My father, David Beetham, who has died aged 83, was a human rights campaigner, political theorist and community activist. Emeritus professor of politics at the University of Leeds, he continued thinking and writing about democracy and its challenges until the end of his life.
Born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, David was the middle of three sons of Elaine (nee Elain Wade) and Tom Beetham. His parents were both devout Methodists, his father a minister. David’s earliest memories were of the blitz in Birkenhead, where he grew up, which gave him a lifelong horror of war. From Kingswood school in Bath he gained a scholarship to study classics at Merton College, Oxford; at Oxford he met Margaret Newbigin, my mother, whom he married in 1963. As they became more involved in Labour party politics he abandoned his career as a Methodist minister to study political theory at Manchester University, and this became his lifelong vocation.
