Radical, enthusiastic, and determined to make the best of the CIEH, new chairman Les Milne is raring to go. He talked to Cathy Savage about the forces that drive him

Cheery welcome over, the first thing Les Milne does is head off to make a cup of coffee. Not just any coffee though, oh no, this is fairly-traded, organic, decaffeinated coffee, served on a CD - after all, if you have CDs you don't need, they make perfect drink mats. If you're looking for an example of practising and preaching in harmony, Les is an excellent candidate.

He is not, perhaps, from the ordinary stock of chairmen. Les is a humanist republican who fought planners to install a solar water heater at his home and grows his white beard extra long at Christmas to play Santa when he goes out collecting for Save the Children. He is passionate about sustainable development and the importance of the global picture.

His career has been shaped by two major influences - a childhood spent among wheezing adults, and a three-year stint as an EHO on the Atlantic island of St Helena. He appears spontaneous, decisive and generous - his greatest flaw (backed by his wife's testimony) is an inability to say no... but then, as with all the best flaws, that doubles up as one of his best characteristics too.

Born, bred, and still living in Gateshead, he is devoted to his family, which first led him into public health.
"As early as I can remember I wanted to be involved in health. All the family had bronchitis and I used to think that wheezing was part of what it meant to be a grown-up," he recalls. "I remember thinking 'I'm sure smoking can't do you any good'. I remember thinking that it couldn't be right that the snow turned black so quickly after it had settled."

Keen to make a difference in the health field, Les began a medical degree at Kings College. However his ambition was crushed at the end of his first year when he was among five who failed one exam. Despite failing by the narrowest margin of the group, he was not one of the lucky few who were taken back on. This he puts down to a lack of ability in rugby and the fact that his radical views had been making waves at the college. "I'd been pretty bolshy in the student union," he says, not without a degree of pride. "I'd been involved in anti-apartheid demonstrations and I'd put forward a motion that we should remove cigarette machines and replace them with contraceptive machines instead." It seems the college was unimpressed. Les was at a loss when he got back to Gateshead, but he talked to a number of people, including neighbour George Neilson - a deputy chief sanitary inspector who "was something of an inspiration". In 1973 he found himself starting over as a trainee public health inspector at Gateshead.

The first shock was the difference in level between the medical degree and the diploma course at Newcastle, a shock which undoubtedly fuelled his later enthusiasm for education and training for EHOs.
"I thought public health was complex, but we were taught it at a very basic level. The people on the course were capable of being stretched, but we just coasted through."
Outside his studies, Les continued to make his mark, forming the student union at Newcastle and serving as the first president. His long-standing work for Save the Children began as a student member of the Third World First charity, when he donated a portion of his grant to them (the only charity without religious overtones).

After qualifying, Les started work in smoke control, and "chugged on" through the profession. By 1978, the call of the big city was too much, and he moved to work at Newcastle. As a district EHO on the pollution control team, Les was involved in some pioneering work, including noise abatement zones and noise reports for the Tyneside metro. But after a couple of years he wanted to look further afield. "I'd always fancied working overseas, but all I had seen were jobs for the oil states and that didn't appeal," he says. Then an advert appeared for a job in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Les applied, was pipped at the post and, disconsolate, turned his head homeward. He jumped at the next promotion he saw - a senior EHO position at Blyth Valley - and got it. However, just before he left Newcastle, he was sent a letter advising him of a job on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic.

He chuckles. "I found myself, on my first day in my new job, asking my new boss for a day off for interview." Happily his boss was understanding and his interview successful, so, after notching up just 88 days at Blyth, he set sail with his family for the other end of the earth. They set up house in the former home of Napoleon's aide de camp and began an enjoyable and educational three years. Unusually for the time, Les was replacing an islander, whom he shadowed for six weeks on arrival before being plunged in at the deep end on the busiest day of the year.

"My first day alone was 1 April, which was Good Friday. Nearly everyone on the island kept pigs and everyone slaughtered a pig for Easter, which meant slaughtering on Good Friday. I started work at 6.30am and finished at 9pm, having travelled 90 miles on an island of only 47 square miles."
The island is a British dependent territory and the right to citizenship had ended just before Les arrived, leaving islanders holding passports with their right to live in the UK "scrubbed out in black felt-tip". The situation left a lasting impression on Les. "It made me realise how small decisions can have a big effect," he explains. "The 50 or so annual immigrants from St Helena had no effect on the UK - but if those 50 stayed on the island, that meant a growing population and 10 more houses to build."
Another example of this phenomenon - and one which strengthened Les's views on sustainability - was St Helena's cash crop disaster. The island had grown flax for post office sacks in the 60s, then suddenly the post office switched to polypropylene and the island's economy collapsed.

Happily when Les was there, however, the island was prosperous again, having provided the bulk of labour to build an airport on neighbouring Ascension Island.
"Being on a tiny island highlights really how dependent you are on distant organisations," says Les.
This dependence caused trouble too, both politically and ethically for Les, as most supplies had to be ordered from South Africa, which was then subject to a British trade embargo and had been the object of his student protests. Once again, decisions elsewhere had an unintended impact on the island. Even Les's plans to improve toilets at a wharf on the island were stymied for fear they would attract "yachties" from South Africa.

At the end of the three-year placement, the Milnes packed up for home, without a job to go back to. By good fortune, the boat they caught was bringing mail from the UK, including a letter from the director at Newcastle saying there was a vacancy there. Les took up the job on "a special boffins unit" - the Scientific Support Team - in June 1986, and fell back into a conventional career. He moved from Newcastle to South Tyneside, before arriving in Stockton in 1990 as principal EHO. He worked through the ranks and was made assistant director in 1996, when Stockton became a unitary authority.

In the meantime, Les had become increasingly involved with the Institute. He was there when the education working party report was published and was horrified to see so many members object to having standards imposed. "I thought 'Crikey - no-one should see it as an infringement of rights or status. Our purpose is to ensure the public has a good quality of service'. So I stood for General Council in 1987 on an 'education education education' ticket, and was elected."
Education remained his key concern - he was vice chairman of the education committee from 1987, and chairman from 1990 until 1996, when he was promoted at Stockton.
Although content at Stockton, he is uneasy about the commute from his native Gateshead, where he has stayed to be close to his family. It doesn't fit with his beliefs on sustainability and he gives others lifts to salve his conscience, while resolutely using the bus on the weekends.

His evident guilt at commuting by car is symptomatic of an almost hairshirt attitude to playing it straight. "One of the lads I worked with once said there should be claret-shaped marks on the calendar to show the 'junket days' when I was away from the office, but I'm very anti-junket," he insists. True to his word, he takes annual leave for all but the essential Council meetings and Congress - as those are of mutual benefit to Stockton.

Now, in 2000, he will head council at a time when the CIEH is ready for a fresh start. "I want to see the strategic review completed and implemented," he says. "It won't be done without controversy, but we'll do it in a sensitive way. In the past the Institute has not always acted right, which is not a criticism of individuals but of the structure. We have to make sure we don't become victims of the structure."
Les believes the CIEH is coming of age and rightly beginning to look beyond the UK. "When we were in St Helena the island was blitzed by the 'clean water by 2000' publicity. Yet before Christmas we were raffling puddings for safe water. We need to look at the big picture and do what we can to pass on our knowledge to those who need it."

He believes CHGL's global ventures will aid international development. "I know it's done for business but it will have benefits for needy parts of world," he says. "If we can get income from wealthy countries we can play Robin Hood and disperse benefits to needy parts."
In this, Les has similar aims to John McCandless, and says he will be a hard act to follow. Nonetheless Les is more than ready to take the challenge, and is keen for members with opinions to make themselves heard.
"There are a lot of strong minds out there. I want to hear members' views, I want radical members to speak out."
2000 is going to be a year to watch.