The class of 67

Was the great Irish day dreamer right in his preparatory notes for Ulysses, when he stated that places remember events?

It certainly seemed as if James Joyce was on to something when, in April this year, 200 sometime members of the 1960s LSE Socialist Society, and their friends and interested contemporaries (who shared the karma if not the dogma of those interesting times) returned to the Old Theatre.

Besides digesting a generous course of nostalgia and paying our continuing respects to heady days of revolting youth we were there to honour the encyclopaedic dignity of a dead friend, the Zimbabwean economist and liberation fighter, Basker Vashee.

Basker studied at LSE after he was expelled from his homeland in 1966 for upholding social justice and human rights at the then University College, Salisbury, Rhodesia and in the broader exploitative, racist society of which it was a part.

Basker’s portrait powerfully illuminated the stage behind another sage with Indian roots, chair-for-the-night Megnad Desai. Beneath this canopy each of us had five minutes to express our memories of Basker and to recall those days of hope forty short years ago.

Sunder Patel, Basker’s cousin from Zimbabwe spoke beautifully and then sang of his loss. Fiona Dove, who directs the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam which Basker helped to found, remembered him fondly. Ted Parker spoke passionately of his own continuing involvement in the struggle against racism.

David Adelstein read a poem he had written for the occasion and sang the Southern African liberation anthem. Many others spoke, interweaving specific memories of the times with mention of Basker’s loyalty and courage in the face of oppression and his role in shaping the LSE events of 1967.

My own contribution recalled the last conversation I had with Basker in Amsterdam a few months before he died. In this he had spoken with special emphasis of how grateful he was to his direct family in Zimbabwe and their indirect but equally loving counterparts in Holland for looking after him. Also the Dutch health service and the staff who cared for him.

I also recalled some other striking things about him- his clear and beautiful voice, how nicely he dressed, how much he loved to laugh and play and have fun- and just how much he loved to dance, particularly to his greatest favourites, the Four Tops and the Supremes.

Also his intellectual honesty and his considerable capacity for imaginative work which he maintained through serious and debilitating illnesses. Basker was always interested in realistically mapping and exploring the factual world out there so that we might better understand what it is we are trying to change.

After we said our Old Theatre farewell to him we went off to less familiar parts of the school and had a drink or two, every shot enhanced by intense conversation, self-satirising humour and the considerable pleasures of re-acquaintance.

Sabby Sagall and John Rose, Joan Smith and Steve Jefferys and their daughter Kerry bore the considerable organisational brunt that made the evening possible, And the staff of the school were very kind to us and fed us well. For which many thanks to all concerned.

Looking back on Basker’s life he really did try to understand the causes of things and also worked manfully to change them for the better.

In a special range of ways he was a fine, fine man, greatly loved and much missed , not least by his son James who was there with us for the evening , tall and strong and shining - like his father.