My last meeting with him was on Friday morning, the day before he died. At the end, Fred offered his hand to shake, and though we did not use the term, we exchanged words appropriate to a goodbye. During that meeting we did a final audio recording to try to help me in the task of completing and publishing the memoirs he was working on. He had given himself a deadline of December this year to finalise the draft. Sadly, that was not to be. Fred set great store by his project and those of us who have read parts of the draft have been very impressed. It is a worthy reflection of two extraordinary lives (Fred being insistent that Etta should have an equal role). About three quarters is drafted but the rest is in notes and fragments. I do, however, firmly believe it is possible to complete it, not, of course, exactly as Fred would have done, but in a way that honours Etta and Fred. If I may, I will be in touch with some of you if I think you might be able to help. Also, do contact me if you have anything I need to know about. Thanks to all those who have already offered assistance. It is going to be needed.

Fred was not only an enormous presence in the History Department and the former Centre for Social History but also in the wider university and, indeed, in all of the institutions and movements into which he wholeheartedly threw himself with great energy and effect. These ranged from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) to, in his last academic journeys, the Tolpuddle Radical History School.

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Fred was born in Glasgow in 1937. He lost his sight at the age of 14. In 1958 he set out to study History and Law at Edinburgh University. After graduating with first class honours in History he went on to The Queen’s College Oxford, completing his doctorate in 1967. Shortly before that, in 1966, he came to Warwick. Here he was a colleague of the great Edward Thompson who, among other things, encouraged him to broaden his interest from political history to the theme of history and literature which he focused on increasingly from the late 1970s. In the department, as in all aspects of his life, Fred played a full part, never making allowances for his blindness. If anything he drove himself harder because of it. He was deeply involved in university politics and the protest around the keeping of files on students and staff and the ever-increasing intrusion of commercial and business interests in academic decision-making. In the department he was a revered teacher, getting his students to read their essays onto tape cassettes. He also had a supply of readers who recorded items he needed for his administrative work and for his research. His office was awash with cassettes and bulky braille files but he always knew exactly where each item he needed was to be found. He taught modules on British Social and Political History, History and Literature and was instrumental in introducing the department’s final year module on historiography and historical methods, an area in which he both absorbed lessons from, and confronted, the postmodern tendencies emerging in the 1980s. He also played a full role in departmental administration and served as chair from 1989 to 1992. His research was also outstanding. He produced many papers on the history of the Labour party, Scottish miners and on the writer Thomas Hardy. The crowning glories were monographs on Keir Hardie: the Making of a Socialist (Routledge/Croom Helm, 1978) and, after his retirement, Thomas Hardy and History (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). In retirement he also wrote about his grandfather In Search of Willie Patterson: a Scottish Soldier in the Age of Imperialism (Cualan Press, 2002) and an unpublished novel, The Panopticon.

Fred was also a public figure who played an energetic and effective role in national disability politics. In particular, he was a gadfly in the RNIB and other societies and pressure groups. In the RNIB he was in the forefront of campaigns to turn it from an organization for blind people into an organization of blind people. He also was motivated by the fact that the employment rate for the blind had been stuck at 25% for many decades. As a result of the fight by Fred and his allies for better education with higher expectations for what blind people could do and by practical measures such as having professional rather than volunteer reader services for them, the percentage of employed blind people did rise, though his expressed aim, to get it to 75%, remains a long way off. Fred also campaigned locally. He and Etta built on their own need for readers to support their demanding careers by building up local services for blind and visually impaired people including the voluntary Kenilworth Readers for the Blind. Their endeavours at national and local level were instrumental in them receiving honorary doctorates from Warwick University in 2017.

Fred’s extraordinary achievements were not only visible in his professional life but also extended to his leisure pursuits. He was a keen cyclist, mountaineer, traveller and formidable walker. In better weather he would, accompanied by one or other of his succession of much-loved guide dogs, walk to the university from his home in Kenilworth.

All the more amazing, these public achievements were only peripheral to the firm centre of his life. In Fred’s own words, ‘best of all has been my family’. He was sustained by his loving relationships with Etta, his two sons, Gavin and Les, and daughter Julie. With Etta also holding down a demanding career in physiotherapy it was a constant source of wonder to friends that both Etta and Fred were able to achieve so much more than many sighted couples. Tragically, only a year ago he had to withstand the terrible blow of losing his beloved daughter Julie when she was only 56 years old.

To achieve all this required enormous strength, determination, confidence and deep reserves of energy. Fred had all these things in abundance. He was loved and respected by all who knew him and he made a lasting impression on all those who had contact with him from his students and colleagues to national figures such as Peter White - presenter of the BBC 4 programme for the blind, In Touch - and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who had been in contact with Fred since he himself lost the sight in one eye and almost in the other some 55 years ago. Brown spoke for us all when, in 2015, he described Fred as ‘a great of our time’ in a radio documentary about Keir Hardie. Although Fred’s strength and determination could make him a difficult person to deal with at times he had the ability to stand by his views and positions without leaving anything but respect and affection in the minds of those who were debating with him. Fred never showed malice or rancour towards anyone with whom he had dealings and he left only warm feelings in the minds of all who knew him.

We will all miss him but we also rejoice that we knew him and we will always remember him. I don't like to use the word inspirational since it is such a cliché but in Fred's case it applies in its deepest and real sense.

Our thoughts and sympathies are with Etta, Les, Gavin and the family,

Chris Read

Emeritus Professor of History

Please also see a tribute to Fred Reid on BBC Radio 4 aired on 8 April 2025 here