Harry

Chris just let me know that Alan Thornett has died. International Viewpoint has a long obituary here. I doubt The Graun will carry an obit, and The Times certainly won’t.

I got to know members of the Oxford branch of what was then the Socialist Group (a successor of the Worker’s Socialist League, via a fusion with, and then a split from, the International-Communist League), through the Oxford Miner’s Support Group, of which they were the backbone, in the wake of strike’s defeat in 1985. I saw Perry Cullen and Ted Heslin several times a week for the whole of that autumn, and spent less, but quite a lot of, time with Alan; and kept up with them for several years after leaving for the US. Autumn 1985 was when the Workers Revolutionary Party started to fragment, after Gerry Healy’s history of sexually assaulting comrades came to light. (For what it is worth, the SG comrades knew nothing of this, though obviously had experienced serious abuse themselves including, in one case, kidnapping, at Healy’s bidding). The Socialist Group were at that time briefly, and I thought absurdly, hopeful of reconciliation with the less terrible offshoots of the the WRP, so they were in a moment of muted (and unwarranted) optimism.

Nevertheless they were mostly realistic about what it meant to be a revolutionary in the mid-1980’s (or ever, perhaps), and Ted and Perry shared with Alan a dry and self-deprecating sense of humour that doesn’t come out at all in the International Viewpoint obit. We once went to some agitprop performance of a play about the Silesian Weavers Strike, and Ted commented to me “This is going to be awful. I like real plays, and musicals. But, you know, you have to go. For the cause”. Another time, on a particularly rainy day, after 3 hours of shaking tins together, Ted said “You do realise that I’m not going to do any of this after the revolution, right? I want to have an allotment, and enjoy growing vegetables once we actually have communism”.

Alan once told me this about Healy. “For years we were envious of the other groups. Cliff and Grant wrote books, and the IMG had all those intellectuals. But Healy just gave speeches. He was a great, great speaker, but we never really understood what he was saying. So we decided to transcribe some of the speeches, and turn them into books. We did that for about four speeches, and then we pored over them, trying to make sense of them. But we were all working class, uneducated, and couldn’t make head nor tail of them. We just assumed we were stupid, and couldn’t keep up with his brilliance. It was only much later that we realised the problem might have been with him, not us”.

People here often ask me what part of England I grew up in, which isn’t a particularly easy question – I was born in the north, but then lived in South Wales and then various place in the South all of which were west of London. Oxford is sort of familiar to everyone (though not my part of it), Aylesbury to no-one, and Slough… well, on Friday the person I was chatting with stole my usual line, which is “The British version of The Office is set in Slough, and that tells you a lot about the place”. He told the leader of our research project that she should watch the British version because it is much better than the American version.

Personally, I think the British version is, indeed, brilliant. Because of that I was excited to watch the first few episodes of the America version when it came out, and found it almost unbearable. I expected it to fail, as I think most sitcoms that move from the UK to the US do. In fact, though, it transformed itself and succeeded. And I admired the writers and the star, Steve Carell, for understanding how to make that happen.

[click to continue…]

Here’s another of my posts about being a peace activist in the UK in the early eighties. This one is mainly about my time in secondary school. When I linked to the substack version from Facebook a couple of people recognized some of the people involved, but they’re pretty well disguised unless you were there. (Something I enjoyed about writing this one is that the characters were in both my life and CB’s life at the time, something we only discovered when we met properly 25 years ago this coming Saturday). Here’s the substack link in case you’d prefer to read it there.

There had to be a Youth CND, both national, and local. I’m not really sure why, to be honest. Every political organization I knew had a youth wing – the Labour Party Young Socialists (boring, controlled by Militant Tendency), the Young Liberals (which contained anarchists, socialists, and the odd liberal), the Young Conservatives (I once debated some Young Conservatives on behalf of the Young Liberals, despite not being one, at the Oxford city conservative club which was opposite my dad’s office – they just seemed so incredibly posh, it was as if they wanted to be caricatures), Revolution Youth (the IMG’s outfit – more about them in a moment). Youth organisations in the Labour Party have mostly ended unhappily, because they were easy to infiltrate and the Party wanted more control than it could reasonably exercise. Youth CND was vulnerable in the same way: much easier for a small coordinated group to dominate than the adult version, not least because there weren’t many young members of the CPGB to resist them, and what young communists there were seemed not, at least then, to be active in CND, but potentially quite damaging to the brand. Some Youth CND activists were well into their twenties. Indeed, this was our problem in Oxford really. I was the organizer of Youth CND in Oxford at the start, which was fair enough because I was the only schoolkid in Campaign ATOM. It attracted several (working class) kids from my school (through me), several (working class) boys from Oxford Boys School (led by a chap called Alex whose parents were both immigrants, and was as good-looking as he was smart, and subsequently became my flatmate for a year in college – somebody I very much regret losing touch with, actually), a few from Cheney school led by a girl called J whose mum, an East Oxford lefty, once took us to a Leon Rosselson concert. And there was a whole group of people in Revolution Youth, or “Revo” as they liked to call themselves, some of whom seemed old enough to be our parents, and several of whom were definitely old enough to be our teachers. It was uneasy to say the least, and my first experience of factionalism. We’d meet at the bedsit of two of the older Revo people, between the Iffley and Cowley Roads, and they, who I have to say struck me as quite dull-witted, would condescend to us with their catch-phrase “Basically, right…[and then whatever the line was that they were telling us, and which was not open for discussion]”, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that, sure, we weren’t the masses, but we were a group of smart kids from state schools quite aware that more of them had gone to or were at private schools than not. They were irritating and off-putting to anyone new who turned up and wasn’t already absolutely committed.

[click to continue…]

A friend on facebook says that Hamnet contains a pretty serious error — naming the Costwolds the Chilterns (or, pretty much equivalently, mislocating the Chilterns between Stratford and Oxford). I’m not sure that would ruin the book for me, but I definitely would find it annoying (knowing both areas very well makes it worse, but even if I didn’t know them!).

My, recent, error/irritation, was in the film Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer meets Jean Tatlock at a cocktail party and one of them (I forget which) almost immediately attributes the slogan “Property is theft” to Marx; the other (again, I forget which one) agrees that Marx said it. I then spent the rest of the movie wondering whether it was the characters, or the screenwriters, that made the error. If its the characters that tells us something quite interesting about them: they are basically poseurs, or at least posing in this context where they are also flirting, and (probably) one of them is refraining from correcting the other (for whatever reason, perhaps connected to flirting). It’s not out of the realms of possibility that someone who worked for the CPUSA at the time (as, I gather, Tatler did) would get this wrong, still less that she endorse a flirtee’s error. But… if it’s the characters who are in error surely the screenwriters know that the vast majority of the audience won’t pick up on the implication, and the tiny fraction of the audience that know Marx and Proudhon will likely spend some substantial part of the movie puzzling about exactly what I was (and still am, slightly, puzzled about). Why would they do that? So… I was tempted to conclude that it was a screenwriter error. But… did nobody who read the script catch it? Are they all really that ignorant? And then I thought of all the people I knew who went into that industry (surprisingly many, including someone who was nominated at a young age for the Academy Award for best director) and think, yes, they really might all be that ignorant. And then I thought, ah, but the only actual Academy Award winner I’ve ever known was a lifelong Trotskyist, and he would have caught it. But, of course, he was a Trotskyist, not a Communist (which returned me to realization that someone working for the CPUSA in the 30’s might well have made the error). [1]

My conclusion is that it was a screenwriters mistake. But: would you like to contribute other examples of errors like these two that have puzzled and/or irritated you?

[1] Ok, since I’m in a flippant mood today, I’ll share this one… I watch a lot of cricket through Willow TV, and in recent weeks I have been inundated a particular ad for the Tom Tiffany for Governor of Wisconsin campaign which, evidently, thinks that people watching Pakistan v West Indies test matches in Madison are fair game. His ad starts out by saying “This is not your grandparents’ Democrat Party. Or your parents'” and shows a picture of Saunders, AOC, and a couple of Democratic Party Governor candidates with, I kid you not, a hammer and sickle. My first thought was to wonder which voters are triggered by a hammer and sickle, and my second, quite seriously, was to wonder whether he is trying to convey the (true, as he no doubt knows) thought that whereas there were lots of Communists in “your grandparents'” Democratic Party (nearly every Communist I knew in LA in the 1980s was a Democrat, and nearly every Democrat I knew was some sort of Stalinist, because those were the circles within which I moved), not one of the people depicted in his ad is one. Obviously not.

I love Rory Stewart’s memoir about being a politician; its one of the best books I’ve read about British politics. Among his many observations about the dysfunctionality of government is that ministers typically know nothing about their briefs prior to taking their jobs, and don’t stay in post long enough to get any command. There may be worse examples than Education, but I doubt it. The advice is to the newest Secretary of State for Education is simple: before you do anything significant read my dad’s last book, and spend a week talking to some of your predecessors (particular recommendations below).

Now some facts:

Here’s another episode in my memoirs of being an activist. You can read it at substack, or here!:

Between school and college I decided to take a ‘year off’ (what they now call a ‘gap year’). I didn’t have much of a plan, except that I wanted to travel, but not really to earn money (a difficult combination to pull off, frankly, and not one I would recommend). My dad had a brilliant idea, resisting which is something about which I have lifelong regrets, which was to go and live with Harry Ree for a few weeks/months and be his factotum. [1]

But, I did go and work for CND helping prepare for the big October 24th demonstration in 1981. I had two duties that autumn.

[click to continue…]

Sorry I’ve been offline for so long. I’m back. For now, anyway.

Among other things I’ve been writing a little bit about what it was like for me being a teenager involved in left wing politics at the beginning of the 80’s. This is the first (and far the longest) of a series of reminiscences that were prompted by a casual conversation with one of my excellent graduate students. Feel free to ignore! I’ll also be posting them on a substack which, if you like, you can subscribe to (free, but god knows how you subscribe!).

Here goes:

We moved to Oxford in the wake of the 1979 general election. Dad had become Chief Education Officer in Oxfordshire a year earlier, but we’d waited to move till I finished my O’Levels and my sister finished primary school, to minimize disruption (because Oxford, itself, then still had a system of middle schools, my sister was more disrupted than I was, having to spend a year in a middle school before going to an ‘upper’ school.

I did the sixth form at Peers School, an inaptly named comprehensive which served two council estates (Blackbird Leys and Rose Hill; like Lord’s Cricket Ground it was named after a person, not a Peer or a Lord) plus some quite distant rural areas outside the city. The demographics were as you’d expect: mainly poor and working class kids, but with a smattering of middle class children like me who whose parents were left-ish, educated, professionals – teachers, vicars, nurses, etc, one or two academics, and the chief education officer (dad was shocked when he started in Oxfordshire just how many of his colleagues in the LEA leadership sent their kids private and I am sure he was not unduly diplomatic about it).

Peers was quite progressive – indeed, the Graunida had an article about how it had once been a school of the future when it was finally closed. It had a School Council, to which I was, I now realise rather surprisingly, elected by other 6th formers (maybe no-one else wanted to do it?). Mr. B, my rather posh Maoist [1] history teacher once told me that the School Council was supposed to be like a parliamentary democracy but that in practice it didn’t work that way, because it mainly endorsed what the head teacher wanted. This, I pointed out, was exactly how he thought a parliamentary democracy worked, so I couldn’t figure out what his complaint was. My role (again, I don’t quite understand how this happened) was to serve on the PTA, the main job of which seemed to be to organize dog shows to raise funds for the school, dog shows being the special enthusiasm of the couple who led the PTA, a policeman and his wife. I remember at the first meeting being kind of awestruck both by the whole scene and, especially, by a rather disheveled woman called Meg who turned up a late, clearly had no time either for the policeman or for dog shows, and yet equally clearly had more organizational sense than any of the other parents. (The dog show experts were manifestly annoyed by her, probably thinking that she was the kind of person who lived on Stratford Street, had probably been a member of the International Socialists who had left when Cliff took them in a Leninist direction, and drove a green 2CV with a “Nuclear Power: No Thanks” sticker on it. If they did think that, I’m pretty certain they were right on all counts; but they also accepted all her suggestions none of which, nearly 50 years later, I can remember).

A few days later I got a phone call at home from Meg.

[click to continue…]

My dad genuinely had no interest in music. Well, almost none – he did enjoy novelty songs from time to time, but not really for the music. Our friend Bob, who is otherwise quite sensible, used to try to convince him that listening to music would enhance his life. I had more sense (I did, briefly, join Bob’s campaign to get my dad to use a smartphone but, again, it was pointless).

So I never shared The Bar Steward Sons of Val Doonican with Tim. I discovered them about 3 months before he died. I believed he didn’t have long to live, and was unusually glum at a cross country meet my son was running in, just walking around for exercise, when spotify played The Cockwombling Song for me, following on from something else. I was puzzled for about 15 seconds before feeling sudden joy. They love what they are doing, and even on record their enthusiasm is utterly infectious. That fall I listened to them a lot, especially when I was feeling down. Songs I’ve never cared for – like, The Lady in Red, and Walking in Memphis have, in the hands of the Doonicans (as The Lady in Greggs, and Walking in Manpiss), became staple listening.

In my excitement I texted my friend Juliette who I knew would just love them: her response was to the effect of “Yeah, Harry, I know all about them, I’ve seen them live twice, they’re even better that way”. To which my thought was “well if you knew all about them, why didn’t you tell me?” [1]

So, I had to see them live. It was a very small venue (maybe 150 people, how the hell do the economics of that work?) and, indeed, they are even better that way. The couple behind me knew about them, but the couple next to me, and I’d guess up to half the audience, only knew them because they follow the venue and looked them up when they saw the listing. And then there are the real enthusiasts, wearing garishly coloured tank-tops (vests), and shouting “Al-an, Al-an” every time Scott mentioned that Alan had written a song. I was entranced.

After the show I had a nice chat with Scott, who said, I think falsely, that he has never written a political song, but that what is going on in the US has made him think perhaps he should.[2] I didn’t express an opinion, but actually I think it might be a good idea, only because I know he has the subtlety to glance a blow rather than fire a shot. The tearful moment of my initial hearing of The Cockwombling Song is the casual mention of the execrable Katy Hopkins, not as a cockwomble, but as an arsehole. It is simply… joyful, and I felt, actually, not so much gratitude as relief about being in a world in which people like the Doonicans do what they do.

And, in that moment, I thought about my dad, and knew it was pointless sharing it with him, but wished he appreciated music. Because if he did I knew it would have reduced him to tears of laughter.

2026 is their 20th birthday. See them live, if you can. If you don’t live in the UK: well, one of my favourite people has crossed an ocean to see Taylor Swift, and, marvelous as she (Swift, though my favourite person too, for that matter) is, I don’t see why you wouldn’t do the same to see the Doonicans.

[1] In fact, I’m glad she didn’t. That fall was bloody hard, and discovering the Doonicans just then made them even more special than they’d otherwise have been.

[2] They tell you not to meet your heroes. Still nonsense, in my experience.

My friend was bitten by a dog this summer. For British readers: being bitten by a dog elsewhere in the world isn’t merely painful, scary and shocking. It brings with it a real possibility of rabies. For non-British reader – really, I’m not making this up, there’s no rabies in the UK. My friend is here in Madison, and it was a drive-by bite, so he never saw the dog’s immunization papers, and can’t get it put down. He’s had to go through the course of preventative rabies therapy, and is clearly experiencing a certain level of trauma, not really wanting to go out in his neighbourhood. I suspect that, like me, he’ll now have a lifelong fear of dogs. Which, of course, may serve him well.

My experience being bitten by a dog was far more satisfying. The Miner’s Strike was half way through, and friends had organized a benefit concert with The Pogues in Camden that I planned to attend. Beforehand I decided to go up the shops to get something for dinner. As I walked up the road I noticed a bloke in a torn dirty old man mac gesticulating wildly to me from a distant phone box. I slowly twigged he was not alone in the box – he was accompanied by a 5-year old girl I recognized from the a house a few doors away, and a good-looking rather well dressed chap around my age. He seemed completely nuts.

[click to continue…]

I managed to time things perfectly – I had a conference in Manchester after day one of the Cheltenham festival, which our friend Bob hasn’t missed since 1953, so we all went to see the first day of Gloucestershire v Hampshire (starring Wisconsin’s own Ian Holland!) at Cheltenham, and I booked a rail ticket from there to Manchester Piccadilly (via Birmingham New Street, naturally) for late in the day. Dad always liked to leave a red ball match shortly after tea, so he and Bob left me to watch an additional hour of play before getting the train.

I wandered off with plenty of time to spare and, as I approached the station, had that sense of dread known to most who regularly use English railways. About 150 people milling around outside the station even as two busses, both clearly replacements, left the station forecourt, bade ill for my trip.
ON investigation, all services to New Street were cancelled indefinitely. We were told, definitively, that no more replacement busses could be found. God knows why I cared – to be honest I’d be as happy spending the night in Cheltenham as in Manchester – but there were a lot of disoriented and pissed off people milling around. I was chatting with a very distressed young woman (20ish) from Bath University who was hoping to reach Middlesborough (good luck) when, looking at the announcements board, an alternative occurred to me. And this is what I love about the English.

The young lad (I suppose he was in his mid-to-late 20s, but he looked 13 to me) who appeared to be in charge of the whole business was, let’s say, stoical, despite being besieged by hundreds of people many of whom were being quite rude to him, poor chap. I sidled up to him and said “So, there’s no trains to New Street this evening right? Probably a death on the line?”. He confirmed my worst fears. “But: trains are still running to Worcester Foregate?” – he assented. “And, presumably, we could all get the next train to Foregate street, change there, and get a train from there to Birmingham Moor Street, from where we could walk to New Street?” (It’s a very short walk). His eyes lit up: “Yes”, he said, “What a good idea! That would work brilliantly!”. Then his face fell, “But how would people know how to get from Moor Street to New Street?”. “Well”, I said, “The most absurd strategy would be to tell them to follow me since I know what I am doing. Or – they nearly all have phones, so could navigate themselves. Another option would be to send an employee to lead them across the city”. He chose the most absurd option.

And so it was that I led about 200 people onto the train to Worcester. Funnily enough, when we reached Worcester Shrub Hill the station staff seemed to know what was going on and told everybody to get off there rather than carry on to Foregate Street, presumably because it facilitated getting an earlier Birmingham train out.[1] By then I was kind of stuck with the 20 year old woman – she was using my portable battery to charge her phone (god she was anxious) and on the one hand I didn’t want to weird her out by talking to her much, on the other hand I didn’t want to lose my portable battery, which I was going to need. With us were a young man from Hull who I genuinely couldn’t understand, and had to pretend to be deaf every time he said anything to get him to repeat it, and a slightly more comprehensible young woman from Derby: I thought they were a couple – more on that in a minute. As we all approached Birmingham I worked out that Snow Hill is as close to New Street as Moor Street is, and I knew it was an easier station to exit; combined with the fact that we’d reach Snow Hill 3 minutes sooner than Moor Street I suggested to the whole train that we all exit there for the walk to New Street. Bold, because I’d never actually walked that particular route myself.

Everything worked out though, and I successfully led my couple of hundred passengers from Snow Hill to New Street, feeling triumphant.

Until we reached New Street.

[click to continue…]

One evening last week, having woken up earlier and, as usual, turned on the Jeremy Vine show (with guest host), I turned, again, to BBC Sounds to find… nothing. They’ve been threatening to turn it off for non-UK listeners for months, pretty much without explanation, and telling users that there is an exciting new and utterly inferior service in which you can just stream Radio 4 and the World Service live. I texted my friend to say it had finally happened, and she said “I know. I immediately deleted the app in anger. Rude”. In fact, it turns out that Radio 2 is available to stream, but this not communicated, let’s say, clearly.

Now to be clear: neither she nor I believe we are entitled to listen for free to radio funded by the UK taxpayer. Being able to listen to pretty much everything whenever I want to has been a huge benefit, for which I would pay a quite large subscription – I’d welcome the ability to do that. But: why have they chosen to withdraw the service rather than to introduce a subscription model? And, for that matter, why don’t they explain why they have withdrawn it and that streaming is still available?

The second question turns out to have an answer. I’ll include a long quote from James Cridland explaining this in detail below the fold. But here’s the short version: the reason they are turning it off is that they are afraid of having to pay worldwide music rights, and they are worried that explaining what they are doing will trigger them having to pay those rights in arrears. And because, in fact, they are continuing to stream the music stations they fear that telling people too clearly how to find them will count as marketing, and thus will trigger having to pay music rights for those streams.

But this leaves me with the first question. The music shows are great but they are essentially ephemeral — I wouldn’t pay a sub for them. By contrast the BBC has a massive archive of spoken word radio that, while intended to be ephemeral is in fact literature that will last forever. It broadcasts this archive on a station called Radio 4 Extra, and most of Radio 4 Extra is (in the UK — it used to be abroad as well) available on demand for a month or so afterwards. As Cridland explains, Radio 4 Extra will still be streamed, but with no catch up, and is not one of the two stations that the BBC makes available through its new (pretty terrible) app. That’s what I, and my friend, would pay our subscription for. And there can’t, surely, be rights issues for 95% of that produce – the BBC (in one of its two forms, see Cridland below) must have worldwide rights forever to obscure thrillers written by Francis Durbridge wannabes in August 1954, no? That output is not affected by the music rights problem (I assume), and could safely be put on catch up (Evidence: good news is that apparently catch up for Radio 4 will be re-introduced in a few weeks).

If anyone with insider knowledge can answer my first question please do, anonymously if necessary. And, any other comments welcome!

Here’s Cridland in full:

[click to continue…]

The latest podcast produced by the Center for Ethics and Education focuses on political disclosure in the classroom. I think a lot of CTers will find it interesting. Several students were interviewed, and they are quite insightful. For what it is worth, my view is that, in general, when teaching about controversial politically and morally-valenced issues it is usually pedagogically better for most of us not to disclose our substantive views about the issues we are trying to get the students to investigate (I can think of examples of people who do disclose where I think what they are doing is pedagogically superior to withholding in the way I do — Jerry Cohen springs to mind — but I think they are the exceptions). In the podcast my co-director Tony Laden expresses sensible disagreement. Well worth listening to, if I say so myself.

(By the way although I suggested the topic after discussing it with a couple of the students who are featured, as with all our podcasts I take no credit for its excellent quality (both in terms of production values and intellectual content), except in that I suggested to our program manager that she might make podcasts, having no idea quite how good she would turn out to be at doing it. A leading podcaster told me how excellent she thought one of them was, and then was horrified to find out just how much of a shoestring we have been operating on!)).

40 years ago today the Daily Mail carried a front page picture of police officers carrying me away from a Miners Strike rally in Whitehall. I mightn’t have known, but a friend of my sister’s told her, having recognized me, with glee, when her dad picked the paper up at the breakfast table. (I never found out what her Daily Mail-reading parents thought when their daughter squealed “That’s Harry”). There was another picture, more recognizable still, inside.

February 24th had been the final national demonstration of support for the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike. We all knew that, after almost a full year, the strike was about to end in a humiliating defeat. And so, more to the point, did the police officers, who had been given remarkable license to engage in thuggery in the mining communities, and had been very well paid for it. Our view at the time was that they knew that the fun would end, by and large, when the strike did, so the Feb 24th rally was a sort of last hurrah for them. The incident that had led to my arrest felt sinister at the time, but of course was unremarkable. Police officers had guided a (very) small section of the (huge) demonstration into a sort of alcove on Whitehall, and just gone for us, knocking people to the ground, pulling them around, kicking them, arresting whomever they felt like arresting (I was knocked down with a very impressive and deliberate body slam, hitting my head on the pavement with, presumably, no serious damage). The arrestees shared the van with the arresting officers. We were on the floor, and subject to regular kickings, while the police officers decided what to accuse each of us with, and who would be witness for whom (you needed two police witnesses for a conviction).[1] Indicating me, my arresting officer (a Londoner called Neil, with a Scottish last name I won’t mention for discretion’s sake) said “He was about to throw a glass bottle full of liquid with a lit rag in it. Who else saw that?”, and another officer volunteered to have ‘seen’ it.

Being processed in Bow Street Police Station was fine – no more physical violence – but being shut in a small, Victorian, cell, which was overheated, and having had no food or water for many hours, was actually quite unnerving. Still more unnerving was when another arrestee joined me, who might have been an actual violent criminal! (In fact, he was). I was released around 3 am, so couldn’t get public transport home, but knocked up my friend Adrian in Theobalds Road. I attended my philosophy of language tutorial with Mark Sainsbury as usual the next morning at 10 am.

At the trial, many months later, the two police officers told inconsistent lies which my solicitor frankly wasn’t smart enough to exploit. The three magistrates, though, knew perfectly well I hadn’t done what I was accused of, but convicted anyway (Adrian paid the fine on the spot, and my Great Uncle Dewi sent me a cheque for the amount, along with a card signed by the whole family telling me how proud they were of me). (For more, see the link about Adrian).

My dad knew a few senior Met officers from his time at ILEA, one of whom had recently observed to him after a phone conversation that his, my dad’s, home telephone was being tapped, (At ILEA he had liaised with the police around many issues, including the time that the National Front (overt Nazis) sued him for not allowing them to use school buildings for their meetings). Without my knowledge he complained to the Met, resulting in a visit to my lodgings by an internal investigation officer (I didn’t have a phone, so he just turned up out of the blue, without an appointment. Those were the days!). The officer was delightful and either believed me that I’d been mistreated or was a brilliant actor. Either way, he drew me to the sensible conclusion that nothing was to be done about it.

Last September I took an Uber from my home to the Madison airport.

[click to continue…]

I received the email about Sandy on early on Saturday morning in the middle of a five hour visit to the Emergency Room, at a point at which it was not clear everything was going to be ok (don’t worry, it was). Still, and although his friends have all been preparing themselves for this, it was devastating. I didn’t think I’d talk about it here. But, although The NYT obit is very straightforward and accurate, it misses something that everyone who knew him will wish it had mentioned.

Sandy was already an intellectual hero of mine when I met him at a Spencer Foundation Board retreat in 2007. It’s not just that he wrote the best philosophy paper about equality in education, which as a sociologist he had no right to do, but because I had started reading his work when I committed myself to doing empirically informed political philosophy, and realised immediately that he was a sort of mirror of what I wanted to be: a normatively committed and informed social scientist who would never allow his values to guide him to empirically convenient results. We had a two hour break on the first afternoon and Sandy, who had never seen (or, I am sure, heard of) me in his life casually asked if I was busy, and would I like to take a walk with him. I managed to overcome my awe, and, well, Sandy was totally brilliant, and its not that he didn’t know that, but he seemed to be able to find whatever was most interesting in whatever you said to him so that the gap between you was irrelevant to the matter at hand. He didn’t seem to care what you status was — he talked as enthusiastically and openly with college presidents, other scholars, students, staff people, receptionists, interns. He could, and did, put anyone at their ease. I quickly saw that he was either determined not to observe, or, quite possibly, completely oblivious to, the iniquitous status hierarchies in academia: his democratic outlook was entirely authentic to him. (Now, reading what that sentence, I realise it’s exactly what I might just as well have written about my dad).

I’m an intellectual outlier in the worlds I inhabited with Sandy. Usually if we were at a workshop, conference, or meeting together (and we often were) I was the only philosopher in a room full of social scientists. But over the years I gradually observed the vast informal network of scholars who were specifically indebted to Sandy for his seemingly-effortless but vast kindness and support. You meet people and gradually realise they are connected to Sandy and when you reveal that you know him too their faces light up and they tell you some story about him that is always delightful and different. The NYT obit doesn’t really capture this. To match his intellectual brilliance and reach is unachievable for most of us. But to leave this world so aptly loved by so many is something we could all aspire to.