Arthur Henry Ashford Wynn (1910 - 2001)

Born 22 Jan 1910 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Husband of Margaret Patricia Moxon — married Jul 1938 in Hampstead, London, England, United Kingdom

Descendants

Died 24 Sep 2001 at age 91 in Highgate, London, England, United Kingdom

Biography

Name: Arthur Henry Ashford Wynn. Given Name: Arthur Henry Ashford. Surname: Wynn. A Given name was found in addition to a first name in the NAME tag. Note: #NI13. Marriage Husband Arthur Henry Ashford Wynn. Wife Margaret Patricia Moxon. Marriage Y. Child: Sarah Margaret Wynn. Child: Stephen Wynn. Child: Henry Philip Wynn. Child: Edward Wynn. Note: #N0106.

Notes

Note NI13 Arthur Wynn A formidable researcher, he produced countless new ideas for social policy Ian Aitken Guardian Saturday September 29, 2001 For the last 30 years of a long and astonishingly productive life, Arthur Wynn, who has died aged 91, was one half of a remarkable medico-sociological research team, of which the other half was his no less formidable wife, Margaret. Like a latter-day Sydney and Beatrice Webb - though, reportedly, more fun - they poured out a stream of meticulously prepared papers on family policy, the nutrition of mothers and babies, and even, in one case, the pre-conception care of mothers-to-be. Most of their output was for publication, either in books or in articles for the academic press. But a lot was used as ammunition with which to bombard politicians, and particularly secretaries of state for health. Most of this material was aimed at Labour ministers, since the Wynns were lifelong Labour supporters. But Tory ministers were not immune; indeed, the Wynns struck up a warm personal friendship with Virginia Bottomley, by way of her husband, fellow Tory MP Peter Bottomley. The late Sir Keith Joseph lived to rue the day he became entangled with the Wynns, for it was his misinterpretation of one of their papers that effectively ended his attempt to succeed Ted Heath as Tory leader in 1975. He had lit upon their article, in the magazine of the Child Poverty Action Group, that examined the issue of poverty and single parenthood, and jumped to the mistaken conclusion that the Wynns were arguing that far too many babies were being born to low-IQ mothers, the result of which would be an increasingly sub-standard British population. In a speech in Edgbaston to promote his leadership claims, Joseph developed this idea into something very like an elitist theory of eugenics. Predictably, it generated the same kind of support as Enoch Powell got for his "rivers of blood" speech. But there was also fer- ocious hostility; the speech was repudiated by many senior Tories, and even Mrs Thatcher, until then a devoted follower of Joseph, concluded that there was something wrong with her guru's judgment. As a result, she took up the anti-Heath torch. The Wynns continued their Stakhanovite efforts almost to the last hours of Arthur's life. Barely hours before his death, he was still working on his personal website - no mean achievement for a nonagenarian. His last joint paper with Margaret - on the nutrition of schoolchildren and the need for universal school meals - will now be published posthumously. But Arthur had already led a full and productive life before he took up research as a retirement job. Educated at Oundle and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read natural sciences and mathematics, he went on to study law at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1939. He spent the war as a boffin, working on, among other things, advanced navigational aids for Bomber Command. Moved by a series of appalling postwar pit disasters, he switched his attention to mining safety. After Labour's nationalisation of the coal industry in 1948, which Wynn applauded, he became director of mining safety research at the then Ministry of Fuel and Power. He was the National Coal Board's scientific member from 1955-65, and then, until retirement in 1971, a senior civil servant in Tony Benn's Ministry of Technology, later transmuted into the Department of Trade and Industry. The son of a professor of medicine, Wynn's original intention had been to special- ise in trades union law, in partnership with Sir Stafford Cripps QC. But the war put a stop to that, and he never returned to legal practice, though he maintained his interest in the subject. Just before he died, he put in an order for a book on the law of warfare, with the intention of conducting a study of the legal background to the proposed war on terrorism. It was typical of a man who, in spite of advancing years, never allowed himself to live in the past. Everything he did was directed to the future. He married Margaret "Peggy" Moxon in 1938; she survives him, as do their three sons and a daughter. A commemorative tablet to Wynn is to be placed next to the grave of his friend, the mathematician and scientist Jacob Bronowski, in Highgate cemetery. Arthur Henry Ashford Wynn, social researcher and civil servant, born January 22 1910; died September 24 2001 Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

Sources

• Unsourced family tree handed down to John Talbut.