A TOAST TO A GREAT MAN
Eugene Byrne looks back on the energetic life of a war veteran who became a prominent clergyman who made a strong impact on Bristol in the 1970s and 80s
The life of the Right Rev Horace Dammers
HAD he lived that long, July 10 of this year would have been the 100th birthday of 20th century Bristol’s most remarkable clergymen, the Very Rev. Horace Dammers.
While his achievements as Dean of Bristol, his humanitarian work, his campaigning for world peace and for better understanding among people of different faiths (and none) were great in themselves, he might be more recognizable to those of us of a certain age as the father of Jerry Dammers, musician, member of 2 Tone and ska band The Specials and the man who penned anti-Apartheid anthem ‘Free Nelson Mandela’.
None of which should detract from his dad, who was popular and widely liked in his time in Bristol, even if his liberal/left politics didn’t always chime with the city’s more conservative politicians and church-goers.
Born in Great Yarmouth in 1921, Alfred Hounsell Dammers (he became known as Horace during his schooldays) was educated at Malvern College and Pembroke College, Cambridge.
During the Second World War, he served in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Artillery, an often gruelling and harrowing experience in which he found comfort and inspiration from the pocket Bible he always carried with him.
True to the best wartime clichés, the little book did indeed save his life, not by stopping a bullet, but a piece of shrapnel from a landmine. “It got stuck towards the end of the Old Testament,” he said later.
His war service ended in 1944 when he was seriously wounded in the savage fighting for Monte Cassino.
Taken down on a stretcher to a dressing station he found himself lying next to a wounded German airman who spoke fluent English.
The German noticed Dammers reading his Bible and said to him: “I, too, read the Bible. I have found some comfort in it since my wife and two sons were killed in an RAF raid on Hamburg.”
This, he later wrote, would be the start of his lifelong mission of peace and reconciliation. He would in later life return to Cassino to take part in religious services with Italians, Germans, Poles and Britons who had fought so hard for possession of the monastery. The same concern would also lead him to Northern Ireland on many occasions in the 1970s and 80s.
At one service he led at Cassino, though, there was controversy when it was claimed that he had encouraged the British ex-soldiers present to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and furthermore to return to their local branches of the British Legion and get their fellow-members to do likewise.
He flatly denied he’d done anything of the sort, but the argument raged in the pages of the press for a few weeks.
Dammers would indeed be leftist in his politics. A lifelong member of the Labour Party he was also founder of the Life-Style Movement (nowadays without the hyphen – to find out more, see www.lifestylemovement.org.uk), which encourages people to live a life less restricted by material concerns. The slogan was: “Live Simply so that others may Simply Live”.
Life-Style encouraged people to do without flashy cars, but have smaller ones instead or ride bicycles. Neighbours could share lawn-mowers and DIY tools. Life-Style called for less luxurious and less ostentatious entertainment, and was opposed to nuclear power and supersonic aircraft (which did not go down well in Bristol!)
He said: “We are moving from an exploitative era of human history into the conservationist era. . . People are fed up with keeping up with the Joneses.”
This was in 1972. Almost 50 years ago he was saying things which many more would sympathise with nowadays, but back then many saw him and those who agreed with him as sandal-wearing hippy cranks.
It had always been his intention to enter the church and after the war he was a curate in Lancashire, then as a lecturer at Queen’s College in Birmingham where Anglican priests and Methodist ministers trained together. He then became a lecturer at a college in India. There were then spells as a vicar in Sheffield, a canon at Coventry Cathedral - where, naturally, he was active in promoting links with churches in Germany, particularly Dresden which, like Coventry, had been devastated by wartime bombing.
In 1972 he was appointed Dean – the principal cleric – at Bristol Cathedral, where he remained until retiring in 1987.
Horace Dammers had a huge impact in Bristol at a time of great change and uncertainty both in the city and the wider world.
He worked to help the homeless, got closely involved with local ethnic minority groups and churches and, mindful that while the City Docks might be closed, Avonmouth was still very much a working port, he gave over one of the Cathedral chapels to The Mission to Seafarers. He also started a Cathedral ministry for local elderly people.
More controversially he established a Peace Chapel, too, both for private prayer and for prayer vigils by organisations like Amnesty International and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. There were mutterings of discontent from some that he was bringing politics into religion, while traditionally-minded Anglicans were uneasy with his ecumenism, his belief that all faiths should be working together. There were, to the horror of a few, Roman Catholic masses in the Cathedral.
Criticism though was usually blunted by his friendly and open manner and considerable charisma. He was also careful to lead the Cathedral congregation from the back, trying to secure consensus and agreement in advance of any contentious move.
Others were won over by his musical ability and his commitment to promoting music at the Cathedral, while his staff were often kept very busy indeed. “We talk,” said one of them, “but the Dean does.”
When he retired, he and his wife Brenda, whom he had married in 1947 and with whom he had two daughters and two sons (including the famous Jerry) continued to live in Shirehampton where they joined the congregation at St Mary’s. He died in 2004.
If you have any memories or stories of Horace Dammers that you’d like to share with BT’s readers, email bristol. times@b-nm.co.uk