Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver. 1890-1967
A Biography by Tom Corran
Sir Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver. 1890-1967
Hugh Eyre Campbell Beaver was born in Johannesburg on 4 May 1890, the oldest of the three sons of Hugh Edward Campbell Beaver, who came from Montgomeryshire, and Cerise nee Eyre, who was of Anglo-Irish descent. During the early part of his career with the engineering consultants Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners he formed a close alliance with the managing director of Guinness, C J Newbold, who invited him to join the board. In the 1930s Beaver refused the invitation.
In 1940 Beaver was appointed director-general of the Ministry of Works, a crucial position, the responsibilities of which included the building and construction of the entire wartime programme of works and the supply of building materials. He was knighted for these services in 1943. Immediately after the war, he was invited, this time at the express wish of Lord Iveagh, to join Guinness as an assistant managing director, under Newbold, with the particular brief of modernising the company both in methods and outlook. He took over as managing director in 1946 on the sudden death of Newbold.
Thus Beaver was launched on a career at the head of a brewing enterprise with very little experience of the supposedly mysterious art of brewery management. Over the next five years he introduced new methods of management, inspired more effective research, introduced the beginnings of a policy of diversification, saw through a notable increase in volume of exports, encouraged the development of younger mangers and consequently witnessed the gradual recovery of Guinness from a long period of relative stagnation.
He bought Guinness firmly into the second half of the Twentieth Century. His diversification policies may ultimately have proved less successful than was hoped, but seemed extremely promising and logical at the time. He was responsible for a major re-organisation of the structure of the company, dividing it into separate trading companies, Guinness Ireland and Guinness UK, under one parent board. At the end of the 1950s he was directly responsible for the introduction of Harp Lager, initially in Ireland and subsequently in a British consortium in England, Wales and Scotland. Harp rose rapidly to become the leading brand of lager in Britain, and one of the earliest of the great successes of the lager boom of the 1960s and 1970s. His period at Guinness also saw the introduction of the Guinness Book of Records, which had sold over 6,000,000, copies by his death. Again he was directly responsible for this project, the original idea for it being his own.
The results of his able management can be seen in the growth of Guinness in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1945 the pre-tax profit of the company was under œ2 million; by 1947 it was £2.2 million; it subsequently rose to £4.8 million in 1948, £6.4 million in 1955, and £7.4 million in 1959, the last full year of his management. His work as Guinness showed him very much at the peak of his powers as an administrator and manager; he introduced new equipment, metal fermenting tuns, bulk delivery, and much more stringent quality control. He revised methods of budgetary control, introduced effective cost control, instituted work study, job evaluation and new works committees, and gave greater recognition to the trade union movement, supporting its growth where necessary. He left the company in very good shape on his retirement in 1960, having ensured in the 1930s that it would be well-housed, and that it would derive additional income form the leasing of land and plant in the Park Royal area.
Beaver was above all an extremely able and effective chairman of committees, as his career suggests, as well as a sharp and invigorating instigator. He had the capacity to reach the right conclusions in a very short time, often to the dismay of his colleagues, and he also had a great ability to persuade committees to reach general agreement and to accept decisions. He was amongst the earliest advocates of "brain-storming sessions" to produce new ideas. Harp Lager originated in one such session in the mid-1950s. His abilities in these directions were reflected in his work for the brewers' panels, which he handled with great skill and diplomacy. He was also a central figure in the campaign to prevent state purchase of the licensed trade following the Second World War, when his position with a company with no vested interest in tied trade helped his cause and campaigned in general. He was in line to become chairman of the Brewers' Society in 1959 when ill-health forced him to decline. He became a vice-president of the Society in 1960.
His public service after 1945 reflected his interest in the role of engineering and industry in society as a whole. From 1951 Beaver resumed his active participation in public affairs; in that year he became chairman of the British Institute of Management, and deputy chairman of the Colonial Development Corporation. In 1952 he was chairman of the Committee on Power Stations, and in 1953 he chaired the Committee on Air Pollution (known as the Beaver Committee) which resulted in the 1956 Clean Air Act. In 1954-56 he was chairman of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. From 1957 to 1959 he was president of the FBI and in the early 1960s he was a leading figure in the formation of the National Economic Development Council. He was awarded the KBE in 1956 in recognition of his services to the nation. He was also chairman of the Industrial Fund for the Advancement of Scientific Education in Schools, and president of both the Institute of Chemical Engineers and the Royal Statistical Society. He believed that industry should bear a part in serving Western civilisation and its way of life. Consequently he was a firm believer in support for worthy causes both socially and artistically, and influenced those around him, both individually and corporately, to support them too. Sir Hugh Beaver was forced to retire through poor health in 1960, although he continued to work unofficially on public matters thereafter.
Sir Hugh Beaver married in 1925 his second cousin, Jean Atwood Beaver, daughter of Major Robert Atwood Beaver MD; they had two daughters before her early death in 1933. Sir Hugh Beaver died on 16th January 1967, leaving £16,500 gross.