FORTY YEARS ON
Clayton and Hopelyn Goodwin, Founders of CaribCommx, celebrate their Ruby Wedding Anniversary
The more things change – the more they stay the same.
For us, things seem to be very much the same as they were in June 1967, and it is hard to believe that 40 years have passed. For the community around us, or, rather, for the social attitudes of the society around us, things have changed beyond recognition.
In retrospect our racially-mixed marriage seemed to have been unusual, ground-breaking in the same year in which the film “Guess who’s coming to dinner” first brought the issue to public prominence. There was already the example of Sir Seretse Khama, the first President of Botswana, but he was royal, and, that we were most certainly not.
At the time the wedding was nothing more significant than the natural development of a relationship which had started five years earlier. Then a young Caribbean in London thought that it would be “fun” to bring together for her birthday celebration myself – then a white teenager who had never been previously to a black people’s house-party, with a girl in her school-class “who had newly arrived from Jamaica”. She said that if we did not get on with each other we need not stay together after that evening. That was in June 1962 – and now in 2007 we have celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary – and (two children and three grand-children later) we are still together. Perhaps we have just taken an unusually long time in making up our mind as to whether we do get on with each other !!!
Yes – there have been always special “circumstances”. When Hopelyn told her father of our intention to get married he threw her out of the family-home – she returned from work to find her belongings on the door-step. Her parents boycotted the wedding citing their objection to a racially-mixed marriage, and did not speak to me until persuaded to do so during a family crisis 32 years later. Then her father said that he had never been so prejudiced – possibly he thought my parents would reject his daughter he would get his rejection of their son “in first”.
Although my parents have never held such views, some diplomacy was necessary. My father’s mother was so frightened of black people that she would cross the street rather than pass one on the same pavement. The old lady was persuaded to meet Hopelyn and, no doubt to her great surprise, found that they “got on like a house on fire”. They became such firm friends that we have a photograph of them with their arms round each other’s waist and smiling.
Then there was the question of the branch of our family in Durban – who were firm supporters of Apartheid. We delayed telling them the news until after the wedding. My aunt replied that because of the delay she had “guessed that it was something like that” but expressed her relief that I had not married “a Boer”. Later she visited us in England and, too, welcomed Hopelyn to her ample bosom.
Nevertheless my parents did have their reservations – about my choice of career as a writer. They were rural villagers who associated journalism with the lowly status of the part—time work of somebody, usually a retired spinster, who cycled between isolated communities collecting details of births, deaths and marriages. I believe that they never did “get the hang” of what journalism is all about.
With the tensions at home we were delighted to get away to a happy honeymoon in the Black Forest of Germany. The year before a friend of my brother had invited me to spend some time with his family. That was before we had decided to get married. So I wrote turning down his invitation as we were now two instead of one, and “by the way, my wife is black”. His reply was immediate. In block capitals he spelled out (in German) – “in our house there is no racial prejudice”. Then he invited us to take our honeymoon there.
Over the last 40 years we have come to consider the Black Forest as being our second home. The father of the family, a kindly, considerate man, remained a close friend until he died in his 90s just a couple of years ago. He had fouyght for the Third Reich in the Second World War. Then, in his youth, he had followed blindly what his political masters had told him, but with maturity and experience he had learned a different way.
Critics considered that our marriage would be lucky to survive six months. Instead it has survived four decades of social change and upheaval. George Francis, chairman of the New Cross Fire parents association, whose son, Jerry, perished in the inferno, was our wedding photographer. Sixteen years ago our own son was beaten up severely by BNP supporters close to the location of, and just shortly before, the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
The guests at our daughter’s wedding in the year 2000 presented a kaleidoscope of cultures, creeds and colours. Hopelyn, myself, our daughter and her husband Paul, and our son, and many of those present, were employed in the Media. So, after all, it was our parents- and not ourselves – who had been out of step with the march of time.
The proverb is wrong:
The more things change – the more they keep changing.
