Tribute to William James Oliver Jordan, 1941 - 2026

The following is a tribute from Mervyn Murch, Mervyn’s full credentials are at end of the post. Mervyn was a very close friend and colleague of dad’s and agreed to me sharing this on his behalf: “Since receiving the news that Bill has died, I have been thinking a lot about him and reflecting on his remarkable qualities. He was, as you know, one of my oldest and dearest friends. I admired him so much, not just for his professional achievements as a social worker and as an academic with a towering intellect, but in his later years for his extraordinary stoical endurance, first in caring for Jean through her dementia, and the living on his own in the cottage in Whimple while writing a series of important books warning about the rise of autocracies internationally (his writing about economics was much appreciated in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union). And arguing the case nationally for a system of universal basic income long before it was taken up by other academics and politicians. In time I hope he will receive the degree of national recognition which, in his life time, he richly deserved but which, like the proverbial unrecognised prophet in their own country, were in certain respects denied him. I have known him for over sixty years. We first met as recently appointed young Devon Probation Officers at a weekend "away day" staff conference at Dartington Hall. We shared a somewhat Spartan bedroom in the west wing and spent most of the night talking to each other, discovering how much we had in common; disrupted childhoods through war, spells living in Ireland, and a radical critical approach to our privileged undergraduate education in Oxford. This fuelled our interest in social work, he from the perspective of studying PPE (for which I later learnt he got a First class honours degree by acclamation) and me by reading jurisprudence and taking an interest in criminology before doing my military national service. From that point on in Dartington, our friendship developed in parallel; growing our young families, developing our professional social work /Probation practice skills and understanding, before being enticed away to academic life teaching post graduate social work students, he in Exeter/Plymouth and me in Bristol. Looking back and thinking about him I ask myself how can one do justice to such a mult-talented ,mult-faceted man? A man driven for most of his life by a remarkable creative intellect and physical energy (I am thinking of his cricketing, playing at Minor counties level for Devon, and his practice of early morning running and organising the winter Manic's Marathon over Dartmoor). To me, and no doubt to others, he could sometimes seem a mass of contradictions---deep emotional attachments to his family and friends and a warm compassion for the disadvantaged channelled into his professional social work practice and teaching. Yet also at times a fierce competitive individuality and intolerance of what he saw as hide bound conventional authority and humbug. Sometimes this caused run-ins with senior management in the Probation Service. There were also times when he would challenge the boundaries of what were regarded as acceptable Probation work, for example when he represented, usually successfully, the local claimant's Union at what was then the Supplementary Benefits Tribunal, provoking the chairman to exclaim that he could not understand what this young Probation Officer thought he was doing "especially as he played cricket for Devon!" His academic output in terms of books, much written in the solitude of early hours, was prodigious. I do hope the Jordan family can keep the books together as a collection.They show the development and breadth of his mind and should be set in the context of evolving British social policy. I recall his first book being drafted in sometime like four days and typed up, if I remember rightly, by Jane Jordan who sent me a copy of it, asking me to come over to Decoy to see him at the weekend. I found him exhausted and jaundiced in bed. The sight of him in such a state put me off writing for years! The text itself had all kinds of original and exciting ideas about unconscious communication in family dynamics and a critique of aspects of Freudian psychology . Looking over what I have just written might give the impression that he was rather dour serious soul. Far from it. He had a most engaging sense of humour and a fund of funny stories, which he himself attributed to his Irish ancestry. I don't know whether his children and grandchildren know that he believed he was descended from the last king of all Ireland, Brian Boru, killed at the battle of Clontarf? You can look it up on Google. There you will also find that the celebrated Irish folk group, The Chieftains, have a rendering of Boru's Funeral March. I wonder if Bill knew that ? If he didn't, he might have a laugh somewhere now if he heard it! I believe it can be downloaded. Mervyn” Mervyn Murch, CBE, Emeritus Professor of Law, Cardiff University School of Law and Politics