Dipak Nandy

Dipak Nandy (born 21 May 1936) is an Indian Marxist and academic.

He founded (and was the first director of) the Runnymede Trust. Hugo Young described him in 1975 as a highly intelligent academic, administrator and politician with whom he discussed the prospects of Roy Jenkins.[1]

Career in race relations

He was Chairman of the Leicester Campaign for Racial Equality from 1964 to 1967 and participated in sit-ins at the Admiral Nelson pub, which at that time operated a colour bar.[2] He was Director of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination Summer Projects in 1966 and 1967; a member of the Information Panel of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants; and Secretary of Equal Rights. He left academia in 1968 to set up and run the Runnymede Trust of which he was the founder-Director 1968-1973. He was a member of the BBC's Immigrants Advisory Committee and the Council of the Institute of Race Relations.[3]

After a brief 'educational' break at Social and Community Planning Research 1973-74, he was recruited to act as a Special Consultant by the Home Office, to work on the Sex Discrimination Bill 1975, before part drafting the Race Relations Bill 1976.

In 1976, he went up to Manchester, where the Equal Opportunities Commission had been located, and remained its Deputy Director and chief policymaker for the next 10 years, 1976–86, where, among other work, he was intimately involved in driving through the Government's policy on taxation (The Taxation of Husband and Wife, by pressing for achieving in equalising the State Pension ages of men and women, and successfully briefed Liberal and Labour MPs and peers to redraft the Government's proposed amendment to the Equal Pay Act 1970.

In 1979 he began to forge a link with the Directorate-General V of the European Commission, and organised a representative conference on issues remaining in the progress towards equal treatment of women throughout the 9 members of the European Commission in 1981, and acted as the Conference Secretary.

He had always had a detailed personal interest in broadcasting as 'the way a society talks to itself', and served as the Chairman of the BBC's Immigrant Programme 1983-88 and as a member of its General Council 1983-90. He was appointed a member of the Committee of Inquiry into the Future of Broadcasting (chairman: Lord Annan), 1974–77, which created Channel 4 instead of the widely expected ITV2, and successfully lobbied through the Committee's report for a unified Broadcasting Complaints Commission.[4]

Personal life

Born in Calcutta, India, in a Bengali Family on 21 May 1936, he was schooled at St. Xavier's College, where he won the Tagore Gold Medal for English Essay.

He arrived in Britain in March 1956 and, after working on the night shift of Cadbury Schweppes, he was offered a place in the English Literature Department at the University of Leeds. He has always maintained that Leeds, in the 1950s, was in range, variety and intellectual heft the most exciting place to be.

At the beginning of his final year (1960), he met Margaret Gracie, whom he dated from 1960 to 1964. In 1964, after finishing, he married her when he was a lecturer at Leicester University. He was described on his arrival at Leicester as "a coloured communist" by his colleague Monica Jones.[5] He separated from Margaret in 1971.[6]

In 1972 he married his second wife Louise Byers,[7] (daughter of the late Lord Byers, Leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords for 19 years), and their youngest daughter, Lisa Nandy was born in 1979. She became a Labour MP in 2010 and, according to her, he thinks she is right wing.[8]

Publications

  • Nandy, Dipak (January 1962). "Ancient Indian Materialism". Marxism Today. [9]
  • —— (January 1963). "How Not to Write History". Marxism Today. [10]
  • —— (1965). Order, empiricism and politics. Philosophical Books.
  • —— (September 1965). "Who Is the Leper Now?". The Labour Monthly. [11]
  • —— (1965). The English mind. Philosophical Books.
  • —— (June 1966). "Immigrants at Work". The Labour Monthly. [12]
  • —— (1968). How to Calculate Immigration Statistics. Runnymede Trust.
  • —— (1968). Race and Community. ISBN 0950009806.
  • —— (July 1968). "La société britannique face aux immigrants de couleur". Le Monde diplomatique. [13]
  • —— (1970). How to calculate immigration statistics. Runnymede Trust.
  • Nandy, Dipak; Holman, Bob; Lambert, John (1972). Race in the inner city. Runnymede Trust.
  • Nandy, Dipak (1982). "Introduction". In Jefferson, Douglas; Martin, Graham. The Uses of Fiction: Essays on the Modern Novel in Honour of Arnold Kettle. Open University Press. pp. 1–8. ISBN 033510181X.
  • —— (30 May 1986). "Famine---who runs the world?". New Statesman. [14]
  • Nandy, Dipak (1988). "Arnold Kettle and English Marxist Literary Criticism". Literature and Liberation: Selected Essays. By Kettle, Arnold. Martin, Graham; Owens, W.R., eds. Manchester University Press. pp. 1–17. ISBN 0719025419.
  • —— (1988). Sir Peter Medawar O.M., C.H., C.B.E., F.R.S. 1915–1987. A Personal Memoir. Runnymede Trust. ISBN 0902397745.

Filmography

  • Racial Discrimination, Rediffusion, 1967[15]
  • Question Time 14 February 1985 [16]
  • A Question of Colour, Open University, 1982

References

  1. ↑ Young, Hugo (2008). The Hugo Young Papers: Thirty Years of British Politics - Off the Record. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-1846140549.
  2. ↑ Jacobs, Barbara (2 November 2011). "Leicester graduate presents programme on fight against racism". Leicester University. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  3. ↑ "The Runnymede Trust Begins Work". Runnymede Trust. October 1968. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  4. ↑ "HO 245 - Committee on The Future of Broadcasting (1974-1977): Minutes, Evidence and Papers". National Archives. Home Office. 1974–1977. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  5. ↑ "Monica Jones". Guardian. 15 March 2001. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  6. ↑ Newitt, Ned. "Who's Who in Radical Leicester". Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  7. ↑ "Dipak Nandy". IMDB. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  8. ↑ "Lisa Nandy Interview: 'Ed Miliband Is A Different Sort Of Politician'". Independent. 17 November 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2018.
  9. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (January 1962). "Ancient Indian Materialism". Marxism Today: 13–21. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  10. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (January 1963). "How Not to Write History". Marxism Today. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  11. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (September 1965). "Who Is the Leper Now?". The Labour Monthly: 418–422.
  12. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (June 1966). "Immigrants at Work". The Labour Monthly. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  13. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (July 1968). "La société britannique face aux immigrants de couleur". Le Monde diplomatique (in French). Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  14. ↑ Nandy, Dipak (30 May 1986). "Famine---who runs the world?". New Statesman. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  15. ↑ "This Week (1956–1992)". IMDB. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  16. ↑ "Question Time". IMDB. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
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