Brian Simon


Brian Simon was an English educationist and historian. A leading member of the British Communist Party, his histories reflected a Marxian interpretation.

Background and early life

The younger son of Ernest Darwin Simon, 1st Baron Simon of Wythenshawe and Shena, Lady Simon, he was the brother of the second Baron Simon of Wythenshawe, Roger Simon, the solicitor and writer on Gramsci.
After Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk, where he was a contemporary of Benjamin Britten and Donald Maclean, and two terms at Schule Schloss Salem, under the headship of Kurt Hahn, Simon went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1934, becoming a leader of the University Education Society. In 1935 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and the student Marxist Study Group.
In 1940 Simon wrote to Joan Peel, his future wife, that at Gresham's most of his creative instincts had been driven out of him or deep underground.
After Cambridge he went to the University of London's Institute of Education to train as a teacher.

Career

In 1938, he was appointed to the newly formed Labour Party education advisory committee and was elected secretary of the National Union of Students branch at the Institute of Education, going on to become President of the NUS in 1939. He travelled to international student conferences, one such visit being with Guy Burgess to Moscow in the summer of 1939.
During the Second World War, Simon served in the Dorsetshire Regiment and the Royal Corps of Signals and was attached to the Phantom regiment which took him to many places and led to a lifelong friendship with the actor David Niven.
After the war, Simon taught in a Manchester primary school, then at Varna Street Secondary Modern, and for three years at Salford Grammar School, where he produced a play which gave Albert Finney his first stage role. From 1950 to 1980 he taught at the University of Leicester as a lecturer, becoming reader, and professor, retiring as an emeritus professor in 1980.
Simon emerged as a major figure in the world of education, writing on the history and politics of education and advocating a national system of comprehensive schools.
Anne Corbett, in her obituary of Simon in The Guardian said that he came under increasing attack in the late 20th century:
The Guardian obituary also said that Simon's writing had reflected a Marxian interpretation of history.

Publications

On 12 February 1941 Brian Simon married Joan Peel, assistant editor of the Times Educational Supplement, the daughter of Home Peel, a civil servant in the India Office and descendant of Sir Robert Peel.
They had two sons, Alan and Martin.

Primary sources

Simon's personal papers are held in the Archives at the Institute of Education, University of London.