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Trevor Carter |
Caribbean Trevor should inspire the youths of today
I WOULDN’T normally say this of a funeral service, but the one I attended on Tuesday was magnificent! I have long thought that Caribbeans do death well and at St Augustine’s Church in Archway they were at their best providing the right mixture of solemnity and style, and a sense of religiosity often missing from other services I have attended.
It was standing room only in the aisles as more than 600 mourners packed the church in honour and memory to Trevor Carter, a great and much-loved teacher, community leader and thinker who came to these shores in 1954 from Trinidad & Tobago.
I had known Trevor, who lived latterly in Archway, for many years. I last saw him at a public meeting I was covering in Islington and discovered he had migrated to the Labour Party from a long membership of the Communist Party.
Many among the mourners knew him personally because he became such a significant figure among the large diaspora from Trinidad that settled in London in the 1950s and 1960s. Always a battler against racism, Trevor, with his cousin the great campaigner Claudia Jones – she, too, found a home in Camden – organised a little “carnival” at the St Pancras Centre in 1958 that grew into today’s Notting Hill Carnival. They wanted Caribbeans to stand proud at a time of race riots in Notting Hill.
As the full two-hour High Anglican full service began, I was puzzled how an old left radical like Trevor fitted into the picture of such intense devotions. Then Father Philip Goff, St Augustine’s parish priest, made it all clear in his address to the astonishment of many in the church – Trevor had been a deep-thinking Christian since childhood and in the last few years of his life had been studying to become a lay priest.
He attended Mass every morning and served on various church bodies. He displayed the same allegiance to Christianity as he did to Communism, said Father Goff. His widow, Corinne, had said of her husband: He always described himself as a Communist, but he never said he was an atheist.
As the old leaders of the Caribbean diaspora die, leaders who devoted campaigning for the rights of their people, I wonder who will replace them?
They were of a certain mettle, well-educated, oozing with integrity and a world view that saw the importance of politics as a force that can change society. Today, young London Caribbeans – facing poor schooling and unemployment – need that leadership more than ever.
Hetty’s quick march against war
FIRST the TV cameraman on the pavement outside the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields caught my eye, and then I saw the subject. It was, of course, the extraordinary Hetty Bower who lives in Highgate. Stylishly dressed Hetty, at the age of 102, with a supportive friend, was preparing to join Saturday’s demonstration against the Iraq war. For a second I turned to a friend, and when I looked around, Hetty had gone, walking towards the square.
I followed her for a few minutes and then lost her. She was moving at a speed that belied her great age. But my colleague spotted her later helping to lead the march with her usual panache!
Mansfield loves rail and all that jazz
CHATTING to Michael Mansfield QC the other evening after he had given a talk at Regent’s College, he revealed to a colleague that he not only loves jazz, but also loves listening to it in Camden.
The Jazz Café was a “very, very good venue”, while the Roundhouse remained simply “brilliant”.
“I loved it because the railways were very much a part of my upbringing,” he enthused. “My dad was a railway man and a controller at King’s Cross so I spent a lot of time in and around steam trains.”
Mansfield spent some time in and around the old Roundhouse too, back in the days when he was a Highgate School lad visiting his dad and the Grade-II listed building which was used to turn around engines.
“I’d been there at a much earlier time so when it was converted into a venue for arts, theatre and music, I used to go quite a lot, and still do,” he added.
Auctioneer Archer a little wide of mark!
THE notion of Jeffrey Archer on a full stomach might not sit well with some diners, but the disgraced lord proved a worthy post-prandial amuse at the Hampstead Theatre Spring Gala dinner on Thursday evening.
Lord Archer drew rowdy cheers and gleeful boos usually reserved for the panto villain when he took up the auctioneer’s hammer to raise funds for the theatre at Lord’s cricket ground.
It would seem Lord Archer is one leopard that does not change his sporting blazer.
As well as squeezing an impressive £53,000 from the captive audience, which counted the star Ewan McGregor among its ranks,
Lord Archer showed he still struggled to identify a man’s better half.
“Will you give me twelve-fifty (£1,250)?” he asked a male guest, hoping to hike the bid. “Your wife is saying ‘yes’.”
When the red-faced bidder explained, an embarrassed Lord Archer was forced to backtrack: “Oh – it’s not your wife, I apologise.”
That look! PCT tells us what’s good for us
POLITICIANS go on about ‘choice’ for the citizen but often it seems to mean less and less freedom.
Talk to your GP and you’ll be told you can now choose which consultant you’d like to see at which hospital, and where you’d like to have your operation.
But that’s as far as it goes. Complain that you don’t want your GP replaced with a doctor employed by a private company and all you get from the authorities is the Tony Blair look that says: “I know best.”
I clocked that look at the meeting at St Pancras Hospital last week where more than 50 objectors told officials of the primary care trust that they didn’t want their GPs in Bloomsbury and Camden Town to be taken over by the giant US monopoly medical company, United Health.
But the more the officials – especially the PCT’s chief executive, Rob Larkman – gave that look, the angrier the crowd became. “We’ve told you we don’t want United Health so why don’t you listen?” said the objectors. John Carrier, the PCT’s chairman and a former Labour Camden councillor, did his best to calm the meeting.
“John, you should resign, your heart’s not in it,” one woman shouted.
A fellow official told an objector that every check had been carried out for “probity”, according to the EU rules, on United Health, but she couldn’t explain why she hadn’t read the medical press which would have revealed the company faces fraud charges.
David Metz, a senior PCT member, said mountains of paperwork had been involved in making a decision.
Then he ignored the studied refusal by both Larkman and Carrier to comment on a lawsuit a patient is threatening to bring against the PCT. If it goes to court, he said, straightening his shoulders, he was confident the PCT would win!
Afterwards, talking to a GP who had been outbid by United Health, it struck me that one of the reasons why the PCT have made such a mess of the tendering is because they couldn’t cope with the number of bidders. Fourteen bids went into the hat, each one spread out over a 200-page document! Surely, the PCT wouldn’t have had enough staff to forensically sift through all the documents in the short time allowed!
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