Voice of Guyana International

Pearl Connor-Mogotsi
13 May 1924 – 11 February 2005

Opening Remarks

Professor Gus John – Moderator

On 11 February 2005, an indomitable spirit took flight. The spirit of a woman who from a very early age was consumed by an impatience for change and a consciousness of the place of art in shaping and humanizing society and giving expression to the fullness of our humanity.

She embodied that spirit in who she was, in how she was and in what she did: as a dancer, actor, theatrical agent, mentor, animateur, cultural and political activist, campaigner and social worker.

In a talk he gave at Harewood House, Leeds, in August this year, Milverton Wallace, who with Uncle Joe (Mogotsi), was the main organizer of this event, had this to say:

“Let me make a modest assertion: The present generation of performing artistes of African, Asian and African-Caribbean heritage now practising their trade in the UK may know nothing about her and the other pioneers whose struggles opened the door for them.

That is the prerogative of youth. Nevertheless, every black artiste, young or old, who now make a living in dance, music and the theatrical arts in this country, owe a big debt to her”.

We will hear tributes today from a good number of those artistes and fellow cultural activists, young and old, who gratefully acknowledge their debt to Pearl Connor Mogotsi, to the Edric Connor and later the Pearl Connor Agency, and the essential function they performed with respect to both their professional development and pastoral welfare.

We would all agree, I am sure, that present and future generations in this country, white and black, need to know who Pearl Connor Mogotsi was, where she came from, the groundings she came with and the continuity she established between her life experience with Britain and its institutions in the Caribbean and the struggles she waged here. Those struggles, against colonialism and for national and political independence in the Caribbean and in Africa, against racism in Britain and the tendency of the British state and its institutions to treat people of African and Asian heritage as if the colonies had simply been relocated to Britain, are less well known than her historical contribution to Theatre and the Arts.

Iconic figures in the immediate Post War generation, such as Claudia Jones have been etched into our historical memory. How many people know, however, that Pearl was as instrumental as Claudia Jones in establishing the Notting Hill Carnival? How many of us who routinely met at the West Indian Students’ Centre (WISC) in the middle to late 1960s and even formed the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association in that place are aware that Pearl was a founder of WISC and was equally active in the affairs of the African Students Centre round the corner? Her political activism alongside students at the African Students Centre made her a central figure in the agitation in the UK for the independence of the Gold Coast, working in tandem with Kwame Nkrumah, Dr Appiah and George Padmore, among others. She was an ardent supporter of African liberation struggles and her house was a meeting place for many of the young leaders of the independence movement. People such as: Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (Ghana). As such, she is numbered amongst the early pioneers of the Pan-African Movement.

Pearl never tired of making the point that our cultural and artistic creativity was not forged in the crucible of British racism, any more than our identity as Caribbean people was constructed solely upon our experience of having been enslaved. Similarly, she argued, the impetus for our cultural and artistic creation did not derive from our struggle against racism, however much cultural resistance was an essential component of that struggle. As such, her battle with casting directors, theatre managers and above all with Equity, the actors’ union, was invariably about acknowledging and employing African and Asian heritage artistes as artistes ‘par excellence’ and not as people to be typecast on the basis of race and ethnicity. In a famous letter to Archbishop Michael Ramsay, the Archbishop of Canterbury, one time Chair of the National Council for Commonwealth Immigrants and Patron of the Negro Theatre Workshop founded in 1961, she observed:

The coloured immigrant artiste does not want to be a symbol of his race… he wants to be a human being. He wants to be a dancer, actor, singer, working fully at his arts, developing completely his peculiar and dynamic talents and contributing to the world of theatre the fullest expression of his own art forms and culture.

In that same spirit, she was a constant source of inspiration and support for a number of black theatrical entrepreneurs and the institutions they created – Temba Theatre Company, Dark and Light Theatre, Talawa Theatre Company. And when her friend, political comrade and fellow activist, the late John La Rose, founded the Caribbean Artists Movement with Kamau Brathwaite and Andrew Salkey, Pearl was one of the original members of CAM.

In the latter years, Pearl dedicated herself to winning justice for the Manhattan Brothers and to the struggle to secure their music rights, intellectual property rights and the royalties that had been denied them. Pearl was determined to do her utmost to ensure that those rights were won back while at least some of the original Manhattan Brothers were still alive. That struggle with Gallo was to last for twelve long years. The world had been denied the knowledge that most of the songs popularised by Miriam Makeba had been written, composed and arranged by the Manhattan Brothers, including a number by Joe Mogotsi himself.

I will now ask Pearl to welcome you herself with these words:

Nobody will honour us or keep our image alive or remember our contribution. We have to do so ourselves and record our history through books, literature, music and the arts. We need our own icons, our own heroes.

Extract from “Our Olympian Struggle”, Pearl’s opening address at the 12th International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, 23 March 1995.

We have come together to celebrate and remember our own special icon, our monumental hero and to add to the record of her historic contribution to theatre, art and politics in Britain, Africa and the African Diaspora.

A very warm welcome to you all.

Tagged: Music, Pearl Connor-Mogotsi