Obituary: Bill Roper
Written by David Davis August 2021
I first met Bill at Birmingham Polytechnic in about 1978. My first imagined memory of him would be of Bill sitting in our staffroom studying closely a copy of The Racing Paper and on the table in front of him Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein’s first treatise on philosophy, along with a copy of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein’s posthumously published treatise on philosophy which completely revised his previous approach. Bill was not really a gambler but loved to try to work out the relationship between what he could find out about the horse, jockey, trainer, previous races and so on in great detail and then put perhaps a £1 on a horse just to see how near to correct he was. But he was into philosophy.
We had the luxury of a Philosophy Society in those days and one of our subjects was Wittgenstein. I remember Bill arriving with both volumes under his arm and the rather awed response by the philosophy of education lecturers present when they saw him open the two volumes, fully annotated, with highlightings throughout, in order to make a point backed up by quotes. I guarantee he was the only person in the room who had read both books. I suspect the others, including myself, had not even read the whole of one of them.
We became colleagues and quickly became friends – close friends for life. We lived near each other and would sometimes go for a pint in the evening together and talk and talk and share arguments, listen to each other, change our minds, go back to our reading and so on. We shared our ups and downs, our theory and the practicalities of our lives from brewing our own beer and fermenting home-made wine to the problems with our relationships.
As Bill puts it in his latest article written as a response to my Dublin keynote ‘I feel as though it wasn’t just in drama/theatre, education and politics [that we met up] but also in psychology and philosophy: Bruner, Vygotsky, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, met up with what I brought: Skinner, Neisser, Locke, Wittgenstein, Goffman’. As the years passed he moved so much further ahead with his studies of Lacan. He left me far behind and I never was able to catch up. Literally up until a few weeks before he died he was still feeding me with new thinking on philosophy, social and personal psychology and many other areas. I was constantly testing his patience by my poor ability to assimilate even the most elementary dimensions of Lacanian theory. He was remarkably widely read with such a deep knowledge of psychology, philosophy, politics, music, art, and culture in general: a quiet man who did not show off his knowledge.
Back in the 70s I asked Bill to contribute to my PGCE drama course and to work on learning and teaching theories. We worked well together. We were both active in the union branch and in the early 1980s I came into dispute with my line manager. My Head of Department was trying to get me to work on other courses apart from my drama courses which would have meant working over my agreed hours. I took it to my union and they supported me. Bill backed me up entirely throughout the dispute. We were moving to full scale union action on the matter when the Head of Faculty and my Head of Postgraduate Studies decided to back off. They realised at the last moment they would lose the case. On the evening before the dispute meeting one phoned me and the other phoned Bill to try to persuade us to drop the matter. We didn’t have a chance to confer but independently we both refused. The next day we won the union case. We were the only two in the Faculty to refuse the £1000 buy off money from senior management to ditch our Silver Book conditions of service. We stayed on them to the end. It was that sort of solidarity, close thinking and trust that cemented our friendship.
I remember he was swimming regularly at the time he met his long-time partner Jayne. She was also a regular swimmer. She told me recently that she was trying to lose half a stone to get her Weight Watchers badge. Bill was swimming to try to settle himself after his divorce. Jayne was engaged at the time but that did not stop a romance blossoming. One day Bill said to me ‘I think I’m in love’. They got together and Jayne became the mother of his two fine sons. He was very proud of them but also worried a lot about them. We shared it all.
Bill was remarkably patient. I never knew him lose his temper although he must have at some time or other. I never had an angry word from him even though I tested his patience on many an occasion.
Bill taught at Birmingham City University (formerly Birmingham Polytechnic and then the University of Central England) from 1978 to 2013 as a Social Psychologist mainly within the School of Sociology. He worked with me on the PGCE, and M.A., Drama in Education courses and with doctoral students. He was committed to teaching and developing psychology within interdisciplinary contexts and to find a social psychology that both built upon and was adequate to the arts, theatre and drama in education. He published some 14 papers in that field. He presented some 14 keynotes and papers at different conferences both in this country and in China, France, South Africa and Canada: all quietly, almost unnoticed by his University. A most modest man.
In his last months, when he was suffering from his cancers, we were in almost daily contact. Despite his illness he wrote an amazing response to my Dublin keynote which I promised I would get published somehow. His loyalty to Jayne in her time of illness has been a lesson to me in steadfastness: another gift.
At the latest hour of his illness Bill arranged for us to speak on the phone to say goodbye to each other and both expressed our love and admiration for the other: typical Bill - clear thinking to arrange it in time. I was in denial. He was totally clear where things stood.
He died in the early hours of the 28th July 2021. We’ve lost a remarkable man. We’ll miss him. I’ll miss him.
Written by Kostas Amoiropoulos August 21
I don't know if what I'm doing makes any sense but this is how social media will offer a way to publicly manage your thoughts and feelings by filling the void of a non-existent ′′ god ′′....
On Wednesday 11th August a man I greatly appreciated left. A quiet man. A very quiet man who had a very quiet death...
But with an extremely dynamic pen and deep knowledge. Which would never give you the impression that he promotes himself or has personal motivation for anything. From those who don't make noise and so stay in obscurity... beyond his writings that unfortunately remain mostly among his acquaintances and friends.
But he was searching till the end. And he always offered his knowledge to those who asked him to. Since I met him, in 1996, he struggled to the end to find answers to who we are, why we think, what we have to do with the world, how we can change our perceptions and our world, get rid of problematic ideologies... and we always asked him to help us understand... and he always accepted... without any return..... UNTIL THE END...
I'm probably lucky enough to be one of those he talked to and have one of his last, if not the last, texts commenting on an article of mine where he mentions Lacan, of course. He was a deeply Lacanian psychologist... but I never caught up, though, to tell him how much he influenced me in my thinking and especially in relation to the way I work with drama. Maybe because, many times, we get the impression that the people we value will never die...
I owe him a piece of what I do at work and the way I think. And I'm so sorry he didn't know he had an impact on me. I'm so sorry.
Bon voyage dear friend Bill Roper. I will miss you...