Editing David Astor (section)

==Later life==
In 1975, Astor resigned as editor of ''The Observer'' but continued as a trustee. In 1977 the paper was sold by his family to Robert O. Anderson, the American owner of the [[ARCO|Atlantic Richfield Oil Company]].<ref name="NYTObit2001"/> In his retirement Astor continued to support a number of charities and to finance pressure groups for causes that he strongly believed in. He was appointed as a member of the [[Order of the Companions of Honour]] (CH) in the [[1994 New Year Honours]] "for public and charitable services".<ref>United Kingdom list: {{London Gazette |issue=53527 |date=31 December 1993 |pages=27 |display-supp=1}}</ref> In 1995 David Astor was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from [[Plymouth University]].<ref name="Astor"/>

===Campaign for Myra Hindley===
During the 1980s and 1990s, he campaigned alongside [[Lord Longford]] to try and gain [[parole]] for the [[Moors Murders|Moors Murderer]] [[Myra Hindley]], claiming that she was a reformed character and no threat to society, and had therefore qualified for parole from the [[Life imprisonment|life sentence]] imposed on her in 1966 for her role with [[Ian Brady]] in the murder of three children. He continued his campaign even after Hindley admitted taking part in two more murders in 1986. In September 1990, he even claimed that her continued imprisonment was comparable to that of [[Nelson Mandela]], who had just been released from prison in [[South Africa]] after serving 27 years of a life sentence for his part in the battle against the oppression of black people under that country's [[apartheid]] regime. Astor had also been a supporter of the campaign for Mandela's release from prison. Along with Longford, he claimed that she was being kept in prison to serve the interests of successive [[Home Secretary|Home Secretaries]] and their governments (who had the power to decide on minimum terms for life sentence prisoners from 1983 until 2002); these politicians gradually increased Hindley's original minimum of 25 to 30 years and from 1990 to a [[whole life tariff]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/feb/28/my-father-david-astor-campaign-myra-hindley|title = Why my father David Astor was right to campaign for Myra Hindley| website=[[TheGuardian.com]] |date = 28 February 2016}}</ref> The campaign to win parole for Myra Hindley was unsuccessful, with her appeal against the whole life tariff being rejected three times by the [[High Court]], and she remained in prison until her death in November 2002, almost a year after Astor's own death. Longford had died earlier in 2001.

Astor had been a supporter of Mandela and an opponent of South Africa's apartheid regime since shortly after Mandela was jailed in 1964.<ref name="NYTObit2001"/> He continued to support the campaign for Mandela's release until he was finally set free from prison in February 1990 and continued to oppose the apartheid regime until it was finally completely abolished four years later, just before Mandela became the president of South Africa.

Astor was one of the founders of the [[Koestler Trust]] in the 1960s and continued to support the scheme until his death.{{citation needed|date=February 2023}} Arthur Koestler, the writer,  was a friend who contributed articles to The Observer. The Koestler Trust was set up as a charity to promote creative arts in prisons; Astor was the Trust's chair for a period.