My father, Michael Moran, who has died aged 71, was a professor of government at Manchester University and a leading authority on British politics and public policy.
He made his reputation with a series of books on industrial relations, financial services and health care. The British Regulatory State (2003) deploys a historical and philosophical range all too rare in academic political science. His final work, The End of British Politics? (2017), has a timely message about the potential breakup of the UK.
He was born in Smethwick, Birmingham, to Bridget (nee Brennan), a cleaner, and Michael, a factory worker, but he spent most of his boyhood in Co Clare, Ireland. He lived on the family smallholding on Scattery Island, in the mouth of the Shannon estuary, and in the nearby coastal town of Kilrush, where he attended the local Christian Brothers school.
He liked to joke about his “Angela’s Ashes” upbringing, but his tall tales were a double bluff – he really was raised in extreme poverty.
On his family’s return to Smethwick in 1959, he went to Cardinal Newman school, a secondary modern. He was lucky to live in an age of expanding opportunities. Smethwick Library gave him a lifelong love of reading and in 1964 he secured a place at the newly opened Lancaster University.
There he met Winifred Evaskitas and they were married in 1967; she became a teacher of English and drama. They settled in Glossop, Derbyshire, on the edge of the Peak District, in the gritstone landscape he loved.
He was a compelling lecturer and greatly respected by his students and colleagues. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
His own politics were often hard to gauge. But after the 2007-08 financial crash he became more radical. As part of the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, he co-wrote a series of books on the origins of the financial crisis. On one thing his views never changed: although he thought politics was a grubby business, he believed in the power of decent public policy and the generous provision of public services.
He is survived by Winifred, his children, Liam and me, and two grandchildren, Tom and Charlie.
