When George Wilson joined the Colonial Office soon after the second globe war his northern accent contributed to colleagues viewing him as a ‘rough diamond’
My father, George Wilson, who has died aged 92, had humble beginnings in a small village in north Cumbria but went on to play critical roles in the planning of British colonies for independence and in the advancement of the NHS and the social protection technique.
He was born in Wetheral, Cumbria, moving soon right after to Blaydon close to Newcastle. He excelled at school and in 1939 won a state scholarship to Durham University. His father was a railwayman and to help alleviate poverty at property George turned down this opportunity, preferring to earn an earnings with the civil support.
During the second planet war he served with the Signals, doing work on the tall masts more than the Manchester ship canal soon after the Liverpool blitz, and setting up communications for the decoy “towns” of the Peak District meant to divert bombers from Sheffield. Right after support in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), he moved to the Colonial Workplace (CO). Having a broad northern accent he was a bit of an oddity there, his senior colleagues taking into consideration him a “rough diamond”.
In 1951 he was CO adviser at the UN general assembly, and then financial secretary in Mauritius, reorganising its infrastructure just before independence. Appointed OBE on return to the Uk, he went to Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and each and every of the Caribbean colonies to advise on arrangements major to independence.
During the 1960s George moved to the Ministry of Health to consider charge of the hospital developing programme for England and Wales. Headhunted by the architect John Poulson in 1969, he grew to become his basic manager, operating alongside political associates of the business this kind of as Reginald Maudling. Concerned by the company’s organization techniques, he returned to what had then grow to be the Department of Health and Social Protection in 1971, a year ahead of the scandal of Poulson’s corrupt practices broke.
As undersecretary from 1972 to 1981, he oversaw the 1974 reorganisation of the NHS, then became controller at DHSS Central Workplace at Longbenton in Newcastle in 1980, meanwhile implementing the child benefit allowance scheme, and upgrading the most comprehensive and complicated laptop installation in Europe. On retirement, he set up an international hospital development enterprise with Paul James. His function finished in 1992 at the age of 71, after the reduction of an eye that had brought on him lifelong impaired vision.
In the 1980s and 90s he struggled to sustain Clarghyll Hall, north of Alston, in Cumbria, a rambling historic creating primarily based close to a bastle (a fortified farmhouse), which quickly caused fantastic monetary fret.
His wife Freda (nee Huddleston) died in 2010 and he is survived by me and my brothers, Richard and Edward, and by his grandsons, Daniel and Kit.
George Wilson obituary
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