Dr Robert Fyson who has died aged 83 regarded himself primarily as a local historian, and as he himself said, ‘you are drawn to the area where you live’. True to his word, his best known work dealt with Chartism in the Staffordshire Potteries, where he spent his academic career, and the  history of the Isle of Man, where he lived in retirement.

Born in London in 1940, Bob Fyson first became interested in Chartism when he attended a WEA day school in 1968. He undertook an MA in Modern Social History at the University of Lancaster in 1974, and wrote his dissertation on Chartism in the Potteries, going on to complete a PhD thesis on ‘Chartism in North Staffordshire’.

Teaching Liberal Studies and subsequently History at what was then North Staffordshire Polytechnic and is now Staffordshire University, he found himself close to the sources he needed for his research, and with the encouragement of Dr Owen Ashton was able to continue his work on the Chartist history of that area. They became great friends and collaborated on a number of Chartist projects, not least the important second volume of the Annotated Chartist Bibliography in 1995. Dorothy Thompson warmly welcomed this updated Bibliography and noted the great challenges involved in selecting those works that merited inclusion. This resource stands as an invaluable resource for Chartist scholars and  a lasting legacy to the editors.

Interviewed by the late Stephen Roberts for Local History News (132, Summer 2019), Dr Fyson recalled the influence of Dorothy Thompson on his work: ‘I attended two weekend seminars held at the house she lived in with her husband Edward near Worcester and out of that came an essay on the strikes of 1842 in the Potteries (The Chartist Experience, 1982). I suppose that essay launched me – as far as I was launched – as a local historian of Chartism. I then went on to tell the stories of a stalwart of Potteries Chartism called John Richards (The Duty of Discontent, 1995) and a Chartist transported on perjured evidence called William Ellis (The Chartist Legacy, 1999).’

Believing with Dorothy Thompson that ‘it is difficult to understand Chartism unless you have experience of being in a political movement’, Dr Fyson was politically active, in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and as a Liberal councillor. He contested Newcastle-under Lyme for the Liberals in both the February and October 1974 general elections, coming third on both occasions. He also stood unsuccessfully as an independent in 2001.

Dr Fyson took early retirement in 1992 and moved to the Isle of Man. Here he wrote The Anglo-Manxman (2009), a biography of a former Speaker of the House of Keys, and The Struggle for Manx Democracy (2016), and contributed several articles to Proceedings of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society. He did not, however, abandon his earlier historical interest, contributing an article on ‘Late Chartism’ to the 2009 Special Issue of Labour History Review on New Directions in Chartist Studies, and speaking at Chartism Day 2012 on ‘Remembering the Potteries Chartists, 1850 -2000’.

Robert Fyson died peacefully in Nobles Hospital on the Isle of Man on 23 August 2023. An obituary in the local Isle of Man Today called him a ‘brilliant Manx historian’. Chartist historian Dr Joan Allen, the chair of the Society for the Study of Labour History, remembered Bob as ‘a man of gentle good humour whose excellent scholarship contributed to the better understanding of Chartism as a movement which drew support from across the British Isles. From the outset he was a regular attendee at Chartism Day and contributed greatly to the warm camaraderie of those annual meetings’.