From Merthyr to Persia

Aubrey Jones was born in Merthyr Tydfil the oldest son of a miner father and a teacher mother. He was educated at the local Cyfarthfa Castle school from where he won a scholarship to the London School of Economics. He left the LSE with a first class honours degree, as well as the Gladstone memorial prize and a Gerstenberg award for postgraduate studies.

Shortly after leaving the LSE he joined the Times, departing his desk in Berlin just days before the outbreak of the Second World War. On return to London he served in the War Office and army intelligence, finally seeing theatre in North Africa and Italy.

At the end of the war he returned to the Times but soon tired of journalism and took a post as assistant to the director of the British Iron and Steel Federation, eventually becoming its director. He was first elected to Parliament as an unlikely member of the Conservative party in 1950 and appointed first, Minister for Fuel and Power and then Minister of Supply under successive Conservative Prime Ministers.

But Macmillan's re-election in 1959 saw him return to the back-benches and reinvigorate his industrial experience. From that time he was convinced that the UK should join the European Community, as it then was. He also took a strong position in support of technological development, believing the country would benefit from a Government policy encouraging closer cooperation between military and civil technology.

When Harold Wilson won the 1964 election for Labour he and George Brown, surprisingly, picked Aubrey Jones to become chairman of the newly formed National Board for Prices and Incomes. He was selected for the role from a dozen names as the only candidate acceptable to both the TUC and the CBI. The decision to take the job saw him give up his Conservative seat and face a wider rejection by the Conservative party.

George Brown told him there'd be a peerage at the end of his chairmanship of the NBPI but that was never Aubrey Jones' goal. Instead he returned to industry, taking up various directorships in the UK and he later spent time abroad, first consulting on reforming the civil service for the military Government of Nigeria and then acting in various consultancy roles for the Government of the Shah of Iran until just before the revolution in that country.

Upon his return to the UK Aubrey Jones sought to return to the House of Commons. He fought and lost the 1983 General Election in the Birmingham constituency of Sutton Coldfield for the Liberal Alliance. He later joined the Social Democrats and eventually the Liberal party. He firmly believed there was a role for the State in civil society, more so than the politics of the Conservative party would allow. He also passionately believed that, with the Empire gone, the UK needed to be part of a much larger entity to make its voice heard in the world.

That entity was, for Aubrey Jones, the European Community and the Liberal Party was the only political party of the day, which was firmly committed to membership of the Community. Unfortunately Aubrey Jones ended his memoirs when he departed from Iran but his views on Europe come across strongly in the selection of notes and letters he wrote subsequently. It's fair to say he would be deeply frustrated by the result of the 2016 EU referendum and the ensuing debacle about the manner and terms of the final withdrawal from the European Union.