The Earl of Perth

There was a mosaic of reasons why Anthony Eden as Prime Minister should in 1957, apparently out of the blue, have appointed a not very political Scots 17th Earl to the then sensitive and important position of Minister of State at the Colonial Office. David Perth had an abundance of aristocratic charm, gravitas and savoir-faire. As chairman designate of one of the most successful merchant banks of the era, Schroder's, he understood investment and development. He was unflappable. He was good at human relations with many different kinds and colours of people.

Perth told me many years later, however, what he believed to be the paramount reason for his appointment. With the problem of the Suez rebels, Captain Charles Waterhouse, Julian Amery, Patrick Maitland and others, the Government's majority could have become precarious. All Conservative MPs were needed to protect government business, late night after late night in the aftermath of bitterness about Suez.

"If it was felt important, as it was, for a minister to go to Africa or the West Indies for weeks at a time," he said, "why not have a lord who did not have to be dragged back to Westminster from Timbuktu or the Cayman Islands for Commons votes?"

The Whips' Office was "going bananas" at the prospect of being asked to spare an MP for lengthy periods in the West Indies or darkest Africa. Life peers had not yet been invented. No Commons ministers had given up their seats on condition they were given a peerage to become a minister in the House of Lords:

So there were only a small number of hereditary peers to choose from! I was prevailed upon. I am not sure that I made the right choice because, having been deputy chairman, I found the prospect of being chairman of Schroder's very exciting.

Perth came from the right stock – pedigree would convey a not quite accurate meaning. His father, as Sir Eric Drummond, was the first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, from 1919, when his son was 12, to 1933, and much involved in the events leading up to the 1925 Treaty of Locarno. Geneva was a far longer journey than it is today. Besides, Eric Drummond (he succeeded his half-brother in the earldom in 1937) was constantly journeying from one capital city in Europe to another.

His wife, Angela, née Constable-Maxwell, younger daughter of the 11th Lord Herries of Terregles, opted as was common in those days to accompany her husband rather than bring up her son. So David was placed out rather like a medieval pageboy with another aristocratic family – that of his aunt the Duchess of Norfolk. His mother's (and aunt's) family was one of the leading Roman Catholic families in Scotland, the Norfolks being the same in England. He was brought up as a strong Roman Catholic and sent to Downside.

Arundel Castle in Sussex, begun in the 11th century and notably modernised in the 19th and early 20th centuries by his uncle the 15th Duke (who introduced electricity and central heating), was his home. There he was surrounded by the portraits of Thomas Howard, the third Duke, by Holbein, Bernard the 12th Duke by Gainsborough and three of the great Van Dycks – to name but a few pictures in one of the great art collections of Europe. Little wonder that in 1972 Edward Heath appointed Lord Perth as Chairman of the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art.

The collector and connoisseur Sir Denis Mahon recalls Perth as an extremely good judge and a splendid chairman. Nobody alive is more qualified to pass such an opinion than Mahon. One of Perth's criteria was that, if a portrait clearly belonged in Britain, it should be retained in Britain. If it wasn't specially connected with Britain, then it might well have to go to the Getty or elsewhere.

Somewhat to the dismay of his distinguished diplomat father, the young David Drummond, having read History at Trinity College, Cambridge, and passed the Foreign Office exam, opted to go into the City to make money – with the specific object of restoring one of the Drummond ancestral family homes, which went back into the mists of time. He also did something else. At the age of 27 he married Nancy Fincke of the Wall Street banking family. It was said that Scottish aristocrats once in three generations have to marry into American money. Be that as it may, his marriage with Nancy was supremely successful for more than 60 years, until her death in 1996.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Viscount Strathallan, as he had become on his father's succession as 16th Earl of Perth, was posted not to the Guards or some élite regiment but to the Intelligence Corps, partly on account of his knowledge of China and his work with the Kuomintang. He was in Paris at the fall of France working with Noël Coward and dramatically evaded the rapidly advancing German army by driving a Bentley to Cherbourg. In the latter part of the war he worked in the Ministry of Production and on various assignments in the United States.

During 11 years with Schroder's until 1956 (succeeding to the earldom on his father's death in 1951) he impressed his hard-headed colleagues with his good judgement and was on the verge of stepping into the chairman's shoes when he was tempted into the Government. His main work as Minister of State for Colonial Affairs was in Africa, where his civilised views chimed with the sentiments of the incoming prime minister, Harold Macmillan, who would make his "wind of change" speech in 1960.

He also paid special attention to the West Indies and in 1958 introduced the Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands Bill, which had the effect of separating Turks and Caicos from Jamaica. The Cayman Islands are a group about 200 miles north-west of Jamaica and had been British for 300 years. Their population was about 9,000, most of whom were of European origin. Many of them originally came to the islands as shipwrecked pirates who decided to settle there or as marooned mariners.

On 11 February 1958 Perth said: "Curiously enough, the sea has remained in their blood, so that today the main occupation of the islanders is to provide seamen for ships." At this point he was interrupted by Lord (Lewis) Silkin – "Not pirates!" Perth responded:

Although the main revenue of the people is the seamen's remittances, there are two other sources of wealth – turtles and tourists, though these are not of great importance. The islands have always faced the dangers of hurricanes. They are governed by a commissioner appointed by the Governor of Jamaica and the local legislature consists of Justices and Vestrymen.

The Turks and Caicos Islands are 450 miles north-east of Jamaica. They are a barren group of islands whose main industry – I can almost say their only industry – is salt.

Years later Perth would suffer much teasing about having created two of the most lucrative and controversial tax havens on the face of the planet. He took it with typical aplomb and in good heart.

He told me that possibly the most useful thing he had done as a minister was his work on the Overseas Service Bill. This was designed to help those who had dedicated their lives to the Colonial Service and the welfare of the people entrusted to their care:

Their very success in their work may often lead to their posts' becoming filled by local recruits, to whom they have taught the art of administration; and as time passes by they are likely to have new masters, local ministers from the countries concerned, particularly in stages immediately before independence is achieved.

Perth regarded it as a sacred duty that, when people in the Colonial Service were forced into early retirement, government should give them the best possible compensation. Many families have reason to be grateful for his determination.

I got to know Perth well when he was in his late eighties and brought forward in 1994 a Bill on Treasure Trove. He aimed to amend a law which had been unchanged for nearly 1,000 years. Its original purpose as a source of revenue for the Crown had gone long ago, he said:

Today, it aims to preserve portable antiquities if they are of gold or silver. At least as important, it seeks to record where they are found, which may in its turn tell us something about our past history. If it is not reported, then again and again, alas, our history is irrecoverably lost. I beg those who find something in the future to report it. The Law of Treasure Trove as it now stands is inadequate to cover various antiquities, especially with the growth of the metal "detectorists".

As he grew older he became an ever more ardent supporter of a Scottish parliament. He rendered great service to Scotland both in his work for St Andrews University as a member of the Court from 1967 to 1986, and as a trustee of the National Library for more than 30 years, as chairman of its committee on investments.

Perhaps his most lasting contribution in Scotland, however, will be the restoration of the old Drummond house in Perthshire, dating back to the 14th century. Stobhall would have become a total ruin had not Perth devoted his determination and fortune to returning it to a family home after re-acquiring it in the early 1950s. It was often said that his remarkable good health, lasting well into his nineties, was as the result of clambering, week in and week out, up Stobhall's steep stone stairs.

Tam Dalyell