An original and mischievous social scientist who enjoyed football and supported Arsenal, Geoff Dench was concerned with the fate of the men who once monopolised the terraces at many British grounds: the reduced status of the white working classes in the jobs market and the poor performance of their children in education.

Much of his work was politically controversial and awkwardly prophetic — at odds with most of his discipline — but driven by his concern for families and communities and the people at the heart of them.

He undertook his most important work at the Institute of Community Studies (ICS), which was founded by the Labour peer Michael Young in Bethnal Green, east London, and came to be regarded as a grandfather of the