My father, Eric Rahim, who has died aged 94, was an economist, writer and academic.
He joined the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, in 1963, as a lecturer in economics. In 1971 he was transferred to the university’s new David Livingstone Institute of Overseas Development Studies and became director of a British government-funded research project looking into technology choices in developing countries.
During this time, under the auspices of the institute, he taught at the universities of Addis Abba in Ethiopia and Ghana in Accra. Later, he was engaged by the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, editing their annual economic and social report.
But he never lost touch with the economics department at Strathclyde, and held the position of honorary senior lecturer there until his death. In 2020 his book on Karl Marx’s early life, A Promethean Vision, was jointly published by Praxis Press and the Marx Memorial Library in London. Shortly before his death he completed a pair of papers focusing on the life and intellectual contribution of Piero Sraffa, the noted Italian economist.
Eric was born in the village of Montgomery, in the district of Faisalabad in Pakistan, one of 10 children of Tarey Rahim Khan, a landowner, and Rose Fateh Massih, who was a teacher before she married and started a family. He attended the Baring school in Batala and the Forman Christian College in Lahore, and saw many families who lived in extreme poverty, which instilled in him a socialist worldview.
In 1949 his interests drew him to journalism. He worked first for the English-language newspaper Dawn, in Karachi, and then for the Pakistan Times. He was an active member of the Communist party when, in June 1954, most of the unit were arrested and he was accused of spying for India and the Soviet Union. He was not charged but was held without trial, and later recalled: “Life in the Karachi jail was not unduly unpleasant … Friends sent a regular supply of books – though there was of course a degree of censorship.” On his release the following year he returned to journalism.
In 1958 he was accepted by University College London to study economics, with the intention of returning as a senior commentator for the Pakistan Times. But when martial law was declared there was no going back.
It was while completing his PhD in economics that he met and married Edith Chatzidamos, a young woman from Vienna learning English in London. When Eric was appointed lecturer in economics at the newly created University of Strathclyde in 1963, the couple made Glasgow their home.
Edith died in 2017. Eric is survived by his children, John and me, and his granddaughter, Imogen.
