Does Fidel Eat More than Your Father?

Abstract

BARRY RECKORD, A YOUNG JAMAICAN GRADUATE OF Cambridge University, emerged in the 1960s as Britain’s leading, indeed, first successful black playwright. He was a man with a great love of humanity, acutely aware of its material suffering and spiritual depravity having witnessed the extremes of privilege and poverty growing up in Jamaica in the 1940s. His compassion was such that he considered studying for the priesthood. But spiritual caring had to be coupled with purposive action to address the material circumstances of poverty which engulfed so many, particularly in the developing world of which he was a product. An education at one of the world’s leading universities was not just a privilege but an enabling capacity to respond to the émigré’s guilt of not being present to engage first-hand in the struggle of decolonisation and nationbuilding. This gnawed at his conscience as he looked out over Primrose Hill, London from his perch in his second-storey flat. The condition of mankind, especially in his native Caribbean, spurred his restless intellect and increasingly demanded time from playwriting. Starting in the mid-1950s and continuing into the 1960s, his plays were staged at the Royal Court and the Arts Theatre in London’s West End, and on Granada and BBC television. The concern for poverty was evident in one of his early successes, Skyvers,1 which explored the listlessness of impoverished British school-age teenagers, undoubtedly reflecting his experience as a high school teacher in England. The hallmark of this intellect was his brutal honesty, emblematic of which was asking the uncomfortable question which sought not the what but the why and more so the why not. He was naturally curious about the many new FLASHBACK