ONE OF the great characters of Scottish journalism was lost when John Pirie died at the weekend aged 83. One of the few in the trade almost universally described as a gentleman.
He was best known for his 20year service as education correspondent on the Daily Record, which inevitably led to him being christened "the professor" by colleagues. But they weren't so wide of the mark.
He brought the educational issues of the day to the widest Scottish readership. He was proud of this and liked to remind other education correspondents that farmore teachers, parents and pupils read the Record than The Herald, Scotsman and Times Educational Supplement Scotland put together at that time.
The commitment and flair he brought to his job was recognised with the award of an honorary degree from the Open University in 1981 and then a Fellowship of the Educational Institute of Scotland in 1986.
Given his deeply held belief in the power of education to liberate the prisoners of disadvantage; and in the trade union movement as guardian of social progress, he was very proud of both accolades.
John's finest journalistic flowering probably came in the 1970s, a decade of huge change, and occasional turmoil, in Scottish education.
In the early part of the decade the two key changes were the raising of the school leaving age and the phasing-out of corporal punishment, which were both aggressively resisted - strange as it may seem now - by many teachers. John was instinctively in favour of both moves; he was progressive in his approach to education, politics and indeed life. But he was a consistently fair journalist, and he gave the opponents of change a decent show in the pages of the Record.
Most of the time John was a scrupulous, concise reporter;
occasionally, when his editor, Bernie Vickers, thought it appropriate, he encouraged John to be emotive. He was an admirer of R FMackenzie, the controversial educationist whose high-profile headship of Summerhill Academy, on the western outskirts of Aberdeen, was sensationally ended at an acrimonious meeting of Aberdeen Education Authority on April 1, 1974.
John's report in the Record the next day started bluntly: "I accuse Aberdeen Education Committee of treachery."
Later, in 1974, John Pollock replaced the scholarly and withdrawn Gilbert Bryden as general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland. Pollock's appointment was a godsend for John; he was a man after his own heart, combative and open, and a leaderwho saw the EIS as a union rather than a restrained professional institute.
John gave full journalistic backing to Pollock and his associate, Fred Forrester, during the bitter teachers' strikes of 1974-5.
Although the Houghton settlement that ended the dispute was generous, there were to be two more waves of serious industrial action in Scottish schools before the decade was out.
Pollock appreciated John's ability to get through to a wide educational constituency via the high-selling Record. But he also understood that John could write well in a more expansive context, and he gave John a column in the Scottish Educational Journal, which was published by the EIS.
John Pirie was born in Dundee in August 1922 and went to work in the Daily Express office. With the advent of war he lied about his age and joined the Royal Navy, his eyesight not being equal to the demands of his first choice, the RAF. For his trouble he ended up on the Russian convoys and was on board HMS Edinburgh when she was sunk by a U-boat in May 1942.
She was carrying GBP45m in gold bullion at the time, which later John would say was an early warning that people shouldn't trust him with theirmoney. He survived and was taken to a camp for allied seamen 20 miles out of Murmansk in northern Russia. The camp residents defied their officers, who were trying to prevent fraternisation with bolsheviks. John would never forget the warmth of the Russian people.
When posted to the Mediterranean, the U-boats escalated their campaign to expose John as wanting in his role as a sonar operator. He was sunk again.
After the war he joined the News Chronicle in Manchester where, he would later claim, he was being "groomed for stardom". He was deputy news editor when the paper closed in 1960. John joined the Daily Record that year.
When he retired, in 1986, he continued his association with the world of education as parttime media consultant for the Scottish Examination Board.
This left friends questioning his true motivation given his firm belief that there was an overreliance in Scotland on formal written examinations.
He was a committed Dundee United supporter and regularly travelled from Glasgow to Tannadice. He used to say he had chosen the team to be different from the rest of his family who supported rivals Dundee FC.
The club's early life as Dundee Hibernian, also appealed. Horse racing was another passion.
But, in the end, John Pirie's many friends will recall his great humanity, his sociability, irresistible humour and the hospitality that was second nature to him and his late wife, Isabel. It was difficult to be in his company for long without laughing, and most will have a smile when they remember him in the years to come.
John and Isabel are survived by their three daughters, Aileen, Barbara and Christine.
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