Obituaries
After leaving Dulwich he started a Chemistry degree at University College London but he abandoned the course to start work as a laboratory technician. He later completed his degree at Woolwich Polytechnic, where he was president of the students’ union, and he later became vice-president of the NUS, where he argued for the abolition of the distinction between polytechnics and universities, decades before it actually occurred. He started his career in education administration as an assistant education officer for Manchester City Council before moving on to hold similar posts at Northumberland County Council and in Doncaster. His real passion in his later years was as an advocate for children with additional educational needs and his voluntary services were greatly appreciated by families who could not have paid for representation in education tribunals. His tireless work since 1995 as a governor at Lampton School in Hounslow was recognised by the opening of the Michael Sterne Communication Centre in 2013. When he retired from work he was elected as a Labour councillor in Hounslow, becoming education spokesman. While working as a laboratory technician Michael married Pat Cutler, whom he had met when both of them had summer jobs in Cornwall, and they had three children, Jonathan, Abigail and Gabriel. A keen sailor, Michael kept a Dehler 38 yacht moored near the family home in Southampton, and he crossed the Channel annually, remarking not long before he died that he was happiest navigating alone under the stars. At family gatherings at home with Pat he would wryly observe that ‘guests are a double pleasure: a pleasure when they arrive and a pleasure when they go away again.’ He is survived by Pat, all three children and 10 grandchildren. An obituary was published in The Guardian on which this is based. Sir James Cheseborough Swaffield CBE (Governor, 1984-98) 16.02.1924 – 04.07.2015 School in Hampstead. He served with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the Second World War from 1942 and stayed on post-war before retiring as a lieutenant commander. On demobilisation he trained to be a council solicitor in Wembley and studied for a University of London degree and, later, an Oxford MA. Qualifying as a solicitor in 1949, he joined the town clerk’s department in Lincoln. He rapidly moved on to Norwich, Cheltenham and Southend before being appointed deputy town clerk of Blackpool in 1956. He was soon promoted to town clerk, becoming the youngest town clerk in any county borough. He moved to the Association of Municipal Corporations in 1962 and for James Swaffield was born in Cheltenham, the son of a soap company director. He attended Cheltenham Grammar School and Haberdashers’ Aske’s
11 years he was the key figure representing the interests of provincial cities and large towns, where he was often critical of a succession of tight rate support settlements from both Labour and Conservative governments. In 1973 he moved to the Greater London Council (GLC), becoming clerk to both the GLC and the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), and was Britain’s highest-paid council official at the time. In June 1975 he supervised the counting of 3.3 million votes in London in the referendum on continued membership of the EEC. He built up a solid working relationship with the Labour GLC leader, Reg Goodwin, but after the Conservatives regained control in 1977 he initially found the more flamboyant Horace Cutler more difficult to control. Cutler had ambitious plans for halting London’s economic decline. In 1979 James and Fred Pooley, controller of planning, proposed building a new London airport in the Thames estuary for £200 million, nearly 30 years before Boris Johnson advocated a similar, if far more expensive, plan. James found the national government under Margaret Thatcher had a discouraging approach to local government. He said that government ministers believed councils ‘could not be left to get on with the things they were good at’. In May 1981 Labour, under Andrew McIntosh, regained control of the GLC but within 48 hours Ken Livingstone had ousted him as Labour leader. As leader of the GLC, Livingstone pushed through left-wing policies, while Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher geared up to abolish the council and the ILEA altogether. James retired from the GLC in 1984 with ‘a mixture of relief and regret’. He then became Chairman of the British Rail Property Board and a Governor of Dulwich College. At British Rail he handed over 10 parcels of land to the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, but most of the Property Board’s activities were more commercial. Broadgate, on the site of the old Broad Street Station in London, was its largest development and showed that London was turning the corner. Also on the drawing board, although it would take 25 years to deliver, was the redevelopment of 125 acres of land behind King’s Cross and St Pancras stations. In 1986-87 major disposals of land helped the BR Property Board raise more than £130 million and the following year income rose to £243 million. He stood down from British Rail in 1991, before rail privatisation became an issue. At Dulwich College, until the 1980s, two schools in the foundation, Dulwich College and Alleyn’s School, had a single, common governing body. This arrangement came to be regarded as cumbersome and it was decided that each school should have its own board of governors. During the transition period Sir James chaired the Dulwich College Committee of the Governors. This move went smoothly and expeditiously, due, in very large measure, to his consummate skill, attention to detail and sense of humour. He rightly became Vice Chairman of the Dulwich College Board of Governors. He retired in 1998.
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