David Lockwood (sociologist)
British sociologist (1929–2014)
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Through Sociology, World War I and Karl Marx
Early life
Lockwood was born on 9 April 1929 in Holmfirth, England, and was the youngest child in his working-class family. His father, Herbert, was a dyer and then retrained as a cobbler after being wounded during the First World War and he died in 1939, when Lockwood was 10. His mother, Edith, was a cleaner.
Lockwood attended Honley Grammar School, and then went to work in 1944 at Victoria Textiles as a bookkeeper. He took evening classes at Huddersfield Technical College. He served in the Army Intelligence Corps from 1947 to 1949.
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Academia
While Lockwood was in the army, serving in Austria, he became interested in Karl Marx through a contact in the Royal Army Educational Corps, and was encouraged to study at university. Still in Austria, he gained a place by examination at the London School of Economics. His contemporary there A. H. Halsey later wrote that Lockwood was outstanding as a sociologist, in a group that included also Basil Bernstein, Ralf Dahrendorf and Ronald Dore. Graduating in 1952 with a first class degree, Lockwood was awarded a one-year studentship, during which he studied industrial disputes and arbitration. Through T. H. Marshall, he then gained an assistant lectureship. Having published books and papers, he became in 1960 a lecturer in the Economics Department of the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
In 1968 Lockwood became a Professor at the University of Essex.
Family life
Lockwood was married to the gender studies pioneer Leonore Davidoff, whom he met while studying at LSE. They had three sons: Matthew, Ben, and Harold.
Lockwood died on 6 June 2014.