James Buxton, a former journalist at the Financial Times who covered the Middle East, Africa and Italy, among other beats, has died.
Jasper Buxton of The Scotsman writes, “Having worked briefly for the Daily Telegraph, he moved to the Financial Times Syndication Department, before joining the Middle East and Africa desk. He was based in London but travelled widely throughout the region.
“Mark Meredith, a news editor from that time and later James’ predecessor as Scottish Correspondent, recalls that James would emerge from the nest of experts at the FT office with a story on Sudan or Somalia. In his gentle way, he would sell/nudge/push/promote it into the foreign pages. There was a daily struggle for space, and reducing the length of a thoughtful piece to get it into the overseas news was difficult. James knew his stuff and quietly and convincingly argued the case for his stories.
“In November 1975, he joined a plane full of journalists who were supposed to fly south from Morocco to Spanish Sahara to cover the Green March. This was a mass demonstration of about 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians on 6 November 1975, organized by King Hassan II to pressure Spain into relinquishing control of Spanish Sahara. It ultimately led to the Madrid Accords and Morocco’s partial occupation of the territory.”
Read more here.
