I extend greetings and condolences to Corinne, Dian-Marie, Michel, Claudia and to Trevor’s siblings and their children who have come from the USA and elsewhere. Today we mourn the passing of a loving husband, father, brother, uncle, friend and comrade.

With Trevor’s passing, we have lost yet another stalwart of that postwar generation who had had a life experience with Britain in the West Indies before relocating to these islands; those who came between 1945 and 1960 and helped to define the contours of the relationship between Britain and that surplus pool of labour which it was importing from its former colonies to help restore its infrastructure and its economy after two devastating World Wars.

Trevor Clarence Carter was born on 9 October 1930 in Woodbrook, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the eldest of Elene and Clarence Carter’s twelve children. Father, Clarence, was a cabinet maker and mother, Elene, a housewife. Humble and dignified folk, they placed a premium on education and on character building. Good manners, good breeding, what you might call ‘proper broughtupcy’ mattered to them even more than educational qualifications. Therefore, as soon as he could drink water, as the old people used to say, the little toddler was sent to Beryl McBurnie’s Nursery School and then on to the African Methodist Episcopal (Akal) Primary School. His primary schooling induced a love of reading and his parents encouraged him to read extensively.

That stood him in good stead when he joined J Edgar Moore’s modern secondary school. Moore had been a master at Queens Royal College but broke away from QRC, believing it to be too elitist and not progressive enough, despite its unquestioned reputation.

Moore’s school catered for students from ages 11 to 18 and it came to be known as a ‘prep school for communists’. He taught Civics (what the called Kivics) and Economics and used those subjects to teach Marxism and the tenets of communism. He would invite students to his home for extension classes in Kivics and Economics and introduce them to radical perspectives on domestic and world events. Those early groundings whetted Trevor’s appetite for socialism and communism. Throughout that period, he was made to read newspapers and journals for his father, while his siblings did the usual chores. Though fully capable of reading for himself, Clarence Carter thus instilled in Trevor a love of current affairs and disciplined discourse.

Having left J Edgar Moore’s school, Trevor took a course in commerce and then attended the Royal Victoria Institute to study architecture. His first job was in the building trade, following which he got a job as a mess boy on a merchant ship, where the cook taught him to make nutritious meals quickly with whatever was at hand, knowledge which Trevor put to good use for the rest of his life. 

He visited many places on that ship, including New Orleans at the height of racial segregation in the USA. That experience was so awful that Trevor vowed never to go and live in America. He would recall how his time on that boat helped him to develop a loathing for unfairness and injustice.

Back in Trinidad, he was heavily influenced by the cultural and political activism of the likes of Beryl Mc Burnie, Lennox Pierre, Pearl Nunez Connor, Alfred Samuels and others.

He was encouraged by Rudy Piggott, an Island Scholar who took up his scholarship at Oxford University and Elean Chase, the architect, to come to England to study architecture, and that he  did in 1954, becoming a student at Regent Street Polytechnic.

He lived in the house of a Communist Party member, Billy Strachan (who, incidentally, also passed on at age 77). In April 1954, Jamaican born and former RAF pilot, Billy Strachan, had addressed the CP’s second ‘Conference of the Communist and Workers Parties within the Sphere of British Imperialism’, speaking on ‘Terror in the West Indies’. At that conference, George Bowrin of Trinidad spoke on ‘The Struggles in Trinidad’ and Ranji Chandrisingh on ‘Terror in British Guiana’. The manifesto emanating from that conference noted, among other things that ‘in Britain the Communist Party has a special responsibility … to draw the widest sections of the labour movement and the peoples into common action with the struggle of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples’ (Marika Sherwood, 1999 Claudia Jones – A Life in Exile).

Trevor’s grounding with J Edgar Moore prepared him for serious political engagement alongside these giants struggling against British colonialism and for national independence, struggling against the colonial mentality and the racism of people within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) itself. Under the tutelage of Billy Strachan and his comrades, and amid his activities with the Young Communists Association, Trevor soon joined the Communist Party.

In November 1955, Trevor’s cousin, Claudia Jones, arrived in Southampton on the Queen Elizabeth, having been deported from the USA for her activities as a Communist. 

Also in 1955, Trevor’s relationship with Corinne Skinner, his childhood friend whose family in Woodbrook were close friends of the Carters, took on a different aspect. Cupid’s arrow landed and the rest, as they say, is history. After a short courtship, Trevor and Corinne married in December 1955 and lived at 53 Cromwell Avenue, what Corinne calls ‘the first commune’ in London. Owned by the London and Westcliff Housing Association, it was one of those large, iconic dwellings that attracted newcomers from the West Indies and provided them with refuge until they learned the ropes and accumulated enough earnings to branch off on their own. The ten people who lived comfortably and harmoniously in that place, sharing a communal kitchen on each landing and the two communal living rooms, have remained friends ever since.

Trevor’s comrade, Reg Bascombe worked as a glazier with Goldsmith’s Optical firm, manufacturing spectacles. He took Trevor and got him a job there.

In 1956, Trevor was called up for National Service which went right against the grain. Without hesitation, he ran away to Moscow and there he stayed, returning to the UK only because Corinne had an accident while on a film set and was hospitalised.

He and Corinne moved to 35 Christchurch Hill in Hampstead and Trevor was given his old job as a glazier at Goldsmiths.

In 1958, Corinne finally received compensation for the injury she suffered on the film set two years earlier and she and Trevor were thus able to buy their first house in Glebe Road. One year later, Michel Courtney Carter was born. In addition to his glazier’s job, Trevor worked part-time in a Russian shop in Holborn.

He and Corinne with cousin Claudia, Pearl Connor and others, were involved in organising the first Caribbean Carnival in St Pancras Town Hall in 1958, in the aftermath of the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane and the Notting Hill riots of that year. Subsequently, a dance was held every year at Finsbury Town Hall, until a zealous caretaker decided one year to inspect the contents of the dustbins. He discovered what was described as ‘bones of unknown origin’ and that led to the cancellation of the annual booking. The funny looking bones of unknown origin were the bones of the souce made from pigs’ trotters, that famous Caribbean delicacy. Needless to say, that revelation failed to impress the management of Finsbury Town Hall even more.

Trevor supported the Notting Hill Carnival ever since then and was for some time a member of the Board of the carnival. He was keen on the Steel Band and committed to ensuring that the steel band remained an essential part of  ‘playing mas’, and that as many young people as possible were encouraged to beat pan. He thus promoted ‘pan’ as an instrument to be learned in school as part of the music curriculum.

In 1961, the year Dian-Marie joined them from Trinidad, Corinne went to Yugoslavia to work as a dancer and later to Italy to act in the film ‘Cleopatra’. Trevor combined work and political activism with fathering two small children. He took to the joys of parenting like a duck to water, but not for very long; for in 1963, his friend Cheddi Jagan invited him to come and work in Guyana. Trevor went ahead, intending that Corinne and the children should join him.  However, that was not to be. The political situation in Guyana became very volatile and it was far too dangerous for the family to join him.

Trevor was detained for politically subversive activities and also found himself on the wrong side of the political divide in a country that even then was segregating along ethnic lines, with Africans predominantly in support of Forbes Burnham and Asians predominantly in support of Cheddi Jagan.

Trevor used to tell the story of hiding in a manhole to avoid the police and military and all he had for company was some gigantic rats that posed more of a threat than the soldiers did.

During the three years he spent in Guyana, in addition to working for Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party, Trevor taught at a school for youths. It was while he was away in Guyana that his cousin, Claudia Jones, who had fought a battle with the CPGB since arriving in Britain, died in December 1964.

Trevor returned to Britain in 1966. By day he attended Kilburn Polytechnic studying ‘A’ level Sociology, Economics and Physiology and by night he worked in the Telephone Exchange in Covent Garden. Following ‘A’ levels, he was encouraged to go and train as a teacher and in 1968 joined Jim Anatole, Nat Perez, Kelvin (Pony) Caballo and others at the Polytechnic of North London.

On graduation, he got a job straight away at Brooke House secondary school in Lower Clapton, Hackney, rising to the position of Head of the Social Studies department. Following the example of J Edgar Moore, Trevor appointed himself mentor to many young students in whom he took a personal interest. He would visit their homes to give regular reports to their parents and to encourage their parents to support their learning. He would also have them come to his home and use his library and engage in discussion of any range of topics. He ran Easter colleges and summer schools in Westminster with early pioneers of the supplementary school and alternative education movement, Ansel Wong, Cecil Gutzmore, Ricky Cambridge, Gloria Cummings and others.

Teaching at Brooke House marked the beginning of the rest of Trevor’s professional career in that, from then on, it was his work as an educationalist that consumed his life.

Some time in 1974, Yvonne Connolly and the late Jeff Crawford had a discussion at Yvonne’s home about education and the situation of Caribbean teachers in the schooling system. Thus were laid the foundations of what became the Caribbean Teachers Association. Connolly and Crawford were later joined by Winston Best, the late Henry Thomas, Trevor Carter and several others and gave shape and direction to the Caribbean Teachers Association (CTA). Less than five years after Bernard Coard wrote his seminal work:  How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British Schooling System. At a time when there was considerable concern about the schooling experience of black students and black teachers, the CTA evolved as a dynamic organisation struggling for equal employment opportunities for Caribbean teachers and for the validation of their contribution to raising standards in British schools and to the building of the black working class movement in education. Pioneers in teaching and school leadership such as Beryl Gilroy, Ken Noble, Yvonne Connolly, Charlie Mungo, John Prince, Yvonne Collymore, Carlton Duncan, Elva Miranda, Winston Best, Elaine Foster, Eta Green, and Trevor himself worked with the CTA executive to grow and support a professional body of Caribbean Teachers.

In 1976, Trevor was invited by Peter Newsam to join him on a visit to the New York City Board of Education to see how schools were run there. As most of you will know, Trevor was an inveterate walker. The fellow walked everywhere, even in New York City. His hosts shared with him their anxiety about him getting mugged, but he carried on walking nevertheless, until one night he came face to face with a mugger who approached him while his friends waited to pounce. The fellow did the classic ruse and asked Trevor for a cigarette.  Putting on the best possible upper class English accent, Trevor replied: ‘I’m awfully sorry, old chap, I don’t smoke’. The fellow was gobsmacked. He asked Trevor to repeat what he said and then called his pals:  ‘Hey, come and hear this dude’. Trevor obliged for a third time and the muggers said to him: ‘Hey, man, why don’t you come with us? You can make us a whole heap of money.  People would pay to hear you speak that stuff, man.’ In typical fashion, Trevor ended up in friendly banter with them.

Trevor later became a Teacher Fellow of the Institute of Education at the University of London in 1981/82, as did his colleague and friend, Celia Burgess Macey and Gillian Klein.

Trevor was part of the Rampton Committee which in 1982 produced a hard hitting report on ‘West Indian Children in Our Schools’, charging that the schooling system was failing black children and that no monitoring was being done by ethnicity to assess the scale of the failure. The Government and the teaching unions ‘shot the messenger’ and Anthony Rampton was sacked, later to be replaced by Lord Swann who did a sanitizing job on the whole matter, although even the Swann version failed to please Margaret Thatcher.

On leaving Brooke House, Trevor joined the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) as a Senior Education Liaison Officer, later becoming the Head of Equal Opportunities. As Assistant Education Officer and Head of Community Education, I was his line manager and was hugely encouraged by the support we managed to give to each other and that we received from Bebb Burchell, the only other black Assistant Education Officer and Herman Ouseley, the ILEA’s Guyana born Chief executive.

In 1986, in collaboration with Jean Coussins, Trevor wrote ‘Shattering Illusions – West Indians in British Politics’, a social and political commentary on the interface between Caribbean migrants and British society and politics from the Post War period up until the early 1980s. In so doing, he revisited a theme explored by Donald Hinds twenty years earlier, 1966, in his seminal work Journey to an Illusion  - the West Indian in Britain. Hinds had arrived in the UK the year after Trevor, 1955.

Trevor was recommended to receive the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) from the Queen but declined on three counts:

a) Britain no longer had an Empire and that gong was therefore completely atavistic

b)  Margaret Thatcher, from whose office the recommendation came, had rubbished the Swann Report and the critical issues it was raising about the education of black children, and

c) He was still a communist and becoming a Member of the Order of the British Empire was wholly inconsistent with that.

1990 marked a turning point in Trevor’s political and professional career. In a very real sense, his world was turned upside down when the Berlin Wall came down, perestroika struck at the heart of the Soviet system and the Communist project effectively bit the dust. Not surprisingly, therefore, Cuba remained for him a beacon, not least because Fidel Castro stood firm against the ravages of US imperialism. Trevor had been to Cuba as part of a CPGB delegation to celebrate the 39^th anniversary of the Revolution and had met Fidel and Daniel Ortega.

Also in 1990, Trevor took early retirement when Margaret Thatcher abolished the ILEA, but he never really retired. He led an even more active life, speaking at conferences, doing charitable work, particularly with ‘War on Want’ in the struggle against global poverty, chairing the Hackney Race Equality Council, working as a volunteer with the Claudia Jones Organization and engaging in local politics. He contested a seat in the Caledonian ward with the active support of Jeremy Corbyn MP. Much to Trevor’s disappointment and disgust, the seat was won by the Liberals.

But, most surprising of all, arguably, is the fact that Trevor walked up to this church from Bickerton Road for morning prayers and Mass at 9.00 o’clock every morning, irrespective of the weather. He would walk in Parliament Hill Fields every morning at 7.00, or could be found running with his dog. He would return home for breakfast and leave to walk to church. He received the Certificate in Christian Theology from the University of Kent in 2003 and was training for the priesthood.

When I asked Corinne how Trevor reconciled that passion for theology with the pride he took in being a communist, she replied, poignantly: ‘Trevor was a High Church Anglican from birth. He was always eager and ready to say that he was a communist, but I do not once remember him declare that he was an atheist.’

We remember him as a man of firm convictions, advancing his arguments forcefully but with no malevolence. He was generous, warm hearted and mischievous and, more often than not, adopted a light-hearted approach even to those matters which he took very seriously.

We rejoice with Corinne, with Dian, with Michel, with Claudia and all Trevor’s family and very many friends, including the good people of this church. We rejoice in celebration of a life lived with purpose. We rejoice with all those that do rejoice at the numerous, and for many of us intensely personal, ways in which Trevor touched and enriched our life. We rejoice in the full assurance that the God in whom he so fervently believed will fulfil His promise and grant him everlasting life. And we weep with Corinne and the children and with all those that weep in order that they might heal, in order that that wound caused by the wrenching away of part of our collective body, and in Corinne’s and the family’s case, of a friendship and love shared over an entire lifetime, that that wound might heal. 

May Mother, Father, Spirit, God, the God of mercy and compassion, and may your Glorious Ancestors comfort and restore you, even as they embrace Trevor’s spirit with fanfare and in glory.

Ase, Ase, Ase.

Professor Gus John is a Founder Trustee of the George Padmore Institute and a Honorary Fellow, Institute of Education.