Author always trying to help the vulnerable
MORE than 30 years ago, Terry Waite travelled to Beirut to try to negotiate the release of western hostages. The story of his 1,460 days in captivity and particularly his positive demeanour after release are well known.
Terry, aged 79, is now the president of homeless charity Emmaus and of Y Care International, the international arm of the YMCA, and his work supporting vulnerable people has never ceased.
He is the author of six books, including the autobiographical Taken on Trust, as well as a light-hearted comedy novel called The Voyage of the Golden Handshake, conceived during captivity.
Most recently he has written Solitude and he has also co-authored several more.
Sometimes reminiscing, sometimes reading from his book Out of the Silence, he told the sell-out audience in the auditorium of Rochdale’s Curtain Theatre about his early life and early work, including when Idi Amin seized control in Uganda and a number of friends and colleagues were rounded up and many were killed.
The young Terry was able to negotiate the release of some captives.
He spoke about his own captivity in Lebanon, the political events that led to it and the reasons he went to Beirut - even though Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had advised him against it.
Terry would not describe himself as a brave man and explained how he had kept his sanity through difficult times in captivity by drafting and memorising his autobiography and other stories in his head, and that his faith had helped him because, whatever they did, his ‘captors could not possess his soul’.
When I asked about his well-known pacifism, he politely corrected the notion that he is a pacifist saying: “Well I’m not - I’m not a pacifist, strangely enough, I lean heavily towards peace, but I do believe that in exceptional circumstances, when every other option has been tried, then the use of force is justified, limited force is justified, for example, to save the innocent, or to protect the innocent.”
Terry was a warm and relaxed speaker, who held the attention of the packed house with ease.
He is clearly a man who listens as carefully as he speaks.
His words about the cause of many troubles he has seen around the world - ‘when law and order breaks down, any group of people are likely to behave in the most appalling ways’ - will remain with me.