Sir Goronwy Daniel

Goronwy Daniel's career as a public servant spanned 45 years, during which he won a reputation not only as a safe pair of hands, always an essential prerequisite for appointments in his native Wales, but as a canny committee man who could get the best out of his colleagues and officers without too much cajoling or having to use his somewhat gruff manner in anything but the most courteous way.

He was already well versed in the mandarin culture of Whitehall when he took up his appointment as Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Welsh Office in 1964. Having lectured in Economics at Bristol University for just a year, he had been appointed temporary clerk attached to the Select Committee on National Expenditure in the House of Commons in 1941 and in the Ministry of Town and Country Planning two years later. From 1947 to 1955 he had worked as Chief Statistician at the Ministry of Fuel and Power and as Under-Secretary in the Coal Division from 1955 to 1964.

He was to spend only five years at the Welsh Office, from 1964 to 1969, under the first Secretary of State for Wales, James Griffiths, thereafter under Cledwyn Hughes and, briefly, under the prickly George Thomas, all of whom were Labour MPs for Welsh constituencies. Those were tempestuous times, with the Young Turks of the Welsh Language Society campaigning hard for official status for the language and Plaid Cymru beginning to make electoral headway after Gwynfor Evans won a by-election at Carmarthen in July 1966. Other events in the same year were the Aberfan disaster and the opening of the Severn Bridge and, three years later, the Investiture of the Prince of Wales.

Goronwy Daniel, a Welsh-speaker and patriot, was true to Whitehall tradition in never wearing his political colours on his sleeve and always maintaining his aplomb. The main challenge of the Permanent Secretary's job was to establish the credibility of the fledgling Welsh Office which, at the outset, was little more than a regional arm of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government with a staff of only 250, and he did that with great success.

Soon, under his leadership, it acquired additional responsibilities for health and agriculture, thus setting in train the process of devolution of which he was in favour. He was also an effective voice for Wales in lobbying Whitehall and Westminster on such major economic issues as pit closures. Unfailingly courteous and famously able to remember his colleagues by name, he won the lasting affection of all who worked with and under him, including Rhodri Morgan, now First Minister at the Welsh Assembly.

Born the son of a colliery manager in the industrial village of Ystradgynlais, Breconshire, in 1914, Goronwy Daniel was educated at Pontardawe Grammar School, the Amman Valley County School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he took first class Honours in Geology in 1937; he then went on to Jesus College, Oxford, where he took a DPhil in Economic Statistics. In 1940 he married Lady Valerie, daughter of the second Earl Lloyd George and a granddaughter of the statesman. At the time of their marriage Valerie Lloyd George was Statistical Assistant to Sir William Beveridge, the Minister of Labour whose reports on insurance and employment became a blueprint for legislation ushering in the Welfare State during the years after the Second World War.

It was with a keen sense of loyalty to his old college that Daniel accepted the post of Principal at Aberystwyth in 1969. From among 22 names considered, his was unanimously and enthusiastically recommended by the selection committee. His 10 years at the "College by the Sea" were happy and fruitful. The college had weathered the turbulence of the Investiture of July 1969 – for his own part in which the future Principal received a knighthood (Prince Charles had controversially spent the summer term at Aberystwyth as an undergraduate) – and now began a period of fresh growth on all fronts.

Daniel was particularly supportive of various initiatives in teaching through the medium of Welsh. One of his favourite schemes was the inauguration of a bilingual Drama Department in 1973 which he saw as providing theatre and broadcasting in Wales with fully trained actors and dramatists. In 1988-89 he chaired the Powers and Functions Working Party set up to consider the future of the University of Wales, whose "Daniel Report" came out clearly in favour of the institution's federal structure.

He was physically very fit and apparently impervious to cold. Tales are still told of the consternation among coastguards on Cardigan Bay whenever Sir Goronwy took his small boat out in inclement weather, often sailing alone as far as Ireland. When the College Registrar once asked for permission to turn up the heating system at the approach of winter, the Principal advised him to instruct his staff to don extra pullovers and gloves.

A vital part of Goronwy Daniel's character was his egalitarian spirit: he treated everyone with the same warm geniality, however exalted or lowly their place in the scheme of things. Even so, it must be said that for those who did not know him well his rather forthright way of speaking could be disconcerting. I remember taking the French dramatist Eugène Ionesco to lunch at Plas Penglais, the Principal's official residence, during a tour of the University Colleges of Wales in 1972. Ionesco had no English and so there were some awkward silences during the pre-lunch drinks, relieved only when Lady Valerie addressed him in her fluent and elegant French. Sir Goronwy, a hospitable man, was not to be outdone in taking his responsibilities as host seriously, but unfortunately his French was not quite up to it.

At one point, in an effort to entertain his guest, he began prancing around the room, tapping on the valuable pieces of Welsh oak furniture and asking, "Combien coute ça?" When Ionesco, with that clown-like mask of his, ventured to guess the value of the antiques (in millions of francs), the Principal would exclaim, "Non, non, non! Beaucoup plus, beaucoup plus!" For much of the rest of the visit I had my work cut out having to explain to a perplexed master of the absurd how distinguished a man Daniel really was.

After leaving Aberystwyth in 1979, the Daniels retired to their farm at Treletert in Pembrokeshire, where they enjoyed country pursuits. For some time interested in the provision of a television service for Wales, Goronwy Daniel now became involved in the campaign for a fourth channel broadcasting mainly in Welsh. Under his chairmanship, the university published an influential feasibility study in which many of the old chestnuts used by opponents of the idea – Wales did not have sufficient talent to maintain such a service, and so on – were finally shown to have no substance.

He also played a vital role behind the scenes. When, in 1980, William Whitelaw reneged on the Conservative government's promise to create a Welsh-language Fourth Channel, and Gwynfor Evans was threatening to fast unto death unless it kept its word, Daniel was one of "the three wise men" – with the Archbishop of Wales and Cledwyn Hughes – who went to see the Home Secretary in London. About a week later, the Secretary of State for Wales, Nicholas Edwards, announced that the Government would set up a Welsh-language channel after all.

A Bill received the royal assent on 13 November 1980, the new service came on air in 1982 and Daniel was appointed its first Chairman. S4C, as the Fourth Channel is known in Wales, is now an integral part of the Government's provision for television broadcasting. It may be properly considered as a monument not only to the readiness of Gwynfor Evans to sacrifice himself for the sake of a principle but also to the practical skills of Sir Goronwy Daniel, who guided the frail bark through what were then uncharted and choppy waters.

It was Daniel, together with Professor Alwyn Roberts, a leading member of S4C's board, who drew up contracts, made the first appointments and laid the financial foundations for the channel. Elan Closs Stephens, whom Daniel appointed as Professor of Drama at Aberystwyth in 1975 and who is now Chair of S4C, recalls how Daniel took a hands-on approach and was in his element whenever he had audience statistics to analyse.

Among his many honours, he received in 1980 the honorary degree of LLD from the University of Wales in recognition of his outstanding service to the life of the Welsh nation.

Meic Stephens