Regional director of NFU hands over to successor

Richard Ellison, regional director of the NFU, left his York office last weekend, leaving it to Barney Kay, former general manager of the National Pig Association.

Mr Ellison, 60, had worked for the NFU for nearly 40 years. He started at the London headquarters in 1972, after leaving Sussex University with a degree in American History. One of his introductory work placements was as assistant county secretary for Gloucestershire and that gave him an idea what he wanted.

He became assistant secretary for North Riding and Durham, based in Darlington, in 1979; and Northumberland county secretary 83-88. He did briefly go back south, to run Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, but got caught up in the upheaval of regionalisation and took up an offer to return to his other “home” patch in 1990 – this time covering Yorkshire and Durham as well as Northumberland.

He has lived in Stamford Bridge ever since and has no plans to move now.

He was presented with a “Mouseman” coffee table at a Yorkshire farmers’ farewell at Askham Bryan, a carved shepherd’s crook at a northern counties do in Piercebridge and a Mouseman clock to match the table by his headquarters staff.

The first really big job of his career, he recalls, was dealing with the imposition of milk quotas in 1984. The “hill line” argument involved in definition of Less Favoured Areas also comes back to him as a long-running saga, along with Edwina Currie and the upheaval she caused with her comments on salmonella in eggs in 1988. But there was plenty more to come in the 1990s – first the Integrated Administration & Control Systems (IACS) through which Brussels extended its control of farm support payments, and then BSE.

“But foot and mouth in 2001 was the worst time of all,” according to Mr Ellison. After that, the closure of the Yorkshire sugar factories and the floods of 2007 were further landmarks.

Now he has handed over a portfolio of issues including reform of the CAP, and advised his successor: “Never forget that membership of the NFU is voluntary.”

His wife, Maggie, has also retired, from the coronary care unit at York Hospital. They have a son, a daughter and a grandson coming up to his first birthday. They plan to see Australia and New Zealand before deciding what next. More golf is one plan. But Mr Ellison “would still like to be involved in rural work and politics in some capacity”. His successor, aged 38, comes from five years running the NPA and varied previous experience.