[1][3][4] At the age of 13, he found two dead partridges, which he deduced to have been killed by the pesticides his father was using on the farm, and which began his environmental outlook on the world.
[1] He was educated at Eton and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read law, but never took his final exams due to a near-fatal disease of his colon.
[3] He went on to take an MA in criminology at Keele University, and later researched the sentencing of cannabis users at the London School of Economics[3] and at the Institute of Psychiatry (1971–1973).
[1][3] He chose not to relinquish his privilege to enter the House of Lords as it would grant him leverage over the legalisation of cannabis and advocacy for squatters’ rights.
[5] When Labour won re-election in October 1974, he was made a Lord-in-waiting (House of Lords whip) by Harold Wilson, working in the Department of the Environment as a junior minister under Anthony Crosland.
[4][6][3] Melchett increased teacher numbers, improved provision for mental health care services, and saw Northern Ireland provided with funding for sporting facilities.
He also had a lot of courage and fought for issues that did not fall within his brief, which involved some aspect of human rights or discrimination or criminal justice.One such issue was a case in which Melchett helped to secure a pardon for a young girl who had been convicted and imprisoned for killing her father, who had sexually abused and assaulted the girl's mother and turned his attention on her younger sister.
In his book, Hayes also said: Melchett chafed at the constraints that were put on him in the name of security or convention and on his ability to travel to any part of Northern Ireland.
He went out as often as he could and on whatever pretext to what were regarded 'difficult areas' – generally places that no minister had ever visited before, or any representative of government more exalted or benign than a policeman or a summons server – and found the people always glad to see him.In the late 1970s, Melchett was the first chair of a (short-lived) Legalise Cannabis Campaign.
Along with many other protesters, he and his partner, Cassandra Wedd, made a symbolic cut to the fence around the air base, and they were arrested and convicted of attempted criminal damage.
[4] He implemented the management systems and equal opportunities he had learned from working in the public sector,[3] and is credited with helping to dramatically increase the organisation’s influence, supporter base, income and staff complement.
[citation needed] He remained on the organisation's international board for two more years, and took up part-time consultancy work with IKEA, Iceland and Asda supermarkets[4] and briefly with industry PR company Burson-Marsteller UK.
Melchett's daughter Jessica Joan Mond-Wedd is a barrister, whilst his son, Jay Julian Mond Wedd, is a farmer.
Melchett was a vocal opponent of hereditary peerages[15] and declared in a BBC Radio broadcast for Desert Island Discs[16] that he had deprived his son Jay (who farms at the family farm in Ringstead) of the right to succeed him as 5th Baron Melchett, of Landford in the County of Southampton, and 5th Baronet of Hartford Hill in the County of Cheshire, because his son was born out of wedlock, which means the extinction of the barony and of the baronetcy upon his death.