Malcolm Dean, the journalist who established the Guardian’s influential Society section and reported extensively on social care, criminal justice, and the NHS, has died at the age of 86 following a long illness.
Dean spent 37 years at the Guardian, from 1969 to 2006, working as a reporter, columnist, assistant editor, and member of the Scott Trust. He later moved into academic research and served on various working parties and commissions.
David McKie, a former deputy editor of the Guardian, described Dean as a “social policy king” who combined deep knowledge of his field with a passion for the real-world impact of policy. Dean launched the weekly Society section in September 1979, just months after Margaret Thatcher’s election, creating a unique space for social policy reporting and public sector job adverts.
In his first Society column, Dean wrote: “But for the first time since the founding of the welfare state this is no longer true. If Mrs Thatcher proceeds with the cuts that she has threatened, society today looks far preferable to society tomorrow.” He had recently returned from a secondment as a special adviser to Labour’s social services secretary, David Ennals.
After retiring from the Guardian, Dean held a fellowship at Oxford’s Nuffield College and wrote the book Democracy Under Attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics. He also chaired a Joseph Rowntree Foundation commission on older people and was a founding trustee of the Young Foundation.
Dean was born in Cheshire, the son of a village baker, and began his career in local journalism. He later studied at Ruskin College, Oxford, after a Harkness fellowship in the US Congress.
