Anthony Kenny was many things to many people — analytic philosopher, Wittgenstein scholar, former priest, prolific author. To one technician who left school at 17 in the early 1980s, he was something more practically consequential: the man sitting across the table in Oxford University's labour negotiations, whose command of logic and brief made losing feel like a masterclass. The letter-writer, negotiating on behalf of non-academic staff against Kenny as chair of Oxford's negotiating committee, describes the encounters with a clarity that four decades have sharpened rather than softened. The imbalance was steep — a 17-year-old school-leaver facing the Master of Balliol — and yet what he remembers is not condescension but courtesy. That detail matters. Courtesy in conditions of structural inequality is not politeness; it is a form of respect that costs the powerful something. The phrase 'crushing defeats' does real work here. The letter-writer doesn't soften the outcome or reframe losses as draws. Kenny's logic and mastery of brief won. But defeat administered with rigour and respect turns out to be a better education than victory against a weaker opponent. The lessons took root: the writer went on to become a trade union general secretary. Sir Brian Fender, the other Oxford academic named, appears briefly but pointedly — two figures from the same institutional world who together showed a young negotiator what 'winning in a civilised and respectful way' could look like. The pairing is interesting. Kenny the philosopher and Fender the scientist, both operating at the top of Oxford's hierarchy, both apparently unwilling to weaponise that hierarchy in the room. The Aristotle quotation — 'Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention' — could read as generic tribute-letter filler. Here it doesn't, because the letter-writer earned the right to use it. He watched Kenny's excellence operate at close range, against his own interests, and still calls it excellence. That is a more honest appraisal than most obituary tributes manage.
