My friend, former colleague and mentor Gerry Abbott, who has died aged 84, was a teacher, a British Council officer and for many years a lecturer at the University of Manchester in teaching English overseas. He was committed to international development and the role of education in it.
Gerry was a proud cockney, born within the sound of Bow bells in the East End of London, the son of Isobel (nee Mudd) and Reg Abbott. When Gerry was born his father was working as a bank messenger in the City, though he was soon to be made redundant, and his mother had just given up her job working in a shop.
After the outbreak of the second world war, the family moved to Guildford, Surrey. Gerry attended Stoughton primary school and the Royal grammar school. After national service he completed an English degree at University College London, and then a training course in teaching English as a foreign language at the nearby Institute of Education, a choice that would decisively shape his future professional life.
His first overseas posting was in Bangkok, where he taught for four years, before serving as the British Council’s education officer in Amman, Jordan.
In 1965 Gerry was appointed to the lectureship at Manchester. Although he remained an influential member of the education department until he retired in 1992, the university’s flexibility allowed him to take on overseas postings at Makerere University in Uganda, for Unesco in Yemen, as well as British Council-funded projects in Sabah, Sarawak and, finally, Burma, from which he was dramatically airlifted during the civil unrest of 1988.
Permeating Gerry’s work was a strong sense of social justice. He described himself as a socialist and humanist, and these two perspectives informed his work and his personal life. This was at the root of his commitment to working in contexts where accessibility to education for many was limited. It also applied to his views on education and teacher education in this country, about which he was becoming increasingly disillusioned.
Gerry’s significant contribution to the field of language education was recognised after his retirement by the award of a PhD by publication. He wrote poetry, three books about Burma, including one with his second wife, Khin Thant Han, a novel, It is Not Written (2013), also set in Burma, and an autobiography, From Bow to Burma (2017).
He is survived by Thant, by three children, Sharon, Becky and Simon, from his first marriage, to Celia Baystone, which ended in divorce, and by six grandchildren.
