My brother, Roy Gregory, who has died aged 80, was professor of politics at Reading University and a co-founder of its Centre for Ombudsman Studies.
Roy was born in Plaistow, east London, to George and Elsie Gregory. Our father was often unemployed during the 1930s and poverty was very much part of Roy’s early life. The second world war broke out when he was four and Elsie was determined to keep him with her in London rather than send him to the countryside as an evacuee.
His schooling was almost non-existent, yet Roy managed to gain a place at St Olave’s grammar school, in Bermondsey, south London, which whisked him away into a different world. He won an exhibition to Oxford, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics at Brasenose College and later focused on the history of the miners and British politics for his doctorate at Nuffield College. In 1964 Roy was appointed lecturer in the politics department at Reading, in 1976 becoming professor of politics, a post he held until retirement in 2000.
Roy never forgot his roots. His time at Oxford in the 1950s, when few students were from state schools, let alone from the East End, led to a passionate interest in social justice, a thread woven throughout his four books on the history of the miners and the Labour party, and later focused on the ombudsman. Together with some of his colleagues, he set up the Centre for Ombudsman Studies, which has since helped to train future ombudsmen throughout the world. His latest manuscript on the miners and the Heath government remains unfinished.
Roy was a Labour councillor in Reading in the 60s and one of the last aldermen in Britain. He was a member of the Labour party until he died.
In May 2003, Roy was struck by a sudden, serious and undiagnosed mental illness that was to rack his mind and body for the next 12 years. Those closest to him never gave up hope for his recovery.
Roy is survived by a daughter, Annie, her mother, Pasha, and me.
