Obituary: Ron Clarke

By ARNOLD PICKMERE

Ron Clarke, Journalist, public relations consultant. Died aged 65.

Ronald Leslie Clarke's face and Kiwi vernacular were familiar in farming circles for more than three decades.

He was probably best known for his many years as public relations consultant for the Auckland Farmers' Freezing Co-operative.

Tony Leggett, editor of the rural publication Country-Wide for which Clarke wrote until his death this month, described him as Affco's unofficial historian and conscience.

Clarke told the company the word "co-operative" indicated that farmers were the only shareholders. Most of them judged Affco's basic objective was to pay them as much as possible.

The freezing workers at Affco's freezing works held much the same view.

And when it came to modernising to meet European Community hygiene regulations, a popular notion among Affco's farmer directors was to do no more than was absolutely unavoidable.

Clarke's most challenging job came in September 1980 when Affco shut its uneconomic old Southdown plant in Otahuhu, displacing 950 workers. This event signalled the beginning of the end for the big Auckland works, including Westfield and Shortland. It was a big shock, before Rogernomics and the 1980s stockmarket crash made job losses and redundancies seem almost normal.

There were delegations to Parliament by the Auckland Regional Authority and others.

But the closure was accompanied by a careful campaign to avoid blaming the workers and to make sure people, including the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon and several ministers, knew what was coming and why.

Even the famous Affco Christmas sides of lamb for clients and contacts were dropped, deemed inappropriate in the circumstances.

The event was bad news but it could have been much worse. It showed a sensible, effective side of Clarke behind a bluff exterior and the direct Kiwi vernacular which few others in the public relations industry would have dreamed of using.

Any form or PR-speak annoyed him. If you suggested something like "let's discuss this offline - we can interface about lunchtime", you risked a two-word volley, the second of which was "off".

The style of speech was natural to a man schooled in Matamata, having been born in Hamilton in 1938. So was his enthusiasm, humour and interest in the meat industry and agricultural affairs, including the years he and his wife Judy grew thornless blackberries and apples on their Huckleberry Farm at Dairy Flat near Auckland.

He had numerous PR clients from farming interests to Fisher and Paykel, fashion houses and even a man who had invented a spring-loaded fishhook which went off rather like a rat trap.

From the Auckland Easter Show one year he produced the news that the dog trials had the wrong sheep, because they were only used to farmers on farm bikes, not humans walking about waving a stick.

In issuing press releases Clarke, combined a straightforward "you decide" approach with the persistence of a sheepdog gently pressuring a reluctant sheep through a gate.

Clarke contributed to many farming publications and was the founding editor of the Rural News. He entered journalism through the Waikato Times and was later part of the team which founded the Sunday News, the country's first Sunday tabloid newspaper.

People knew where they were with Clarke. Someone he disliked he usually described as "prick" or, if really bad, a "proper prick". His complete approval on the other hand was signalled by: "Yeah, good bastard". Sometimes he would go on to explain why.

The church at Warkworth was overflowing with friends at the funeral. He is survived by Judy, children Rob, Penny and Sarah, and grandchildren.