Environmentalist and campaigner Roger Diski
Published: 11 March, 2011
TRIBUTES are being paid this week to Islington man Roger Diski – one of the world’s leading environmentalists – who drowned while swimming off the African coast of Sierra Leone.
Roger, 61, from Tufnell Park, a former head of history at Holloway School in the 1970s, will be remembered for his recent campaigns to shame the holiday industry for the damage it does to Third World countries.
He was a trustee for the Holloway-based national charity Tourism Concern. They are currently campaigning against holiday firms who destroy host communities by diverting water for new tourist developments.
Director of the charity Tricia Barnett said: “We have an appalling situation in countries like Bali and India where the holiday resorts get all the water and the locals are left with little.
“We’ve had situations where so-called eco hotels in Zanzibar are accessing all the water.
“And what little water the locals do get is often full of pollution and waste.
“Roger was very concerned that holiday-makers are not being made aware of this issue. We are going to miss him very much.”
Born Roger Adrian Marks, he was the second child of Ralph, an accountant, and Phyllis, British Jews whose parents had moved to London’s East End before the Russian Revolution. As a student at Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys’ school in Elstree, Hertfordshire, he won the history prize, even though Simon Schama was a fellow pupil.
He went on to study politics and history at Nottingham University. He was editor of the radical education magazine Children’s Rights, where he met his first wife, the writer Jenny Diski (née Simmonds). They invented their new surname together.
Roger’s fascination with Africa began in the 1980s, when he became an anti-apartheid activist. He later founded ethical holiday firm Rainbow Tours, named after the “rainbow nation” of a newly democratic South Africa, which he ran with his second wife, Judith de Witt, until they sold up in 2008.
He was chairman of the responsible tourism committee of Aito, the Association of Independent Tour Operators.
He leaves wife Judith, two daughters, one stepdaughter and two stepsons.
PETER GRUNER