My former colleague Jon Tinker, who has died aged 83, was concerned within the Sixties in Spies for Peace, a British group of anti-war activists. In 1963 they photographed and printed top-secret authorities plans for sustaining management after a nuclear assault.
Jon disclosed his function to me shortly earlier than he died. He admitted he didn’t have the derring-do to participate within the break-in into one of many secret bunkers meant to manipulate the nation within the occasion of nuclear struggle, however he relished the following cloak-and-dagger operation to jot down the pamphlet and information launch that the federal government unsuccessfully tried to suppress.
The group hid their culpability by shopping for, utilizing and destroying a second-hand typewriter and duplicating machine: “We drove for hours at evening till we discovered a bridge over a river within the northern Chilterns and threw the incriminating proof into the water.”
He was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, the son of Dorothy (nee Duerden), a author, and Rex Tinker, an accountant, and educated at Charterhouse college, Godalming, Surrey, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating with a level in pure and ethical sciences.
Anti-war exercise was certainly one of two themes in Jon’s life: the opposite was pure historical past, which subsequently morphed into sustainable growth. These twin pursuits took him from secretary to the Committee of 100, an anti-nuclear group, and personal secretary to the thinker and peace activist Bertrand Russell in 1960, to a profession in environmental journalism and coverage recommendation. He labored on varied publications together with the Countryman and New Scientist, and for the Worldwide Institute for Atmosphere and Improvement.
In 1986 he co-founded and have become director of the London-based Panos Institute, with the goal of offering well-researched data on points affecting growing international locations. It had offshoots in Paris, Washington and Budapest and knowledgeable and influenced lots of of journalists in Africa and Asia. “However what you mustn’t do is prescribe what Nation X ought to do about it,” mentioned Jon. “Many non-governmental organisations don’t perceive that.”
He had a knack for recognizing and appearing on necessary points earlier than others adopted go well with, whether or not the lack of hedges in Britain or HIV/Aids within the international south. Realising early on that HIV was not merely a priority for homosexual males in wealthy international locations, he organised articles and books that influenced a number of governments and the United Nations to take motion: “It was a very powerful factor I’ve finished,” he instructed me.
He mixed an indefatigable work ethic (when he lived in Wales he was all the time first to reach on the London workplace) with a love of canines, Scrabble and gardening, whether or not in Wales or Canada, the place he lived on an previous ranch for seven years from 1992.
When he knew he was dying from most cancers he expressed anger in regards to the lack of many hedgerow birds that he grew up with, such because the yellowhammer, and unhappiness that his grandchildren wouldn’t see them.
Jon was married twice, in 1963 to Mary Kirkwood, whom he met by way of the Committee of 100, and in 1971 to Sally Holmes. Each marriages resulted in divorce. He’s survived by his companion of 40 years, Marcus Charles, by two daughters, Zenzie and Sarah, from his first marriage, and two stepdaughters, Kate and Jane, from the second, seven grandchildren, Izzie, Kitty, Alfie, Ben, Joe, Albie and Charlie, and his brother, Tim, and sister, Prim.
