The Oxford department that AH Halsey headed at Barnett House for 28 years trained graduate social work and probation students. His role as an activist ran through what it did: his view of sociology was always a broad one, encompassing social and community work at the applied end.
After his appointment as research adviser to Tony Crosland in 1965, he and Michael Young campaigned hard to get a government response to the Plowden report on primary education, and to launch pilot action-research projects in educational priority areas. The result was a national programme run directly by the Oxford department, with Margaret Thatcher, a later education secretary, keen to meet “Dr Halsey” to learn the results for her 1972 white paper. He took a similar role in launching the Home Office community development projects in the wake of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech.
In the late 1960s Halsey encouraged the OECD in Paris to focus more on educational policy rather than manpower training, personally securing substantial funding from the Ford Foundation and Japanese government for a new OECD centre, which he chaired for many years. He travelled Britain speaking to groups as part of his commitment to adult and community education. Nearer to home he established a local community project on the Barton estate in Oxford, which ran for many years under Barnett House auspices. His ability to engage many different audiences without using any notes or aids made him a very formidable and effective operator – within academia, the civil service, international organisations and local groups.
