Len Clark obituary

When the epochal National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act had its second reading in March 1949, Len Clark, who has died aged 103, was in the gallery of the House of Commons, enjoying a day out with his future wife, Isobel. Unusual entertainment perhaps, but not for Len, who lived and breathed the countryside and was a central figure in many organisations, including the Campaign for National Parks, the National Trust, the Open Spaces Society and the Youth Hostels Association (YHA). While he was rarely in the front line, he is remembered as being the conscience of these organisations, reminding them quietly but firmly what they were there for.

From an early age Len rambled in the Chilterns and in Surrey; the simplicity of the YHA appealed to him. During second world war service he was based in Hereford and south Wales, and explored Wales and the Marches, setting up local groups and hostels. He joined the YHA executive committee in 1948, serving as national treasurer and then chairman until 1963. He described the organisation as a club that sprang “from a love of the countryside, comradeship, tolerance and adventure”. For a decade he fended off the controversial admission of motorists at hostels and he championed the smaller, more remote hostels.

Appointed as the YHA representative on the National Trust council in 1961, Len joined a circle of establishment figures. In 1967 Conrad Rawnsley, organiser of the Neptune appeal to acquire coastline, was accused by some of the trust’s leaders of extravagance and indiscipline. Rawnsley then attacked the trust. This culminated in a special general meeting with a series of motions calling for change. The chairman, Lord Antrim, struggling to keep order in the crowded hall, whispered to Len: “Say something, Mr Clark.” Len, while opposing the motions, suggested the trust should look at its style of governance. The result was a committee chaired by Henry Benson, on which Len served, which began to democratise the trust.

As a member of the trust’s properties committee, Len travelled widely on his Honda 50 motorbike to view potential acquisitions, whether stately homes or countryside (he favoured the latter), and his words often swung the committee. Thus the trust acquired and saved from afforestation the 16,000-acre Abergwesyn commons in mid-Wales. He chaired the national youth panel, encouraging the trust to cater for young people with Acorn Camps, working holidays and suitable information in visitor centres.

He served on the properties and executive committees for 23 years, but even after he stepped down (caught by the Benson-imposed age limit of 75 for committee members) he was in demand for his wisdom, ability to get to the heart of a problem and understanding of ordinary trust members.

In the late 1970s, when legislation for public access to common land was long overdue, Len took the unpaid post of commons liaison officer for the Open Spaces Society. Still on his Honda, he explored and reported on commons, regularly arriving at the society’s offices looking like a badly wrapped parcel, to peel off layers of wet waterproofs, which steamed on the heaters. In 1983 he was secretary to the government’s Common Land Forum, which aimed to find a solution to the commons’ problems of deregistration, no right of public access and poor management.

Len’s commitment to the South Downs began in the late 1930s, when he was struck by the view from Chanctonbury Ring, in West Sussex – a Damascene moment. More than 50 years later he was at the heart of the campaign to create the South Downs National Park, which had been omitted from the list of parks created following the 1949 act. Quietly and determinedly he worked with the multi-organisation South Downs Campaign, which finally achieved its goal in 2009. He was appointed CBE in 1982 for services to conservation.

View image in fullscreen

His work as a countryside campaigner sat alongside his career as an administrator in local government and the health service.

Len was born in Islington, north London. His father, Joseph Clark, was a shop assistant, and his mother, Edith (nee Symons), a seamstress. Len’s careers advice amounted to being told, wrongly, that he could not become a civil servant because he wore glasses. Instead, aged 16, he left Highbury grammar school to join London county council as a clerk; when he retired in 1977 he was the senior administrator of the London Ambulance Service (by then part of the NHS).

A Quaker and a pacifist, in 1940 he had registered as a conscientious objector but was refused exemption. He was ordered to join a non-combatant corps, a compromise of which he remained rather ashamed.

After his retirement Len volunteered as a Samaritan in Guildford, playing an active part for more than 30 years, including a period as local director. With his wisdom and humanity he helped countless callers and colleagues. He was a vegetarian for 80 years, a lifelong teetotaller and devoted Guardian reader.

He met Isobel Hoggan through the YHA and they were married in 1952. She died in 2016. Len is survived by his sons, Alastair, Stuart and Neil, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.