Henry Drucker

Henry Drucker was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Arthur Drucker and his wife Frances. He grew up in Rutherford, where his father owned a department store, and attended Rutherford High School. Drucker studied for a BA in philosophy at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he was the student government president. ==Academic career==

Spurning the opportunity to return to the United States, Drucker was appointed as a lecturer in politics at the University of Edinburgh in the same year he completed his doctorate. At that time, the politics department at Edinburgh was small in terms of both personnel and student numbers, and he became its main authority on British electoral politics. Drucker's lectures were well attended and he was noted for introducing new teaching techniques, such as leading groups of students on reconnaissance missions during important parliamentary by-elections to gather on-the-spot data and meet party campaigners. In the 1970s and early 1980s he was also a regular commentator on BBC Scotland's election night television programmes, where his Scots-inflected American accent and mutton-chop whiskers distinguished him from his fellow guests. Drucker's first published work was The Political Uses of Ideology (1974), an adaptation of his PhD thesis, which examined Marx's concept of ideology and contrasted it with how certain notions of the term are themselves used by ideological actors in the modern era. Drucker's preoccupation with political theory continued with the publication of what was to become arguably his most celebrated book, Most of Drucker's other works concentrated on the contemporary British political situation. Having arrived at Edinburgh at a time when politics in Scotland was in a state of flux, many of his early publications – such as Our Changing Scotland (1977; edited with Michael Clarke) and Breakaway: The Scottish Labour Party (1978) – analysed events taking place north of the border. Widening his scope, in 1983 Drucker devised and edited the first edition of Developments in British Politics, intending it as a general textbook for undergraduate students; it has since been updated several times, and by 2002 had sold over a million copies. ==University fund-raising==

Drucker hoped that he would advance to the professorial chair of politics at Edinburgh following the death of its incumbent, John P. Mackintosh, in 1978. Instead, he was overlooked in favour of Malcolm Anderson, and although he was made a senior lecturer the year after Mackintosh's death further promotion was not forthcoming. All of these were serious shortcomings: the university was at that time facing a "severe financial crisis", Despite its success, however, Drucker's reputation in Oxford was not necessarily positive: reservations about "American" methods of fund-raising, together with a common belief that his public pronouncements went beyond his remit, made him an "outsider" among the university's dons. By 1993 the development office had a staff of 60 and a vastly increased budget. That same year, Drucker resigned from the university and established his own consultancy, Oxford Philanthropic. As well as assisting clients in raising funds, his main objective was to "advise donors on how to make strategic philanthropic investment." He was particularly influenced by the notion of venture philanthropy, and attracted several charities and public bodies as clients. In 1999 he retired as the consultancy's managing director, taking up a less active role as chairman instead. ==Political activity==

Drucker's association with the Labour Party was personal as well as professional, and he made no secret of his commitment to it; Martin Clark, a colleague in Edinburgh's politics department, remembered him as "very much a Labour man." Drucker was perhaps better known, however, for his friendship with the young Gordon Brown, whom he later recalled (in an interview with Brown's biographer, Paul Routledge) as "hugely popular, a natural politician: totally self-assured... He was a bit like a Bill Clinton figure." In 1980, he and Brown co-authored The Politics of Nationalism and Devolution, which sought to establish a blueprint for future party policy on devolution and the constitution in the aftermath of the failed referendum on a Scottish Assembly. Christopher Harvie has since claimed that Drucker and Brown parted ways following the book's publication, as the latter grew increasingly sceptical of Drucker's pluralist-minded arguments in favour of proportional representation and electoral coalitions. It was Drucker's continuing support for Labour, alongside his fund-raising expertise, that led to him being appointed by the party in 1996 to raise money for its general election campaign the following year. This was not a happy experience, however, and he only lasted in this role for three months. Drucker was particularly dismayed by the party's use of a blind trust (i.e., anonymous donations) to fund Tony Blair's private office, and an argument over the use of this trust with prominent party donor Michael Levy at the latter's home allegedly prompted him to resign immediately. Levy retorted that Drucker had written a funding presentation for the party so "ridiculously thin" that his contract had been terminated, which Levy alleged had motivated Drucker to attack Blair and the party's new donors as an act of revenge. John Rentoul, Blair's biographer, noted there was a strong "personality clash" between Levy and Drucker which may have "sharpened" the latter's criticisms, but concluded that "Drucker was right, and Blair was forced effectively to admit as much when the blind trust was wound up at the end of 1996." ==Personal life and death==

Drucker was married from 1975 until his death to Nancy Livia Newman, a fellow lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and the daughter of NBC newscaster Edwin Newman. They had no children. Drucker suffered increasing health problems throughout his final decade, and two heart bypass operations encouraged him to scale down his professional activities. It was while attending a meeting at the offices of the housing charity Shelter on 30 October 2002 that he suffered a cardiac arrest, dying shortly thereafter at the Royal London Hospital. He is buried at Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford. ==Sources==