Frederick Douglas Lang DSC, one of the UK leather industry’s most respected leaders, died on 15 April. He was 97.
Lang was born in 1918, in Glasgow, was raised in Paisley, educated at Dardenne, Craigflower and Merchiston, and went on to Leeds University where he studied leather manufacturing.
When he was 18, he joined the RNVR as a midshipman and, three years later, he was called up by the navy when the second world war broke out. He saw service in Norway and the North Sea, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and was part of the 1st Destroyer Flotilla for the D-Day landings.
During the war, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, and also during that time he met and married Anne Finlay Stevenson.
When he came home in 1946, he joined the family leather business WJ & W Lang in Paisley and, in 1965, became managing director of the firm and a founding director within the newly formed Scottish Tanning Industries. He went on to become president of The British Leather Federation and, in that role, took on the chairmanship of the Tanners Committee formed to fight the then Labour Government’s National Enterprise Board over their investment in parts of the leather industry. It was a battle they eventually won.
In 1982, he became Chairman of Scottish Tanning Industries, a post he held until his retirement in 1985.
