Yahoo Finance Paul Stibbe obituary
My dad, Paul Stibbe, who has died aged 93, had a life of extraordinary complexity and diversity. Although he was born into a family of wealthy Leicester industrialists, of Dutch-Jewish background, his early life, as the son of Jessie (nee Mather) and Edward Stibbe – of nannies, chauffeurs, and boarding schools – was disrupted by the outbreak of the second world war. In 1942 he joined the RAF as a mechanic.
After the war, his older brother Philip began a career in education and it was left to Paul to follow his father’s footsteps into the family business, Stibbe Machinery, one of the largest employers in Leicester. Demobbed in 1946, he spent the next decade forging new trade links with Europe. In 1955 he went to the London School of Economics, where his tutors included Ralph Miliband and Karl Popper. There, disillusioned with the values of his parents’ generation, he became an active Labour supporter.
He married Elspeth Barlow in 1959 and they settled in St John’s Wood, north London, going on to have four children, Victoria, Nina, Jeremy and Thomas.
In 1961, Paul was called back to work at Stibbe. He did his best to reconnect but hated the conventions of the business world, and the family politics even more. A year after Paul and Elspeth separated in 1965, Paul succeeded his father as chairman of Stibbe Machinery. In 1968 he married Judith Dimock. In 1972 Stibbe Machinery won the Queen’s Award to Industry. Two years later the company had gone out of business, and Paul was personally bankrupt.
Over the next 10 years, living in considerably reduced circumstances, Paul worked for the Management Training Board and lectured at local colleges. He also joined the Ecology party, for which he stood unsuccessfully in council elections in Loughborough.
In 1985 Judith died. Paul faced single parenthood – of their three children, Alexandra, Emily and me – and bouts of unemployment. He became an expert budget cook, discovering lentils and textured vegetable protein, and invented a variety of dal dishes that his children remember with affection.
In 1987 he married Hazel Rawlinson and moved to Wolverhampton, where Hazel was a consultant at New Cross hospital. There Paul built up a counselling practice and trained as a psychotherapist. He spent the final 15 years of his life in retirement in Montgomery, Powys, where he was a leading light in local book, environmental and Scrabble clubs.
He is survived by Hazel, his seven children and 16 grandchildren.
