John Oman Ballard

Obituary in the Jesus College Annual Report, 2018 BALLARD, John Oman (1942) died on 12 August 2017 aged 93. John Ballard, the son of Frank (1917) and older brother of Martin (1949), was born on 12 April 1924 in Bristol. Educated at Caterham School he came up in 1942 to read History. Part way through his studies he volunteered for the British Naval Forces. His three and a half years in the Navy gave him the opportunity to reconsider what he wanted to do with his life and on his return to Cambridge he changed to Law. After qualifying as a barrister he embarked on a career in the Colonial Service that spanned 13 years. In Tanganyika, now Tanzania, he was a Regional Magistrate, then Government Prosecuting Counsel being leant to Zanzibar in a sedition case. After five years he accepted a secondment to Cyprus where the Turkish minority were battling with Greek rebels. The situation was volatile and violent and on one occasion he prosecuted a group of Turkish people for the murder of 38 Greek people. He went on to be involved in negotiations between the Greek and Turkish governments. His final years in the Colonial Service were as Assistant Attorney-General in North Borneo where he became Legal Advisor for the intergovernmental committee to establish the constitutional arrangements for a new federation, Malaysia, which came into being in 1963. He then joined the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department in Australia. Later as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior, he was involved in debates on aboriginal affairs policies. He became responsible for the extradition of criminals to and from Australia and initiated processes to close Brazil as a safe haven for Australian criminals. In 1975 John became the statutory member of the Commonwealth Employees Compensation Tribunal and was appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal as a Senior Member when that Tribunal took over responsibility for Commonwealth compensation matters. He did not stop updating the textbook he was asked to write, the Annotated Employees’ Rehabilitation Compensation Act 1988, until he was 85 years old. He married Sylvia Jocelyn Smith in 1949; they had three daughters and a son and eleven grandchildren. As well as his father and brother his family includes two other Jesuans Nick Tyndall (1949) and David Ballard (1972).