British political and economic thinker and activist (1928–2023)
James Hugh Robertson (11 August 1928 – 9 November 2023) was a British political and economic thinker and activist, who became an independent writer and speaker in 1974 after an early career as a British civil servant.
Biography
James Hugh Robertson was born on 11 August 1928. He was educated at Sedbergh School and thereafter studied Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1946 to 1950, where he played cricket and rugby union, and ran cross-country for the university.
After serving on British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s staff during his "Wind of Change" tour of Africa in 1960, Robertson spent three years in the Cabinet Office. Following that he became director of the Inter-Bank Research Organisation for the big British banks.
In the mid-1980s Robertson was a prominent co-founder (with his wife) of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) and the New Economics Foundation (NEF). He was a member of FEASTA and a patron of SANE (South Africa New Economics Foundation), which was set up following his visit there in 1996.
In October 2003, at the XXIX annual conference of the Pio Manzu Research Centre, Rimini, Italy (closely associated with the UN), he was awarded a gold medal for his "remarkable contribution to the promotion of a new economics grounded in social and spiritual values" over the past 25 years.
Robertson joined the advisory board of International Simultaneous Policy Organization which seeks to end the usual deadlock in tackling global issues through an international simultaneous policy.[1]
One of Robertson's last books was the Future Money: Breakdown or Breakthrough? (Green Books, 2012).
James Robertson and his wife, Alison (née Pritchard) lived in Oxfordshire. He died there on 9 November 2023, at the age of 95.[2]
His father was Sir James Wilson Robertson.
