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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 19 April 2007

Honour this truly great campaigner

• SHAME on English Heritage for not honouring that remarkable Englishman, Michael Scott, with a blue plaque at his final residence in Primrose Hill. (Hain backs plaque honour for anti-apartheid fighter, April 12).
Can’t it recognise heroism when it stares it in the face? Though no longer a household name, Scott helped change the course of Britain’s colonial history in a determined but always non-violent way.
He was one of a trio of English priests – Trevor Huddleston and John Collins were the others – who alerted public opinion to Britain’s links with the apartheid state and actively took part in the struggle that culminated in Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa.
Before he was expelled by the former Pretoria government, Scott lived in a Johannesburg black township and was a rare white face in street protests against racist laws. Most of all, he spoke up for the blacks of South West Africa (now Namibia) at the United Nations in the teeth of objections by British Labour and Tory governments.
Last October, during Black History Month, English Heritage pasted a plaque on the Kensington house where the exiled King of the Zulus, Cetshwayo, had stayed for a month in the 19th century. Now, a plaque to Michael Scott would, for those so inclined, add to the understanding of Britain’s colonial past. And honour a man of unwavering principle.
DENIS HERBSTEIN
N6 (Address supplied)

• I WAS astonished to read the article concerning English Heritage’s refusal to mark the Reverend Michael Scott’s home in King Henry’s Road with a blue plaque.
Michael was an inspiration to many people of my generation (including Bishop Trevor Huddleston) for his courageous stand against South Africa’s racist policies in the 1940s and his single-handed battle at the United Nations for the cause of the people of South West Africa (now Namibia).
I was privileged to work with Michael at the Africa Bureau (1960-1962), where I witnessed for myself his compassion for oppressed and disadvantaged groups not just in Africa, but throughout the Third World.
A plaque seems the least we can do to honour this brave, self-effacing trail-blazer. A truly great man.
KEITH LYE
NW5 (Address supplied)

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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