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Richard Maunders: a life of art in struggle

NICK WRIGHT salutes the militant student leader who went on to bring his creative talent and thirst for equality to the schools of south London

RICHARD (Dick) Maunders, who has died in his seventies, was one of a generation of ’60s student leaders who worked to integrate art students with the emerging militant trend in the NUS.

A student representative (and an innovative social secretary) at Camberwell art school he worked, along with a national cadre of Communist students, to co-ordinate student unions, organise a series of national art student union conferences, the first Marx House Communist school of art and the art courses at the annual Communist Universities.

“I got to observe first hand how gifted a teacher he was,” Anthony J Onwuegbuzie, his teaching colleague at William Penn School in south London, recounts.

“In fact, of the scores of secondary school teachers that I have observed over the years across two countries (Britain and the US), Richard is, by far, the most impactful teacher that I have known.

“As evidence of his teaching acumen, Richard was able to hold the attention of the most challenging students — many of whom I had struggled to motivate in my own classroom, and who had caused me the most discipline problems. Richard had a uniquely effective way of bringing out enthusiasm in virtually all his students.

“Richard was the most non-racist person that I have ever met. Moreover, as can be seen by how diverse his friends are and how diverse his former students who have contacted him have been, Richard embraced all cultures and nationalities, and was continually frustrated by the racism that confronts the UK, especially the increase of racism in the social and political discourse in the Britain and the US in this ‘post-truth’ era.”

Richard was an activist in the National Union of Teachers with a broad grasp of the Marxist and humanist pedagogics. His firm ideological positioning allowed him to survive the political difficulties which followed the dismantling of European working-class power and, in retirement, underpinned his return to artistic practice.

His friend Carole McKenzie recounts that he had undertaken new design work, creating a book for the painter George Allen and began to write, including for the Morning Star.

 “2018 had been a very difficult year. He lost both of his brothers one to cancer and, more recently Chris who had a lung disease … He came through these losses and had great plans for the future.”

He will be missed by his family, friends and comrades and many of his students with whom he kept in contact.

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