LEWIS SMITH

One of the things that I talked a lot about with my farther and what stands out most in my mind are our conversations on how life is and how one can live it. By this I mean that we shared a view on life. This view could best be summed up by the quote “so it goes from” the novelist Kurt Vonnegut. This really just means that life will work the way it does, and that is the way of life. That essentially life is chaotic and not ordered, like skating on thin ice, that separates you from the catastrophic, yet we consider it to be as solid as concrete. It was an understanding and an appreciation that I was skating on thin ice that my farther gave me This was not though an excuse for laying back and allowing the world to roll over you but a way of realising that we must endure life and it’s privations.

This to me made sense in that a life like this could produce the circumstances that meant any man could flounder or succeed and this would not be a measure of his skill, talent or morality but a side effect of life in general. From this you can and should draw the idea that what happens to the man across the street or on the legendary Clapham omnibus could happen to you. This is for me the essence of what I received from my Farther. That you should not judge lest ye be judged. He was a man capable of sitting down with the worst and the best and not feeling he was better or worse than them but equal to them and I feel this was what he gave to me. The idea that only a sliver of paper divides you or I from those less fortunate. He was not a great lover of humanity but a great lover of humans and this was for me the basis of why he did the things he did. Whether that was education in the academic sense or education in a wider sense of imparting knowledge to those that needed to know, from those without a voice. He was extremely passionate about this and this was a core belief for him that was central his interest in educating himself as well as others. It could be said he adhered to Socrates dictum that a life unexamined is not worth living. He was always interested in learning and began to do so by working in bookshops, which resulted in a life long addiction to books resulting in the culmination of him writing one in conjunction with Dr Tom Carnworth. His interest in reading and learning has been passed on to all of his children as well as his friends, though in my case mainly comics. It was this that was the basis for another achievement I feel is worth mentioning, and that is the drug library at Trafford Substance Misuse Service, which has metamorphosised constantly but still bears his imprint and has helped innumerable people over the years.

I feel that Ian’s primary focus was driven by the understanding that life is not particularly fair or just, and that we can in some ways attempt to redress this balance. That those who are at the bottom are not there because in some way this is the natural order, or that they deserve to be there and this should be questioned and we should make some efforts to change this. Though the method of how this was to be done had to be adjusted in relation to the situation. I know his initial position was that of an anarchist back in the sixties and perhaps he modified his views and his methods but essentially stayed an outsider even though he was on the inside. Though he was part of the establishment in many ways he continued to rail against it.

I can say, and it has been said by others, that he was and did remain radical, so I am only adding my voice to the chorus, but I am adding that his radicalism was fundamental not just functional. From his very earliest outlook and even as a young man he did not follow the tried and tested path but took one of his own making, and that due to this his was a life less ordinary than most and should be celebrated as well as mourned.