WHEREIN LIES the essence of good public relations? Who better to ask than Patrick Howarth, for more than a quarter of a century public relations officer of the RNLI? His answer is predictably clear-cut and to the point: 'First of all in telling the truth, and secondly in believing in what you are doing. Fundamentally, of course, in having a good product because, unless the product is good, no public relations can do more than paper over the cracks. Of course, with the lifeboat service it is very, very easy because we have such a superb product. On top of that we have so very many voluntary public relations officers up and down the country, really doing the job. We are only a small group of professionals but it is a sustained exercise carried out by a great many people'.' There it is in a nutshell. The RNLI was indeed fortunate that, on the retirement of the much-loved Charles Vince in the early 1950s the guidance of its presentation to the general public should have come into such sure hands, but then at times life seems to go to immense trouble to see that the right person appears in the right place at the right time, spinning the wheel, if necessary, a number of times until the desired result is achieved.

Patrick Howarth—Pat to his many lifeboat friends—came to the RNLI by a circuitous, adventurous route which had equipped him with unusual but invaluable experience: A boy, winning the poetry prize at Rugby; a student at Oxford, whose work was praised by Siegfried Sassoon and C. S. Lewis; a young man looking for work in the recession of the '30s with the imagination to take a chance on the rather romatic job of editing, in English, for the Polish Baltic Institute in Gdynia, an erudite quarterly magazine addressed to the peoples of Scandinavia . . .

'In retrospect, I am very grateful that I had this opportunity because all the articles, which were on highly technical subjects, were either written by foreigners writing in English or they were translations.

It was my job to put them into English English. It really made me think about the accurate and careful use of words which at that age, 23, was a marvellous training . . .' Summer, 1939, and it became obvious that the next quarterly number of 'Baltic and Scandinavian Countries' would never appear. The Second World War was to break out over Danzig and, in those last months, Danzig, Gdynia and the whole Polish Corridor were over-run by journalists from all over the world . . .

'To counter the German propaganda, the Poles, characteristically, had a very nice chap but he didn't speak any English . . . so I really just took over from him and, as an unofficial, unpaid public relations officer to the Polish Government, became their spokesman . . .' By now, Pat could of course speak Polish himself and his war service was with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) whose task was to foment and support clandestine resistance to the enemy wherever it could gain a foothold.

The story of SOE and of many of the outstanding men and women who served in the organisation are told in the latest of Pat's many books, 'Undercover', which is to be published in May.

Peace again, and . . .

'. . . / wondered what to do. By sheer chance I heard that they were looking for a press attache at the Embassy at Warsaw . . . I got the job and returned to Poland in September, 1945, to serve under a marvellous ambassador, Bill Cavendish-Bentinck . . . The plane flew quite low over the city and I couldn't see a single roof. It just looked like a pile of rubble . . . We landed in a field—they had to shoo the cows off. . . Warsaw seemed a terrible place. Desolate. Yet everywhere there were flower sellers.

This was Hiroshima with flower sellers on every street corner. It was characteristic of Poland's great spirit . . . " What looked like becoming a diplomatic career, however, ended when Pat married a wife from behind the Iron Curtain.

That is the briefest of summaries of what were unforgettable years and it is perhaps significant that when, in his fifties, Pat's dormant poetic muse was once more aroused it was to write an autobiography in verse of those early years. Many lifeboat people will have heard extracts from this epic poem, 'Play Back a Lifetime', read by the author, either over the radio or at readings in aid of the RNLI. Or they may have met him in more reflective and discursive mood, hearing his readings of his second long, reminiscent poem, 'The Four Seasons', which have also been broadcast.

But to return to the early 1950s: Pat, back in London, in the Civil Service, with one book published, another being printed . . .chafing to find a job which would use his abilities more fully . . . a worthwhile job which would still allow him to write. Sheer chance entered once again; it was to be the last spin of the wheel . . .

'/ was talking to a very nice man, who was Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, and he said "Oh, my cousin is retiring from being in charge of publicity for the RNLI. Do you know of anybody who might be able to succeed him?" So I said, "Give me the address" . . .' For Pat, his introduction to the RNLI on February 1, 1953, was pretty dramatic. The day before, in the west, the car ferry Princess Victoria had gone down in St George's Channel —the biggest disaster to a merchant ship in peace time around our shores for a quarter of a century—and that same weekend floods were wreaking dreadful devastation up and down the east coast. Lifeboats were out everywhere.

Immediately, he was in the thick of his work for the lifeboat service, but he counted it his great good fortune that he was introduced to that work by a man like Charles Vince, whom he was soon to succeed . . .

'He was one of the finest human beings I have ever encountered; a man of absolute impeccable integrity, huge fun and liked by everybody. The only thing I held against him was that wherever I went on RNLI business, the first thing anybody said to me was, "What a pity Mr Vince has retired!" ' However, Pat was soon to experience the extremely warm welcome which awaits 'a chap from headquarters' when he goes to the coast. The first lifeboat station he visited was Dungeness, always to remain one of his favourites.

7 realised that, just because the RNLI was a voluntary service, I was not (with memories of service life) regarded as someone from HQ coming to lay down the law, but was treated as an individual.

I was accepted on my merits and wouldbe told, without hesitation, if I went wrong. 1 found that very salutary and very gratifying.' In the quarter of a century that followed.

Pat was a frequent visitor to lifeboat stations (7 certainly wasn't going to try to write or talk about lifeboats and lifeboat crews unless I knew what I was talking about.') and to the fund-raising branches and guilds.

And if it was part of his work, it was also his pleasure . . .

'It would be difficult to find another job in which you made so many good friends up and down the country. People who work for the RNLI whether at a lifeboat station or in a financial branch really are broadly speaking the nicest people in that community. If you fit in, you are accepted as a member of the club. And the voluntary workers are so keen! Their very enthusiasm always made me feel very humble.' On no less than five occasions. Pat was at a lifeboat station when a service call came . . .

'/ can't pretend any of them were very dramatic. The first was certainly the most colourful. 1 was just finishing lunch when I heard the maroons fired. I dashed down to the lifeboat house and found the crew already aboard. The coxswain said I could go out; there was an injured seaman on board a ship and they were taking a doctor out. The coxswain turned round to me and said, "What do you think about this for speed?" / told him I was very impressed. And he said, "You'll be able to tell them all about that when you get back to London, won't you?" Anyway, we went down the slipway into the harbour and we were just clear of the harbour when the coxswain turned to me and said, "We've forgotten the bloody doctor!" 'One of my most memorable visits, or series of visits, was a week I spent on the coast of Wales with Wynford Vaughan Thomas in preparation for a radio programme he was planning. We went from one lifeboat station to another by lifeboat. That was a whole week spent virtually at sea, meeting a different crew every day and going to a different station.

It was a marvellous experience.

Most instructive and most enjoyable.' Those were the good days, but there have been tragic and difficult times when, as public relations officer, Patrick Howarth would be in the front line and when the Institution would depend very much on his wisdom and his stature.

In his term of office, it was the last Fraserburgh disaster, in 1970, coming as soon as it did after the Longhope disaster in 1969, which presented the lifeboat service with its greatest problems in terms of public relations . . .

'We did undoubtedly come in for quite a bit of criticism—our boats and everything else. And we dealt with it. I had a long television interview and there were all sorts of criticisms. But I think that served as a catalyst, you know, and after that the criticism stopped. On the whole, we are subjected to very, very little adverse comment.

'The highlight in our professional public relations was certainly the way in which we celebrated our 150th anniversary in 1974. We had a small working party of which I was chairman and Ted Pritchard was secretary and right from the start we made up our minds that nothing was too good for the RNLI and that we should aim at the very best in everything we did that year. This was accepted as the policy and we started off with a service in St Paul's on March 4, the actual anniversary. The Queen could not come because she was abroad but the Queen Mother came, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached the sermon, the Jewish Chief Rabbi and the Moderator of the Free Church Council took part and Cardinal Heenan would have been present but for ill health. That set the tone and we went right through the ' Year of the Lifeboat' with one highlight after another.' Patrick Howarth's public relations work has spread beyond the confines of our islands, because he has been very much concerned with the work of the International Lifeboat Conference, for which the RNLI provides the secretariat and which is growing in importance all the time. The Conference meets in a different member country once every four years and Pat has attended every meeting since the one at Bremen in 1959; on several occasions he has presented a paper to the Conference on behalf of the RNLI. Perhaps even more important, it was at his instigation that, a few years ago, an annual international journal was introduced to bridge the gap between conferences and help keep up the steady international exchange of technical information.

'It is very pleasing to see the tremendous standing which the RNLI has among all countries. And I myself have made so many friends from the different nations . . . " At the Hague last spring, when lifeboat societies from 25 countries were represented, Patrick Howarth was singled out to receive the special good wishes of everyone present at the dinner—the delegates, the crews and their wives—because it would be the last International Lifeboat Conference he would attend—and it was his birthday . . .

'. . . That was really tremendously pleasing . . .' After 27 years, Patrick Howarth retired from full-time service with the RNLI last December, although the Institution will still continue to have the benefit of his advice as a consultant for a little while yet. So now, perhaps, was the time to take an objective look at the running of the Institution from the centre . . .

' You cannot run it as a business. You cannot run it as a service. You have got to accept that the lifeboat service is really a collection of individuals, each contributing something which only he or she has to offer. It has some of the qualities of an armed service; it has to be run on business-like lines; you need some of the skills of the Civil Service. But you have got to combine all those to run the RNLI as it has traditionally been run and as I think it always should be run.' And to take a look back at his own term of office . . .

'Looking back over a quarter of a century, I have astonishingly few regrets. I have failed occasionally to achieve something I wanted to do—it was one of my regrets that I never managed to get a film made of the Lynmouth overland launch—but in personal terms I have no regrets at all.'.