Patrick Comerford
During my walks around Bedford in recent walks, visiting the churches, walking by the river banks, searching for sites associated with the early Jewish communities, and admiring the street art and sculptures, I was delighted to see a bust of Archbishop Trevor Huddleston at the High Street end of Silver Street.
Archbishop Trevor Huddleston is one of the heroes of the struggle against apartheid. Nelson Mandela said: ‘No white person has done more for South Africa then Trevor Huddleston.’ The respect he showed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s mother was one of the inspirations for the future Nobel Prize winner to set out on the path to ordination.
I met Archbishop Trevor Huddleston a number of times when I was involved in the struggle against apartheid. He visited Dublin on many occasions, including Whitechurch parish, and I have a number of books he signed for me, including an early edition of his inspirational Naught For Your Comfort (1960).
Archbishop Trevor Huddleston’s statue in Silver Street, Bedford, is by the sculptor Ian Walters (1930-2006), who worked with the African National Congress in the 1970s. The fundraising was initiated by Bedford and District Trades Council, with the support of Bedford Borough Council and public donations.
The memorial was unveiled 25 years ago on 30 October 1999 by Bishop John Richardson of Bedford. Nelson Mandela came to Bedford on 7 April 2000 to rededicate the bust, and said: ‘I owe this debt to the Anti-Apartheid Movement and to Father Huddleston in particular. It is a great honour for me to say to him, Thank You.’
Trevor Huddleston was Bishop of Masasi, Bishop of Stepney and then the second Archbishop of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean – a member church of the Anglican Communion – and is best remembered for his activism against apartheid alongside Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But it was only during these recent visits that I realised that Trevor Huddleston was born in Bedford.
Trevor Huddleston was born Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston in Bedford on 15 June 1913, the son of Elsie (Barlow-Smith) and Sir Ernest Whiteside Huddleston, a senior naval officer. He was educated at Lancing College, Christ Church, Oxford, and Wells Theological College, Salisbury. He was ordained deacon in 1936, priest in 1937 and joined the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield in 1939.
He was sent to South Africa in 1940, and moved to the Community of the Resurrection mission in Rosettenville in Johannesburg in 1943, to build on the efforts of Raymond Raynes who had built three churches, seven schools and three nurseries.
Trevor Huddleston spent 13 years in Sophiatown, and as a much-loved priest and respected anti-apartheid activist, he earned the nickname Makhalipile (‘dauntless one’). The ANC bestowed the rare honour him with the Isitwalandwe at the Freedom Congress in Kliptown in 1955. It was during this time that he became close friends with future President of South Africa Nelson Mandela.
The many South Africans whose lives he changed include Hugh Masekela. Huddleston gave him his first trumpet as a 14-year-old at School in Rosettenville. The trumpet was once owned by Louis Armstrong and soon after the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed, launching the global career of Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.
Other notable people who have credited Huddleston with influencing their lives include Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Sally Motlana, vice-chair of the South African Council of Churches in the 1970s; and Archbishop Khotso Makhulu. He was close to Oliver Tambo, ANC President during the years of exile, from 1962 to 1990.
The Community of the Resurrection called Huddleston back to England in 1955. He left South Africa reluctantly and in 1956 he published his seminal work, Naught for your Comfort. The title is a quotation from a poem by GK Chesterton:
O tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet,
And the sea rises higher.
He was the master of novices at Mirfield and then the prior of the community’s priory in London until he became Bishop of Masasi in Tanzania in 1960. He remained in Tanzania for eight years, and returned to England as Bishop of Stepney in the Diocese of London.
As Bishop Trevor Huddleston, he was one of three Anglican bishops among the original patrons of CND, along with Bishop Leonard Wilson of Birmingham, who had been a PoW while he was Bishop of Singapore in World War II, and Bishop Glyn Simon of Llandaff, later Archbishop of Wales, who commissioned Jacob Epstein’s Majestas or statue of Christ in Majesty for Llandaff Cathedral.
After 10 years in England, Trevor Huddleston became Bishop of Mauritius, a diocese in the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean, in 1978. Later that year, he was elected the Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean. He once joked during a visit to Dublin how his see was the Indian Ocean.
Archbishop Hiddleston retired from episcopal ministry in 1983. But he continued his anti-apartheid campaigning, and had become president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1981. He once wrote: ‘The sin of racial pride, the evil doctrine of apartheid must be condemned by the Church and the consequences of apartheid must be clearly and unmistakenly proclaimed. This is prophecy; it is also politics.’
While Nelson Mandela was still in prison on Robben Island, it was announced on 18 July 1988 that he was to receive the Freedom of the City of Dublin. On that day, a birthday party was held in his honour in Merrion Square. That evening, I was at the ‘Nelson Mandela Freedom at Seventy Concert’ organised by the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and presented by Doireann Ní Bhriain, Rodney Rice, BP Fallon and Pat Kenny.
I was in Dublin City Hall a few months later when Nelson Mandela was awarded the Freedom of the City of Dublin in September 1988. He was still in prison and the Freedom of the City was accepted on his behalf by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston and Adelaide Tambo, wife of Oliver Tambo.
Nelson Mandela was unable to come to Dublin. But in the following year, David Cameron, who was working in the policy unit at the Conservative Party Central Office, was able to go on an anti-sanctions ‘fact-finding’ mission to South Africa in 1989 with a pro-apartheid lobby firm sponsored by PW Botha.
At the invitation of Christian Aid and the South African Council of Churches, I travelled throughout South Africa and Namibia as an Irish Times journalist in January 1990 and left South Africa only days before Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990.
Within a few months of his release, Nelson Mandela was in Dublin in 1990 to personally accept his Freedom of the City that had been accepted on his behalf by Trevor Huddleston. That evening (1 July 1990), I was honoured to be one of the patrons of the ‘Tribute to Nelson Mandela’ concert. That concert was presented by Doireann Ní Bhriain, Rodney Rice and Dave Fanning, and the line-up included the Chieftains, Christy Moore, Davy Spillane, Donal McCann, De Danaan, Mick Hanly and Dolores Keane, Mary Stokes and Davy Spillane. Winnie Mandela was the keynote speaker.
To mark Nelson Mandela’s first visit to Dublin, Louise Asmal edited a special Tribute to Nelson Mandela, published by the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and which included my own ‘Apartheid: Myth and Reality.’
The late Diana Collins counted Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, Bishop Ambrose Reeves and Dean Gonville ffrench-Beytagh among ‘that select band of men like, who were not content simply to denounce the cruelties of apartheid, but were prepared to risk their reputations, positions, even their lives by trying to help the victims of the South African government.’
Trevor Huddleston died in Mirfield on 20 April 1998. His statue was erected in the centre of Bedford the following year and was unveiled in October 1999.
The plinth of Huddleston’s statue in Bedford is carved with a quotation from Nelson Mandela: ‘No white person has done more for South Africa then Trevor Huddleston.’
Other works by the sculptor Ian Walters include his memorial to the International Brigades in Jubilee Gardens South Bank, London; a head of Nelson Mandela outside the Royal Festival Hall, London; the statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square; the statue of Fenner Brockway in Red Lion Square, London; a statue of Harold Wilson in Huddersfield; and a statue of Stephen Hawking in Cambridge.
In an opinion piece in the Church Times this weekend (2 August 2024), the Very Revd Richard Sewell, Dean of Saint George’s College, Jerusalem, recalls how Trevor Huddleston wrote in Naught for your Comfort the Gospel message relies on ‘the simple recognition that all people are made in the image and likeness of God; that in consequence each person is of infinite and eternal value; the state exists to protect the person, but the state is always of inferior value to the person.’
