Obituary: Brian Gorman, former director of the English-Speaking Union Scotland
Brian Gorman was born in Wishaw in 1951, the son of Cornelius, a baker, and Winifred, a housewife. He had two brothers, Jim and John, and a sister, also Winifred. He was very close to his family, his father especially, and loved to spend Saturdays with him making deliveries in Larkhall and other parts of Lanarkshire.
An academically gifted child, he attended Our Lady’s in Motherwell before matriculating at Glasgow University in 1967 to study politics, then trained as a teacher.
From 1974, he taught in Coatbridge and Dundee, becoming a principal teacher of modern studies while still in his early 20s.
His keen grasp of psychology helped him maintain order: despite his dislike of the corporal punishment then common in Scottish schools, he bought the largest tawse available, hung it prominently in his classroom and allowed other teachers to borrow it. The fearsome reputation of Mr Gorman’s belt meant he never had to use it.
Brian always loved travel, particularly travel by coach. As a teacher he had become involved in schools travel through SETA, the Scottish Educational Travel Association, and he jumped at the chance to become its General Manager in 1976. He then became Transport Manager at the leading coach trip company Cotters Travel in 1979.
He said his greatest achievement working in coach travel was persuading coachmakers to put a window on the passenger-side front door that could be opened, speeding up passage through continental toll booths.
From his schooldays, Brian had a deep interest in debating and public speaking, and had long been a volunteer with the English-Speaking Union Scotland, the Scottish chapter of the multinational educational charity.
He became its Director in 1983, and set about transforming it with great vigour. He increased the membership, expanded participation in the school-level competitions, and dragooned university friends, friends of friends and even casual acquaintances to become volunteer judges of those competitions. He enhanced ESU Scotland’s international network, especially with the branches in New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
As Director, he launched an annual art exhibition that ran in the ESU’s premises during the Edinburgh Festival, and used to boast that the revenue from sales covered most of the annual cost of running the office.
State schools had been the backbone of the debate scene in Scotland but the long teachers’ strikes beginning in 1984 saw many extracurricular activities under extreme stress.
Brian’s unstinting efforts – spending several nights a week during term time overseeing competitive debates and public speaking events across Scotland – helped maintain the culture of debate and public speaking in state schools during this time, but he was not blind to the quality of the contributions of private schools, and when a trio of generational talents cohered into a formidable debate team at Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College in the late 1980s, Brian and their English teacher at Stewart’s, Cameron Wyllie, guided them to victory in the second-ever World Schools Debating Championship in Canada in 1990.
That was also the year Brian organised a highly profitable World Conference for the ESU in Edinburgh, and he was offered a promotion to the ESU in Washington DC, which he declined after long and careful consideration as he thought he still had more to contribute in Scotland.
Brian’s friends wonder what might have happened had he taken the offer, as it was around this time that he became ill, eventually being diagnosed in 1991 with idiopathic cardiomyopathy. He continued to work even as his health worsened, and faced his decline and looming death with great equanimity. A heart transplant saved his life in 1993.
It soon became obvious he did not have the strength to work again with the dynamism he had shown at the ESU, so he decided instead to devote himself to travel, as a consultant, helping develop new coach tours to the continent, scouting out routes and hotels and sights, and taking great delight in guiding tours as well.
An aficionado of theatre, he acted as chairman for two theatre companies, Suspect Culture from 1996 to 2002, and EK Performance from 2002 to 2006. Both companies remember him as a natural organiser; Suspect Culture’s David Grieg says he was “the best chairman I ever had”, while EK’s Pamela Carter recalls a generous man whose efforts cleared the way for the company to concentrate on creation.
Brian also became an advocate for transplant patients within the NHS, helping to identify areas where the needs of patients and their families could be improved and working on several committees to design services that centred patients.
He called this the most satisfying work he had done after his own transplant and regretted having to give it up when his health again became burdensome. A kidney transplant followed in 2021 after years of soul-sapping dialysis that he bore with patience.
Brian is survived by his sister, five nieces and a nephew – and a huge number of lifelong friends around the world.
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