My friend Tony Flower, who has died aged 71 of cancer, was a social entrepreneur and writer, and a maker of musical instruments, models and charities.
For 20 years he worked with Michael Young (Lord Young of Dartington) at the research organisation the Institute for Community Studies, helping Young create and develop some of the organisations that made him the most prolific social entrepreneur of the 20th century. Tony was deputy director of the ICS – where I was a fellow trustee – from 1994 to 1996 and chair from 2001 to 2005 (before and after Young’s death), and he then chaired the renamed Young Foundation until 2007.
Tony played an important role in more than 30 organisations, where his contributions included writing constitutions and funding applications, helping recruit (and retain) staff and, often, chairing the trustees. He was co-founder and general secretary (1982-88) of the Tawney Society, the thinktank behind the SDP; a consultant with the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, for a decade from 1993; and a trustee and chair of trustees for Education Extra, the foundation for after-school activities. The most unlikely organisation with which he was involved was the Argo Venture, dedicated to intergalactic colonisation, where he was co-ordinator from 1984 to 2002.
Tony was born in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, the son of Frank, a Hurricane pilot in the second world war and later a civil servant working on aircraft development, and Dorothy (nee Williams), a postmistress. He attended Chipping Sodbury grammar school, followed by the universities of Exeter (for a BA in philosophy and sociology and an MA in sociology) and Leicester (for a PhD in mass communication), and worked initially as a graphic designer.
In 1981 he met Young, who had invited him for lunch to discuss setting up the Tawney Society, and quickly became his right-hand man. From then on until his retirement, whether working for Young or independently, Tony was based at the ICS’s late 17th-century headquarters in Bethnal Green, east London. He was a benign and cheerful presence at the heart of the office. Young said of him in 1996: “You have so many qualities I admire – humour, braininess, good judgment (a priceless asset, and so rare, in our sort of field anyway), unflappability, capacity to get on with all sorts of people, an inner confidence which draws people to you … excellent writing [and] perseverance.”
Tony’s special talent was an extraordinary ability for getting on with people. He claimed to be interested in everything – except football.
He lived in an old house in Stepney, filled with objects he had picked up or made himself and with an ancient bubble car sitting immobile in the front room. After he retired, he and his huge collection (minus the bubble car) moved to a small Tudor house in Faversham.
In his last years Tony suffered from cancer and the loss of his sight, which was frustrating for somebody who was always making small, delicate things, but he remained resourceful and stoical.
He is survived by his sister, Carol, brother, John, and nephews, Matthew and James.
