Fairley John

John Fairley

 

Born in Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, John was an outstanding pupil at the nearby Lenzie primary and Lenzie academy. He studied politics at Edinburgh University, where he joined the Communist Party, graduating from university in 1975.

 

He then lectured at London Metropolitan University. During the 1980s, he worked for the Greater London Council promoting the importance of high-quality skills training and apprenticeships. Fairley returned to Scotland in 1986 and worked in economic development at the City of Edinburgh council.

 

Around this period, he left the Communist Party and, having no formal political affiliation, his network of spanned party political boundaries. He was a founder and regular correspondent of Radical Scotland, a publication aimed at “recasting the country's conventional thinking on social and economic policy”.

 

John Fairley held professorships at three Scottish universities. He was a highly regarded teacher, thinker and writer on social and economic policy in Scotland. Fairley died suddenly, aged 57, in 2010.

 

Source: Guardian 9th December 2010