My friend Angus Erskine, an academic and a campaigner for social justice, who has died of cancer aged 70, was a key figure in the development of the Social Policy Association in the mid-1980s, and served on its executive committee. He co-edited, with Pete Alcock and Maggie May, textbooks for social policy students, including The Student’s Companion to Social Policy (1997), and was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Social Policy.
Angus began his academic career as a lecturer at Sunderland Polytechnic in 1981, before moving to Edinburgh in 1984, then the Universities of Glasgow (1991) and Stirling (1996), where he became a senior research fellow in the department of applied social science. He had a particular interest in social security, anti-poverty strategy and comparative social policy.
