Edward Goldsmith

Published on Friday 11 September 2009 21:37

Ecologist, editor and campaigner

Born: 8 November, 1928, in Paris.

Died: 21 August, 2009, in Siena, Italy, aged 80.

TEDDY Goldsmith, who has died of pneumonia and complications from Alzheimer's disease, was often referred to as "the Godfather of Green". Almost 40 years ago, before "green" was fashionable, politically correct or even heard of, he founded what would eventually become the Green Party and launched the influential magazine The Ecologist. "Quite a lot of people thought I was mad," he recalled.

While his younger brother, the late Sir James Goldsmith, became an internationally known banker and billionaire, Teddy spent much of his career in a Cornwall farm cottage with an outside toilet. Whether from there, or, latterly, from his hilltop home in Tuscany, he campaigned against what he considered the dangers of economic development, global capitalism, World Bank policies towards poor nations, nuclear power and the devastation of the rainforests. At the same time, he championed conservation, organic farming and writing off Third World debt.

Even within the green community, he was variously considered a prophet – for awakening the UK and the world to ecological issues – or a "wacko" for his sometimes reactionary statements, such as blaming industrialisation for taking women out of the home.

He believed the world's increasing obsession with economic growth and technological advancement was detrimental to the future of our planet and that we should look to small communities around the world – even "primitive" tribes – as models of self-sustainability while respecting and protecting the environment.

He walked the self-sustainability walk. He recalled that, in the 1970s, he lived "a very ecological life in rural Cornwall". He said: "I had a compost toilet that cost me all my friends. If they didn't catch pneumonia because we had no central heating, they were sick from the smell of it.

"I remember once we had this very charming, beautiful woman staying with us. It was the middle of the winter, so she was already blue with cold. She needed to use the loo, so out she went. You should have seen her face when she came back. The next day she invented a transparent excuse about her mother being ill and left. I never saw her again."

Edward Ren David Goldsmith was born in Paris in 1928, son of Frank Goldsmith, a landowner from Suffolk who had served as Conservative MP for the Suffolk market town of Stowmarket before and during the First World War. As a result of growing anti-German sentiment in Britain during the Great War, Frank, whose father had been a German Jewish immigrant to the UK, moved to France, where he married Marcelle Moullier. As a result, Edward and his brother grew up bilingual.

When the family returned to Britain during the 1930s, Edward went to Millfield School, Somerset, before going up to Oxford (Magdalen) in 1947, graduating in 1950 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He did his National Service as a second lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps in Germany, latterly with the Allied staff in Berlin.

After an unsuccessful business venture in France, but still with family money, Goldsmith drifted around the world with a university chum, John Aspinall, who was collecting rare animals for his zoo, Howlett's, near Canterbury. It was on these trips that Goldsmith found an affinity with tribal groups – the seeds of his later campaign to ensure their survival. Back home, he became involved with a group called the Primitive People's Fund, which would eventually become the influential Survival International.

"Anthropology grabbed me," Goldsmith once said. "It seemed to me that tribal societies had it right. The way they lived in a society with a social and ecological balance and stability seemed eminently sensible to me."

He saw that tribes in the Amazon and elsewhere looked to nature to survive and thereby became natural ecologists by culture. Nowadays, that seems obvious and celebrities such as Sting have helped bring attention to such tribes and to the rainforests. When Goldsmith started out, however, "primitive" people were seen simply as that – to be given hand-outs and helped rather than be learned from.

Determined to make a difference, and funded by his banker brother Jimmy, Goldsmith founded The Ecologist in 1970, its first cover depicting a man suffocating in rubble. It also featured an article on population explosion, a subject close to his heart, which would give rise to accusations that he was a right-wing reactionary and racist.

Goldsmith edited the magazine for 20 years. It was forced to shut down its print version this year but remains an online publication edited by his nephew – Sir James Goldsmith's son Zac.

After The Ecologist's initial success, Teddy Goldsmith and his team published the breakthrough A Blueprint for Survival, which remains one of the most influential books in the history of the green movement. It sold half a million copies and influenced politicians, economists and many concerned citizens.

To spread the message, Goldsmith and his friends decided, in 1973, to launch a political party, called "People", and based on the ideals in the Blueprint. It would later become the Ecology Party and eventually the Green Party – now a worldwide phenomenon.

Goldsmith would later write other influential books, including The Way: an Ecological World View, Can Britain Survive? and, with Jerry Mander, The Case against the Global Economy.

Praising Goldsmith's legacy in an article in The Ecologist in 2007, Paul Kingsnorth, a former deputy editor of the magazine, wrote: "We live in curious times. The leader of the Tory party and the boss of Tesco compete to out-green each other. The prime minister is berated for his polluting holidays … Environmentalism has officially arrived, and anyone who's anyone has a compost bin, a cycle helmet or a ludicrously priced recycled jumper. If you're not on that new biogas-powered train, you'd better run before it leaves the station with all your friends on it, sipping fairtrade coffee and looking smugly down at you.

"It might be hard for today's young, enthusiastic greenie to imagine a time when this was far from being the case; when being an environmentalist was the minority pursuit of a few hairy oddballs; when organic food was for radical outsiders, not supermarkets; and climate change was not a nice little earner for pinstriped carbon traders but a bonkers theory on a par with David Icke's universal lizard conspiracy. But there was such a time, and it was not so long ago.

"…Being 'green' in those days meant that you were on your own … You had to be prepared to be ignored, laughed at or dismissed as a loony."

Edward Goldsmith was made a Chevalier de la Lgion d'Honneur for his services to France. He is survived by his wife, three sons and two daughters.