John Ring died in June 2023, aged 64. You can read my obituary of him in Watchdog 164 (December 2023). He joined CAFCA in 1991 and was continuously on the Committee from 1992 until his death, making him the longest serving Committee member after myself and Bill Rosenberg.

John was involved in all of the various campaigns and activities that CAFCA has been involved with in the past 30 plus years, including all the networks and coalitions, from the 1990s' Society for Publicly Owned Telecommunications (SPOT, our Telecom campaign) and Campaign for People's Sovereignty, through to the birth of the ongoing Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA) a decade ago.

John did the unglamorous stuff - he was a signatory for the CAFCA and Watchdog bank accounts and term deposits, he always took part in Watchdog mailouts, he manned CAFCA tables selling Watchdogs at public meetings; for many years he took the minutes at CAFCA Annual General Meetings and monthly Committee meetings. CAFCA was a very important part of John's life, he very rarely missed a meeting. Apart from me, he was the last remaining link to the Committee as it was in the 90s and, hence, he was present for, and in the thick of, a large part of CAFCA's history.

And he served CAFCA literally right to the end. On a May 2023 Saturday the Committee held its annual strategy meeting. John attended, although in terrible shape. He took the minutes, as always. The next day he was taken to hospital in an ambulance and he never went home again. He still managed to write up and send us the minutes, from hospital. He died a few weeks later from cancer.

CAFCA A Very Important Part Of John's Life

John didn't have a will, despite being urged to do so - right up until his final days - by his CAFCA Committee colleagues. That meant that his siblings had to sort out his estate. In February 2024 his brother Michael wrote to us: "After CAFCA member John Ring passed away in June last year it was without a will, however he had made his wishes reasonably clear to his siblings including myself. John's wholehearted commitment to the goals and aspirations of CAFCA naturally led to an intention to leave something from his estate to CAFCA".

I'm pleased to report that John's family made a substantial bequest to CAFCA from John's estate, for which we are truly grateful (this is the second substantial bequest that CAFCA has received recently from the estate of a former veteran Committee member, the first one being from Jeremy Agar). And writing this tribute to John gives me the opportunity to include material about him that I missed when I wrote his obituary.

I came across an online profile of him on the Website of a game development company (his life as a game inventor was not something he ever mentioned to his CAFCA Committee colleagues). "He was always good at playing board games, but not as good as some. He was never ranked higher than tenth in his high school chess club. John has written several novels without being able to find publishers for them, and has twice stood for political office without being elected" (for Social Credit. MH).

"He was active in a number of community organisations, including an anti-globalisation group (I assume this is CAFCA. MH). This group isn't really all that clear about what it supports because its membership is diverse, from the centre Right through to the extreme Left. John wrote: 'The only things we're united about is what we disagree with. I'm certainly in favour of some individual liberties (I was once on the executive of a civil liberties group for many years), but I don't agree with Libertarian economic ideas'".

"He also worked as a laundryman. As he put it: 'I can survive on surprisingly little. And sometimes that is an advantage'. He was a home winemaker and had read very widely. John told us that this profile is shorter than what he had planned to write, but shortly after he started, he got distracted because the neighbour's house was on fire". That captures some of the idiosyncratic person that was John Ring. He was never a Watchdog writer, so it is fascinating to see something he had written, even if it does include a fairly blunt assessment of CAFCA. John, we thank you for your posthumous generosity and we'll ensure that it's put to the best possible use.

Watchdog - 166 August 2024