Plan UK pays tribute to Lord Deedes

Bill Deedes, world-renowned journalist and Plan UK patron, died on 17 August 2007 at the age of 94.

Lord Deedes with pupils from a school funded by Plan in Sierra Leone

His long and distinguished career, which included the editorship of the Daily Telegraph and over 20 years as a member of parliament, gave Lord Deedes a unique perspective on the social and political issues he covered in his many articles.

He continued as an active journalist up until the end of his life, visiting war-torn countries and heading high-profile humanitarian campaigns for UNICEF and other charities.

Plan UK CEO, Marie Staunton, who travelled many times with him to Africa, Kosovo and East Timor, remembers him:

"Bill Deedes' exceptional quality as a working journalist was a stillness, a watchfulness even in the middle of disaster and chaos.

"During the Southern Sudan famine in 1998 we arrived at a feeding centre besieged by masses of mothers and their skeletal children who had walked for two or three days in the hope of food. Aid workers busily weighed, measured and carried out triage.

"Bill positioned himself under a baobab tree and observed. He noticed some of the women being turned back from the feeding centre because their thin children were not yet quite starving. His subsequent story showed up the inadequate aid response, the lack of political will to tackle the enormity of this disaster and made a 'splash' - a lead story in the Telegraph.

"He explained that he had been using his eyes as a grandfather. On every humanitarian trip he would observe the mothers, writing about what impeded them from making a future for their children.

"Bill Deedes did not have an ego that needed to impose itself on situations and his observation backed by experience often picked up stories that others missed.

"After visiting Plan programmes in Sierra Leone he empathised, as an ex-soldier, with the former boy soldiers that we met. He encouraged them to use their skills of organisation and survival and questioned that country's president on their lack of chances for jobs and education."