{"id":607645,"date":"2025-12-02T15:30:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/607645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T15:30:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T15:30:24","slug":"tributes-paid-to-radical-pioneer-with-merseyside-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/607645\/","title":{"rendered":"Tributes paid to ‘radical pioneer’ with Merseyside connection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Andreas Whittam Smith was at the forefront of major change in British media\"SirSir Andreas Whittam-Smith in 2015(Image: Jonathan Brady\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Tributes have been paid to a legendary figure in British media who grew up in Merseyside. Sir Andreas Whittam Smith was one of the co-founders of The Independent in 1986, regarded as the first in the history of Fleet Street not to have a permanent allegiance to a political party.<\/p>\n

A family spokesperson<\/a> announced Sir Andreas’s death<\/a> on November 29, saying<\/a> that he was “surrounded by family until the end” and that he would be “dearly missed”. He is survived by his wife, two children and three grandsons.<\/p>\n

Sir Andreas<\/a> worked at a range of British papers<\/a> including the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph before founding The Independent. He later became the president of the British Board of Film Classification<\/a> (BBFC), allowing provocative films such as A Clockwork Orange and The Exorcist to be released on video for the first time.<\/p>\n

Sir Andreas was born in Macclesfield on June 13, 1937 but his family moved to Birkenhead<\/a> when he was a child. His dad, Canon JE Smith, was a Church of England vicar and his parish covered the town.<\/p>\n

Sir Andreas went to Birkenhead School before securing a place at Oxford University. The Independent said his upbringing was often forgotten about in later years as he rose up the ranks of the establishment.<\/p>\n

In its obituary, the newspaper said<\/a>: \u201cHe was knighted in 2015 (‘for public service, particularly to the Church of England’), and his double-barrelled (but not hyphenated) name, as well as his ways, often led people to think he had come from some greatly privileged background. He had not.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was known at school as \u201cAndy Smith\u201d, and somewhere along the line, the embellishments were added. He was, strictly, a Scouser, growing up in Birkenhead with his father, Canon JE Smith, and mother.”<\/p>\n

The newspaper also included a quote from Sir Andreas directly about his time at Birkenhead School. He said: “I had a good education, but not one that could be described as elitist in a social sense.<\/p>\n

\"SirSir Andreas Whittam Smith in 1989(Image: PA Wire)<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018It wasn\u2019t Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, nor Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge…there was nothing pukka about the school: the social mix stretched from dockers\u2019 sons to doctors\u2019 sons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s obituary added: \u201cHe was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, the son of a Church of England vicar, Canon JE Smith, originally from a Manchester working-class family, whose parish was in an impoverished area near the docks of Birkenhead on Merseyside.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis mother, Margaret (nee Barlow), a piano teacher, was the daughter of a Lancashire mill owner.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir son\u2019s Christian name derived not from some exotic foreign relations but from a village on the Isle of Man where his parents had spent their honeymoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndreas was educated at Birkenhead School and obtained a third class degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Keble College, Oxford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of his career was spent as a journalist.<\/p>\n

Sir Andreas co-founded The Independent in 1986 with Matthew Symonds and was its first editor from 1986 until 1993.<\/p>\n

After this, he worked at the BBFC and was chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service from 2001 to 2003. He was appointed the First Church Estates Commissioner, a senior lay person in the Church of England, in 2002 and stood down from the role in 2017.<\/p>\n

Paying tribute, former Independent editor and BBC<\/a> presenter Amol Rajan said: \u201cA radical and a pioneer, Andreas profoundly transformed British journalism for the better, and forever. With his passing, a titan – and the golden era he personified – has ventured to the great newsroom in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Andreas Whittam Smith was at the forefront of major change in British mediaSir Andreas Whittam-Smith in 2015(Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[2644,748,393,4884,378,179,16,15,8881],"class_list":{"0":"post-607645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-birkenhead","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-in-the-news","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wirral"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115650692872867805","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}