My husband, Dick Wilson, who has died aged 87, from Alzheimer’s disease, was a polymath, linguist and politician. He used his extensive knowledge and skills, enhanced by kindness and unflinching commitment to social justice, to enrich his community wherever he lived.
In the 1970s Dick made a major contribution to local politics in our home town of Nottingham. From 1973 and 1977, he was leader of the newly Labour-controlled Nottinghamshire county council, bringing new ways of running county councils, establishing a political executive ratified by a formal committee structure, for instance, and introducing the post of chief executive as a complement to the political leadership. Nationally he made his mark as leader of the Labour group on the Association of County Councils. From 1977, until Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, he had too short a period as chairman of Nottingham Health Authority.
Dick was born in Carlisle to Tom Wilson, an electrician, and Margaret (nee Armstrong), a nurse. Carlisle grammar school was the springboard for his many intellectual achievements and for his love of lifelong learning. But as a Labour councillor in the 1960s on first Cumberland county council, then Carlisle city council, Dick was a major contributor to the policy of turning grammar schools into comprehensives. He was always passionate about comprehensive education; his father had had to turn down his own place because they couldnot afford the uniform.
A scholarship for modern languages took Dick to Queen’s College, Oxford, in the end for a theology degree before being ordained an Anglican priest and serving as a curate in Carlisle. Though only for a brief time. The Roman Catholic church proved to be his spiritual home, and he remained committed to it for the rest of his life. Languages, many of which he taught himself, were another lasting passion.
He and I married in 1969, having met through IVS, International Voluntary Service, and soon moved to Nottingham. It was to be always a marriage of equality.
In 1982, Dick began work for the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, at last a stable job. Eventually it took him to eastern Europe, as adviser to new bureaux being set up in Hungary and Lithuania, adding the languages of those countries to his long list. Dick’s love of learning continued, and in 2003 he gained an MA in philosophy of religion at King’s College London. When we settled in our final home near Cambridge in 2004, he served as tutor for a wide variety of subjects for the University of the Third Age in Cambridge.
Remaining committed to social justice and equality, recognised as amazingly knowledgable, he was also a man known for his kindness and jokes and remembered for his encouragement of young people and their learning.
Dick is survived by our children, Clare and Jon, four grandchildren, his sister, Dorothy, and me.
