My grandfather Roger Sawtell, who has died aged 95, was a proponent of employee-owned businesses and spent much of his life either working for such enterprises or helping to set them up.
Roger was born in Sheffield, the middle of three children of Horace Sawtell, a steelworks engineer, and Barbara (nee Leslie). He won scholarships to Bedford school and then the University of Cambridge, where he studied mechanical sciences, leaving with his degree in 1948 to work as an engineer at English Electric in Rugby in Warwickshire, and then Spear & Jackson in Sheffield. After 16 years at Spear & Jackson he was offered the role of managing director, but turned the offer down, as he had decided that his future should lie in working for a company with a more egalitarian business structure.
