Lionel Cliffe obituary

Lionel Cliffe co-edited the two-volume collection Socialism in Tanzania (1972), which remains a important reference source

In a little Tanzanian town earlier this year, a guy approached my old pal Lionel Cliffe, emeritus professor of politics at Leeds University. “You had been my instructor forty years ago,” he explained. This guy was a graduate of Dar es Salaam University, the place Lionel had taught in the heady post-independence years. This kind of an experience was not uncommon for Lionel, who has died aged 77. He is effectively remembered by his several college students, who consist of two African presidents and quite a few other politicians, activists and academics.

He was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, and educated at the city’s King Edward VII school and Nottingham University. A conscientious objector, he prevented nationwide support and instead worked for Oxfam in the late 1950s. In 1961 he went to Dar es Salaam to teach at Kivukoni adult training college. He also worked in Uganda and Kenya. Back in Dar es Salaam, he engaged vigorously in the university’s curriculum reform and in 1970 became the 1st director of the interdisciplinary advancement studies programme. He also wrote prolifically and co-edited the two-volume assortment Socialism in Tanzania (1972), which remains a key reference supply.

At the finish of 1971 he left Tanzania for brief spells in the US and Sweden, then settled in Rottingdean, East Sussex, in which he lived with his partner Doris, whom he married in 1981. With like-minded colleagues and close friends, he started the Overview of African Political Economic climate, setting the agenda for analysis on Africa for a generation. Missing Africa, he accepted a publish at the University of Zambia in 1975, but was falsely accused of fomenting student revolt against the government for its weakness on the matter of Southern African liberation. He was detained in a Lusaka jail and deported.

From 1978 he worked at Leeds University right up until his retirement in 2001 and gained worldwide recognition for his investigation. In 2002 the Royal African Society marked his job with the Distinguished Africanist award.

His and Doris’s residence in his beloved Sheffield was an open property for activists and academics from all more than the world. After their separation in 1988 (they divorced in 2006), he moved to a village close by, enjoying Friday nights with neighbours in the pub, organising trips to Test matches at Headingley and remaining undefeated in the yearly a hundred metres handicap dash along their lane. There, with his companion, Margaret, he created another open home.

He remained hugely active at Leeds, and continued to travel extensively, especially to Eritrea and South Africa. Lionel loved Doris’s children and later on Margaret’s as his personal, turning out to be a a lot-loved grandfather.

In August he was diagnosed with myeloma. Generally, he told his pals that “getting a ball and enjoying company has abruptly turn into a much higher priority. But the ‘face’ I want to see must be critical about the globe, not me.”

Margaret and his stepchildren survive him.

Lionel Cliffe obituary