David Widgery (27 April 1947 – 26 October 1992) was a British Marxist writer, journalist, polemicist, physician, and activist.[1][2]
Biographyedit
Widgery was born in Barnet and grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He contracted polio as a child and was expelled from sixth form for publishing a magazine.[1]
Widgery joined the International Socialists in 1967, remaining in the group when it became the Socialist Workers Party in 1977. He began working at Bethnal Green Hospital in 1972, worked at St Leonard's Hospital in the late 1970s and later in the decade he published his first book, The Left in Britain, 1956–68.[1]
His books include The Chatto Book of Dissent (1991), an anthology of dissident writings co-edited with Michael Rosen, Some Lives!: A GP's East End (1991), the story of his experience as a doctor in London's East End, The National Health: A Radical Perspective, and Beating Time (1986), an account of the Rock Against Racism movement of the late 1970s.
When Widgery died, aged 45, excess alcohol, barbiturates and pethidine were found in his bloodstream, but it is not known whether this was an accidental or intentional overdose.[4] One obituary described Widgery as "a radical humanist intellectual on permanent loan to revolutionary socialism."[5]
Publicationsedit
Widgery, D. (1976), The Left in Britain, 1956-68 (Peregrine Books)
Widgery, D. (ed) (1980), The Book of the Year: September 1979 to September 1980 (Inklinks)
Widgery, D., The National Health: A Radical Perspective
Widgery, D. (1986), Beating Time
Widgery, D. (1989), Preserving Disorder (Essays on Society & Culture) (Pluto Press)
Widgery, D. and Rosen, M. (eds) (1991), The Chatto Book of Dissent (Chatto)
Widgery, D. and Shelton, S. (1991), Some Lives!: A GP's East End, London: Sinclair Stevenson.
Widgery, D. (1991), Marketa Luskacova: Photographs of Spitalfields (Whitechapel Art Gallery)