From The Times

May 6, 2009

Robin Guthrie: charity director and social campaigner

Robin Guthrie

Robin Guthrie was at the forefront of many of the profound changes in community development and charity work in the 1960s and 1970s. A reforming chief charity commissioner, he was prominent in the development of research into social problems of neighbourhoods, a pioneering writer on education and had a profound influence on the cultural scene in his adopted city of York.

Robin Guthrie was born near Cambridge just a few miles away from Peterhouse, where his father was Professor of Ancient Philosophy. He was educated at Clifton College in Bristol and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1958 to study classics after his National Service. There he came under the influence of the Christian social reformer Canon Eric James and decided that his skills would be best used on behalf of the poor and deprived.

Accordingly, he trained as a teacher and combined an exacting post in an inner-city comprehensive in Kennington, South London, with his position as head of Cambridge House, one of the university settlements which brought the skills and resources of the universities to the impoverished parts of Britain.

While teaching he wrote a revealing and influential series of articles for New Society about life on the education front line — a series which pioneered a new type of “insider” journalism. Guthrie also led a determined but unsuccessful campaign against the destruction of local communities brought about by the development of high-rise flats in South London.

It was during this time that he married Sally, a fellow settlement resident, before taking his young family to the new town of Peterborough where he was excited by the possibility of building a new community as social development officer. There he helped to create the Cresset social centre in a town then dominated by housing, factories and shopping centres.

He moved on to become assistant director of social work service at the Department of Health and Social Security, but found life as a civil servant frustrating and the daily commute from his home in the Cambridgeshire countryside tiresome. He was a lifelong Labour supporter, so the prospect of having to serve a Tory government in 1979 meant that he leapt at the opportunity when offered the directorship of the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust. He spent nine years at the York-based organisation, establishing it as the main independent social research body in Britain, and was the inspiration behind the creation of Hartrigg Oaks, the country’s first continuing care retirement community.

Despite his gentle manner and donnish demeanour, Guthrie could be vigorous and uncompromising when deflected from what he believed to be the right course of action. He often said that he judged every task that he undertook on whether it was “making a difference to the back streets and tower blocks of South London”. So it seemed an unlikely move when he took up the post of chief charity commissioner in 1988. But Guthrie believed that dragging this longestablished institution into the 20th century was essential to ensure that charities working on difficult social issues got the best possible service. In a whirlwind four years he moved operations to Liverpool and Taunton, introduced computers and reorganised the management structure.

Guthrie was not only devoted to the cause of the disadvantaged but also showed great personal kindnesses to the people he met. One of his first pupils at Kennington, with whom he was in touch till the end of life, said that Guthrie was the first person to show him any respect. Discovering a young boy in his York garden hiding from local bullies, Guthrie encouraged him to help to look after his garden and chicken coop, mentoring the lad at school and building up his self-esteem, to the point where he was able to embark on a successful army career.

In his last job, as director of economic and social affairs at the Council of Europe, Guthrie was mainly concerned with matters such as poverty and migration. But his combination of considerable charm and steely determination made him the right choice for the delicate task of overseeing the census in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in 1994, which had been the subject of a dispute with the EU member Greece.

But throughout this time he was having a profound impact on York — overseeing the transformation of St John’s College into a fully fledged university and setting up one of the first city museum trusts in the country.

Throughout his life Guthrie took a keen interest in music and the arts, sitting on regional and national arts bodies where he was instrumental in creating the National Centre for Early Music in an abandoned church inside York’s city walls.

His other abiding passion, apart from his family, was nature. He raised sheep in the substantial grounds of his Peterborough home and was only reluctantly persuaded that sheep rearing in the smaller garden of his house at York was not advisable, choosing instead to raise chickens.

He is survived by his wife, Sally, and two sons and a daughter.

Robin Guthrie, charity director and social campaigner, was born on June 27, 1937. He died of heart failure on April 12, 2009, aged 71