By Clayton Goodwin
A lot that has happened for the good to me in life has come about by attending beauty contests. In February 1964, I accompanied a friend who was a contestant in such an event at Camberwell Baths in south-east London, and, while there, I was introduced to the chairman of the judging panel, Aubrey Baynes, the Vincentian god-father of the UK West Indian press. Seven years later I was a reporter at a similar occasion in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and the promoter thought I should meet up-and-coming publisher Arif Ali who hailed from Guyana. Aubrey invited me to write for his publication, mentoring me through my early days in the business. As for Arif ….. he started talking to me about his favourite subject – cricket – which was indeed also my favourite subject. We kept in touch. Over the next few years we spoke rather a lot about cricket. I even contributed some items on the subject to his then small-sized magazine Westindian Digest.
A couple of years after our first meeting Arif took over the ownership of the West Indian World weekly newspaper when Baynes retired. My disappointment at losing Aubrey’s guiding hand was off-set somewhat by his successor’s enthusiasm and optimism. Although by now my name was well-known to the West Indian readership, I couldn’t afford to become a full-time journalist. Payment in Caribbean dollars did not cut through the ice in England, and my first attempt to go solo had crashed in 1966 when printers had gone on strike for several months. As a free-lance writer, nothing published – nothing paid. Therefore, by mid-1975 I was working in the marketing department of British Uralite Ltd in the construction sector, while writing in the evenings and weekends. That was my position when West Indies won the first cricket (Prudential) World Cup that summer. Then my future hit a favourable juxtaposition of Guyana theme-based incidents. It started with me having the opportunity to see Alvin Kallicharran from Guyana batter the Australian bowlers in the preliminary round of that tournament at the Oval.
A fortnight later Clive Lloyd, as captain, raised the Cup aloft after his team had beaten the same opponents in the Final at Lord’s. It goes without repetition that, he, too, was Guyanese. And so, too, was the administration led by Forbes Burnham in Georgetown. Now, if there were to be an enterprising publisher, who also happened to be Guyanese, this was too good an opportunity of promoting the country through the cricket to be missed. Cometh the hour, cometh …… Arif Ali. He had the facilities to publish the required supplement within the Westindian World. Did he know enough details of the history of the game in the Caribbean – and the time, given his other duties, to collate them? Not quite, but he knew a man who did. Our little chats on cricket since the meeting at Bradford had come in useful. Arif picked up the phone – I answered.
I would like to say – and the rest is history – but it wasn’t quite as easy as that. Since my unfortunate experience with the printers’ strike I had promised my wife and family that I wouldn’t hand in my notice at the day job until I had three months’ worth of salary in the bank to get me going. Arif could afford to pay only the equivalent of one month. Still, that was better than nothing, and we could now afford to have a decent holiday. Then, I’m not sure quite how it happened, Arif lost the script twice. It seems that once it was thrown out in error by the office cleaner and the second time it was stolen, with his briefcase, from Arif’s car. However, having promised so much to his readers and advertisers, the publisher couldn’t back out now. He paid me for the two further re-writes. That was three months wages in total, and I was free to cast of the shackles of conventional employment. That supplement, by the way, is still with me on the shelf above my head as I write.
My fortunes changed overnight. Aided, as it was, by the good feeling of an exceptional tour and a successful series by West Indies in the equally exceptionally hot summer of 1976. International publishers Harrap were sufficiently impressed by the supplement to accept my pitch to write a history of West Indian history – histories were in short supply at that time. Harrap invited Arif to put on the launch for Caribbean Cricketers from the Pioneers to Packer – which he did at the offices of his newly-launched Caribbean Times in Finsbury Park, North London on the eve of the next West Indies tour in 1980. As with everything he did, Arif invested his full energy into the project, inviting prominent personalities from all walks of life to attend. It was there that I first met Reg Scarlett, the former West Indies off-spinner and the force behind the prestigious Haringey Cricket College, who provided great help in my getting even more acquainted with the game in the region.
West Indian club cricket was then strong in England. Arif deserves much credit for bringing the disparate clubs together in a cohesive format by sponsoring a nationwide competition named in honour of Rohan Kanhai and, then, following a change in the regional captaincy, in honour of Clive Lloyd. When an Old Barbados side played an Old England side at the Oval in 1982 somebody was kind enough to praise myself and another journalist for our role in promoting West Indian cricket. Arif Ali, in contrast to the sour-face of another publisher in the same market, took the microphone to say how proud he was to have had some small part in the development of our careers. It was a welcome tribute and public relations triumph for the man himself – two qualities in which there was nobody quite like Arif.
All the while he was publishing newspapers and magazines – before he sold the titles in order to concentrate on Hansib Publishing books – Arif marked each West Indies cricket tour of England with either a special supplement or a social event. In 1995, he celebrated the 45th anniversary of Sonny Ramadhin and Alfred Valentine (“the spin twins” of calypso fame), who had bedazzled the cream of England batting, with a high commission reception. They looked as young and enchanting as they had been in their halcyon days. Is it mere co-incidence that West Indies cricket declined from that moment that Arif Ali quit the business? On the facts, it would be difficult to argue otherwise. The team hasn’t won a Test series in England since then.
Aubrey Baynes and Arif Ali – two pillars of West Indian publishing in the United Kingdom. The one gave me the opportunity to make a name for myself in journalism, and the other provided the means for me to enjoy full-time employment in that trade. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have known and worked with them both. How fortunate it has been for me that I had a penchant for watching pretty girls parade? If I hadn’t, then destiny would have passed me by. How lucky I was, too, that Arif Ali decided to talk to me about cricket. And then there was that business of how the Guyana-themed pieces fell so neatly into place – Alvin Kallicharran, Clive Lloyd, the Forbes Burnham administration, and, of course, Arif Ali.