Born 18th September 1928, St Mary, Jamaica
Ascension to Ancestors, 2nd August 2022, aged 93, Bristol, UK
LAUREL ‘ROY’ HACKETT was born 18th September 1928 in St Mary, Jamaica, where he was mostly raised by his grandmother, Lily. She was a passionate educator, who taught many of the children in the village to read and write. She also charged a few quatty (threepence) per week, when running a school there. Roy’s grandmother also taught him to count and at the age of 7, she took him to the school and insisted he was enrolled ahead of his years. He was therefore in a class with the older children because he was very smart, which meant he also had to be tough to stand up to his bigger classmates, who did not want him there.
©️ Photograph: Olumedia/The Guardian
Roy himself grew to love learning and was so passionate about going to school that, rather than working on the farm with his father at the age of 16, on Good Friday 1944, he ran away from home to avoid this labour. It was not work itself that he shirked, it was the fact that he was not able to continue his education. While in Jamaica, Roy did a few jobs but mainly wanted to focus on learning, so enrolled in an Advanced Bookkeeping course, in Kingston, as an investment in his self-improvement. He believed that having an education would enable him to get on in life.
After coming to England in 1952 at the age of 24, it would be another 37 years until he saw his parents again. He came on his own, didn’t know where he was going, other than ‘to England’, and had no one to receive him. He landed in England, with his copy of Advanced Bookkeeping, and had only the support of strangers and the welfare department to rely on. Soon after arrival in Liverpool he found work and recounts a whole life of hard work, resting he claims, only for the days while on the ship traveling to England. Roy was proud of not claiming dole or further welfare, beyond those moments of arrival in Liverpool. Work led him to different places, such as working for McAlpine, after a spell in Wales getting into steel before coming to Bristol in 1957, but it was Taylor Woodrow that brought him to Somerset, to work on the building of Hinckley Point, Britain's first atomic power station.
Roy sent for his girlfriend, from Jamaica, soon to be his first wife, Ena. It was working at the Coal Board in Eastville that helped him to buy a 3-bed house in Royate Hill for £1000. He also spoke of his time as a foreman in St Ann’s Board Mill, where he was supervising 52 white workers and had to argue hard to get to the role in the first place. At this point in the conversation, he held up his Advanced Bookkeeping as evidence of why he was able and worthy to advance - that and being ready to argue his case.
Roy was keen on history - his personal history and wider affairs. He collected bus tickets, kept original passports, and even the 1968 first St Paul’s Festival programme. He was still waving his copy of Advanced Bookkeeping to the years 5 and 6 classes at Glenfrome School, St Werburghs, Bristol, when he spoke to them there in 2015. This was part of a project with Vandna Mehta and Remi Tawose and most of this article is derived from that talk. Roy’s mind had faded in the last few years, he would forget details or confuse things - but before that, he was bright and light and speedy for a long time. He was a real raconteur with a cheeky grin.
I started to get to know Roy more in the mid to late 2010s. It was the Bristol Black Archives Partnership, where members of the - African Caribbean community in Bristol were engaged to raise awareness of the Bristol Record Office and its role as keepers of the city story, in Archives - along with other Museums and Galleries in the Bristol Culture team of the City Council. In this project, Roy worked with Karen Garvey, Lilleith Morrison, and others to share their stories, memories, and archives for all the younger generations of Bristolians. There were interviews and resources developed, which included Roy’s story.
There was also the 2011 Bristol Bus Boycott Research project. Then, Roy was interviewed by Mary Ingoldby and the Firstborn team, as a kind of follow-up on Madge Dresser’s 1986 study, to capture the story of the Bristol Bus Boycott and emphasise its political and heritage significance for Bristol and the UK.
In the last few years of his life, he still pursued the life of the West Indian Parents and Friends Association, an organisation that had been run from St Werburgh’s Community Centre for over fifty years, in some form. When the organisation closed recently, it consisted of some remarkable elders, like Barbara Dettering and those who had been working to uplift their community throughout those decades since their arrival. Now, consisting mostly of elders, it was a place of communing and going through minutes and agendas with a sense of that still undiminished purpose but with a hunger for a younger generation - who might make a more current connection to new generations of that community today.
While it was hard to find people with that ‘West Indian’ heritage, like myself, to maintain the organisation, it was also clear to see a wider disappearance. With the passing of each member of this generation or those at any age in this community, we feel the loss of a time - when Bristol’s West Indians were a clearer and more identifiable group, with its colourful characters, making an impact and conveying a sense of presence in Bristol’s inner city - most identifiably in St Pauls. Now, they can hardly be found, having dispersed genetically and geographically; having been displaced by the forces of development, felt as gentrification; through new and ongoing migrations of people from around the world - and inevitably, aging.
In those latter days of the West Indian Parents and Friends, Roy and the group still held it up with the importance it deserved, as they felt the echoes of a history which Roy would trace back, as a continuous line to the Commonwealth Coordinated Committee (CCC), set up in 1962. It was with this organisation, or Association, that Roy worked closely with Owen Henry and other community activists. It was an Association of the many groups that began to spawn as the ‘West Indians’ arrived. There were groups that represented the arrivals from different islands - Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and others. These groups offered mostly social and cultural activities, dinner dances, excursions, and Christmas hampers for the more needy in their communities. These were funded by members’ dues and activities and sustained by the numbers of “West Indians” in the community with their different regional inflections.
Meanwhile, all groups felt the issues of settlement, housing, education, employment, and the impact of racism. Many lived in St Pauls, so they were also aware of the way that neighbourhood was treated by outsiders, who came to dump their rubbish there for instance. The CCC was a network that sought to bring everyone together, from all the different cultural associations, to make a strong voice to the council and other institutions, to better the neighbourhood for everybody.
One of the main political and strategic operatives in the Committee was Owen Henry who worked closely with Roy, and with whom Roy had a shared sense of identity and common cause. Roy reported that this organisation was used to ‘fight the bus issue’ in 1963. He cited Owen Henry and Guy Bailey as key players in the campaign. He said the CCC also had English-born Paul Stephenson as its President, who made a good spokesman because of his command of Englishness.
In Madge Dresser’s 1986 pamphlet “Black and White on the Buses”, she outlines how the group, led also by Prince Brown, Audley Evans, and others, mounted a campaign to agitate for change, enlisting the support of Tony Benn and the Opposition Labour Party; a range of 1960s Bristolians, including University of Bristol Students and Lecturers, to join with these dark-skinned people to protest and boycott against discrimination. In 1965, the first law was passed in the UK to outlaw racial discrimination, with some of that political weight being attributable to Bristol’s bus boycott of 1963.
Roy was at the forefront of the formation of the first St Paul’s Festival in 1968, which evolved into St Paul’s Carnival today. Roy cites Mr Drummond, Owen Henry, and others as also wanting to give something back to the communities of St Paul's especially, those who had welcomed and supported them. They took inspiration from Jamaican festivals of Masquerade (or simply ‘mas’) and of ‘Junkanoo’ as the basis of creating a celebration for all the people in the neighbourhood. The first programme, as well as the floats and steel pans, included Morris Dancing, Indian dance, and music; involvement of the schools, churches, and local pubs and ran for sixteen days.
So, when the West Indian parents and Friends were still trying to keep the community together in these last few years, without the energy of their youth, it was these kinds of activities founded on Association - coming together across the island and identities, self-help and leadership; working together with allies for equality, justice, and improvement in life-chances. They were also keen on organisation and accountability, depicted in decades of minutes of their ongoing fight for Charity (love), togetherness, community improvement, fairness, equality, and justice.
Roy’s ascension to the Ancestors marks a huge loss to his loving family and admiring community. It will be a big also for our city - since he was, as many commentators have said - ‘a legend’. He was a real Bristolian and Jamaican! - which means in both cases, a rebellious spirit and standing up for what you believe in.
Roy grew up with his fellow descendants of enslaved Africans and other ethnicities across the British Colonial world, who have managed to shape the cultural superpower that is Jamaica - with its creativity, industry, rebellious attitude, and the national chant of: ‘Out of Many, One People’. He never lost the love for the country of his birth and always gleamed with pride about all that the people on that little island in the Caribbean Sea have managed to achieve.
We will miss that cheeky smile and troublesome Spirit - who always encouraged his community to fight for their rights, to stand up and resist being made into an underdog. He also recognised the importance of bringing the community together in organised ways - whether through the Bristol West Indian Parent and Friends or Commonwealth Coordinated Committee, whether Trade Unionist or Community Activist, he had a strong belief in power of people coming together democratic working principles, transparency, and accountability in taking care of political and social affairs.
The recording of Roy’s discussion with the students of Glenfrome School and some other interviews with Roy can be found here.