Hugh Menown, Obituary, Peter Maggs, The Independent, 25th March 2000
The obituary of Hugh Menown (see copy below) was the culmination of a debt of honour. Hugh was a gruff Irishman, brought up on a farm on the Ards peninsular, near Newtownards, County Down, not far from Belfast. He spoke with a broad Ulster accent, his language peppered in about equal measure with agricultural sayings and Anglo-Saxon epithets. Hugh had joined the English Electric Valve Company, EEV, in the early ‘fifties, and when I arrived there he was manager of Gas Tubes Division. Most of the ‘valves’ or ‘tubes’ made by the company were hard vacuum devices. But a particular type of device, known as a ‘hydrogen thyratron’, was filled with that gas at a low pressure and was used as a very high power switch in radar, laser and particle accelerator applications. The technology was quirky, but over a number of decades Hugh, and a team of dedicated staff, had refined the design of EEV's thyratrons, and they were in use all over the world; sales were very profitable.
EEV was a unit of GEC, the General Electric Company, that electrical and electronic giant controlled by Arnold Weinstock. He ran the company like a medieval warlord from the head office in Stanhope Gate, off Park Lane in London. He kept his senior managers in a constant state of terror; it was said that they had the latest company results with them at all times in case he should telephone. EEV was considerably more profitable than its parent, and within EEV, Hugh’s division was the top performer. Thus EEV was one of the Jewels in the GEC Crown, and Hugh’s Gas Tubes Division was the star-player at EEV.
But as frequently happens in such situations, Hugh was not universally regarded within the company. Perhaps it was jealousy; perhaps it was that he didn't go out of his way to suffer fools gladly. He related to me how a director had asked him over lunch, and in the presence of other senior managers, whether it was true that the Irish still kept coal in their baths. Every month the board and senior managers got together to discuss the trading performance, and Hugh’s division consistently, and substantially, out-performed the other divisions. One of the reasons for this was that Hugh had his own way of doing things; he did not obey the accepted rules and operated like an independent entrepreneur within the company. He used to say that he ran the Irish Electric Valve Company... On one occasion, when his results were the bright spot in an otherwise gloomy month, he couldn’t resist rubbing his colleague’s noses in it. “What is it, gentlemen”, he said, “That I’m doing right, that the rest of you (he probably said ‘youse’) are doing wrong?”
At some point the company had wanted to relocate Hugh’s division to Lincoln (from Chelmsford). Hugh refused to go, and the management subsequently denied him a company car out of spite. In 1980, when I joined EEV, this had all been rectified by the new managing director, the Honourable Martin Jay. He was the son of cabinet minister Baron (Douglas) Jay, and brother to Peter Jay, son-in-law to Prime Minister James Callaghan, and sometime British Ambassador to Washington. Martin had been educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and was the personification of that line in Kipling’s “If”: “If you can walk with kings, nor lose the common touch...” He was held in very high regard by the entire staff at EEV. He would walk around the factory every week, talking to the shop-floor workers – and remembering their names. Clearly, he had Weinstock’s ear, and he also fairly quickly recognized Hugh’s worth at EEV, rectifying the company car insult. He also allowed Hugh considerable leeway within the company, and by extension, those who worked with him.
Once again, I had fallen on my feet as I was assigned as technical salesman to Hugh’s division, working closely with him and his section manager, Chris Neale. Visiting customers with Hugh soon taught me about the technical and commercial aspects of the business. We saw customers in France, Germany, Switzerland and America. Everywhere Hugh went he was feted as an old friend, a ‘character’, and an expert in his field. Certainly, I was his bag-man, and later on, as I learned the business, I plucked up the courage to disagree with him, sometimes quite violently, about strategy and tactics. But Hugh had a nose for business. He was not always right, but when he was occasionally wrong, it was rarely about anything really important. Naturally, as his colleague, some of the glory reflected on me, and I like to think that I used it to good effect later on, when I too became a little more senior in the company.
Hugh drank to excess, and this was probably rooted in the trauma of the suicide of his daughter Andrea. ‘Andy’ had killed herself while suffering from extreme depression, and Hugh and his wife Margaret, never got over it. Hugh would regularly drink himself insensible, and this could sometimes be problematic on overseas trips. One Friday night in Chicago, he fell against the washbasin in his hotel room while drunk, cutting his cheek and giving himself a black eye. He looked awful the next day. I was horrified, because I knew that he was due to go to Buckingham Palace in two weeks time to receive an award from the Queen. Actually, I was more concerned at what Margaret would say, since I was supposed to be looking out for him. But Hugh had the luck of the Irish; barely seven days later when we returned to England, the cut had healed and the eye was back to normal.
In 1991, Hugh retired, and eight years later Margaret succumbed to Parkinson’s disease. In 1999 Chris and I took Hugh back to Belfast for a few days, seeing the places and meeting the people we had heard about over the previous decades. Hugh died in 2000 from liver cancer, but I was determined that his memory should be properly marked.
The obituary was cleared for publication at corporate level, but the new managing director of EEV disapproved violently, since I had had the temerity to criticise the board of directors in print with the story about Hugh’s company car. No matter that I was describing events of three decades earlier; everyone involved was either retired or dead, and the piece had been cleared by GEC head office. I received a severe bollocking from the MD. He of course knew nothing, and cared less, about the enormous contribution that Hugh had made to the company. And it was precisely this attitude that I wanted to circumvent in writing the tribute. It was an acknowledgement of what Hugh had done for the company, and the staff within it, and it was payback for the privileged education I received at Hugh’s hands. I thought then, and think still, that it was one of the best things that I have done.
Click below to read the original obituary, © The Independent, Saturday 25 March, 2000.
The obituary of Hugh Menown (see copy below) was the culmination of a debt of honour. Hugh was a gruff Irishman, brought up on a farm on the Ards peninsular, near Newtownards, County Down, not far from Belfast. He spoke with a broad Ulster accent, his language peppered in about equal measure with agricultural sayings and Anglo-Saxon epithets. Hugh had joined the English Electric Valve Company, EEV, in the early ‘fifties, and when I arrived there he was manager of Gas Tubes Division. Most of the ‘valves’ or ‘tubes’ made by the company were hard vacuum devices. But a particular type of device, known as a ‘hydrogen thyratron’, was filled with that gas at a low pressure and was used as a very high power switch in radar, laser and particle accelerator applications. The technology was quirky, but over a number of decades Hugh, and a team of dedicated staff, had refined the design of EEV's thyratrons, and they were in use all over the world; sales were very profitable.
EEV was a unit of GEC, the General Electric Company, that electrical and electronic giant controlled by Arnold Weinstock. He ran the company like a medieval warlord from the head office in Stanhope Gate, off Park Lane in London. He kept his senior managers in a constant state of terror; it was said that they had the latest company results with them at all times in case he should telephone. EEV was considerably more profitable than its parent, and within EEV, Hugh’s division was the top performer. Thus EEV was one of the Jewels in the GEC Crown, and Hugh’s Gas Tubes Division was the star-player at EEV.
But as frequently happens in such situations, Hugh was not universally regarded within the company. Perhaps it was jealousy; perhaps it was that he didn't go out of his way to suffer fools gladly. He related to me how a director had asked him over lunch, and in the presence of other senior managers, whether it was true that the Irish still kept coal in their baths. Every month the board and senior managers got together to discuss the trading performance, and Hugh’s division consistently, and substantially, out-performed the other divisions. One of the reasons for this was that Hugh had his own way of doing things; he did not obey the accepted rules and operated like an independent entrepreneur within the company. He used to say that he ran the Irish Electric Valve Company... On one occasion, when his results were the bright spot in an otherwise gloomy month, he couldn’t resist rubbing his colleague’s noses in it. “What is it, gentlemen”, he said, “That I’m doing right, that the rest of you (he probably said ‘youse’) are doing wrong?”
At some point the company had wanted to relocate Hugh’s division to Lincoln (from Chelmsford). Hugh refused to go, and the management subsequently denied him a company car out of spite. In 1980, when I joined EEV, this had all been rectified by the new managing director, the Honourable Martin Jay. He was the son of cabinet minister Baron (Douglas) Jay, and brother to Peter Jay, son-in-law to Prime Minister James Callaghan, and sometime British Ambassador to Washington. Martin had been educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and was the personification of that line in Kipling’s “If”: “If you can walk with kings, nor lose the common touch...” He was held in very high regard by the entire staff at EEV. He would walk around the factory every week, talking to the shop-floor workers – and remembering their names. Clearly, he had Weinstock’s ear, and he also fairly quickly recognized Hugh’s worth at EEV, rectifying the company car insult. He also allowed Hugh considerable leeway within the company, and by extension, those who worked with him.
Once again, I had fallen on my feet as I was assigned as technical salesman to Hugh’s division, working closely with him and his section manager, Chris Neale. Visiting customers with Hugh soon taught me about the technical and commercial aspects of the business. We saw customers in France, Germany, Switzerland and America. Everywhere Hugh went he was feted as an old friend, a ‘character’, and an expert in his field. Certainly, I was his bag-man, and later on, as I learned the business, I plucked up the courage to disagree with him, sometimes quite violently, about strategy and tactics. But Hugh had a nose for business. He was not always right, but when he was occasionally wrong, it was rarely about anything really important. Naturally, as his colleague, some of the glory reflected on me, and I like to think that I used it to good effect later on, when I too became a little more senior in the company.
Hugh drank to excess, and this was probably rooted in the trauma of the suicide of his daughter Andrea. ‘Andy’ had killed herself while suffering from extreme depression, and Hugh and his wife Margaret, never got over it. Hugh would regularly drink himself insensible, and this could sometimes be problematic on overseas trips. One Friday night in Chicago, he fell against the washbasin in his hotel room while drunk, cutting his cheek and giving himself a black eye. He looked awful the next day. I was horrified, because I knew that he was due to go to Buckingham Palace in two weeks time to receive an award from the Queen. Actually, I was more concerned at what Margaret would say, since I was supposed to be looking out for him. But Hugh had the luck of the Irish; barely seven days later when we returned to England, the cut had healed and the eye was back to normal.
In 1991, Hugh retired, and eight years later Margaret succumbed to Parkinson’s disease. In 1999 Chris and I took Hugh back to Belfast for a few days, seeing the places and meeting the people we had heard about over the previous decades. Hugh died in 2000 from liver cancer, but I was determined that his memory should be properly marked.
The obituary was cleared for publication at corporate level, but the new managing director of EEV disapproved violently, since I had had the temerity to criticise the board of directors in print with the story about Hugh’s company car. No matter that I was describing events of three decades earlier; everyone involved was either retired or dead, and the piece had been cleared by GEC head office. I received a severe bollocking from the MD. He of course knew nothing, and cared less, about the enormous contribution that Hugh had made to the company. And it was precisely this attitude that I wanted to circumvent in writing the tribute. It was an acknowledgement of what Hugh had done for the company, and the staff within it, and it was payback for the privileged education I received at Hugh’s hands. I thought then, and think still, that it was one of the best things that I have done.
Click below to read the original obituary, © The Independent, Saturday 25 March, 2000.
| menown_obituary.pdf |