My friend and former colleague Tony Birch, who has died aged 90, was a political theorist whose book The British System of Government (1998) became a standard text for students. He was chair of the UK’s Political Studies Association (1972-75) and in 2002 received the association’s most prestigious award, the Sir Isaiah Berlin prize for lifetime achievement in political studies. He was also vice president of the International Political Science Association (1973-76).
An only child born in Kentish Town, north London, to Rosalind (nee Noblett), a secretary, and Harold, an office worker who died of tuberculosis after fighting in the first world war, Tony went to William Ellis grammar school in Highgate. At 15, during the second world war, he began working as a civil service clerk, although he was determined to get to university at some stage and began taking evening classes. Eventually, with the aid of a scholarship, he went to Nottingham University, where he gained a first-class honours degree in government.
Our long friendship began while sharing an office at the Board of Trade, where Tony worked temporarily before starting academic life as an assistant lecturer in government at the University of Manchester in 1947. At Manchester, with colleagues, Tony emulated US research in running one of the first sample surveys of voting behaviour in Britain, at the February 1950 general election. The following year he won a Commonwealth Fund scholarship to the US for a year’s study of political parties. It was a rewarding visit not just professionally but personally, as he met Dorothy Weiss, a political activist, on the trip, and they married on his return to Britain in 1953.
Back at Manchester University Tony kept himself busy as a lecturer, administrator, teacher on trips abroad, researcher and book-writer; all this despite suffering two serious attacks of spinal meningitis, one in 1955 and another in 1958. In 1961 he joined the University of Hull as their first professor of government, charged with setting up a new department.
He moved to Exeter University in 1970, and to Canada in 1977, where he was professor of political science at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. On retirement in 1989, he became emeritus professor there, and carried on some limited academic activity. He remained in Canada until his death.
The British System of Government ran to 10 editions, and his other publications included the book Political Integration and Disintegration in the British Isles (1977). In retirement, his Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy (1993) confirmed him as a significant political theorist.
He and Dorothy, who predeceased him, had shared interests in sailing, opera, classical music, jazz, books, theatre and bridge. Tony was also a keen football fan, following Spurs as a long-distance supporter.
Tony is survived by a daughter, Tanya, two grandsons, Andrew and James, and two great-grandchildren. A son, Peter, predeceased him.
