkinson [q.v.], then Minister of Transport, and bluntly told to desist from any action that could result in a wage increase. Neden, who always strongly resented the intervention of others in his conciliation work and made no attempt to disguise this resentment, whether it came from officials of the TUC or from cabinet ministers, thought taking sides in this manner would be wrong. Instead, he proposed to Macleod [q.v.], then Minister of Labour, that an outside committee be created to help the parties reach an agreement. Macleod was initially hesitant but did not prevent Neden from making his offer. However, when Macleod reported to the cabinet on 24 January he was overruled by his colleagues, who feared that conciliation would be seen as a surrender to the unions and so weaken the government’s anti-inflationary credentials. Consequently, Macleod repudiated Neden’s plan; an action without precedent and ‘the breaking-point in the dialogue of trust that had hitherto existed between the ministry and the TUC’ (Goodman, 169). A seven week long strike ensued in which 1,600,000 working days were lost and which ended in the defeat of the union. Macleod’s reputation was thereby salvaged, indeed enhanced. Neden, however, felt badly let down and humiliated. He had considered resigning but decided not to do so. However, he was bitterly angry and never forgave Macleod for the incident.

Neden retired from the ministry in August 1958, like several of his predecessors, a disappointed man, disillusioned with politicians and with their ways. He was the last Chief Industrial Commissioner to devote his time entirely to industrial relations and conciliation. His successors were not allowed, as Neden had done, to press employers for concessions. Nor were they allowed the same public prominence that Neden had attracted during the struggles of 1957 and 1958 and which had irritated Macleod, antagonised other civil servants, and led to complaints to Needen’s Permanent Secretary by the head of the Service.

With a rubicund face and an artificial leg the thump of which was a familiar sound in the corridors of the Ministry of Labour, Neden was a robust and colourful figure who, after more than thirty years as a civil servant, retained something detectably military in his bearing, directness and at times bluntness of speech. After his retirement from government service, he served as deputy chairman of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation from 1960 to 1963. Neden's wife Jean died in 1965. On 11 February 1967 he married Violet Ryan (née Ball), a former tax officer aged 66. He died at his home in Keston, Kent on 11 April 1978.

Hugh Pemberton

899 words

PRINCIPAL SOURCES USED

  1. *Eric Wigham, Strikes and the government, 1893-1974 (1976).
  2. *Obituary, The Times, 15 April 1978.
  3. *G. Goodman, The awkward warrior (1979).
  4. *Robert Shepherd, Iain Macleod (1995).
  5. Nina Fishman, ‘"Spearhead of the movement"?: the 1958 London busworkers’ strike, the TUC and Frank Cousins’ in Alan Campbell, Nina Fishman and John McIlroy British trade unions and industrial relations, vol. 1 (1999).
  6. G. Ince, The Ministry of Labour and National Service (1960).