Obituary

Steven Ludlam

29 September 2017

Members of the PSA will be very sad to hear that Steve Ludlam, at the University of Sheffield, died suddenly from pancreatic cancer in September 2017. Steve will be remembered as a dedicated scholar who played a major role in launching the Labour Movements group around 1997. Although his later scholarship focused largely on Cuban politics, Steve carried out significant research during his career into labour and trade union politics in the United Kingdom, concerning both the 1970s and the Blair era. His Political Studies paper on the 1976 IMF crisis was an especially significant piece, paving the way for a major reassessment of that episode in British politics. More than that, however, he was a calm, measured academic who was especially supportive of younger colleagues and those entering the profession. Steve was the first convenor of the Labour Movements group from its formation until around 2005 and a mainstay of many of its conference panels and workshops throughout its existence. The group will be all the weaker without him.

Professor Mark Wickham-Jones
SPAIS, University of Bristol

Steve Ludlam (1951-2017) was a lecturer and then Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield from 1993 until his retirement in 2016. He did his first degree in politics and economic history at Sheffield as a mature student, and then completed his Ph.D on British trade unions and the IMF spending cuts in the 1970s, making full use of his earlier experience as a NUPE shop steward. He published widely on the politics of Labour and the British Labour movement and was a key figure in the ESRC Members of Parliament project at the time of the Maastricht debates. He then switched his main research interest to the politics of post-Cold War Cuba and contemporary left politics in Latin America. He will be remembered with great affection by his many friends and colleagues for his sharp mind, his energy and exuberance, his many publications, his mischievous sense of humour, his strong commitment to social justice and Cuban and Chilean solidarity, his work for UCU, and his inspirational teaching.

Professor Andrew Gamble

Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield