My father, John White, who has died aged 104, was an English instructor in London. He turned a humanist consultant on the standing advisory council on non secular schooling for the Interior London Training Authority (Ilea) within the late Nineteen Sixties and early 70s, serving to to make sure that humanism and non-religious views had a voice within the shaping of the syllabuses of the time.
He had turn out to be involved concerning the narrowness of spiritual instruction in faculties within the 60s and was nervous concerning the requirement for each day worship introduced in by the 1944 Training Act. From 1968 onwards he turned an activist within the British Humanist Affiliation (BHA, now Humanists UK), and was a member of its schooling committee, and later its chair and secretary. He was additionally a celebrant at humanist funerals.
It was John’s BHA work that led him to sit down on Ilea’s standing advisory council on non secular schooling, and in addition drew him into engaged on a lot of interfaith committees. His papers, saved on the Bishopsgate Institute in London, present a wealthy historical past of humanist schooling campaigns from the 60s by to the 90s.
John was born in New Cross, south-east London, the one baby of Jack and Edith (nee Fox), after his father had returned from 4 years on the western entrance as a stretcher-bearer throughout the first world conflict. The horrible issues his father had seen had an impression on John later turning into a humanist, pacifist and socialist.
Whereas he was at Brockley Central college his involvement with the Woodcraft Folks, a co-operative worldwide socialist motion, additionally fuelled a love of conventional track and dance, in addition to tenting and the countryside.
Regardless of his pacifism, John’s opposition to fascism prompted him to volunteer in 1940 for the RAF. He skilled in Canada and returned as a navigator, flying on harmful evening missions in Lockheed Hudson planes alongside the Mediterranean to provide Valletta throughout the siege of Malta.
After being demobbed in 1946, he did instructor coaching at Newlands Faculty in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, and after a quick spell educating at Brixton Day faculty, he moved to Dunraven secondary college in Streatham, staying there from 1954 till retiring in 1979 as head of English. Throughout these years he additionally taught night courses in speech and drama on the Guildhall Faculty of Music and Drama.
In 1949 John married Lucie Denham, a nurse whom he had met at a drama group in Buckinghamshire. They shared a love of the humanities, poetry and theatre, and have been eager members of London’s Tower theatre, with John producing and compering previous time music corridor evenings there within the 60s, in addition to later with the Lissenden Gamers in Highgate.
He usually carried out at Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger’s Singers’ Membership within the 80s, and was additionally a much-loved member of Sharp’s folks membership at Cecil Sharp Home close to Regent’s Park, in addition to Croydon folks membership. In reality he was a founding organiser of Sharp’s in 1988, and was nonetheless acting at their weekly classes past his a centesimal birthday.
Lucie died in 2012. He’s survived by their two youngsters, Ann and me, 4 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.
