Author: Nigel Haigh
Gathorne Cranbrook, or to give him his full name and titles, Dr. Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 5th Earl of Cranbrook, was a distinguished zoologist who played a key role in guiding IEEP for some twenty years. He has died peacefully at the age of 93 surrounded by his wife and family.
Gathorne had studied natural and moral sciences at Cambridge University before taking the career changing decision in 1955 to travel to Borneo to help excavate the Niah Caves which had been inhabited by humans for 40,000 years. There he developed a more rigorous method of classifying animal bones which is now standard. He became fascinated by swiftlets, tiny birds that build edible nests, and established that they used ‘echolocation’ to navigate in the dark like bats. He returned to England to take a PhD at Birmingham University on swiftlets and then taught at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur where he led frequent field trips and established a field studies centre. He returned to England in 1970 and in 1978 succeeded to the title and took his seat in the House of Lords as a Conservative, where he devoted much of his energies to environmental policy in the UK and the EU. He was soon made a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and later became the first Chair of English Nature. He continued to make frequent visits to Malaya and Borneo where he had devoted followers as the tribute in the Borneo Times quoted below makes clear.
My first encounter with Gathorne was in 1979, the year before I joined IEEP. Gathorne was a member of the House of Lords EEC Scrutiny Committee, which had published a report criticising the EEC (as the EU was then called) for adopting some Directives without a proper base in the Treaty of Rome. I had then organised a deputation of environmentalists to appear before the Lord’s committee to ask them to follow up their report by calling for an amendment to the Treaty to cover environmental protection. The deputation included Professor Louis Suetens, Chair of the European Environmental Bureau, and a constitutional lawyer at the University of Louvain, who reassured the committee that there was no flaw in their argument and that others in other European countries had similar views. The Lord’s published our evidence in a report called Environmental Problems and the Treaty of Rome which was to influence the Single European Act of 1986 that introduced a title on the environment.
Gathorne and I first met at the reception to mark the opening of IEEP’s offices in London in 1980. Some months later, Konrad von Moltke (then Director of IEEP) and I appeared before the Lord’s committee to give evidence at their inquiry into the proposed EEC ‘environmental impact assessment’ Directive. At that time the UK government was hesitant about supporting the Directive and IEEP’s evidence helped the Lord’s to come out firmly in favour – the first time it had openly disagreed with the Government. By the next year Gathorne had become Chair of the Lord’s committee and, knowing that I was studying all the existing and proposed Directives, he asked my advice on topics for future inquiries. I proposed ‘noise’ as a fresh and controversial subject and Gathorne then invited me to be the committee’s specialist adviser. As I continued as special adviser for several other inquiries, I came to know Gathorne quite well and greatly to respect him. So, when Sir Hans Kornberg FRS decided to step down from IEEP’s Board in 1985 I recommended to Ernst von Weizseicker, who had followed Konrad as IEEP’s Director, that Gathorne should succeed him.
Gathorne was thus on the Board in the late 80s when the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), which had created IEEP in 1976, and was responsible for financing it, decided that it must be restructured and that the ECF could from then on only contribute annual grants. The Board then engaged into a discussion with the staff and agreed that separate legal entities should be established in Bonn, Paris and London to employ the staff from 1990. Gathorne became Chair of IEEP London and was also represented on the Board of a Dutch Foundation, Stichting voor Europees Milieubeleid (STEM) created to ensure that the several IEEP offices fulfilled an agreed mission statement and also to distribute an annual ECF grant that continued for some years. He served as Chair of STEM from 1991 to 1998 and learnt to think as a European. He remained Chair of IEEP London until 2005 when he was succeeded by Caroline Jackson MEP.
I found Gathorne a wonderful Chair to work with as did David Baldock who succeeded me as Director in 1998. He had confidence in us and gently steered us while letting us get on with our work. He accompanied us when we met Ministers and opened many doors for us. He participated actively at the 20th anniversary of IEEP held in Madrid and once hosted a management committee meeting at his Cambridge College.
Robert Jacob Ridu, former speaker of Sarawak’s parliament has paid this tribute:
“If you have ever marvelled at our national parks, felt pride in our ancestral history, or wondered about the wildlife hiding in our jungles, you are looking at the living legacy of Lord Cranbrook. … He walked our land not as a colonial master or fleeting tourist, but as a humble student of our nature and a true brother to our people… The next time you see a flock of swiftlets dancing against the Sarawak sunset, or walk beneath the cool shadow of a giant dipterocarp tree in our national parks, think of the English lord who loved this land as his own.”