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Ivan Massow
(1967 - living) U.K.

Ivan Massow

Businessman, and political activist

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His original name was Ivan Field. When young his family broke up and he was taken in by the bachelor John Massow and assumed his surname.

Ivan went to school at the Brighton comprehensive. He joined the Conservative Party when he was 14, and became the chair of his local branch; the youngest in the country.

At the age of 16 he fled to Bristol. In the early 1980s he got a job in insurance and he saw how insurance companies denied cover to gay men when the AIDS crisis started.

In 1990 Ivan started business as a sole trader, specialising in offering life insurance and mortgages to gay men. It began in a squat in Kentish Town, London, and in the first year it had a turnover of £36888. In 1998 he set up his company Massow Financial Services. The company paid him £378000 in 1998. By 2000 he had a 70% share of a company valued at £20m.

Ivan launched the magazine Phase, with its first issue in March 1994, but it was not a success and he lost nearly £60000 on the venture. He is a whipper-in for the East Sussex and Romney Marsh foxhounds and joint master of the Cokeham Bloodhounds.

In 1997 he suffered a great tragedy with the suicide of his long-term boyfriend James. In 1998 he began a new relationship with Dean Ridgewell (born 1972), a headhunter of investment bankers.

In 1999 the press was full of stories about him wanting to have a baby with the lesbian actress Jackie Clune, but any such plans appeared to be shelved. In the same year Ivan was considering entering the race to become the Conservative Party candidate for mayor of London, put he withdrew. He became the running mate for the candidate Steve Norris.

He was appointed chair of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1999. This was a surprising appointment as he was not someone who was obviously interested in the arts.

In 2000 Ivan was looking for a seat to stand as a candidate for the forthcoming general election, although he was disappointed to be put on the "deferred" list of candidates by the Party. This meant that he had to undertake training and to get more experience. Apparently he was often cold-shouldered by the constituency parties. He also advised on the campaigns run by Conservative Future, the Party's youth wing.

On August 2, 2000 the UK radio, television, and newspapers were full of the story that he had defected from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party. He wrote an article for The Independent accusing the Conservative party and its leader William Hague of being intolerant, particularly in relation to asylum-seekers and Section 28.

Writing in his role as chair of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in an article in the New Statesman on January 18, 2002, he condemned the current "concept art" as a con trick and hype, and his comments were widely reported.

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Source: The Knitting Circle, UK - http://www.sbu.ac.uk/stafflag/people.html

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