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Irving Oldfield |
Advocate of real journalism who helped launch CNJ
VETERAN journalist and early supporter of the New Journal Irving Oldfield has died, aged 85, after a short illness.
Irving was involved in the early planning for the new paper in 1982 along with his journalist wife Renee. He was responsible for a feasibility study – essential in obtaining the financial backing needed to get the project off the ground.
Irving was a familiar face at the New Journal in those early days, helping out in the newsroom while Renee worked as a sub-editor on the paper.
Completing the Oldfield family trio was Irving’s journalist son Simon, who contributed freelance motoring articles for some of the early editions.
Forthright and often outspoken, Irving had a reputation for sound judgment and for giving good advice. He believed passionately in the importance of hard-hitting, serious journalism as the guardian of truth and freedom. It was that spirit which inspired him in his work for the New Journal.
The son of a miner, Irving went on from grammar school in Sheffield to his first job as a reporter on the South Yorkshire Times in Mexborough during the Second World War. He met fellow reporter Renee Lightley on the paper, and the couple married in 1947.
After a spell on the Sheffield Star, Irving moved to the prestigious Yorkshire Post, where he worked for 11 years, latterly as South Yorkshire correspondent based in Doncaster. He showed the ropes to a fresh-faced lad called Michael Parkinson.
In later years, Irving would often watch Parky’s TV shows and remark drily that he’d taught him everything he knew! Irving’s expertise in reporting the then booming coal industry led him in 1961 to the National Coal Board in London as a press officer. At the Aberfan disaster in 1966, when a coal tip slid down on a primary school, Irving was one of the first Coal Board officials on the scene.
He would recall how he lit cigarettes for the exhausted miners after their long shifts digging through the debris to rescue buried children.
One incident typified the sensitive but no-nonsense approach of the man. After hearing a bereaved mother being refused a benefit payout because it had not been properly authorised, Irving grabbed the document and signed it himself. The money was handed over immediately without argument.
After being promoted to chief press officer at the NCB, Irving headed what many journalists regarded as the best industrial media operation at the time.
He retired in 1983 – grateful at having avoided a personal conflict of interests during the later miners strike.
A lifelong member of the National Union of Journalists, he was also for many years an active member of the Labour Party in Enfield.
He is survived by Renee, Simon, daughter Karen and a number of grandchildren and great grandchildren.
The funeral will take place at New Southgate Crematorium, 98 Brunswick Park Road, at 1.30pm on Wednesday followed by a wake at The Lord Nelson pub, 14 West End Lane, High Barnet. |
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