Veteran Observer subeditor and contributor Peter Avis was a dedicated leftwing campaigner and lifelong francophile
Peter Avis, veteran leftwing journalist, broadcaster and long-serving Observer subeditor, died suddenly last week at his home in Brighton. He was 83.
Avis worked his first subediting shift at the Observer in the 1960s and worked for the paper periodically over the next four decades, finally departing in 2003 after 14 years' continuous service. In the 1970s he was a reporter for the Morning Star, ultimately becoming its diplomatic correspondent, and in the 80s edited the journal of the ACTT, the film technicians' union. A lifelong francophile, he spent his last 30 years shuttling between England and France, annually publishing A Taste of Dieppe, a popular guide to the French resort for British tourists, and becoming an honorary citizen and resident of the town. He also worked until the end of his life as London correspondent of l'Humanité, the French leftwing daily. Avis filed news stories and features for the Observer and Guardian until 2012. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the annual Brighton Festival and cultivated his connections in the British labour movement by hosting parties for leading lights of the Labour party whenever its conference was in the town.
He was a long-standing member of the Communist party, yet in 1989 during Czechoslovakia's "velvet revolution" he marched with the dissidents and was harassed by the police. More recently, he supported the Green party in Brighton.
The Observer's deputy editor, Paul Webster, said yesterday: "Peter was a man of passionately held convictions, who threw himself into everything he cared about – journalism, radical politics, his beloved Dieppe, his many friends and his family. His one-man crusade to burnish links across the Channel, fuelled by endless bonhomie, was characteristic of a much-loved man."