Easterhouse Baptist Church, Glasgow was packed on Saturday 25 June for a Thanksgiving Service for Bob Holman, committed Christian and social justice activist.
He was well known in the field of social policy and practice. After rising to the higher echelons of academic recognition from a poor start – his wartime evacuee experience having adversely affected his early education – he gave up a professorship at Bath University opting to become more closely involved at grassroots level in the community.
One of his earliest projects was on the Southdown Estate in Bath, working as a resource agency, helping marginalised young people find a firm footing in life. At the same time he worked alongside the local Brethren fellowship in reaching out to local disadvantaged youngsters. Those experiences are recorded in his fascinating book Kids at the Door.
Easterhouse Estate
In 1987 he moved back to Glasgow with his wife, Annette and children. He lived on the sprawling, deprived, and neglected Easterhouse Estate establishing Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (FARE) – a self-help group run by local people, many of whom were enabled to be transformed from lives of deprivation, degradation and poverty.
All this time his standing gave him opportunity to make his views known. A regular contributor to national papers and professional journals, he was a prolific writer and in great demand as a conference speaker. He wrote biographies of George Lansbury, Keir Hardie, F.B. Meyer and Studdard Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’). Such was his standing that obituaries have appeared in papers such as The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, the Herald and the tabloids.
He took his stance as a Christian, a commitment he held firmly and consistently ever since he responded to the gospel challenge through the Covenanters. He identified fully with evangelical churches and was a valued and active member of Easterhouse Baptist Church in Glasgow right up to his death from Motor Neurone Disease. His was a humble lifestyle, practising what he preached, loving his neighbour as himself as well as loving the Lord his God with all his heart.
