Crichel Down
Sir: The summary of the Crichel Down affair in Lord Bruce-Gardyne's review of Lord Carrington's memoirs (12 November) is inaccurate in many respects — some unimportant, but one or two critical.
The land in dispute was not purchased by the Ministry of Defence during the war (no such department then existed, though there was a Minister of Defence — Chur- chill) but by the Air Ministry in 1937. The former owners were not, at the time of the transfer of the land to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1950, entitled to an option to repurchase, nor was that. transfer the cause of the contention. The Protests were against the proposal Of the Ministry of Agriculture to sell the property, to Crown Lands for farming by a tenant as a single unit, and against the conduct of two of the civil servants concerned in working to this end in the knowledge that certain indi- viduals had previously been assured that their interests in purchase or in tenancy would be considered. The principal com- plainant was Commander Marten. He was not a former owner; his locus standi was that part of the land had formerly belonged to the Crichel estate of his wife's father, who was killed in the war.
There was no 'committee of inquiry'; an inquiry was conducted by a single Queen's Counsel, Sir Andrew Clark. He did not conclude that 'the former owners had an overwhelming case'; this was not what the inquiry was about. Although his report, in the opinion of man.), at the time, fell short of complete objectivity, he found that the issue had been handled incompetently and in part improperly, and that the persons interested in the land had been badly treated by officials. They had.
The involvement in the affair of the minister, Sir Thomas Dugdale, was rather more than 'titular', though he was innocent of wrongdoing. He had participated in discussions about Crichel Down between the various bodies of which he was in charge, but neither this, nor the miscon- duct of officials, was the just ground of his honourable resignation: as a Conservative minister, he had left virtually unchanged the agricultural policy, including policy on the disposal of compulsorily acquired land, of his Labour predecessors. That was the root of the trouble.
Finally, it is surely misleading of Lord Bruce-Gardyne to write that Lord Carring- ton, then one of Sir Thomas's parliamen- tary secretaries, 'took the advice of the Prime Minister and did not resign'. He submitted his resignation, as did his junior ministerial colleague, and the Prime Minis- ter refused them both.
Martin Lynch
Hillside, Combe Hill, Combe St Nicholas, Chard, Somerset
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