The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 26

Obituary: Dave Cook Comrade in the hills He was an inveterate seeker out of truly appalling new climbs. He once talked me into climbing a new line with him on the far east Buttress of Clog-wyn Du'r Arddu. The state of the rock on it he judged from the fact that at one point, with 100 feet of rope out and no worthwhile protection, a 20-foot high pinnacle weighing several tonnes on which I was standing slid slowly down for 18 inches before coining to rest again. Had it not done so, he would have written my obituary 20 years before this goes to press. As it was, he just laughed, and so did I you could forgive Dave almost anything for the innocence of his commitment.

Not only for that though. His political creed was expressed in a complete readiness to share everything and anything he had. He was the most exemplary man I ever met, and as good company as I ever met with too, whether sitting in his Brixton home with a carry-out from Momma Redstripe's to keep us arguing to the small hours or at some bleak and ill-attended political rally on a November Sheffield night, or on a dusty summer's Sunday at Harrison's Rocks, or an occasion the year before last when he and I drove down to Pembroke for a criminal trespass on the military ranges in order to extend climbing's purlieu there. His sporting and political interests coalesced admirably in his writing about climbing, which is widely admired by the activity's devotees, and cuts a swathe through the bigotry, sexism, willy-waving, ignorance and exclusivity which still bedevil attitudes within it. At the time of his death, a book about his bicycle ride to Australia is being typeset by the Ernest Press and will be published early next year.

His life, after the political depression suffered by all of us on the left in the early nineties, was opening up again. He was enjoying his grandchildren (Dave's three children, Henry, Lester and Alberta, had all lived with him in Brixton). There would have been another book about his Mediterranean ride. He was fun to be with, but there was a sharper edge to Mm than just that. He wrote once, reviewing a book in the New Statesman, that it "forces the reader to think of a world where the story might have ended differently." Dave's sights were clearly set on that world, and he communicated it by precept and example to everyone he met.

If only, for our sakes who knew and loved him and for the principles for which he worked lifelong, his own story would have gone on longer, could have ended differently too DAVE COOK died in St Thomas's Hospital of pneumonia at the age of 51 on Thursday afternoon. He had been unconscious for a fortnight after being knocked off his bicycle by a lorry whilst cycling through Turkey on a round-thc-Mediterrancan bike ride. Guardian readers may remember his reports on his last long distance bike ride, from London to Australia, which appeared in these pages three years ago. After hospital treatment in Turkey he was flown back to London but the infection which was to kill him had already set in. The two main loves of his life were rock climbing and this country's now-defunct Communist Party.

I was fortunate enough to be his sometime comrade in both spheres of activity for nearly 30 years. His climbing began whilst he was a pupil at Solihull School in 1958. His father, a water engineer, had settled in nearby Knowle after a peripatetic early life. He went up to St Catherine's College, Cambridge, to read history in 1959, and his enthusiasm and talent developed rapidly upon joining a talented group of climbers in the university mountaineering club: Nick Est-court (killed on K2 in 1978), Mike Kosterlit2, Dick lsher-wood, Rupert Roschnik, Unity Stack. He was immediately active in the Young Communist League at Cambridge, and when he left with a 2.1.

in 1962 to take a postgraduate education certificate in Leeds, he found himself in an amenable environment for the development of both these interests. He became Yorkshire district secretary for the YCL, and an initiate into and devotee of the mysteries of gritstone climbing. This blunt and abrasive sub-species of the greatest sport, which takes place on smoke-blackened, moor-rimming Pennine outcrops and demands a disproportionate outlay of sweat and blood for success, he seemed to relish almost as an objective correlative to the class struggle to which his early politics were committed. He was one of the most signfi-cant figures from the last really vital phase of the YCL. when a working class and in the main non-university educated group of people Pete Carter, Barney Davies, Dougie Bain amongst them created an extraordinarily attractive modern and politically creative milieu of anarchic attitudes, irreverence, resourcefulness and highly-charged sexual energy within it.

Dave himself had started out from a very orthodox Marxist position, but moved with this group to a more radical stance and into the Movement Politics of the late sixties. His work here brought him to the notice of the then national organiser of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Gordon MacLcn-nan, who contrived his appointment in 1971 as national student organiser, in which role Dave's organisational powers really began to take effect. The Student Organisation had been under the prevalence and baleful influence of the Stalinists in the CPGB for many years at the time of Dave's appointment, but shifts in the climate and emphasis of student politics in the late sixties and early seventies leftism was losing the momentum given by 1968, and student organisations countrywide were beginning to look favourably at the CP again allied to Dave's endearing and persuasive character brought about a renaissance which was ultimately to work itself out in the splits and controversies of the late seventies and eighties. The position of student organiser was largely autonomous, one which Dave enjoyed enormously and where his political brain, his Bonapartism and his warm personal qualities found freedom of expression. In 1974 he changed roles to become national election agent, and in 1975 succeeded Gordon Mac-Lcnnan as national organiser.

In this role he acted as catalyst to a great release of political energy, and his organisation of events like the All Pally Rallies with acts like Scritti Politti and Shakin' Stevens performing proved his capacity to attract young, vibrant people into the party. But he came to the job at an inauspicious moment. It was a time of heightening debate within the party on women's and gays' rights both of which he staunchly promoted without perhaps clearly understanding the detailed issues involved and on the drafting and redrafting of the policy document The British Road to Socialism. A conservative realignment, given the Stalinist nature of the party's old guard, was perhaps inevitable in the face of his call for a more open and pluralistic party. Dave was made to pay.

From 1977 he found himself increasingly squeezed, his allies were booted off the executive and political committees, he himself was treated with scant honesty, his job restricted to menial tasks of card issue and collection of Morning Star subscriptions. His close ally from the time and editor of Marxism Today, Martin Jacques, recalls that "conservatives believe that the party had gone too far over towards accommodating new social movements, and no longer sufficiently concerned itself with the traditonal obsessions of class and friendship with the Soviet Union. There were bad times. Dave had one of the key jobs so they really went after him. He was anti-Stalinist, Euro-Communist, very principled, utterly brave and never deterred.

When he had his own base from which to operate in the student organisation, he was very good. As national student organiser he was responsible for the Communist universities which ran in central London each summer, and which in their heyday were brilliant and potent exercises in promiscuous heresy. But within an ossified national apparatus he found himself between a rock and hard place. He wasn't an operator with Dave, what you saw was what you got and they treated him dreadfully. "He left in '81 to work in a support unit for difficult children, which he excelled at, but came back as national campaigns organiser in '83 after the Morning Star split.

But the ruling faction still distrusted him. Right to the end, though, he kept his romantic attitude towards the party, even when it was clear to me and others that it was a bust flush." THE romantic attitude was still obvious, as was his total lack of cynicism about the state of leftist politics, even after the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Moscow gold revelations. His continuing optimism led him to set up, with Pat Devine and others, the RedGreen Study Group a natural direction for his energies. As late as the autumn of 1991 he was explaining in the columns of the New Statesman why he was still a Communist and how the democratic nature of that quasi-religious belief still held its force for him. But his party had gone, had become Democratic Left.

His home demolished, he looked to other struggles. There were always plenty of those in his personal life. Bea Campbell describes him as a man who was "robustly candid about his commitment to sexual pleasure, and completely comfortable with his masculinity. He was one of a group of men for whom issues of sexual and personal politics had never been part of their political project. The debate on them didn't come naturally to him, but he put himself out to make himself an ally in the way feminism was attempting to navigate a life for itself within the CP.

He was a person with whom you could do business." It is, I suppose, as a companion in the hills that I shall chiefly remember him. Of all the people I climbed with in my brief zenith as a rock climber 20 or more years ago, Dave was the most reassuring and encouraging to have hold of your rope on a difficult route. He seemed almost to will you into climbing better than you ever thought you could. His own climbing was earnest and dogged, but seldom less than effective and always taken with joyful and voluble enthusiasm. David Cook sets ofTfor his cycling trip in Australia in 1989 PHOTOGRAPH SHfclLA GRAYFQHMAT Jim Perrin David John Scott Cook, born August 4, 1941; died February 25, 1993.

David Gow Weekend Birthdays Music on the right tracks Prof Roger Scruton, philosopher, 49; Antoinette Sibley, prima ballerina. 54; Kenzo Ta-kada, fashion designer, 54; Elizabeth Taylor, actress, 61; Elisabeth Welch, singer, 84; Joanne Woodward, actress, 63. Tomorrow's birthdays: Peter Alliss, golfer, commentator, 62; Stephanie Beacham, actress. 44: Alfred Burke, actor, 75; Dr Denis Burkitt, surgeon and cancer researcher, 82; Robin Cook, Labour MP, Opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry, 47; Lord Dilhorn, 61; Barry Fantoni, novelist, cartoonist and jazz musician. 53; Helen Grindrod, QC, Crown Court Recorder.

57; Sir Anthony Havclock-Allan, film producer, 89: Prof John Irvine, physicist, principal and vice-chancellor, Aberdeen University, 54: Barry McGuigan, boxer, 32; George Malcolm, pianist, composer. 76; Brian Moore, football commentator, 61: Prof Linus Pauling, chemist. 92; Prof Sir Stephen Spender, poet and critic. 84; Sir Brian Urquhart, former assistant secretary-general. UN.

74; John Wilson, racehorse trainer. 37. David had also completed a Marimba Concerto for the percussionist Evelyn Glen-nie, a hearing of which is eagerly awaited. There were many new works in the pipeline and it seems unjust that we shall now be denied the opportunity of hearing them. David was my best mate a very characteristic Gow word.

He had no composerly airs and graces. Sometimes very thought provoking to talk to, often very funny. I see him now bowing awkwardly at the end of one of his many premieres, impatient to turn to his performers to thank them. He died of cancer and the recent months have been full of pain. A month aRO he wrote to me "Life is being a bit of a If you knew David you can hear him say that.

World view from the road ber and orchestra! works) that David had written for them, music that was technically demanding but rewarding to play. His practical sense was challenged when commissioned by British Rail to write a piece for the BBC Concert Orchestra in celebration of the first run of the 125 Intercity service from Paddington to Bristol. The line has welded rails and so the composer was denied the familiar train rhythms, but as ever David found a way to do it. The piece is often played. Listen to it and hear what he did.

I first met David as a WEA evening-class lecturer where his enthusiasm for the music he had chosen to analyse was infcctious.Those were exciting times. When the Open University began, David became one of its tutors and I was one of the many students lucky enough to benefit from his wise counsel. There are now many outstanding lay people who have takeii early retirement, on an adequate pension looking for an opportunity of service, who, amongst others, would be strong candidates for a massively increased nonstipendary ministry. In the cities, as Dr Gill has pointed out. near-empty churches stay near-empty because services are often so abysmal that they are oil-putting to the occasional attender.

But many of them arc of little architectural merit and all are appalling drains on resources to keep them in repair. In the inner-city and council house areas, where there is so much social deprivation and where the church is so weak, the solution lies in a massive reduction of church buildings and the creation of strong multi-purpose and where possible multi-denominational buildings, serviced by a Another Day February 27. Mrs Webb's book. My Apprenticeship, has made me think a little of what I could say of my own life. But then there were causes in her life: prayer; principle.

None in Mine. Great excitability and search after something. Great content almost always enjoying what I'm at, but with constant change of mood. I don't think I am ever bored. Yet I have some restless searcher in me.

Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay one's hands on and say "This is it?" What is it? And shall I die before I find it? Then see mountains in the sky: the great clouds, and the moon which is risen over Persia; I have a great and astonishing sense of something there which is "it" A sense of my own strangeness. A Moment's Liberty. The shorter diary of Virginia Wool. Uouarth. l'JSO.

Memorial BUCK Alexander Jamee Died Fobruar m. 19'J2 Ifi our hems for ever John and Sarah. Stanley and Leah, all your family and Irlends. and colleagues al London Lighthouso To place your announcement tele-phono 071-430 1234 or 001-834 0080. not surprising as the present parochial system leaves many of its clergy belting from one church to another with congregations in single figures, or battling alone in a city parish trying to maintain a Victorian church seating 500 with a mainly elderly and female congregation of 50.

These are not inviting prospects for able young men and women who want to use their lives trying to build the Kingdom of God. Power in the Church of England is divided making reform exceptionally difficult and slow. Nevertheless unless Dr Carey, supported by his fellow bishops, gets a grip of what needs to be done there won't be much left for him to hand over to his successor when he retires in years. The Rev Nicolas Stacey was formerly Dean of Greenwich Borough, London, and Director of Social Services for Kent. could do for his daughter.

Goodbye the integrated state school, goodbye the Molar Rollers Softball team. Hello media scrutiny: "Someone is going to be assigned to chronicle her zits." There sounds to be a solid person, her mother's daughter, in there: she faxed her maths homework to her father when he was on the trail, her intention is to be an astronaut-engineer, she said of the sex scandals around dad only that they were and she likes macaroni cheese. V.H. Today's other birthdays: Marian Anderson, contralto. 91; Paddy Ashdown MP.

leader, Liberal Democrats, 52; Sir Michael Butler, pro-provost and chairman of council. Royal College of Art, 66: Peter de Vries, novelist, 83; Alan Jin-kinson, general secretary, Nalgo, 58; Mervyn Jones, author. 71; Michael Kaye, director. City of London Festival, 68: Barbara Kelly, chairman. Scottish Consumer Council.

53; Ralph Nader, consumer protection pioneer, 59; Rabbi Julia Neubergcr, 43; Graeme Pollock, cricketer. 49: Alberto Romcdios, operatic singer. 58; Sir Gene Sarazen, golfer, 91; credibility which lie believed he had been called by God to lead was in dive straits. He called it "a Church under judgment which has been lukewarm, disobedient, sinful and faithless." He compared it "to an old lady muttering platitudes through toothless gums." He believed that the key to revival lay with the clergy. He has demanded that they should have competence tests; that accountability should be introduced as soon as possible and the parson's freehold, which effectively gives a vicar a meal ticket until he is 70, should be replaced by contractual arrangements.

He has supported fiis fighting talk by claiming SOME wiU have known David Gow, who has died at the age of 68, as a composer, others as a lecturer and the really lucky ones also as a friend. Although born in England, David was of Scottish descent, counting amongst his forebears the great folk musicians Neil and Nathaniel Gow, a family tie that David acknowledged in his Ancestral Variations on a theme by Neil Gow. David was the first student to receive a scholarship from Kent County Council to study composition at music college and the young composer rewarded the council by writing two orchestral pieces designed to be played at its children's concerts. His ability to write for a variety of occasions and performers stayed with him throughout his life. Many talented young performers experienced the excitement of performing music (cham- rural congregations of having full-time stipendiary priests looking after four or five separate country parishes.

Their congregations have decreased by 37 per cent over the last 21 years. As many village churches are medieval gems, they cannot easily be closed or converted. Other remedies are required. I believe the future for the Church in country areas lies in the ordination, after limited training, of men and women from the local congregation to serve as non-stipendiary part-time priests. For every 12 of these, there should be a full-time priest to support them.

For most of his later working life, David was a further education lecturer. It is amazing when considering the huge range of music that he composed how he ever found time to do it all. His retirement from college work gave him the freedom to be a full-time composer and his recent years have seen the emergence of a large number of concert pieces including the Hardy Symphony (acclaimed in a Guardian review), a piano concerto and much choral music. Many of these were commissioned by performers who admired his work. There has been a distinguished series of nine string quartets and several works for the cellist Tim Hugh.

The latest, a concerto, which he recently premiered with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester for broadcast in the near future proved to be a musical statement of great intensity. team of clergy and trained lay people. Thirty years ago. when I was Rector of Woolwich, we developed a pattern of team ministry from the Georgian church, which we converted into a multi-purpose centre for worship shared by the United Reformed Church, with offices for housing the homeless, the Samaritans, local voluntary bodies and a disco in the crypt for youngsters, many of whom were on probation. A number of the team, which included Anglican clergy, ministers from three different free-church denominations and a Roman Catholic priest, earned their living working in local state schools.

A strong, well-manned church reaching out to the local community makes people feel it is worth joining. But such centres can only be manned and financed if there is a wholesale redeployment of resources. So THE White House is a miserable place to be a real adolescent: so happy Kith birthday today to Chelsea Clinton, newest pupil at the Quaker-run Sidwell Friends School. Washington, and substitute for Dan Quayle as butt of the ugly-stupid jokes. Teeth in steel braces, body in jeans, and heart in Little Rock.

Arkansas she dissolved in tears as the family boarded the last jet. Before they left, her father released her pet frog into the Arkansas river so that "it could lead a normal which was more than he Face to Faith A crisis of Nicolas Stacey THE crisis for the Church of England is not about the ordination of women or about possible disestablishment but whether it can sur- vive as a credible and influential force for the Christian faith in this country. It is still capable of putting on an impressive show at state and special occasions, but to many it is seen as an ever-declining and marginalised religious club of little significance. Clearly the Archbishop of Canterbury is under no illusions. Dr Carey made it clear at the outset that lie thought that the Church.

in Dr Carey's church Geoffrey Kinder David Gow. born April 6. 1924; died February 23, 1993 far this is the nettle which the church has been reluctant to grasp. Only in suburbia does the church seem to function reasonably well if there is a dedicated and able priest but too much time is spent on administration which could be better done by a bursar. A number of clergy have become so dispirited that their ministries have become counterproductive.

The blame lies with the system which leaves them isolated in unresponsive parishes with little support from their superiors. Such men should be offered early retirement on generous terms with opportunities for retraining, possibly as counsellors and professional carers. As they would not be replaced, the church would save money. It is no secret that the quantity as well as the quality of those offering themselves for ordination is declining. This is that the Church must live dangerously: "if they want a wishy-washy Archbishop of Canterbury who is just a flag blowing in the wind, that is not me." His critics are now asking when he is going to produce a strategy to back his words.

The need is urgent as the Church Commissioners' unhappy time in property development has resulted in a financial crisis, forcing many dioceses to cut numbers of clergy they can afford to pay. In his new book, The Myth of the Empty Church (SPCK 20), Dr Robin Gill, Professor or Theology at the University of Kent, points the way forward. He shows the disastrous effect on.