My friend Neil Davidson, who has died aged 62 of a brain tumour, was a leading Scottish intellectual of the radical left.
The author of seven books on Marxist topics as well as many academic papers and articles for socialist publications, his major work was How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (2012), in which he explored the reasons for the emergence of capitalism. He also wrote The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000) and Discovering the Scottish Revolution, 1692-1746 (2003), the latter winning him the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher prize.
Born in Aberdeen, Neil was the son of Margaret (nee Sarquher), a secretary, and her husband, Dougie, a radiographer. On leaving Aberdeen grammar school he worked as a clerk for the Grampian health board in Aberdeen, but after passing the civil service exam in 1987 he made a move to work for the Scottish Office. He continued to work in the Scottish civil service following the shift to the Scottish parliament in 1999, rising to become policy adviser to the first minister and finance minister.
Neil was, though, leading a double life: while diligently carrying out the role of the dispassionate civil servant he was also an active socialist, having joined the Socialist Workers party in 1978.
He began to get up early to do his writing, and by the mid-2000s, with his part-time intellectual work gaining traction, decided to leave the civil service to take up a position as a senior research fellow at Strathclyde University, subsequently moving to become a lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, where he remained for the rest of his life.
In the early 1990s he was a founder of the Edinburgh Campaign Against War in Europe, which protested about Nato actions during the Balkans conflict, and in 2013, having left the SWP, he helped to create the breakaway rs21 political group. He was also involved in Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism (RISE), a left-wing alliance in favour of Scottish independence. A fine speaker, he was received appreciatively at conferences around the world, although some international audiences – and many English ones too – found his Aberdonian twang challenging.
He was a passionate man, full of life, fond of food (from kebabs to korma), beer, whisky, wine and raucous conversation. He was also wickedly funny, with wide interests in history, literature, art and film, his tastes running from high modernism to detective fiction and horror.
Most of all, Neil was a passionate socialist, both erudite and militant. His energy was immense: he was always writing, speaking and organising, and he was continually involved in the next project to revive socialism from below, convinced of immediate possibilities.
He is survived by his partner, Cathy Watkins, his mother, and his sister, Shona.
