Jean Stead

Jean Stead Formerly national news editor and assistant editor, the Guardian.Born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, 1936, educated privately and later at Hunmanby Hall School for Girls.

Biography

Trained as a reporter on the Yorkshire Post, working as a reporter for 10 years in Leeds and London. Joined the Guardian as a reporter in 1963, specialising in writing about housing and the homeless, immigration and race relations. Also as an occasional columnist on the women's page. Became deputy to John Cole, then the news editor, in 1968, succeeding him as news editor from 1970-79.; was then appointed Special Projects Editor, working with the Design Editor, Michael McNay and covering investigations, book serialisations, and the setting up of specialist columns, including a legal column and motorcycling column.For two years also motorcycling correspondent covering international Grand Prix racing across Europe. She wrote extensively about the nuclear disarmament movement in Europe, particularly in Germany, at the height of the Cold War, and covered a Scandinavian women's peace march across the Soviet Union, having her exit visa taken away and being threatened with arrest after interviewing dissident writers under house arrest.She wrote the first articles about the women's protest against the siting of American Cruise missiles at Greenham Common, and its significance for feminism. She then became Scotland correspondent from 1983-88, covering the national miners' strike and at the Ravenscraig steelworks and the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, as well as Scottish politics and the nationalist movement.

Her book “Never the Same Again” the story of women in the miners' strike, was published in 1986.

After retirement in 1988, she later returned for a short time as archaeology correspondent after archaeologists protested at the burial of the Rose Theatre site and the original Shakespeare Globe Theatre, and wrote a number of articles about major discoveries nationally and internationally, including at the site of the Berlin Wall. She edited the current affairs journal The New Reporter , from 1994/95, designed by her husband John Bourne (can be seen at the Guardian Archive in London.) In 2006 she was one of the organisers of a 25th anniversary exhibition of the Greenham Common women's protest. She is now the UK co-ordinator for Grandmothers for Peace International, based in Elk Grove, CA near Sacramento, which opposes nuclear weapons and led protests against the Iraq war. She served recently as an adviser to UKLAW, the committee set up to help Afghan women by Joan Ruddock M.P She is also a member of organisations opposing cruelty in factory farming.

Family

She has been married for 50 years to John Bourne, who joined the Yorkshire Post after being deputy editor of the University newspaper Varsity, and was later a reporter on the Guardian, before joining the Financial Times, where he was Parliamentary Lobby Editor. They have two children and three grandchildren and live in London and Cornwall.