Background
lan McLean was born on April 11, 1919, at Bulawayo.
lan McLean was born on April 11, 1919, at Bulawayo.
Educated at Milton School, Bulawayo. After serving in the Royal Air Force as a flight lieutenant from 1940 to 1945, he resumed his studies and obtained a BA degree.
His political career began in June 1958 when he won the Bulawayo North seat in Parliament. When the Rhodesian Front came to power Premier Winston Field appointed him Minister of Labour and Social Welfare on December 17, 1962. The portfolio of Health was added when Premier Ian Smith took office in 1964.
One of his favourite roles is moral guardian against what he calls “the nauseating excesses of the permissive cult”. In July 1970 he launched a campaign for a "cordon sanitairc” against moral contagion from outside and urged people to be on guard against the “New Left” exploiting the generation gap to divide society. On September 16, 1972 he told the Family Planning Association he was tired of having the difficult problem of population control dumped on his lap. He said commerce and industry had a responsibility to get the message to African women of the advantages that money can buy so that they drive their men to aim at prosperity instead of population increase.