Right Rev Richard Wood RIP

Kyt · Oct 29, 2008

Anti-apartheid man dies - News - Oldham Advertiser

AN Oldham-born cleric and anti-apartheid activist – who was expelled from Namibia for standing up against the brutal treatment of the colony’s native population – has died.

The Right Rev Richard Wood was one of several clergymen to be expelled from the country in 1974 by South African prime minister John Vorster.

This followed the Oldhamer’s bid to use the South African courts to stop the maltreatment of freedom fighters trying to overthrow a puppet regime.

Born in Oldham on August 25, 1920, Rt Rev Wood was the son of a cotton-mill engineer who initially trained as an electrical engineer.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the RAF, working on Fairey Battle light bombers at an airfield in Épernay, France. After the war, while working in India, he was inspired by a Tamil priest to become a devout Christian.

He was ordained in 1953 and emigrated to South Africa two years later. When his first wife, Elsa de Beer, died in 1969, he decided to become a monk.

After a year’s service in southern Africa he returned home to England to become a Franciscan where The Bishop of Damaraland, Colin Winter – whose daring opposition to apartheid had made him a public enemy of the whites – took him on.

Rt RevWood led the life of a nomad, an unconventional figure zigzagging across southern Namibia in his blue Combi vehicle taking the gospel to black farm workers and miners far from their northern homes.

"If you wear a clerical collar people don’t swear at you," he once said. "When you dress as they do, they treat you as a human being."

He became a suffragan bishop in 1973, and was soon calling on white Namibians to work for a just society.

His empathy with the Christian-based liberation movement SWAPO (the South West Africa People’s Organisation) infuriated South Africa’s prime minister.

When Rt Rev Wood heard SWAPO followers were being flogged by the puppet regime in Ovamboland, he helped submit depositions by stealth which enabled injunctions to effectively end the practice.

He was subsequently expelled by the aparthied government of South Africa.

Having vowed to leave the UK if Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, Rt RevWood went to Tanzania in 1979 to teach. In 1982 he moved to the US, where he worked as a parish priest.

He returned to England in 1985, and he and his second wife Cathy retired to Itchen Abbas, near Winchester, in 1998.

Rt Rev Wood died earlier this month. He was 88-years-old and is survived by his wife, their children, and two children from his first marriage, as well as eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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Antipodean Andy · Oct 29, 2008

Would be interesting to know what he did beyond looking after Battles in France. RIP.

liverpool annie · Dec 6, 2008

Antipodean Andy said: ↑

Would be interesting to know what he did beyond looking after Battles in France. RIP.
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Richard James Wood, priest: born Oldham, Lancashire, 25 August 1920; ordained deacon 1952, priest 1953; Rector, Christ Church, Beaufort West, South Africa 1958-62; Vicar of St Andrew's, Riversdale 1962-65; Chaplain, South African Defence Force 1965-68; Assistant, St Alban's, East London 1968; Rector of St John's, Fort Beaufort 1969-71; Rector of Keetmanshoop, Diocese of Damaraland, Namibia 1971; Priest-in-Charge of Grace Church and St Michael's, Windhoek and Canon of St George's Cathedral, Windhoek 1972; Vicar General and Suffragan Bishop of Damaraland 1973-75; expelled by South Africa 1975; Priest-in-Charge of St Mary, Lowgate, Hull 1978-79; Chaplain, Hull College of Higher Education 1978-79; Honorary Assistant Bishop of York 1978-79, 1985-99; staff, St Mark's Theological College, Dar es Salaam 1979-83; married 1946 Elsa Magdalena de Beer (died 1969; one son, one daughter), 1972 Catherine Roark (two daughters); died Itchen Abbas, Hampshire 9 October 2008.

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