My friend Pat Conaty, who has died aged 75, served for many years at the Birmingham Settlement, a charity that helps people in poverty and indebtedness. There, as development director, he pioneered a series of groundbreaking initiatives, including what became National Debtline, offering free support to people with debt problems in the UK.
In his work for Birmingham Settlement from the mid-1980s, Pat was seeing more and more people coming forward with debt problems, many of whom were victims of what he called “predatory lending”.
Witnessing first-hand the devastation wreaked by over-indebtedness, he led the collaboration with other debt advice agencies to establish in 1987 a phone line, together with a package of support material, to help people to help themselves. What began as a pilot advice service in Birmingham grew into National Debtline, now run by the Money Advice Trust.
In 1995, inspired by the community development bank, South Shore Bank, in Chicago, Pat led the establishment of the Aston Reinvestment Trust (ART), bringing together Adrian Cadbury as chair and Steve Walker, from Barclays, as chief executive, and working with Birmingham city council to develop a network of credit unions. ART advanced tens of millions of pounds to support local businesses and preserved thousands of jobs. Pat stayed in a development role with the trust, also initiating ART Homes to help people with the cost of home repairs.
Born in southern California, Pat was the son of Margaret (nee Gorman), a secretary, and Francis Conaty, a metallurgical engineer. He went to Junipero Serra high school in Gardena, then studied politics and economics at the University of California at Irvine and Riverside. After marrying a British woman, Rosemary Foggitt, in 1977, Pat moved with her the following year to the UK, settling in Birmingham.
Pat found work with Birmingham city council as a play leader before training as an adviser with Citizens Advice. In 1983 he joined Birmingham Settlement as a debt adviser, before becoming development director (1989-99). After a period of self-employment, Pat worked for New Economics Foundation (2003-08), then held an associate role at Co-operatives UK (2009-20).
In 2006 he moved to Powys to enjoy the peace of the Welsh countryside, but this did not stop his activism. He co-wrote The Resilience Imperative: Co-operative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy, with Mike Lewis (2012). In 2014 he was a founding director of the New Garden Cities Alliance in 2014. This interest was sparked by his own experience of bringing up children on a low income and looking for affordable housing in the 1980s.
He and I co-wrote two reports, Not Alone and Working Together (2017 and 2018), for Co-operatives UK and the Co-operative College, looking at how co-operatives can support the self-employed. The TUC also commissioned a handbook, Organising Precarious Workers (2017). In 2019 Pat was a founder member of union-coops:uk, a group working to get trade unions and worker co-ops to recognise their common aims.
Pat is survived by Rosemary, their daughter, Elsa, and son, Jake, and four grandchildren.
