John Loxley was a radical economist and a political activist. In a series of short eulogies by Issa Shivji, John Saul and Peter Lawrence, John is remembered as an extremely skilled and articulate economist and as an equally articulate and committed radical activist.
John Loxley spent a lifetime concerned with alternative economic theory and policy. He was born in Sheffield, England in 1942 into a large working class family and completed a Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) in Economics (1963) and a Ph.D. in Economics (1966) at the University of Leeds in England. His Ph.D. dissertation is entitled ‘The Development of the East African Monetary and Financial System, 1950-1964.’ In the mid-1960s, he began a career as a lecturer in the Economics Department at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, during which time he also served as a research manager and an economist for the National Bank of Commerce Tanzania while performing duties as director of the Department of Economics and Planning at the Institute of Finance.
Loxley moved to Canada in 1975 to take up the appointment of Secretary (Deputy Minister) of the Resource and Economic Development Sub-Committee for the Province of Manitoba. In July of 1977, he began teaching in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba where he later served as head of the department as well as the coordinator of Research, Global Political Economy Program for the Faculty of Arts.
Loxley served as economic advisor to governments in Uganda, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mozambique, Manitoba, and during the incoming presidency of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. In 2002, a symposium was held in his honour at the University of Manitoba, ‘Governance and Adjustment in an Era of Globalization: An International Symposium in Honour of John Loxley’, followed by a book of published essays in 2005, Globalization, Neo-Conservative Policies and Democratic Alternatives: Essays in Honour of John Loxley. In 2010 John received the Galbraith Prize in Economics and Social Justice by the Progressive Forum.
John explained that it was during his work in Africa (Tanzania and Mozambique) where he truly ‘discovered what radical politics and social and economic transformation were about.’ In Africa, he was a part of the attempts to build socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was also at this time that a series of banking reforms he proposed were implemented. In these contributions by his comrades and friends, John is remembered as a radical economists and political activist, and a loyal and committed friend.
Some of this biographical information has been taken from the University of Manitoba website here.
‘A committed radical activist’
John and I became great comrades in Tanzania in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we taught together and worked together politically – as we were invited to do – to help in the restructuring of the University of Dar es Salaam so as to fit it more positively into the newly-conceived socialist society that the Arusha Declaration had recently proclaimed to be Tanzania’s goal.
And then, later in the 1970s, we both found ourselves here in Canada, with me returning to my native Toronto and John (again an immigrant!), with Zeeba and their kids, at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. True, I didn’t see John – across the miles that separated us – as often as I would have liked in recent years but we always met up again, when we did, as firm friends, more or less starting our conversation at the very same point where we had broken it off the month or the year before!
And I continued to learn from him…and to admire him. And this perhaps for one reason in particular which I’ll attempt to spell out here briefly.
For he was capable, in a way I have seen few others able to do, of presenting himself, simultaneously, as two quite different people: both as an extremely skilled and articulate professional economist and as an equally articulate and committed radical activist. I remember this from Dar days: he could function downtown, cleanly and clearly, as a tough-minded economist and credible as such to other economists and ‘experts’ on short-term ‘official visits.’ And present himself, equally credibly and equally convincingly, on campus as a thoughtful and always focussed militant in support of progressive and eminently humane views and causes, helping to hone his students’ skills and advance our collective endeavours there.
But wait, he was even better than that. For he actually presented himself both downtown and at the university on the Hill as a totally un-fractured and non-schizophrenic presence, as a person who had found the way to be both a skilled professional economist AND a militant activist at the same time: two sides, in sum, of one golden coin.
I think this was also the personality and the skill that he brought with him to Winnipeg and to Manitoba and, no surprise, he made an important and similar contribution here as well.
As for me, I will miss him – at once, a tough-minded professional, a clear-eyed progressive and a dear friend.
John Saul
‘Marxist political-economy to bankers’
I heard the upsetting news of John’s passing from my friend John Saul. It bought back all the fond memories when John was in Dar es Salaam.
At the university where he taught, he as a quiet but very profound scholar. His writings are still being used today as a reference point. As a matter of fact, I quoted them in a biography Julius Nyerere which we have just published.
Then, when John was the director of the Institute of Finance Management, he hired me to do part-time lectures on Marxist political economy to bankers. Some of those bankers became bigshots in in the banking sector and when I meet them these days they still remind me of this course.
Later when John was in the North-South Institute he invited me to do a lecturer tour of Canadian universities. In 21 days, I visited as many universities and my last stop was Winnipeg where I stayed with John and Zeeba.
John made a major contribution and will be terribly missed.
Issa Shivji
‘Never gave up the struggle’
It is an honour and privilege to be able to say a few words about John, my good friend since we first met in Tanzania in 1968. We had the same doctoral supervisor at Leeds, Walter Newlyn, who, when I chose to do my fieldwork in Tanzania, told me to contact John. When I did, he immediately invited me to lunch at his and Zeeba’s beach side house – formerly owned by Barclays Bank– a far cry from Parson’s Cross. We became good friends. After my return to Leeds to write my thesis, and before I could get to Chapter 2, John, now in the University of Dar es Salaam economics department, wrote to ask me to apply for a lectureship as they were trying to hire like-minded economists sympathetic to Nyerere’s ujamaa socialist vision. So, thanks to John, I returned to Tanzania.
These were exciting times in a country that attracted and shaped the lives of many academics and policymakers from around the world who wanted to support Tanzania’s socialist development, and some who didn’t. My memories of John during that time are of his support for junior colleagues, his interest in what people were doing and his dedication to his students. But there were always the soccer matches in which John played with characteristic seriousness and enthusiasm, followed by the ritual visit to a nearby bar for a beer or three.
We met up regularly when he visited his family in Sheffield or when I was in Canada. On one occasion, John suggested that I come with my family to Winnipeg to do a summer school at University of Manitoba in 1989. He and Aurelie found us a house and especially ensured we experienced the festivals and, of course, the Blue Bombers. I particularly remember a long weekend at their lakeside house with a plentiful supply of beer and Leonard Cohen. That was great fun and characteristic of John’s enjoyment of life and ability to take a break from his heavy work schedule. I remember too John encouraging, if not instructing me to finish my thesis. Two years later I submitted it. He just had that ability to inspire people never to give up, as he himself never gave up the struggle for a more equitable and humane society.
We continued to meet up regularly, most notably at his 60th birthday celebrations and when he in turn made a surprise appearance at my 70th – typical of the close, loyal and supportive friend he was to me, as he was to so many others. We will all sorely miss him.
Peter Lawrence
Each of these contributions were delivered in an online tribute: ‘John Loxley: a Celebration of Life’ (31 August 2020) and available to watch on here.
Really sad to hear of the death of John Loxley who I knew mainly through correspondence linked to the production of a collection of essays on ‘Structural Adjustment in Africa’. This was back in the late 1980s when this first phase of what would later be known as globalization was in its heyday. At the time, John was visiting professor at the University of Leeds and the co-editor of the book, Bonnie Campbell was professor of political science at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal where she had been since the early 1970s.
John and Bonnie wrote a the Introduction and John himself contributed the first chapter, on ‘The Devaluation Debate in Tanzania’, a tour de force that was at one and the same time theoretically informed and also well grounded in terms of both Tanzanian realities and IMF and World Bank policy – and which explored the role of the Tanzania Advisory Group (TAG) – the first time that an intermediary had been utilised to help design adjustment policy independently of both the national government and the international financial institutions.
The TAG team, as it came to be known consisted of two Canadians and a Swede and a support staff – all sympathetic to Tanzania’s needs and with a proven track record of success in institution-building in Africa and/or their own countries. It was a sharp piece using both his insider position and his intellectual integrity to provide a balanced and compelling analysis of how policy was made.
I wrote the last chapter on ‘The Politics of Adjustment in Morocco’., which tried to provide a coherent analysis both of policy making and of the responses to it in terms of popular protest. I had valuable comments from both John and Bonnie on my draft.