My friend David Peschek, who has died aged 82, had a passion for local government that led him to participate as a councillor, study it as an academic, and write about it as a journalist.
David and his brother, James, were the children of David, an electrical engineer of Czech (then Austro-Hungarian) descent, and his wife, Dorothy, a postmistress from Halling, Kent. Both boys gained music scholarships to King’s school, Canterbury. Music was David’s first love, but he turned down a place at the Guildhall School of Music – “I don’t think I would have made a very good oboe player,” he once said – although James went on to become head of music at Uppingham school.
David had a few false starts in teacher training, insurance and working for a toffee manufacturer, but national service had a profound effect. Being billeted with men from backgrounds so illiterate he had to write their letters for them helped shape his moderate Labour views. He was also an enthusiast for Europe long before Britain’s entry to the Common Market.
Working in Kent county council’s clerk’s department, David attended meetings of the Herbert commission, set up in 1957 to examine local government in London. This fired his interest and he became a junior member of the London School of Economics’ influential Greater London Group. He was proud to be the only member of the LSE senior common room who did not have a degree, having gained a qualification at night school. He also wrote a highly readable short volume, Policy and Politics in Secondary Education (1966), and served as a Labour councillor on Maidstone borough council.
Wanting from boyhood to be a journalist, he freelanced for four years for the then ground-breaking New Society, and for the Local Government Chronicle, to which he contributed, latterly as political editor, for more than 20 years.
In 1968 he joined the Association of Municipal Corporations (later the Association of Metropolitan Authorities) as editor of Municipal Review, transforming an in-house magazine into a respected monthly, read outside the confines of its sponsor. His hobby horse was the role of the elected member at a time when councillors had far more power than they have today. This led to a long affiliation with the Association of Councillors. During these years, too, he held a Leverhulme fellowship to study the politics of reorganisation.
In 1980 David left the magazine to create Logis, a consultancy that advised local government on the need and means to improve its image and communication with residents.
Until 2013, when David and his second wife, Shelagh, moved to a Somerset village, they had lived for more than 46 years in a large rambling house in Staplehurst, Kent, where they fought for space with their books and David’s mountainous archive of cuttings. He loved political gossip and debate and would happily argue the opposite of what he believed for the sake of a good argument.
He is survived by Shelagh and their son, David; by Susan, the daughter of his first marriage, which ended in divorce; by two grandchildren; and by James.
