My friend and mentor Les Jones, who has died aged 90, was an economics teacher at schools in Oxfordshire and Shropshire, but also had a side existence as an organic farmer during the 1980s and 90s.
In 1982 Les bought a 25-acre smallholding, The Hollows, in the Stiperstones hills in Shropshire, where – while still teaching – he raised sheep, goats, geese and chickens and grew organic courgettes, beans and potatoes. He was also involved in setting up Bishops Castle and South Shropshire Credit Union.
Although he loved working on the land, the smallholding sucked up a lot of Les’s money, and in 1996 he sold it to facilitate a move to the village of Cwmbelan in mid-Wales, where he looked after a smaller plot and an allotment while also teaching part-time at Coleg Harlech.
Les was born in Coedpoeth in north Wales, the youngest of the four children of Theresa (nee Davies), a housewife, and Llewellyn, a coalminer. After attending Grove Park county school for boys in Wrexham, he went to work as an engineering apprentice at Bersham Ironworks, where he developed the socialist beliefs that remained with him for the rest of his life. After studying locally with the Workers’ Education Association, he was offered a place at Ruskin College in Oxford, where he took a course in economics and politics.
In 1964 Les won a scholarship to study politics, philosophy and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he was taught by the historian AJP Taylor. Shortly after graduating in 1968 he began his career as an economics teacher, working over the years at three Oxfordshire schools – Chipping Norton grammar, Bicester school and John Mason school in Abingdon – as well as at Holsworthy school in Devon and Madeley Court school in Shropshire, where he taught me. He took early retirement in 1987, after which he worked part-time at Ludlow Sixth Form College until 1993.
He had his paintings exhibited in local galleries, remained a stalwart of the Labour party, and also became a Quaker.
An early marriage ended in divorce. In 2000 he married Eileen Laycock, a social worker whom he had met in 1988. Eileen died in 2011, and while the Covid lockdown was tough for Les, he continued to teach online, including by preparing students for their Oxbridge interviews. He lived on his own, and independently, until a fall led to a move to a care home shortly before his death.
