Professor Bernard Crick, chairman of the advisory committee on citizenship, is a left-wing academic, writer, political theorist, campaigner for constitutional reform and the biographer of George Orwell.
He is a longstanding advocate of citizenship education, and is now Emeritus Professor of Politics at London University’s Birkbeck College.
A frequent writer both for and to the national press, 69-year-old Professor Crick’s most recent media outing was to complain that demoting Radio 4‘s Yesterday in Parliament to lesser prominence could stunt political literacy among the young.
Earlier this year he made the headlines by suggesting in Punch that Alderman Roberts, father of Margaret Thatcher, had been notorious in Grantham for “touching up” shop assistants.
The citizenship advisory group also includes: Alaine Appelbee (General Synod C of E); Lord Baker;Tom Bentley (Demos); Heather Daulphin (Hampstead School); Mavis Grant (head, Mary Trevelyan Primary, Newcastle); Elisabeth Hoodless (CSV); Sir Donald Limon (representing Speaker of the Commons); Jan Newton (Citizenship Foundation); Dr Alex Porter (Institute of Education); Usha Prashar (chair of Parole Board); Graham Robb (head, Lode Heath school Solihull); Marianne Talbot (Brasenose College, Oxford); Sir Stephen Tumim (former Chief Inspector of Prisons); Phil Turner (formerly with Borough of Redbridge, London).