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GAZETTE
High Court, Queen’s Bench Division, he served
as Presiding Judge on the North Eastern Circuit
from 1988 to 1991.
In 1999, at the Old Bailey, Potts presided at the
trial of the 78-year-old former British Rail ticket
inspector Anthony Sawoniuk for the murder of
Jews while working as a Nazi collaborator in his
native Belarus in 1942.
Sawoniuk had fled Belarus at the end of
the war and had lived incognito in Britain
ever since. However, after an extraordinary
investigation involving help from the KGB and
witnesses from the Belarussian town where the
atrocities took place, he was eventually traced
to a house in Bermondsey.
It was the first and only trial in Britain under
the War Crimes Act (1991), and involved a trip
to Belarus for Potts, counsel and the jury. After
being found guilty, Sawoniuk was sentenced
by Potts to two life sentences, dying in prison
in 2005.
Potts’s other appointments included
membership of the Mental Health Review
Tribunal from 1984 until 1986, and the Criminal
Injuries Compensation Board in 1985-1986. He
was a member of the Parole Board from 1992
to 1995 and vice-chairman until 1996. He was
the first chairman of the Special Immigration
Appeals Commission from 1997 until 2001.
During the Archer trial, Potts was described
by one newspaper as looking like “an
angry, broad-faced farmer”, yet beneath
his occasionally intimidating exterior he was
kind and considerate with a sunny, unstuffy
disposition which brightened the atmosphere
of courtrooms. Though in limited circles he
was known as “Porridge Potts”, he was not
thought of as an especially heavy sentencer.
He married, in 1971, Philippa Margaret
Campbell (née Croke). She survives him with
their two sons and his two stepsons.
Reproduced by kind permission of The
Telegraph
REV JOHN NICHOLAS CHUBB (1951,
English) was born in 1933, and studied
English at St Catherine’s Society. He served as
a parish priest and hospital chaplain.
Susan Chubb
PROFESSOR FRANK
CIOFFI (1952, PPP) died
on 1 January 2012 at the
age of 83; a remarkable
member of the generation
of philosophers educated
in Oxford in the early
1950s. In his later career,
he was known for the
fresh, original, combative precision of his
essays and lectures, his half-century of critical
engagement with Freud and his illuminating
explorations of often neglected aspects
of Wittgenstein’s later works. In matters
of the mind, he forged and followed his
own pathways. The enormous range of his
reading and conversation provided a wealth
of accessible examples, often humorous
or earthy, to anchor difficult philosophical
points. His explorations of the character,
scope and complexity of humane knowledge
offer strength to those who seek to develop a
philosophy of the humanities to supplement
or rival the philosophy of science and expand
our philosophical understanding of human
knowledge.
As an undergraduate, Cioffi was struck that
some Oxford philosophers, so careful in their
analysis of philosophical doctrines, failed
to extend their sceptical caution to the
examination of the Freudian views that
gripped them. He was especially
impatient with those he considered
to be apologists for Freud. He
held that they failed to ask crucial
questions, for example, about Freud’s
transition from his early seduction
theory to a theory of repressed
childhood phantasies of parental
abuse or about Freud’s interpretation
of many of his most famous cases.
ST CATHERINE’S COLLEGE 2012/63