UK: Tony Garrett, Tobacco Industry Leader, 1918-2017

Source from:  Financial Times 12/13/2017

In early June 1977, as Britain was preparing to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the chairman of Imperial Tobacco launched Operation Berkshire.?

Tony Garrett, who has died at the age of 99, hosted a secret summit of the world’s largest tobacco companies to formulate a defensive strategy against the anti-smoking campaigns that were persuading governments to restrict cigarette sales and advertising.?

The aim of the meeting, held under “tight security” at Imperial’s Shockerwick House near Bath, was “to develop a smoking and health strategy which would include an?.?.?. agreement that no concessions beyond a certain point would be voluntarily made by members”, according to an internal memo by Hugh Cullman, president of Philip Morris. “Tony Garrett seemed to be most concerned that companies and countries would be picked off one by one.”?

That security was broken in 2000 when the British Medical Journal published a detailed paper about “the international tobacco companies’ conspiracy”, based on confidential documents filed by the industry in response to litigation by the US government. The BMJ authors concluded that the legacy of Operation Berkshire was a spurious “smoking and health controversy” that “greatly retarded tobacco control measures throughout the world”.

Opponents of Big Tobacco see Berkshire as a key moment in the industry’s sustained fightback against government restrictions. For example, the Whitecoat Project in the 1990s attempted to create controversy about the health effects of second-hand smoke.

Richard Anthony Garrett was born in July 1918, the son of a bank manager, and grew up in the Bristol area, joining Imperial Tobacco as a junior in 1936 at its Wills plant in the city. Apart from distinguished wartime service as an Army officer — including the D-Day landings in Normandy — he stayed with the company until his retirement in 1979.?

An outstanding feature of his leadership was Imperial’s pioneering sponsorship of events in sports and arts, which emerged as regulations were squeezing tobacco companies out of conventional advertising. Britain banned cigarette ads on television in 1965.?

Garrett — an enthusiastic sportsman who played rugby, cricket and golf — saw sponsorship as an attractive alternative route to promote tobacco products. He started with the John Player subsidiary, where he was chairman, before taking charge of Imperial Tobacco as a whole. Soon the brand’s logos were attached to the John Player Special cricket league, JPS Rugby League Cup and JPS Classic golf competition. Garrett was also a classical music lover — and led Imperial into extensive sponsorship of opera, ballet, orchestras and record production.

His view of the evidence that smoking seriously damages health seems to have been ambivalent. He insisted in 1975: “A very great deal of top management time throughout the tobacco industry is devoted to the highly complex problems of smoking and health and to seeking a solution to them.”?

Personally he was a light smoker of Embassy cigarettes and occasional cigars. Garrett described himself in an interview with World Tobacco as “a gregarious sort of individual, noisy and extrovert”.
Unfortunately Imperial’s most visible move to reduce the harm caused by tobacco failed under controversial circumstances. The company spent about ￡15m to develop New Smoking Materials, made from cellulose, which were blended with tobacco to produce a new range of safer cigarettes.?

Their launch in 1977 was a disaster, and Imperial quickly closed the NSM operation, burning the unsold cigarettes. Garrett put some of the blame on the government, for failing to promote the venture, which it had encouraged during earlier stages of research and development. He was particularly angry when the Health Education Council said switching to NSM cigarettes was like jumping out of a building “from the 36th floor rather than the 39th floor”.?

After retirement, he served as vice-chairman of the television company HTV and as a trustee of charities including the Glyndebourne Arts Trust and the Royal Opera House. His biggest charitable achievement was as president of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, for which he raised ￡1m during the 1980s and was made a CBE.?

He married Marie Dalglish in 1946. After her death in 2000 the radio journalist Nancy Wise became his second wife. She survives him, as well as three children from his first marriage, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
  Enditem