Ben Whitaker, Orwellian campaigner: A tribute

Ben Whitaker, a highly valued member of the George Orwell Society and a tireless promoter of the campaign for a statue of Orwell to be placed outside BBC Broadcasting House, has died aged 79. He will now sadly miss the unveiling of Martin Jennings sculpture in November. But as Geoffrey Robertson commented in a Guardian obituary: ‘He would have wished it inscribed with his favourite aphorism, from the censored introduction to Animal Farm, which states the principle for which his own life stood and for which he wanted the BBC to stand: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”’

Born in Nottingham and a former Labour MP for Hampstead, north London, Ben Whitaker championed the progressive social reforms of the Harold Wilson government, in which he held a number of posts. Moreover, as a human rights lawyer, he made many distinguished contributions to civil liberties in Britain, and especially abroad, through his leadership of the Minority Rights Group and then of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and as a UN rapporteur.

In 1965, one of his Amnesty International missions took him to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where he entered one of Ian Smith’s notorious secret detention camps. Afterwards, during a live interview on Rhodesian Television Service (now the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation). he condemned the ‘illegal police state afraid of the truth’. The police immediately raided the studio, claiming he had broken laws against bringing Smith into disrepute and revealing the secret detentions. As Robertson adds: ‘He had to exit the studio by the back door, collect Janet, his wife, and make a quick escape to the airport.’

Back in London he opposed US involvement in Vietnam and supported a number of progressive causes: the abolition of theatre censorship, the ending of the death penalty and the decriminalising of homosexuality and abortion. In 1975, he was asked by the government to investigate whether the Turkish atrocities against the Armenians amounted to genocide. The Turkish authorities were appalled when he concluded that they most certainly did – and he refused to withdraw his report.

His publications include The Police (1964) Crime and Society (1967), Participation and Poverty (1968) and Parks for People (1971).

He is survived by his wife Janet (raised to the Lords in 1999) and their children, Quincy, Dan and Rasaq; Aaron, a son from a previous relationship; and seven grandchildren.