John La Rose
| John La Rose | |
|---|---|
| Born |
27 December 1927 Trinidad |
| Died | 28 February 2006 (aged 78) United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Political and cultural activist poet, writer, publisher |
| Spouse(s) | Irma Hilaire (first wife), Sarah White (partner) |
| Children | Michael La Rose, Keith La Rose, Wole La Rose |
John La Rose (27 December 1927 – 28 February 2006) was a political and cultural activist, poet, writer, publisher, founder of New Beacon Books and Chairman of the George Padmore Institute. He was originally from Trinidad but was involved in the struggle for political independence and cultural and social change in the Caribbean in the 1940s and 1950s and later in Britain, the rest of Europe and the Third World.
John Anthony La Rose was born in Arima, Trinidad, in 1927, the younger son of Ferdinand La Rose, a cocoa trader, and his teacher wife Emily. He had four sisters and a brother. La Rose attended the local Roman Catholic school, and at the age of nine won a scholarship to St. Mary's College, Port of Spain. After finishing school he taught at St. Mary's and later became a leading insurance executive in Colonial Life, which was then in the process of becoming the biggest insurance company in the Caribbean. He later lived and taught in secondary schools in Venezuela, before coming to Britain in 1961.
His interest in culture – so-called serious music, literature and folk language and proverbs – preceded his commitment to politics and trade unionism. He saw these and cultural activity as interrelated in a vision of change. He wrote in his statement "About New Beacon Review" that his conception aimed "at the expression of the radical and the revolutionary. More easily definable in politics, and more complex and less easily definable, or indefinable, in the arts and culture". As an executive member of the Youth Council he produced their fortnightly radio programme Voice of Youth on Radio Trinidad; and in the mid-1950s, he co-authored with the calypsonian Raymond Quevedo – Attila the Hun – the first serious study of the calypso, originally entitled Kaiso, A Review, subsequently published as Atilla's Kaiso (1983).
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