A view down Greenhow Botton towards Roseberry, which distinctive shape barely manages to poke above the skyline. Remarkably, it is a clear day—clear enough that, far off in the distance, from this the highest point of the North York Moors, Hartlepool is visible, gleaming faintly through a break in the clouds. Why bother mentioning Hartlepool, you might ask, when it is barely discernible in the photograph? A fair question.
Over the years, I have developed the peculiar habit of collecting random tidbits about North East characters and history, clinging to the optimistic notion that one day I might manage to link one to a photograph for the day. One such character is Ivor Gustavus Cummings but, alas, this was the nearest I got to Hartlepool today.
Cummings was born on this day, 10 December 1913, in West Hartlepool. His mother was a junior matron at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary; his father, a senior house officer there, was among the African professionals who graced Tyneside at the time. Hailing from Sierra Leone, his father came from a wealthy merchant family and had ties to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the black British composer. A pedigree not likely to spare Ivor from racial prejudice during his school years.
Frustrated, Cummings left England to work as a clerk for the United Africa Company in Freetown. Eventually, he returned to London, where he became warden of a government centre for colonial students—a role that marked the start of his entanglement with British bureaucracy.
When the Second World War broke out, Cummings joined the Colonial Office. There, he devoted himself to smoothing over the inevitable tensions faced by Caribbean RAF volunteers, whose presence was made no easier by the arrival of segregated American troops. His influence reportedly reached the King himself, courtesy of Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma.
After the war, Cummings remained at the Colonial Office, taking on the thankless task of supporting Commonwealth citizens assisting Britain in her post-war recovery. For his troubles, he was awarded the OBE. When the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948, he stood ready in an official capacity to greet the Jamaicans who had been invited to help rebuild a Britain battered by its own hubris.
Cummings did not live long enough to see the tangled legacy of his work. He died in London on 17 October 1992 after a prolonged battle with cancer, his contributions largely overshadowed by the very prejudices he worked to mitigate.
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