Richard Wiggs

Richard Wiggs, campaigner: born Letchworth, Hertfordshire 4 June 1929; married 1953 Margaret Street (three daughters); died Biggleswade, Bedfordshire 5 July 2001.

Richard Wiggs will be mainly remembered as the man who slew Concorde. He leapt into fame (or, in some quarters, infamy) in 1966 as the organiser of the Anti-Concorde Project, which financed itself by raising money in half-page newspaper advertisements featuring densely printed arguments against the supersonic transport. Later he organised the project for the Nuclear Freeze; and through his life he participated in local campaigns and good causes in Hertfordshire.

When Wiggs launched his attack, the Anglo-French Concorde was still an icon of the technological euphoria of the 1960s. Environmental concerns were generally dismissed as the province of bearded, besandalled vegetarians, all of which stigmata Wiggs bore proudly.

There already was a substantial critical literature, including articles by the Swedish aviation expert Bo Lundberg. These demonstrated that in the unlikely event of Concorde's escaping commercial failure, it would be an environmental disaster. As an aircraft, it was small, expensive, extremely noisy on takeoff, and with a limited range. Its continuous sonic boom would cause regular distress and property damage on the ground, and flying so high it would contribute uniquely to atmospheric pollution, damaging the ozone layer.

But the prestige of the British nation was then tied to the fantasy of a fleet of hundreds of copies of Concorde, our new empire of the skies. To all established opinion of right and left, Wiggs's intervention was a sort of blasphemy.

Wiggs recruited some impressive scientific talent to the Anti-Concorde Project: his advisory panel included a Nobel Laureate and Fellows of the Royal Society. Since the United States was crucial to the fate of Concorde, Wiggs worked closely with colleagues there, led by Professor William Shurcliff. They forced the supersonic transport issue into the American political arena. Tests were conducted of the effects on the ground of supersonic flight, and these showed that compensation payments alone would make it uneconomic. It was said that Concorde achieved an event unique in history: the unanimity of economists on an issue, that of the commercial unviability of supersonic passenger transport.

When the American authorities banned overland supersonic flight, Concorde's main market, the coast-to-coast route, was gone. That left the North Atlantic route (doubtful because of airport noise) and Australasia, where at least a few copies could be sold to keep the project plausible and alive. The Anti-Concorde team swung into action, and exposed the follies of Concorde there as well. Because its short range required repeated refuelling stops, it had hardly any time advantage; and because of its overland routes many people would be boomed.

Eventually the major independent airlines all cancelled their delivery options, and the two governments had to give away a few copies of Concorde free to their captive national airlines. As Wiggs later pointed out, the Concorde model built up hardly any flying experience over the next two decades, merely equivalent to a couple of weeks for a standard Boeing. Hence its safety was not established by the absence of disasters before the Paris crash last year.

Wiggs had a long history of campaigning, starting at the age of 12 when he prevented a local marshland from being converted into a cricket field. He campaigned to close a loophole in the Leasehold Reform Act, ensuring that leaseholders in Letchworth Garden City could buy their freeholds, and thereby preventing the estate being sold to developers. In the nuclear disarmament movement of the early 1960s he organised a speakers' corner in Hitchin Market Place. He later returned to the nuclear issue, organising the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in 1985.

In his later years, his campaigning turned to the unlikely field of music teaching in rural areas. There was a trust, endowed by Esther Seebohm, including her family home in Hitchin (where Richard's grandfather had been a gardener), for the Rural Music Schools Association. An attempt was made to wind up the trust, which Wiggs opposed. On a legendary occasion he bugged an AGM with a tape recorder concealed in an umbrella; and he discovered that the property was not owned by the trust anyway. Out of that glorious struggle came the Benslow Music Trust, to which he devoted much energy.

The family home in Biggleswade, Fairfield House, was itself something of a campaign. It was nearly derelict when they bought it, and with ingenuity and enthusiasm, it has been converted into a monument of inspired and loving eccentricity.

Richard Wiggs led a life of impassioned integrity. He took great delight in exposing the stupidities of those in power, an easy task for someone with his superior abilities. He greatly enriched the lives of those around him, and helped to make the world a better place.

Jerry Ravetz