My father-in-law, Alun Emlyn-Jones, who has died aged 94, was born into a family with a rags-to-riches story. His grandfather, Evan Jones, had arrived in Cardiff a farmhand and a monoglot Welsh speaker. By the time of Alun’s birth, his father, Emlyn, was a Liberal MP and owner of a Cardiff shipping line, but half the company’s assets were seized by Franco after the family backed the republicans in the Spanish civil war.
His father’s response to that loss – “That, my boy, is the price of principle” – affected Alun’s political and humanitarian work through the rest of his life, as a Liberal candidate, chair of Cardiff Magistrates Association, NSPCC president and chair of many other voluntary committees. Well into his 80s he was street-sleeping to raise funds for homeless people.
Alun was born in Cardiff, son of Emlyn and his wife, Rhoda (nee Care). As a wartime bomb-aimer (nicknamed “Gremlin”), he beat not only the high casualty rate, but missed a training flight on which the rest of his crew were killed at Garrowby Hill in Yorkshire. In 1998 he instituted a memorial where the crew are honoured every Remembrance Sunday.
In 1949 Alun saw Prue James dance in Babes in the Wood at Cardiff New theatre. They were married months later. Alun exhibited his father’s charm but none of his business acumen. In rep jobs he would buy his own carbon paper or hundreds-and-thousands to make up sales, but his 1950s idea for Ready-Kleen Vegetables, sold peeled and prepped, was ahead of its time. Typically, those involved in this business, known as the Arkaves (from RKVs), became a social group, still meeting after 60 years.
Alun became involved in alcohol services after the death of his sister Inez to drink, and established the South Wales Council on Alcohol in 1965.
In 1967 Prue died of a brain haemorrhage, when their youngest daughter, Lucy, my wife, was only four. Alun experienced severe alcohol problems himself, but went on to found several rehabilitation units in South Wales, and was appointed OBE in 1976. His idea for a unit on the Bristol Channel island of Flat Holme generated local headlines referring to Alco-traz.
Throughout his life, Alun remained very much at the centre of an extended family network. He had a great ability to make lasting friends of any age or political persuasion.
Alun is survived by his second wife, Julie (nee Young), whom he married in 1983, four daughters, Judy, Rhoda, Mandy, and Lucy, from his first marriage, and three grandsons, Oliver, Nick and Daniel.
