Ronald McIntosh

Sir Ronald Robert Duncan McIntosh (26 September 19191 April 2019) was a British civil servant and author. From 1973 until 1978 he was director-general of the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC).

Background McIntosh was born in Whitehaven on 26 September 1919, to Scottish parents, and grew up in Harrow, Middlesex. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became friends with Roy Jenkins. McIntosh went on to serve in the Merchant Navy during World War II. and in January 1976 he advocated modernisation grants to the engineering industry to encourage investment. He delivered a speech in November 1976 in which he supported an austerity programme to end the economic crisis, which was condemned by the Trades Union Congress. In the same month McIntosh criticised the political parties for their "quaint and out of date concepts of adversary politics", which would not be able to solve the country's failing economy, and instead advocated co-operation between parties.

In January 1977 McIntosh called for import controls to protect certain domestic industries, such as electronics. He was also in favour of a formal link between NEDO and Parliament, which he advocated in a speech to the Bow Group in March 1977. In 1978 he retired as director-general of NEDO and said "over the years incomes policies have not on balance brought any net benefit to this country and may indeed—through their effect on industrial relations and incentives—have done more harm than good."

After he retired he accepted an executive directorship with the investment bank S. G. Warburg & Co., and was chairman of APV plc. He had retired from both of these roles by 1990.

Personal life and death In 1951, McIntosh married civil servant Doreen McGinty. She was Catholic, and McIntosh converted to Catholicism. She died in 2009.

McIntosh died at William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent, on 1 April 2019, at the age of 99. He lived in Throwley, Kent.

Works Challenge to Democracy: Politics, Trade Union Power and Economic Failure in the 1970s (London: Politico's, 2006). Turbulent Times: The Memoirs of Ronald McIntosh (London: Biteback, 2014).