Sir Alister McIntosh, KCMG 1906-1978

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XII, Issue 1, 1 May 1979, Page 4

Sir Alister Mclntosh, KCMG 1906-1978

A. G. Bagnall

The death of Alister Donald Mclntosh takes from our midst one of the strongest friends of influence which the New Zealand library movement and, more particularly, the National Library with Turnbull, has had. Although the summit plateau of his distinguished career was bounded by his 23 years as Permanent Head of the Prime Minister’s Department and Secretary of External Affairs, his professional life concluded, as it had begun, in the service of libraries. With characteristic generosity and modesty he referred to his ‘retirement’ duties as Chairman of the National Library Trustees and of the Turnbull Committee as an opportunity to repay some of the undischarged debt which he felt that he still owed to the profession because of his move along the passage after a mere eight years in the General Assembly Library.

He was born in Picton on 29 November 1906, the eldest of a family of three boys and a girl to parents who were both members of pioneer Marlborough families. His father, a Post and Telegraph Department telegraphist, then postmaster at Seddon, had been frustrated in his own hopes for any advanced education but young Alister, with quiet Scottish determination, passed his matriculation examination and a section of his B.A. degree before being appointed to a cadetship in the Labour Department, early in 1925. Carl Berendsen was then Chief Clerk and about to move to the Imperial Affairs Office of the Prime Minister’s Office. Young Mclntosh, after a year, was fortunate in obtaining a position in the General Assembly Library where he was able to confirm his qualities of application, industry, insight and circumspection. If he was perhaps the first to find that for the ambitious and capable the Library was a corridor to the sanctums of power he approached the threshold quite unwittingly to reach the point of decision with mixed feelings.

Meanwhile he attended Victoria University College, part-time as was then customary, to complete his degree and graduate with honours in history in 1930, mid-term in his library career. He married in 1934. His wife, nee Doris Pow, was also a history graduate, although of a different university generation, and she sustained and assisted him through his challenging task of writing the main text (13 chapters) and of editing the complete text of Marlborough (1940), one of the most distinguished Centennial histories; and this at a time when the preoccupations of the Labour Government in its second term and a deteriorating international situation were closing in on any leisure he might have.

Mclntosh’s library years coincided with a professional revival. Tremendous stimulus was given to the thin ranks of full-time staff by the decision of the Carnegie Corporation of New York to extend to New Zealand its policy of granting travel-study fellowships to a

select group of mainly young librarians. In common with others he spent much of his 1932/33 fellowship time at the Library School in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and in visits to the Library of Congress and key state and university libraries. The excellent report which he wrote on his return can be read 46 years later with profit and enjoyment; if we dwell on its content it is simply that here was set out the spirit of future advance with specific proposals which are reflected in so much of our development in the decades since.

The document was in three main sections, firstly the needs of Parliamentary reference work, then the necessity for a National Library, its organisation with special reference to research facilities, and, thirdly, a possible National Library system of service which, with Carnegie Corporation help, could ensure the development of adequate public library services. The National Library’s three main functions, as he then saw them, were the provision of adequate parliamentary reference services, the establishment of nation-wide historical research facilities and, in co-operation with scientific libraries, the establishment of a Dominion science library. He stressed the need for the central cataloguing of materials for all units and summed up the problems of library co-operation in a presciently early but characteristic sentence: ‘One is reluctant to keep using the term co-operation; its lack is the most striking feature of New Zealand libraries . . . but actually that process is the best approach ... to show what is intended and convince the disbelievers and the unwilling

The Library itself he saw developing around the core of the General Assembly Library with the addition of Turnbull, the Dominion Archives of which the Parliamentary Librarian was then Controller, and, following an earlier report, the library of the Royal Society. Forty years later, the quite new situation which had arisen from the presence of the still youthful but burgeoning giant, the National Library Service, the basis on which Turnbull had become part of the National Library and the separation of National Archives —which he did not accept as necessarily final —led him to think of other ways in which the National Library’s central collection should develop to include Turnbull and the skim-milk of the General Assembly Library’s once cherished holdings which he saw banished, however reluctantly, to a railway siding in the Rimutaka foothills. An effective symbiosis could emerge only by the transmutation of the mocking red graffiti around the mirage in Molesworth Street to a functional edifice commensurate with the country’s technical and cultural needs and political pretensions. That the fence of intransigence did not disappear before he died was a bitter disappointment after the days, weeks of planning,

persuasion and lobbying which he gave to this primal cause. No one could have done more. Without an inappropriately lengthy summary it is difficult to explain precisely his role in the crucial developments of his early years. The initial impetus came from members of the fellowship brought together by Dr. Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation as the Carnegie Group. Mclntosh had already transferred to the Imperial Affairs Section when the Group began work in 1935 under the chairmanship of John Barr. Taking its cue from the opinions of Mclntosh and others, it decided that the highest priority was the establishment of a rural library demonstration with Carnegie financial support and local body involvement. It was even hoped that Mclntosh could be seconded to run the project in Taranaki, the selected area. It was probably all for the best that he could not be spared and that the demonstration did not proceed beyond a most thorough report by G.T. Alley whose ‘CAR’ scheme in Canterbury had already shown the novel but practicable basis on which urgently needed advances could be made. Mclntosh’s role, henceforward, was as an increasingly useful adviser and inter-

mediary with Government. His apparently ready access to Ministers and Members sometimes led hard-pressed library friends to expect more than he could deliver or that it was proper for him to seek. If the politicians did not wish to take certain steps, then, having regard to his scrupulous respect for the constitutionally accepted roles of elected representatives and salaried advisers, for the time being, that was it. In suitable contexts he could and did point out desirable courses of action, with overseas precedents which it would be in New Zealand’s interests to follow. One may treasure the four word dismissal by a Prime Minister of the Menzies-White plans for a National Library in Canberra —‘They must be mad’. His earthy, cynical pessimism, in which he sometimes indulged to intimates, he perhaps cultivated as a relief from the tensions, crises and absurdities of his increasingly heavy burdens. Occasionally —very rarely—we were able to prove his fears unjustified. In the library sphere, as in others, he was consistently holistic in viewing any problem beyond the interests of an individual or an institution. In one or two striking instances he would tender advice, when asked, which was not that which one might expect a Chairman of Trustees of the National Library to proffer although later reflection would show it to be entirely consistent with his view of what was in the best interests of development in a related area.

His rare presence at one of a seemingly interminable series of officials’ meetings which preceded the passing of the National Library Act gave some character to a waste land. When the Act

became law he was inevitably one of its first group of Trustees although his appointment as New Zealand Ambassador in Rome in 1966 deferred his closer involvement until his return in 1970. On the retirement of Sir John Ilott in May both the National Librarian and the Turnbull Committee invited him to allow himself to be nominated for office. Cabinet duly appointed him Chairman of Trustees; in September the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust appointed him Chairman and at the December meeting of the Committee he was appointed Chairman. The four years in Rome had permitted him to enlarge on his interest in maps and prints both for himself —and even then generously anticipating their ultimate resting place in the Library—and for Turnbull on whose behalf he repeatedly acted on specific commissions often suggested by himself. This period is permanently marked in the collections by items like the Zatta Atlas and many interesting engravings, particularly the fascinating European distortions of the navigators’ classic renderings. While in London he was able to complete the final negotiations for the transfer of the Webster collection to Turnbull. Although not a book collector in the accepted sense he had acquired a range of New Zealand books and pamphlets beyond what might be considered as

a working collection. Many of these he had disposed of in 1966 but in retirement before the final series of appointments snatched away leisure and health he regularly attended Wellington book auctions. One’s own treasured associations with Alister Mac are from the last decade. He had left Library work two years before the writer’s first transfer to Turnbull although he was even then a professional legend. The first personal contact was in quite another area and marginally worth recalling because of its small light on his working responses. A night about 1 September 1945 when Sir Leonard Isitt, Chief of Air Staff, was in T okio Bay as New Zealand plenipotentiary for the Japanese surrender on USS Missouri the following day: Appropriately he used naval communication channels to check with Wellington on a minor point in the negotiations. The Duty Cipher Officer (AGB) received and translated this Most Immediate which regretfully required the reply of the P.M.’s right hand. Mclntosh, dragged from sleep, was what one later came to know as his invariably courteous self and dictated a reply which was duly wrapped up and despatched. Isitt, bless him, all alert in the excitement of that unique eve, asked for clarification on some trifle. In the uncertainties of pre-dawn judgement the Cipher Officer decided that Mclntosh should sleep out the rest of the night, at least so far as he was concerned, and left the tidying up for the 8 a.m. watch —to earn a later indirect, kindly but unmistakeable reproof. This very minor incident emphasises indirectly the pressures

under which he worked which, inevitably, exacted a price in health and expectation of life. The writer was fortunate as Chief Librarian in having Mclntosh’s undivided interest during his last two and a half years of office. The National Librarian and my successor had to share his subsequent time with obligations as Chairman of the Broadcasting Council and Chairman of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, the latter position being rated, even in the Trust’s formative years, as more than a part-time job. It is almost unnecessary to say that these additional tasks were assumed largely from an over-developed sense of duty, of public conscience enhanced by his acceptance of a most popular knighthood in 1973. The New Zealand Library Association had made him a life member in 1963 and its Patron in 1972. He would have liked to have done more for it but there was general recognition that the administrative struggles in Wellington were still his most promising arena.

If the slow progress on the National Library building was a major frustration there were compensations. From his first meeting as Chairman of Trustees he sought to give reality to his 37 year old recommendation about scientific and technical library service. It was one way in which, by meeting a known want, sceptics might see some practical point in library expenditure. He was able, too, to secure from various sources much needed additional funds for the National Library Trustees as well as for Turnbull and in the latter case was able to see and enjoy the concrete fruits of his efforts. He was an accessible counsellor, whose well-considered advice was a privilege to many. He was most conscious of the subtle change in his role as an adviser to paid officers. Whatever his private thoughts and despite his obligation to act as a leader in promoting policy he was very much aware that the best course, frequently, was to encourage and console his lieutenants in their professional decisions

provided they met the situation by his standards. His contribution, finally, was the greatest not merely because of effective chairmanship, not only because of his knowledge of people and situations but from a blend of character, principle and experience. This rare essence was supreme, for he also knew, without instruction, the problems, the language, and was ready at the starting point of consultation from which one could immediately proceed to the most subtle assessment of personality, situation and, if necessary, political strategy. Each successor can make his own contribution but we can only hope that not too many decades pass before another of his calibre is at the service of libraries and our cultural tradition. To Doris Mclntosh who contributed so greatly to his success and who always took a lively and generous interest in the Library we extend our deepest sympathy.