When he was 17, my friend Dave Turner, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 57, was able to turn his back on a shopfloor apprenticeship at EMI and choose a life of self-education, social justice and fun. If his chosen subjects were orthodox, his specialised research areas were about the forgotten or overlooked.
For his sociology degree at Essex University, he investigated the working conditions of trainee hairdressers. And for his postgraduate study, he specialised in gerontology. After qualifying as a nurse, he took a job in Nicaragua. During speaking tours for the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign in the UK, he was unafraid to challenge some of the left’s romanticised view of the Sandinista government. He was not often asked back.
The son of Fred Turner, an electrician, and Josie Ling, a school dinners supervisor, Dave was born and raised in Ickenham, Middlesex, and attended Glebe primary and Vyners school, in Hillingdon.
Although he was a child of the 1960s, he was anchored in a working-class world and the experiences of those who lived through the second world war. His commitment to care for that generation and to public health led him to specialise in nursing elderly people and, after further study, to work as a GP.
After graduating from Essex University in 1983, he trained as a nurse at St Mary’s hospital, Paddington. In 1989, he took a postgraduate degree in sociology with special reference to medicine, at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, London, and in 2001 obtained a degree in evidence-based health care at Kellogg College, Oxford. After taking a postgraduate education diploma at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in 2003, and lecturing there, in 2008 he added a fourth degree, in medicine and surgery, at the University of East Anglia.
In 1989 he met Claire Beswick. They married in 2004, and made their home in Studham, Bedfordshire.
At his GP practice, on hearing his working-class accent, some new patients would ask: “Am I going to see the doctor?” He lamented the social and economic stresses that he felt were behind many of the illnesses he came across in his surgery. It was not long after becoming a GP and repaying his student debts that his own illness was diagnosed.
A vocal supporter of women’s and Palestinian rights, a vegetarian and keen cyclist, Dave was also an inveterate giggler. He championed the rights of men to having a shed, an allotment, a motorbike and a pint. He found convivial company in the Green and Labour parties, among cyclists and Guardian readers.
He is survived by Claire, his daughters, Marnie and Isha, and his sisters, Pam, Jen and Susan.