GW66
Obituary:
Teddy Goldsmith
1928 - 2009
Edward ‘Teddy’
Goldsmith, who died in August aged 80, was hugely
influential: a life member, activist and major
donor. He was the founder of the Ecologist magazine
and the single most influential thinker in the
early days of the Green Party.
David
Taylor remembers him.
The last time I saw Teddy was back in 2004 during
the run-up to the European Elections. I’d gone up
to London to see if he’d contribute to our campaign
here in the south west. What stayed with me after I
left was the way he said farewell. He shook my hand
and then, with the touch of an old fashioned
‘gentleman’, placed his left hand on top of our two
held hands, and looked into my eyes. I remember the
intimacy of that look. I knew it might be the last
time I saw him and it was a gesture of remarkable
warmth.
I first heard of Teddy in a Sunday magazine back in 1972. He was featured in a story about a group, including Jeremy Faull -the party’s first-ever county councillor- who’d bought land in Withiel, Cornwall to create a self-sufficient community living close to the land. Some years later, quite coincidentally, I found myself living in the same valley, with Teddy as my neighbour, and enjoying his treasure trove of a library.
Teddy has often been labelled the founder of the Green Party, formerly called PEOPLE; but that distinction strictly speaking belongs to our own original Gang of Four:- Mike Benfield, Freda Sanders, Tony and Lesley Whittaker who decided to start the party on December 12th 1972. But in another way Teddy was, as he was the party’s ‘intellectual founder’. His radical thinking underpinned the need for a new politics.
Back in 1972 when the Gang of Four were setting up PEOPLE, Teddy was organising the Movement for Survival; attempting, in a way similar to Real World in the 90s, to bring the different elements of the environmental movement together in a political alliance. Only when that failed did he link up with PEOPLE’s founders.
It was Dennis Nightingale-Smith who introduced Teddy to PEOPLE, at his house in Malvern Hills, when he heard that they had adopted Teddy’s ‘Blueprint for Survival’ as policy. Blueprint’s impact, with its analysis of ecological limits, can hardly be underestimated. It sold three quarters of a million copies in seventeen languages, was debated in Parliament, and led directly to the creation of the modern green movement. It also led PEOPLE to invite Teddy to write the first Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. Sadly it was not to be. Like Marx with the Communist Manifesto, Teddy had difficulty meeting deadlines.
In 1974 Teddy stood as a PEOPLE candidate in the General Election of that year in Eye, Suffolk, which included part of his father’s old constituency, Stowmarket. Using a camel to highlight the soil erosion caused by intensive agriculture, and a closely written 3000 word election address, he lost his deposit with style. In 1975 it was Teddy who proposed that the party should change its name from PEOPLE to the Ecology Party to reflect the centrality of political ecology to green thinking.
Teddy always championed the dispossessed. He started out as an anthropologist and subsequently helped found Survival International with Robin Hanbury Tennison. He was the author of dozens of seminal books including Blueprint for Survival (1971), Can Britain Survive (1972), The Stable Society (1978), The Social and Environmental Effect of Large Dams (1984), The Great U-turn: De-industrialising Society (1988), Gaia and Evolution (1990), 5000 Days to Save the Planet (1990), The Way: An Ecological Worldview (1992), The Case Against the Global Economy (1996).
In the ‘90s, through the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG) which he founded with Jerry Mander, he continued his devastating critique of growth led globalisation with relentless attacks on the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 1991 he won the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, and the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. In 1997 he was cited for ‘Best Ecological Politics Book of the Year’ by the American Political Science Association for ‘The Case Against the Global Economy, and for a Turn Toward the Local’.
In 2007 the IFG hosted the first Edward Goldsmith Lifetime Achievement Award and appropriately Teddy himself was the first recipient. On many of the issues he wrote about - rainforest destruction, dams, indigenous peoples, cultural preservation, agribusiness and globalisation - Teddy has been proved prophetic, and usually decades ahead.
In many ways Teddy was a controversial figure, challenging orthodoxies wherever he found them, and he had small ‘c’ conservative views on social issues such as leaders, population and immigration, and women in the home. For Teddy the best model for a stable society, which he saw as a necessary adjunct of a steady state economy, was often the traditional one. This caused ructions with many in the Green Party and led to the loss of one Ecologist editor, Nick Hildyard, now of the Corner House.
Former Green Party Executive Chair, Jonathon Porritt said: “Teddy was the first person who articulated the essence of sustainability in a complete and uncompromising way. He was never worried about realistic possibilities. His mission was to have it all. Not always the most accommodating, but he was at his best applying scientific rigour to a problem.”
It is an understatement to say that Teddy was influential. He was a force of nature and of vision. He will be remembered as the single most influential person in the evolution of ecological political thought. And if that wasn’t enough he was also great fun – always provocative but with a sense of mischief; and compassionate, witty, exuberant, humble and generous. He will be missed.
When the roll of honour of those early Green pioneers is called out Teddy’s name will be amongst the most prominent. He was a truly inspirational figure and his thinking on eco-systems and sustainability underpins the rationale behind our politics. Teddy is survived by his wife Kathy, and his children Alexander, Dido, Clio, Benedict and Zeno.
David Taylor is a former Principal Speaker of the Green Party
I first heard of Teddy in a Sunday magazine back in 1972. He was featured in a story about a group, including Jeremy Faull -the party’s first-ever county councillor- who’d bought land in Withiel, Cornwall to create a self-sufficient community living close to the land. Some years later, quite coincidentally, I found myself living in the same valley, with Teddy as my neighbour, and enjoying his treasure trove of a library.
Teddy has often been labelled the founder of the Green Party, formerly called PEOPLE; but that distinction strictly speaking belongs to our own original Gang of Four:- Mike Benfield, Freda Sanders, Tony and Lesley Whittaker who decided to start the party on December 12th 1972. But in another way Teddy was, as he was the party’s ‘intellectual founder’. His radical thinking underpinned the need for a new politics.
Back in 1972 when the Gang of Four were setting up PEOPLE, Teddy was organising the Movement for Survival; attempting, in a way similar to Real World in the 90s, to bring the different elements of the environmental movement together in a political alliance. Only when that failed did he link up with PEOPLE’s founders.
It was Dennis Nightingale-Smith who introduced Teddy to PEOPLE, at his house in Malvern Hills, when he heard that they had adopted Teddy’s ‘Blueprint for Survival’ as policy. Blueprint’s impact, with its analysis of ecological limits, can hardly be underestimated. It sold three quarters of a million copies in seventeen languages, was debated in Parliament, and led directly to the creation of the modern green movement. It also led PEOPLE to invite Teddy to write the first Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. Sadly it was not to be. Like Marx with the Communist Manifesto, Teddy had difficulty meeting deadlines.
In 1974 Teddy stood as a PEOPLE candidate in the General Election of that year in Eye, Suffolk, which included part of his father’s old constituency, Stowmarket. Using a camel to highlight the soil erosion caused by intensive agriculture, and a closely written 3000 word election address, he lost his deposit with style. In 1975 it was Teddy who proposed that the party should change its name from PEOPLE to the Ecology Party to reflect the centrality of political ecology to green thinking.
Teddy always championed the dispossessed. He started out as an anthropologist and subsequently helped found Survival International with Robin Hanbury Tennison. He was the author of dozens of seminal books including Blueprint for Survival (1971), Can Britain Survive (1972), The Stable Society (1978), The Social and Environmental Effect of Large Dams (1984), The Great U-turn: De-industrialising Society (1988), Gaia and Evolution (1990), 5000 Days to Save the Planet (1990), The Way: An Ecological Worldview (1992), The Case Against the Global Economy (1996).
In the ‘90s, through the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG) which he founded with Jerry Mander, he continued his devastating critique of growth led globalisation with relentless attacks on the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 1991 he won the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, and the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. In 1997 he was cited for ‘Best Ecological Politics Book of the Year’ by the American Political Science Association for ‘The Case Against the Global Economy, and for a Turn Toward the Local’.
In 2007 the IFG hosted the first Edward Goldsmith Lifetime Achievement Award and appropriately Teddy himself was the first recipient. On many of the issues he wrote about - rainforest destruction, dams, indigenous peoples, cultural preservation, agribusiness and globalisation - Teddy has been proved prophetic, and usually decades ahead.
In many ways Teddy was a controversial figure, challenging orthodoxies wherever he found them, and he had small ‘c’ conservative views on social issues such as leaders, population and immigration, and women in the home. For Teddy the best model for a stable society, which he saw as a necessary adjunct of a steady state economy, was often the traditional one. This caused ructions with many in the Green Party and led to the loss of one Ecologist editor, Nick Hildyard, now of the Corner House.
Former Green Party Executive Chair, Jonathon Porritt said: “Teddy was the first person who articulated the essence of sustainability in a complete and uncompromising way. He was never worried about realistic possibilities. His mission was to have it all. Not always the most accommodating, but he was at his best applying scientific rigour to a problem.”
It is an understatement to say that Teddy was influential. He was a force of nature and of vision. He will be remembered as the single most influential person in the evolution of ecological political thought. And if that wasn’t enough he was also great fun – always provocative but with a sense of mischief; and compassionate, witty, exuberant, humble and generous. He will be missed.
When the roll of honour of those early Green pioneers is called out Teddy’s name will be amongst the most prominent. He was a truly inspirational figure and his thinking on eco-systems and sustainability underpins the rationale behind our politics. Teddy is survived by his wife Kathy, and his children Alexander, Dido, Clio, Benedict and Zeno.
David Taylor is a former Principal Speaker of the Green Party
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