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11 August 2009: Peter Townsend: Wyvern Extract
Wyvern Extract
Peter Townsend was one of the two founding Professors appointed by the Vice Chancellor Albert Sloman to lead the new University of Essex in 1964 ( Sloman’s vision of the new university was given in the previous year’s Reith Lectures for the BBC entitled A University in the Making (1963). His key task was to establish the new sociology department – and this at a time when sociology was entering an exciting stage in its own history - experiencing rapid growth and offering much hope for understanding the rapidly changing nature of society. He was Professor of Sociology between 1963 and 1981 (when he left for Bristol (1982-1993). During this time, he chaired the department for seven years and became Pro Vice Chancellor (1975-8) – establishing the role of pro vice chancellor social, a role that has subsequently cased. He had a passion for student welfare, and was a key figure of dialogue between staff, administration and students during the in the early years of the much publicised student troubles. He became a Doctor of the University in 1993 - and has subsequently received at least eight similar distinctions from other universities around the world. In his later years, after his retirement from Bristol, he returned to the London School of Economics where he was involved in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and running its MA course.
Peter had a wide ranging vision of sociology – displayed in the wide ranging appointments he made to sociology in fields such as mathematics, social history, philosophy and social psychology. He also taught widely: for example, he included slavery in his introductory social policy course. With Dennis Marsden and Adrian Sinfield, he later pioneered a major course in M.A. Social Service Planning. But all the time he was helping to establish a new university and out it on the map, he was also researching, writing, campaigning, and establishing pressure groups. His activities are breathtaking.
At the heart of his work was a humanist socialism, a hatred of inequality and a passion and plea for both redistribution and the recognition of devalued and stigmatized groups . His work spanned the life cycle – from child poverty and children’s rights through the vagaries of adult life to the pains and deprivations of the elderly. Peter always brought a first rate critical sociological mind to everything he did – but he also always wanted to take it further into the practical affairs of the world. He saw social structures – not people- as lying at the heart of universal inequalities of all kinds. But his passion indeed was for the real living and struggling people who suffered the difficulties of unequal lives – specially the poor, the disabled, the children and the aged. His early work had a focus primarily on the UK and can be found in such studies as The Last Refuge (1962) and The Family Life of Old People (1963) and The Poor and the Poorest (1965); work in his later years became more international ( in books like The International Analysis of Poverty (1993), and World Poverty (2002). He was a prolific writer - producing hundreds and hundreds of pieces over the years, but probably towering over them all was his magisterial Poverty in the UK - published in 1979, a little before he left Essex. This alone must bequeath his name to history – now as part of the history of Britain’s great poverty studies. Future generations will have to study Booth, Rowntree and Townsend to see how measurements and levels of poverty changed over a century. He turned the idea of relative poverty into an idea that is now almost universally accepted.
He was always driven by a concern with action and policy – he was not an ivory tower academic. In his earlier years he was active in the Fabian Society. He was founder member and chair of the Child Poverty Action Group in 1965 (becoming Life President in 1989) and the Disabilty Alliance in 1973. He served on many sub committees of the Labour Party – both in and out of office.
In his later years he worked with UNSEC, WHO, ILO and the United Nations.
Peter last visited Essex in 2004 to present a paper on the early history of the department, and this is available online. His life and work was a testament to pragmatism, equality and the decent treatment of all people. He left a massive legacy behind him – in so many ways, he made the world we live in a better place to be.