Richard Stanley obituary

The independent film producer Richard Stanley, who has died aged 71, was a master storyteller and the creative force behind a campaign that has put road safety in the developing world on the international agenda.

Fifteen years ago road safety in the world’s poorest countries was a cause without champions. While other health epidemics prompted global summits, road traffic injury – the leading global killer of young people aged between five and 29 – was consigned to peripheral meetings of technical experts. To Richard, this was indefensible.

Working with the FIA Foundation from 2004, Richard framed a new campaigning narrative. His weapon of choice was the documentary and short-form video. Stunning cinematography provided the backdrop to a gritty reportage. Richard cajoled successive UN secretary generals, prime ministers, presidents and heads of development agencies to go on the record about road traffic injury. But his lead characters were always the forgotten victims and ordinary people: bereaved mothers, injured children, and people left with shattered limbs.

Richard’s 2009 documentary Dying to Go to School set a standard. Presented by the actor Michelle Yeoh, and focusing on the quarter-of-a-million children killed on roads in developing countries each year, it was aired worldwide on the BBC in advance of the first ever ministerial conference on global road safety.

Like many of Richard’s friends, I was enrolled into the cause by his infectious commitment. One moment I was being reminded that, like so many other UN officials, I was neglecting a major cause of human suffering. The next I was in Kenya participating in one of Richard’s documentaries. One shot involved crossing the eight-lane Nairobi-Mombasa highway with children from the sprawling slum of Kibera, some as young as 12, making their way to school. For point of reference, try imagining your child crossing the M1, without the aid of traffic lights or bridges.

The breakthrough came in 2015 when, remarkably, halving deaths from road traffic injury was adopted by 193 governments as one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) – a set of targets intended to steer international priorities to 2030. This was a triumph of effective advocacy backed by brilliant campaigning through film. But it was also a product of new partnerships and coalitions working together to build transport systems fit for people. One of Richard’s gifts was his ability to work collaboratively, bringing people together and working as part of a campaigning community.

Richard’s work on global road safety was the culmination of an extraordinary career. He was born in Cambridge, the younger son of Kate (nee Furness) and Louis Stanley, a journalist who later became head of the British Racing Motors Formula 1 team and a pioneer in improving racetrack safety. His parents divorced when he was a few months old, and Richard was raised by his mother, whom he adored, and from whom he inherited a love of poetry and literature. Richard did not thrive at school – Frensham Heights in Surrey – but he always loved writing and had an early interest in photography: he and his brother, John, transformed the family bathroom into a darkroom.

Having married Sandra Rose in 1965, with whom he had two sons, Giles and Matt, Richard entered the world of journalism. Graduating from local newspapers in Oxford, where he developed the tools of the trade, Richard was thrilled to get a job in the newly established Radio Oxford in the early 1970s, working in news and on his own music show, Full Circle.

It was during this period that the campaigner in Richard began to emerge. Influenced by a John Pilger documentary, he became increasingly interested in international development. Making a short trip across the road from Radio Oxford, he joined Oxfam as communications director, leading a series of campaigns and fundraising appeals. Convinced that film could reach new audiences and drive social purpose campaigning, Richard created his own independent company with his second wife, Chrissie Jakeman, in 1983 (his first marriage having ended in divorce).

With Oxfam as his first client, Richard made one of the first campaigning films on fair trade, training his lens on the poverty of cocoa growers and the vast profits of the chocolate industry. Hungry for Change (1985), another campaigning film, was years ahead of its time, prefacing Oxfam’s later work on African debt and unfair trade. Much to the displeasure of the Foreign Office, in 1987 Richard persuaded Julie Christie to make a film in Cambodia highlighting the UK’s continued acceptance of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime as Cambodia’s representatives at the United Nations. The policy was quietly changed a few months later.

Today, we would describe Richard’s career as a portfolio enterprise. He thought of it as doing what he loved. Mixing BBC and freelance journalism with activism during the 1980s, he interviewed Henry Miller, Joni Mitchell, Roald Dahl and Gore Vidal, among many others. It was during this period that Richard met and married Chrissie, with whom he had two children, Jess and Kate.

While road safety campaigning dominated the last 15 years of his life, Richard also worked with the former US president Jimmy Carter and the Task Force for Global Health to produce a series of films on neglected tropical diseases including trachoma. He produced a powerful video documentary for the World Health Organisation on adolescent suicide.

Richard was a perfectionist and a consummate professional. He dedicated his art to causes he believed in – and to people bearing the brunt of injustice. Behind the warm smile was a steely drive to make a difference, and he did. In his personal life Richard was kind beyond measure. His friends loved him for his warmth, compassion, and endlessly interesting reflections on life and literature.

For Richard family was everything. He was devoted to Chrissie and his children, one of whom, Matt, worked with him as an editor from the early 1990s. At the mention of his six grandchildren his eyes would light up, a beaming smile cross his face, and a gallery of photos would appear on his iPad.

He is survived by Chrissie, his children, and grandchildren, Milo, Tilly, Emmett, Alice, Rafe and Laurie, and his brother, John.

• Richard Mark Stanley, film-maker and road safety campaigner, born 27 April 1948; died 25 October 2019