Raymond Frederick Brown


Sir Raymond Frederick Brown was the founder of Racal, and the British government's chief arms salesman from 1966 to 1969.
Brown was born at 4 Nettleton Road, Greenwich, London, and started work as a tea boy at the age of 14. In 1950 he and his partner George Calder Cunningham founded Racal, which gradually grew to become a major supplier of military radios and telecommunications equipment with Brown as its Managing Director. In 1966, he joined the Ministry of Defence as "head of defence sales" in the newly created Defence Sales Organization, now known as the Defence & Security Organisation, where he was given wide latitude to promote British arms exports. According to The Guardian, his office explicitly participated in bribery to advance sales, as noted in the Guardian-supplied quotations below. When one British ambassador's deputy inquired:
the response was as follows:
Added Harold Hubert, the director of army sales in the Defence Sales Organization :
Within a few years, Brown became frustrated with the British government's efforts to limit such activities. Although Denis Healey attempted to ease him out of his government position, Brown served out his full term. Brown subsequently managed Muirhead Ltd., and served as a director of the Standard Telephones and Cables company. He purchased Witley Park in 1982, where he lived until his death, and is buried nearby in the All Saints Churchyard, Witley, Surrey.