I got to know Barrie Stead in 2010, not long after starting work at ShareAction. Barrie emerged when we advertised a training day for people with an interest in putting questions to directors at company Annual General Meetings (AGMs). He was a truly brilliant find for a charity then employing just six staff. He rapidly became by far our most effective volunteer.
Barrie died aged 88 last year in his home in Hammersmith after a distinguished career as the partner of a law firm, a local politician and educationalist. He was an active private investor with shares in a wide range of British companies. From 2010 onwards, he attended many AGMs to impress upon the boards what a fine thing it would be for them to accredit as Living Wage employers.
He was unfailingly charming in making this request. He had a highly effective technique of offering a sprinkling of friendly praise for the directors whilst signalling his general satisfaction with the investment held in the company before putting it to them that his satisfaction would be so much the greater if the directors were to ensure that the lowest paid workers, not least the company’s cleaners, enjoyed the dignity of a real Living Wage.
Barrie knew how to make shareholder engagement engaging. He wasn’t a professional investor but he cared about the companies whose shares he owned and this shone through. This made him an extraordinarily effective steward of his investments.
Barrie’s interactions with companies happened the old school way, face to face and with considerable charm and skill, though there was also no mistaking his determination. No less than two dozen FTSE 100 companies signed up to accredit with the Living Wage Foundation after a question from Barrie Stead. One of these companies was Legal and General plc, the insurance giant that owns the UK’s largest asset manager. Needless to say, there was minimal resistance to Barrie’s persuasive encouragement of the L&G directors. Having made the commitment themselves, Legal and General Investment Management went on to become a leading advocate for the real Living Wage within the UK’s institutional investment community, putting its £1 trillion of assets under management at the service of the UK’s Living Wage movement.
By 2011, Barrie was a key player in our team with delivering AGM training. A crucial part of our training sessions were role plays. We would cast Barrie in the role of company chairman, where he would affably but effectively deflect questions posed by earnest young campaigners from NGOs, there to learn how to land a point at a company AGM with something approaching Barrie’s skill.
Along with many visionary people, civil society organisations, employers and investors who together form a movement for the real Living Wage, part of Barrie’s personal legacy is 16,000 employers across the UK who today are accredited as real LW employers. That more than half the FTSE 100, the UK’s largest listed firms, are accredited is an remarkable achievement. What an extraordinary contribution to society, in your retirement, to influence the living standards of many thousands of people working, often unseen, for some of the UK’s largest companies.
One of my last interactions with Barrie was in June 2023 when we went to the Tesco AGM together to ask the directors, once again, to commit to accredit as a Living Wage employer. We weren’t successful. The fight goes on.
We’ve lost an inspired and enlightened social change-maker since Barrie’s passing but we imagine him keeping an eye on us from above, cheering the movement on as we continue to demand the real Living Wage for all who work in UK retail and beyond.
You can read more about Barrie’s life and work in the Guardian’s obituary by Steve Schifferes.
Barrie Stead (1936-2024) RIP.
