In the autumn of 1955, Dr Vivian Fuchs, then the director of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) Scientific Bureau, was granted leave to lead the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Sir Raymond Priestley, who had been in the Antarctic with Shackleton and Scott, came out of retirement to take his place and became acting director of the survey for three years.

When I came home from Signy Island in June 1957, Sir Raymond and his staff occupied a suite of rooms off Millbank. With him was his personal assistant, Anne Todd, a typist and William Sloman, a recently appointed personnel officer. Sir Raymond had been vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, and one of the early innovations he introduced to FIDS was to employ his friendship with other vice-chancellors to improve recruitment. Sloman was dispatched on an annual tour of universities to talk to staff and students about the survey.

Early in 1957, Sloman told Sir Raymond that Professor J.B. Cragg at the University of Durham had expressed an interest in Antarctic ecology. Sir Raymond asked him to encourage Cragg to ‘formulate his views more precisely’ and two pages of Ecological investigations in the Sub-antarctic and Antarctic dated 3 April 1957 were received (BAS 1957–1958). Cragg was keen to go south and suggested that £600–£700 would be adequate for a temporary replacement for him at the university. On 10 April Sir Raymond sent the document to Dr F.C. Fraser at the British Museum with a covering note: ‘You are the biological expert on the [FIDS] Scientific Advisory Committee and I send the proposal for your comment’. The same day he wrote to Sloman, ‘The best way of upgrading our work and personnel, is to get those senior people interested in the work and personally acquainted with the conditions down south, but in view of the Treasury's present attitude I wonder sometimes whether we aren't flogging a moribund horse’. On 13 April Fraser replied, ‘I am most heartily in sympathy with the idea of making an ecological survey and I consider that F.I.D.S. is lucky to have a man of Cragg's standing willing to do the job’. He guessed that money would be a problem and suggested that the Royal Society might be sympathetic (BAS 1957–1958). Something worked, for on 6 September 1957, when I chanced to meet Professor Cragg at the Scientific Bureau, a brief tour of the Antarctic bases on the RRS Shackleton had been arranged.

This visit to Signy Island and South Georgia in 1957–1958 encouraged Professor Cragg to submit a more ambitious proposal (BAS 1957–1958): ‘the Zoology Department of the Durham Colleges should become a centre from which some of the biological investigations in the Dependencies can be organised. I shall accept responsibility for the continuity of the research programme, offer guidance on research projects, provide facilities within my Department for the working up of results and where possible arrange for F.I.D.S. biologists to be registered for Higher Degrees of Durham University.’ Sloman showed me the document and I noted that the initial estimate was ‘about £1,500 per year (plus air fares and subsistence when necessary)’.

When Cragg returned early in 1958, he discovered that he could not be spared from his department at Durham, so he had to postpone his next visit to the Antarctic until January 1960. There was no response from the Falkland Islands Government and eventually he withdrew the application. He remained optimistic, writing to me: ‘The Royal Society National Committee for Biology is going to discuss biology in the Antarctic and one of my staff, Martin Holdgate, is on that committee. I am hoping that he will be able to do some useful work’ (BAS 1957–1958).

Forty-five years after those events, a strange scenario emerged. Sir Martin Holdgate (Reference Holdgate2003) remembered Sloman saying that Cragg's appointment had been blocked by Priestley because he, Cragg, had once declined to tell the University of Melbourne if he had ever been a communist. Holdgate added that in his view Priestley had done British Antarctic science ‘a grave disservice’.

There had, indeed, been some sensitivity about communists in Australia at the time Priestley was vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, but he proved himself quite capable of dealing reasonably with incidents (Priestley Reference Priestley2002). Cragg never went to Australia, but at some time, perhaps as a recent postgraduate in the 1930s, he may have had an application to the University of Melbourne turned down. It was known at Durham that he took exception to being asked if he had ever been a member of the communist party and refused to answer on principle (John Coulson, personal communication,).

The documents in the British Antarctic Survey Archives prove that it was Sir Raymond himself who invited Cragg to submit a written proposal on Antarctic ecology, and he would hardly have done that if he had retained misgivings about the name on a 1930s application form. Furthermore, in promptly consulting Dr Fraser, he took care not to promote his own views.

By 1959 when I was next in London, Sir Vivian Fuchs had returned to the survey. I never saw a published appreciation of Sir Raymond's role with FIDS, but all these years afterwards, I am still convinced that, far from doing ‘a grave disservice’ (Holdgate Reference Holdgate2007), Sir Raymond Priestley deserved more recognition than he ever received.