‘Unparalleled public intellectual’ Mary Warnock dies aged 94

Tributes have been paid to Baroness Warnock, the moral philosopher, educator and author who had an “unparalleled impact” on public policy, who has died aged 94.

Baroness Warnock was mistress of Girton College, Cambridge between 1984 and 1991, after spending several decades at the University of Oxford. Most notably she chaired the inquiry that led, in 1990, to the passing of legislation regulating in vitro fertilisation and research using human embryos.

In the 1970s, she headed an inquiry that led to radical changes in the way that disabled children are taught in mainstream schools and she later chaired a Home Office committee on animal experimentation.

In November Baroness Warnock received the Lord Dearing Lifetime Achievement Award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2018. The citation said that “the energy and industry that has allowed her to range so widely and successfully combines with her powerful intellect and almost unparalleled impact on public policy to make her one of a kind”.

Speaking at the time, Laurie Taylor, the sociologist and broadcaster, said: “No one of our generation has better claim to the title ‘public intellectual’.”

Born in 1924, Baroness Warnock studied philosophy at the University of Oxford and spent six years as headmistress of Oxford High School for Girls. She was married to Geoffrey Warnock, who was vice-chancellor of Oxford between 1981 and 1985, and was made a dame in the 1984 New Year Honours. She published her most recent book, Critical Reflections on Ownership, in 2015 at the age of 91.

Sarah Franklin, director of Cambridge’s reproductive sociology research group, described Baroness Warnock as “a giant and an astonishingly productive, generous, wise and instrumental figure”.

“Against considerable odds she held out for a more humane, pragmatic, decent and kind society in which people’s relationships with each other, and dependence on support from social institutions of all kinds, would bind us in a unity that elevates us all,” Professor Franklin said. “She had the very greatest optimism about what she called the moral idea of society. At the same time, she had an equally deep respect for the obstacles to social good.

“She used her piercing wit and agile mind to both lead on the issues she cared about and expose the hypocrisies and mythologies she saw around her. Despite her many titles she remained conspicuously modest in her manner as well as her lifestyle, but there was nothing remotely modest about her ambitions for us all and our future.

“She wanted all of us to try harder to create a society in which tolerance of difference could be combined with a unity of purpose in the name of measuring our progress by the care we take of others.”

Adam Balen, former chair of the British Fertility Society, said that Baroness Warnock was “an exuberant philosopher of great intellect”. Her work leading to the foundation of the HFEA, he said, “set the ground rules which have enabled the UK to be the foremost nation in the development of assisted conception technologies.

“This facilitated tight yet permissive regulation not only for the treatment of subfertility but also to explore and treat other conditions such as genetically inherited disease. Although they may not know it, her contributions continue to benefit the thousands embarking upon fertility treatment each day in the UK.”

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com