We were sad to hear of the recent death of one of our loyal supporters, John Bibby.
John was active in many organisations, including York Philosophical Society, and contributed to historical activity in the city. He also played a key role in the York Bus Forum over nearly ten years.
After graduating in mathematics from the University of Cambridge he taught at the Open University, and at the Universities of Edinburgh and York. He co-founded Radical Statistics, a society using statistics to promote social change, recently addressing its 50th anniversary conference.
His activism was informed by a strong belief in human rights, illustrated by his hunger strike in York Minster in 2009, protesting at Israeli military action in Gaza. He described his action then as 'a personal statement providing a way in which people can add their own voice'. He also organised a successful national conference - Borders and Beyond in the Middle East - in 2016 at York St John University on the history of the Middle East.
John's historical interests were wide. A notable contribution was York 1844 and all that, a conference he organised in 2019, focusing on York in a pivotal decade for the city. This attracted 20 papers on a variety of topics.
In 1989 John and his wife Shirley bought a house which was part of the former Elmfield Primitive Methodist College (1864-1932) in Heworth. He acquired the College archives, and arranged for these to be catalogued. The archives informed a talk he later gave on the history of the College. Elmfield College, York: a Personal Journey – York's Primitive Methodist Training College can be viewed on YouTube.
John took a lively interest in our history group from its inception in 2013, always willing to engage with a wide variety of topics and activities. Even last year, when he was quite poorly, he offered help when we needed to find new people for key roles.
Dick Hunter remembers ‘John and I first met in Milton Keynes in the 1970s, through a shared interest in cooperative enterprises. I was drawn to his enthusiasm, his curiosity and wide interests. After a gap of many years we met again over a pint in the Black Swan in York. We subsequently researched and wrote an article 'Elmfield College and World War One' using diary entries and correspondence from active service around the world as sources. This was published in YAYAS Times, no. 58, February 2013. More recently John contributed to our poverty research project, researching the lives of orphans boarded-out (fostered) from the workhouse.’
We were sad to hear of the recent death of one of our loyal supporters, John Bibby.
