Pat Conaty, who died aged 75, spent four decades building institutions that sit squarely on the generative side of the ledger. Not policy papers about financial inclusion — actual operating infrastructure that moved money, advice, and power toward people who had none of the three. The signature achievement was National Debtline. Starting at Birmingham Settlement in the mid-1980s, Conaty saw the human wreckage of predatory lending up close and responded not with advocacy but with a phone line and a support package. The 1987 pilot grew into a national service now run by the Money Advice Trust, still offering free debt advice to anyone in the UK who needs it. The mechanism — help people help themselves — was radical in its simplicity and its refusal to extract fees from the desperate. In 1995 Conaty went further, modelling the Aston Reinvestment Trust on Chicago's South Shore Bank. He assembled Adrian Cadbury as chair and Steve Walker from Barclays as chief executive, then worked with Birmingham city council to build a credit union network. ART advanced tens of millions of pounds to local businesses and preserved thousands of jobs. He then initiated ART Homes to help people with home repair costs. Each step extended the same logic: build community-owned financial infrastructure that doesn't drain value from the communities it serves. Born in southern California, the son of a secretary and a metallurgical engineer, Conaty studied politics and economics at UC Irvine and Riverside. He married Rosemary Foggitt in 1977 and moved to Birmingham in 1978, beginning as a play leader for the city council before training with Citizens Advice and joining Birmingham Settlement in 1983 as a debt adviser. He became development director in 1989 and held the role for a decade. After self-employment, Conaty worked for the New Economics Foundation (2003-08) and then held an associate role at Co-operatives UK (2009-20). In 2006 he moved to Powys but stayed relentlessly active. He co-wrote The Resilience Imperative: Co-operative Transitions to a Steady-state Economy with Mike Lewis in 2012. In 2014 he co-founded the New Garden Cities Alliance, driven by his own experience of raising children on a low income while searching for affordable housing in the 1980s. The final phase was equally structural. He co-authored Not Alone and Working Together (2017, 2018) for Co-operatives UK and the Co-operative College, examining how co-operatives can support the self-employed. The TUC commissioned his handbook Organising Precarious Workers in 2017. In 2019 he co-founded union-coops:uk, working to align trade unions and worker co-operatives around their shared aims. What makes Conaty's career remarkable in the GRIN frame is how consistently generative it was. He didn't capture value — he built pipes through which value could flow to people otherwise locked out. National Debtline, ART, ART Homes, credit unions, co-operative infrastructure: every initiative was designed to outlast its founder. Most did. He is survived by Rosemary, their daughter Elsa, son Jake, and four grandchildren.
