My friend Andrew Clark, who has died of leukaemia aged 77, was, in his own words, “a small boy grafted onto a privileged family tree”. He was the third of six children adopted by Zettie (nee Halliday), a nurse, and Arnold Clark, a wealthy glass merchant and pillar of the Baptist church. Born in Croydon, he grew up in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, in a strongly religious household, and became an Oxfam field director, a prominent Quaker in Britain and a passionate pacifist.
After boarding school at Leighton Park, in Reading, he studied social science at Birmingham University, and then community development at Manchester University. Andrew’s faith, constantly evolving, was the mainspring of his actions. He was aware of his privileged position and by his teens had decided to devote his life to others less fortunate. Adventurous and hungry for travel, he went as an aid worker to Biafra at the time of the Nigerian civil war and then to the newly independent Bangladesh, setting up relief and rehabilitation services for the Quakers.
Back in Britain for a brief respite, Andrew was told by his father: “I don’t mind what you do next as long as you don’t go to Vietnam.” A fortnight later the overseas director of Oxfam invited Andrew to work with the Buddhists there. He later said it was the best job he ever had.
In Vietnam he met Ann Noel Ewert, a volunteer nurse. They married two years later, in 1975, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and were immediately posted by Oxfam to the famine-struck Ogaden area of Ethiopia, where their honeymoon was a diet of goat stew in a small hotel in Kebri Dahar.
In 1976, the young couple, with their 10-week old baby, Joel, set off for India to create the Oxfam West Orissa programme with the development worker A V Swamy. Finding solutions to rural poverty became one of Andrew’s key skills, deepened by postgraduate study of agricultural engineering at Cranfield University in 1977. He conducted a review of Oxfam’s work across India, and lived happily with his family (completed by the arrival of his daughter, Zettie) among the locals in Damoh, central India.
He returned home in 1982, to take up the post of general secretary of Quaker Peace and Service (now Quaker Peace & Social Witness), leading the Quakers’ work in projects and action for peace and justice. He moved into Chipko, a house spectacularly located on the Chiltern escarpment that he designed to be sustainably powered by wood logged from his land. From now on, Andrew’s need for physical activity was satisfied by a chainsaw, a quad bike and a wood-burning stove.
Andrew ran Quaker Peace and Service for 17 years until 1999. He then led the International Association for Religious Freedom until 2006, and after retiring became chairman of Anti-Slavery International, for which he was a tireless fundraiser.
Andrew’s love of Chipko was shared by his children, and he and Ann Noel lived there to the end of his life, with Zettie and her family helping him write his memoirs.
He is survived by Ann Noel, Joel and Zettie, and six grandchildren.
