IAIN SHERRIFT 1923-2000
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Last December I called lain to persuade him to write me a short piece for our Christmas Special as one of five former CM staffers looking back over their time on the magazine. Though he was the last to be briefed his copy was the first to land on my desk, with the covering line: "Brian, try this for size!"
His pithy piece was exactly what I wanted. Having castigated previous Governments for their lack of imagination (not to say transport policy) he closed by saying: "What will the new century bring? Who knows? I suspect not even John Prescott has the faintest idea. I won't be around to see it. Will you?"
The finality of lain's closing line struck an uncomfortable chord with me, so I took it out. Surely he of all people would be around to witness the upheavals of the new millennium?
lain clearly had a better handle on his mortality than me; his words were sadly prophetic. When I told a truck manufacturing friend of lain's death last week he said, quite rightly:, "Now that isthe end of an era."
That era stretched from the fifties to the mldeighties. Having worked in Scotland for various transport concerns lain joined CM in 1966 at a time when road haulage was rapidly extricating itself from a decade of on/off nationalisation into a world of Carrier's Licences and free market competition.
Road haulage was an extremely rough and ready industry and throughout it all lain knew people—and people knew lain. If you were walking down the aisles of any European Truck Show with lain your progress would be painfully slow as countless operators and manufacturers relentlessly hailed him from all sides. For many years after his retirement in 1985. having edited CM for 10 years, people would ask me "How's lain?"
When lain wanted to make an editorial point he made it; often quite bluntly. And not everyone liked the message. His "noprisoners" style was epitomised in the early eighties during a TV appearance with the late Alex Kitson. lain and Kitson, the union firebrand, were due to discuss the advent of tachographs. The moderator had hardly finished his introduction before lain let fly and, despite several attempts by Kitson to get a word in edgeways, it was clearly a lost cause. As the interview wound up Kitson could be seen smiling wryly at lain. Though outgunned, Kitson clearly didn't bear a grudge, as he later spoke at a CM Fleet Management Conference—one of lain's many editorial innovations, along with our annual Livery Competition.
His unflagging support for the industry was rewarded In the 1985 New Year's Honours List when he was awarded an MBE "for services to road transport journalism". Indeed his reputation within the Department of Transport was such that the recommendation for his honour was strongly supported by the Permanent Secretary, Sir Peter Lazarus.
The term "character" is a much hackneyed phrase, but every now and then someone comes along who can carry it off. lain carried it off with ease and he'll be missed by a generation of old-style hauliers who identified strongly with him as a fiercely independent spirit and as a lover of the industry.
For those of us who worked for him (and that's exactly what you did, you worked for lain) his death marks tile passing of a patrician editor and a charismatic leader.
Working for lain was never easy—but never dull. lain wrote his own obituary to everyone who knew him.
They surely don't make them like that any more.