Malcolm Dean obituary

The Guardian

5 days ago

Malcolm Dean's desk at the Guardian's offices in Farringdon Road, central London, was probably the greatest fire risk in the building. In a pre-internet age, when reports and press releases arrived in paper form, he kept mountainous stacks of material within easy reach, and somehow knew how to access what he wanted without causing an avalanche.
Malcolm, who has died aged 86, was the Guardian's social policy leader writer from 1972 until he retired in 2006. He needed all that information at his fingertips to maintain his understanding of policy and practice across a wide range of ministerial portfolios. On any day he might be required to write about health, education, social security, race relations, criminal justice, equal opportunities and much more besides.
I knew about his method because for many years my desk was next to his. He did not work in an ivory tower. He attended press conferences and read the reports, but he also used his colleagues as additional eyes and ears, interviewing us to build a rounded picture. The subject matter that he mastered might sometimes be dry, but he was invariably cheerful. His honesty, integrity and optimism worked as an inspiring antidote in a sometimes cynical world.
The knowledge and contacts that he developed writing leaders formed the basis for a more publicly visible role from 1979 when he became editor of Society, a newly established section of the paper that appeared on Wednesdays. He ran it for 21 years, writing himself and commissioning articles across the social policy field from practitioners as well as journalists.
It became required reading for everyone in leadership roles in the public sector and he took pride in the number of new campaigning organisations that the section helped to spawn. The section was a magnet for classified advertising of job vacancies from across the sector and it became a huge commercial success. Routinely it exceeded 100 pages and eventually at its peak it occasionally topped 200, dwarfing the paper itself.
Unusually for a journalist, Malcolm also had a foot in the boardroom. For seven years from 1994 he sat on the Scott Trust, the body that owned the Guardian and appointed its editor. Given Malcolm's ability to express himself with force and often at high volume, it is unlikely that other members remained unaware of his opinions.
On the paper his views were heard but not always heeded. Malcolm was a words man. He frequently bemoaned editors' decisions to give more space to pictures. For his taste there was too much reporting of showbiz and too little policy. His only half-joking slogan became: 'Dare to be dull!' Unsurprisingly, editors chose a different course.
Malcolm was born in Wilmslow, Cheshire. His father, Noel, was the village baker in nearby Alderley Edge. His mother Sarah (nee Black), known as Biddy, came from a farming family in Northern Ireland, but was brought up in Cheshire after the death of both parents.
After passing the 11-plus exam, Malcolm went to King's school, Macclesfield. At a careers conference there he met Edward Taylor Scott, the editor of what was then the Manchester Guardian, who lived in Wilmslow in an avenue where Malcolm delivered bread. He followed the great man's advice to join a local paper in the Kemsley Group, because it ran a good training scheme. After four years on the County Express, the Wilmslow weekly, he heard that the Kemsley chain had been taken over by Roy Thomson, Canada's biggest newspaper proprietor.
He wrote to Thomson suggesting exchanges between his Canadian and British papers. Within a month Malcolm was on a steamship bound for Canada, where he was sent to report in a remote gold mining town in the frozen north. His multiple adventures in the US and Caribbean included time playing for the Trinidad and Tobago international rugby team.
He returned to the UK after a spell working his way around Australia and south-east Asia. After two years studying politics and economics at Ruskin College, Oxford, he went to the US on a Harkness fellowship, and his time there included working as a speechwriter in Congress. He never took a degree because he thought he did not need one, and started at the Guardian in 1969. In professional terms it became the love of his life. He worked as a general reporter for three years before finding his niche among the leader writers.
Although the Guardian was the central feature of his career, he branched out several times into politics. In 1978-79, during the final year of the Callaghan government, he was special adviser to David Ennals, Labour's social services secretary.
Later, even more actively, he stood for the SDP/Liberal Alliance in parliamentary elections in 1983 and 1987. He nursed the Bath constituency and in the latter election came close to unseating Chris Patten, its Conservative MP, achieving one of the 10 biggest swings to the Alliance in a year when its leaders, David Owen and David Steel, were struggling to connect.
Malcolm's election agents during this period recalled his great political skill in uniting his constituency party, where Liberals were initially disgruntled about having an SDP candidate imposed. He was not the most brilliant public speaker, but he effectively undermined Patten's position as a moderate Conservative by hammering away at his Commons voting record in support of Thatcherite policies. Members of the local party, who started by fearing they had a policy egghead imposed on them, found him a clever and determined campaigner – buoyant, energetic and popular with the volunteers.
After losing in 1987 he decided not to run again. His family say he believed that he could have won the next time, but that he would have more influence as a Guardian leader writer than as a backbench MP. He loved the Bath constituency but did not enjoy bickering in the party at national level.
After retiring from the Guardian, he took up a two-year fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford (2006-08), where he wrote a book, Democracy Under Attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics (2011). He continued as a Guardian contributor and served on several national social policy working parties. He chaired a Joseph Rowntree Foundation commission on older people and was a founding trustee of the Young Foundation thinktank.
Retirement also gave him more time for his passion for walking. Among many expeditions, he did the Wainwright Walk three times, hiking from coast to coast across northern England. People usually start in the west, at St Bees in Cumbria, and head eastwards to Robin Hood's Bay in Yorkshire. For the second and third traverse Malcolm insisted on doing it from east to west. He said that way he would get to meet and talk to more people as they came towards him in the opposite direction.
After a short marriage to Lesley Pirie, a Russia expert, he married Clare Roskill, a social work specialist, in 1978. Clare went on to work for the government on social policy.
In 2019, Malcolm was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and five years later, after the disease became overpowering, he moved into a care home.
He is survived by Clare, their sons, Tim and Ben, and Sophie, the daughter of his first marriage.
James Malcolm Dean, journalist, born 11 June 1939; died 17 July 2025