My father, John Andrews, who has died aged 77, was a college lecturer in trade union studies, a dedicated parish councillor and a local historian.
He spent most of his career, until 1996, at the Oxford College of Further Education, where he taught shop stewards and health and safety representatives, helping others change the lives of working people for the better. He knew how important good health and safety was, having worked while a student on a brewer’s dray and in a jam factory.
In the course of this teaching, he probably visited every hospital, prison and mental health institution in Oxfordshire, along with the Morris car plant. His work also affected the lives of Mauritian textile workers, as one of his students was a labour officer in Mauritius. However, what was most important for him was when his courses gave trade unionists the chances they had never had before, to learn and to change their own lives.
The son of Winnie (nee Neate) and Vic Andrews, John was born in Caversham, near Reading, to where his mother had been evacuated from south London during the second world war. His father, an amateur cycling champion and later an active trade unionist, was then serving as a fireman with the London Auxiliary Fire Service. Like many of his generation in the postwar years, John grappled with being working class in a grammar school system that expected pupils to have completely different experiences, motivations and aspirations.
His family of five lived in a three-room flat without running hot water. A new landlord successfully employed aggressive “Rachman” techniques to force them out. His background and experiences made John a lifelong socialist, trade unionist and active member of the Labour party. For him, class was the key factor in the shaping of society.
After studying politics at Leicester University, my father taught in primary schools in Lewisham, London. A placement during teacher training in Leicester led him to switch to adult education. He began by teaching sociology at Plymouth College, in Devon, then moved to Dunstable College, Bedfordshire, and the OCFE.
In 1969 he married Jill Redrup and for many years they lived in the Oxfordshire village of Great Haseley. On his retirement in 2010, John became more involved in the life of the village, fighting to keep the local bus service, and working on the village plan.
John wrote throughout his life, starting with pieces for specialist athletics magazines, having inherited a love of cycling and sport from his father. His later writing (as a member of the village history group) attempted to explain the history of working people in Great Haseley. His article on the handwritten magazines produced by Dorothy, daughter of Haseley’s reforming 19th-century rector Canon Henry John Ellison, was published in the journal Oxfordshire Local History in 2020. Copies of a biography of James Worledge (2016, which John co-wrote with his brother Peter) are held by the national libraries of Scotland and Poland.
He is survived by Jill, me, and two granddaughters, Anne and Helen.
