Reverend Paul Nicholson (1932-2020). No home but the struggle

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Reverend Paul Nicholson (1932-2020). No home but the struggle

In Uncategorized on March 7, 2020 by kmflett

Reverend Paul Nicholson (1932-2020): indefatigable campaigner & veteran Guardian letter writer

I was surprised and dismayed to read of the death of the Reverend Paul Nicholson this week. I had bumped into him just a couple of weeks ago (he was off to another protest) as I was leaving the City of London HQ of one of the UK’s largest companies (I was doing my job as a union officer-yes I do have a full-time job…) He looked, as I expect he thought the same of me, much the same as he had looked for as long as I remember.

I worked with Paul Nicholson over many years when I was President of Haringey TUC over many campaigns around poverty, racism and much else. We both lived in Tottenham after all.

I found him idiosyncratic- no doubt at best he thought the same about me, because his campaigning zeal was based on religion and morality while mine was more focused on materialism. Still I’m not religious and he was a vicar but that never stopped us working together. When you are fighting for people at the bottom of society who have been dumped on by authority you take your allies where you can, and often brilliant allies they are too.

He had a wry sense of humour, offbeat and perhaps not so different to my own though I was never able to persuade him to grow a beard.

He was anyway a model campaigner, resilient, still going well into his late 80s. Not either as someone who just lectured younger people about how things were done ‘in my day’ but always up to the minute campaigning focused on now.

Paul Nicholson was also a veteran writer of letters to the Guardian, a subject I should add I don’t recall ever discussing with him. His focus over many well informed, astute letters, was his campaigning work. It is just one of those coincidences I suppose that I came to know several of the regular Guardian letters contributors not just Paul but also Toby Wood (who is still very much alive).

One can only bid a sad farewell to a great campaigner and epistler. If only there were more vicars like the Reverend Paul Nicholson.