Professor Jack Spence

James Hamill and Bob Borthwick write:

Professor Jack Spence, who has died at the age of 94, served the University from 1973 to 1991 as Professor of Politics, Head of Department and Pro-Vice Chancellor.

John Edward Spence, always known as 'Jack', grew up in the mining town of Krugersdorp in South Africa (his father came from a mining family in County Durham). He was educated at Pretoria Boys High School and the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) from where he graduated with a BA in 1952. In the mid-1950s he enrolled at the LSE and graduated with a BSc Econ degree in 1957. While at the LSE he met Sue who became his wife and they returned to South Africa where Jack became a Lecturer at the University of Natal. In 1961 Jack returned to the LSE to take up a Rockefeller Junior Fellowship. In 1962 he was appointed as a Lecturer at University College, Swansea where he rose to become a Senior Lecturer. In 1973 he was appointed to a Chair at Leicester and shortly afterwards became Head of Department. From 1981-85 he served as a Pro-Vice Chancellor.

Jack left Leicester in 1991 when he was appointed Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) where he solidified the already good links he had established with the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. After leaving Chatham House in 1997 Jack returned to university teaching in the Department of War Studies, King’s College, London. Jack continued to teach postgraduate students there until well into his eighties.

Jack Spence was heavily involved in a wide range of academic activities. He served as Chairman of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and was a past President of the African Studies Association. He was much in demand as an external examiner and was extremely well known in both the British and South African academic communities. He served stints as editor of International Affairs, The Journal of Southern African Studies and the British Journal of International Studies.

Jack was an Academic Adviser to the Royal College of Defence Studies and was awarded an OBE in 2002 for teaching services to the Ministry of Defence.

As a Head of Department Jack was calm, fair-minded and presided over a Department that was mercifully free of some of the ideological and personal conflicts that marked some other Politics Departments. He fostered a spirit of collegiality which reflected his own sunny and optimistic outlook. Jack’s many contacts meant that the Department had a steady stream of visitors from South Africa and other places. To students of the 1970s and 1980s, something of a golden age for Politics at Leicester, Jack was a highly impressive and much respected teacher who brought an unmistakeable air of authority, wisdom and gravitas to his lectures while holding a large first year audience in the Rattray Lecture Theatre in rapt attention. This was no easy task as many of us would find subsequently. As the students of that period travelled upward in the Attenborough Tower’s legendary paternoster, they would realise, without looking, that they were approaching the home of the Politics Department on the 9th and 10th floors and it was almost time to disembark. This was due to the strong scent of cigar smoke emanating from the Spence office. Students of the time had heard much about politics being conducted in smoke-filled rooms and here was proof positive! Jack’s affection for cigars would only be brought to an end in the 2000s on strict instructions from Sue!

Jack made an immense contribution across the discipline of International Relations where his interests were wide and varied, but he will be chiefly remembered for his work on South African politics and South African foreign policy in both the apartheid and democratic eras. In that field he leaves a rich legacy and an impressive body of work. Jack established himself as this country’s leading academic expert on South Africa and his contributions were valued well beyond the academy by the media both here and in South Africa. In the UK Jack’s reflections appeared in The Times and the Daily Telegraph and in South Africa in the Johannesburg Star, Mail and Guardian and the Cape Times. His work was particularly insightful on the turbulent decade in South African history from the bleak stalemate of the mid to late 1980s, through the transition period in the early 1990s and onto the birth of a new South Africa in 1994. In this period few publications on the future of South Africa were complete without an essay from Jack and no conferences on that country’s politics were complete without his presence. His wise counsel was also sought by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and consultancies, particularly Oxford Analytica for whom he provided analysis on South Africa over many years. Jack was sceptical, even suspicious, of ideology particularly when it led to a rigid dogmatism which impeded objectivity and critical analysis. In the great divide in South African historiography and scholarship between Marxists and liberals, his own work was firmly situated in the tradition of liberal constitutionalism alongside contemporaries such as Merle Lipton and David Welsh. It was a source of great satisfaction to Jack that South Africa’s new constitution of 1996 was firmly embedded in those principles and that it continues to serve as a reliable anchor for the beloved country despite its many difficulties. However, his intellectual tolerance and curiosity meant he was never dismissive of other approaches and it was to his great credit that he never succumbed to ideological feuding and vendettas and maintained friendships across ideological boundaries. His writing style was eloquent, accessible and invariably laced with literary references to Robert Frost, WH Auden, Lewis Carroll, George Orwell and Robert Browning which demonstrated Jack’s considerable intellectual hinterland and always made his many articles a pleasure to read. His books included Republic Under Pressure: A study of South African Foreign Policy, Lesotho- The Politics of Dependence, Change in South Africa, Violence in Southern Africa, After Mandela: The 1999 South African Election and Ending Apartheid (with David Welsh)

It would be remiss not to mention another major contribution which Jack made to academic life which was his assistance to and nurturing of future generations of scholars. Jack’s networks were extensive – "my spies are everywhere" was a favourite Spence aside - and he used these to make openings for younger scholars by suggesting they give talks or provide book chapters or articles. He would speak to editors on their behalf and even help aspiring scholars who had rather lost their way. Many are the now middle-aged, older and even retired scholars who are in his debt for the contacts he provided and the career opportunities he helped open up. It was typical of Jack that he did this with maximum good grace and minimum fuss. Thus a phone call from Jack would often be accompanied by the words "…and I thought you might be a good fit for this and I mentioned it to the editor." As a very eminent Professor of Renaissance Studies at Leicester once said of Jack, "He has a production line where he churns out scholars of South Africa."

Jack Spence will be remembered as a huge figure in British academic life who left an indelible impression on all those who encountered him at Wits, Natal, LSE, Swansea, Leicester, Chatham House and King’s College, London. Even more important than that, however, he was a very fine person: gracious, kind, good humoured and the best of company. He will be greatly missed.