David Boyle (1958-2025)
David Boyle (1958-2025)
David Boyle, Radix Policy Director: 1958-2025
“David Boyle, part writer, part journalist, part politico, part historian, part economist and mostly brains, intellect and common-sense.”
― Roy Lilley, NHS blogger, NHSmanagers.net
As David Boyle, Radix Big Tent Policy Director, was laid to rest this week in Steyning Sussex, we are producing a very special version of our media review, remembering David in his own words - and there were many of them. Involved with at least three think-tanks, editor of several journals, with over twenty published books on history, economic and political change and historical fiction, hundreds of pamphlets and policy papers and countless blogs, prolific seems an inadequate word for his prodigious capacity to write - and write well.
'Nobody wrote better and more engagingly than David, often about quite complicated subjects from coproduction to town-planning' says Ben Rich, CE of Radix in his tribute.
Lesley Yarranton, long-time collaborator and friend of David, remembers 'his core philosophy that there is ‘hope’ in all things, if only you know where to look for it is a conviction threaded through the more than 70 books he published, ranging from What is New Economics? to How to be English. He had the ability to weave a lyrical undertow into the driest of council reports and transform indigestible chunks of dull analysis into sparking prose.'
In his poem 'Dark', in his own poetry collection Oh Shenandoah, David reflects on his creative spark.
With Radix Big Tent
This just a very small sample of David's heroic output for Radix Big Tent, with his boundless talent to absorb, analyse and create new perspectives on a range of subjects.
Pamphlets
In Whatever happened to doing? written with Steffan Aquarone, the authors ask if the political culture has forgotten how to make things happen. “The problem we identify is that our political culture and political classes have shifted their focus from doing things to consulting on things, or measuring or communicating things. From action to process or gesture or optics,” with a four stage solution suggested.
Writing with Lesley Yarranton Tickbox warned that ‘Tickbox culture’ threatens post-covid infrastructure investment plans, arguing that plans to develop new infrastructure, as set out in the budget, will face extensive problems in terms of cost, safety and timing without a major shift from bureaucracy to human judgement to keep projects on track.
Launching the Platform for places initiative, and written jointly with Platform Places, David provided a blueprint for a community led strategy which would revive our high streets, based on bringing to scale already successful case studies.
Books
With Joe Zammit-Lucia, in The Death of Liberal Democracy he argues 'for the current bland, politically correct, compromising liberal democracy that comes across as a weak-willed lack of conviction to be reborn as something clearer and fiercer. One that re-discovers its radical roots and is decisive in constructing an open society that works for all. A society that discards the top-down bureaucratic form of government and replaces it with one that is open to challenge from below. They cast this vision into the context of the history of political liberalism and mesh it with the rapid changes we are seeing in contemporary culture.'
Also with Joe Zammit-Lucia, Backlash looks at Globalisation. 'Source of prosperity for billions? Or a driver of increasing inequality, poor labour conditions, unceasing environmental damage, and cultural fracture? Can you imagine a new kind of trade deal which works for people and planet?'
With New Weather Institute
Lindsay Mackie remembers David as 'a most amazing thinker and visionary and all worn with such a light touch.' He wrote several pamphlets with herself and Andrew Simms 'The subjects were David's abiding interests- the power of small local institutions, the need for people to be truly involved in their own fates- co-production, and the overweening and inhuman power of giant corporations.'
The absent corporation 'looks at the modern economic oddity that, if you ask for help if anything goes wrong, there is nobody there to help you, just a great echoing void stuffed with customer relationship management software.'
In The end of Privatisation 'written just after the Covid pandemic revealed such deficiencies in State planning and execution in its use of large corporations to deliver, for example, test and trace rather than using local, knowledgeable organisations and networks, David returned to his fervent belief that when organisations fail, its probably because they are too big, too financially focussed, and too derisive of the human element.'
Unprepared 'looks at what we can learn, often from developing countries, about the kind of local planning required to be ready for when storms or terrorists claim lives near where we live – and what governments need to do in order to encourage it.'
Books
With over 100 titles to his name on Amazon, we highlight just two of David Boyle's most recent works.
Tickbox analyses the 'insidious philosophy of automation and the misuse of data that weighs heavily on every one of us... [suggesting] a series of ways out - starting with recognising the danger and calling it out for what it is - a massive failure, corroding our lives and our ability, as human beings, to act on the world.'
In Edge City UK written with Lesley Yarranton, David looks at the different types of what may be called 'edge cities' and what is needed in planning to create spaces for people to thrive where they live and work.
Other works
This can only be a small taste of the innumerable works David left behind and on such a wide range from a musical on life in Vienna in 1913 to policy papers on co-production, on new money systems and corporate monopolies, biographies of poets, fiction set in the Roman occupation of Britain and World War 2 thrillers. Details of his other works can be found on his own website and on Amazon.
In his tribute to David, Ben Rich concludes, 'Amongst his many generous traits was that he always thought the very best of those around him, and I was deeply flattered that he assumed I was as widely read as him and could keep up with him, even when he had in fact left me far behind. He has left me behind again, and Radix Big Tent and I will be much the worse for that, but so much the better that he was here in the first place.'
My Place
by David Boyle
Oh Pleiades, Oh Milky Way
Remember my small dreams by day,
And while you shift tremendous light,
plant more majestic dreams by night.
Beyond our billion small events,
see through my insignificance,
from distant pole to distant pole,
plant your deep echo in my soul.
Oh Sirius, call out my name,
across millienia the same,
and send me starlight while I grope
to rest in joy not tinged with hope.
Burn up delusions. Burn out pain,
and let me master life again -
but life that's filled, no, not with lies,
but daily, innocent surprise.
Oh Hyades, Oh Betelgeuse.
don't let my tininess reduce
the glory of each pinprick light.
Oh Great Bear, stay there through the night.