|
|
 |
| |
Hugh Webster |
MP mourns ‘a good man gone’
HOLBORN and St Pancras Labour MP Frank Dobson has paid tribute to Hugh Webster, a youth worker who died in January.
Mr Webster, who was 82, worked in King’s Cross, dedicating his life to helping young people.
Mr Dobson said: “Hugh was a good man. Some people qualify for that description because they do good things, others because of the sort of person they are. Hugh qualified on both counts. He was a good man who did good things.”
Mr Dobson first met Hugh when the MP joined the Coram’s Fields management committee in the 1960s.
Although he did not talk about it with his friends, Hugh had seen service during World War II in an armoured tank regiment before becoming involved in youth work.
He would commute each week from his home in the Essex countryside, staying with friends near the Mary Ward centre, in Coram’s Fields, while working there, and then heading back to his house to look after his well-tended garden.
Mr Dobson said: “I came to realise what an extraordinary person he was and how fortunate we were to have such a colleague.”
His work at the centre made it one of the longest running and best used youth services in the borough.
Mr Dobson added: “Running a youth club in Holborn and King’s Cross was a difficult and demanding job. Nobody else ever did so well for so long. All sorts of other outfits came and went – wildly popular at one point only to fade out as fashions changed. But that didn’t happen at the Mary Ward.
“Of course, the club had its ups and downs but it was always there, always open and a place which local youths felt belonged to them and where they belonged. And that was because of Hugh.”
And his understanding of young people’s needs was crucial to his success, said Mr Dobson.
“He had an instinct for getting the best out of young people, including some fairly unpromising ones.
“Hugh got the message across of how decent people behave towards each other. He didn’t preach. He showed by example in the club or out on trips how to get things done without fighting or shouting or being unpleasant or unfair.”
And this stretched to inviting people from Coram’s back to his home in Saffron Walden, where he would hold garden parties around his outdoor swimming pool.
Animals kept at Coram’s Fields also had a friend in Hugh. He would buy feed for the club’s goats, sheep and poultry from farmers near his home each week and drive it to London. When the Fields’ animal enclosures were being re-built, he took the sheep home with him and looked after them.
Friends who remember Hugh say it was his simple understanding of what makes others tick which made him such a well-loved and influential figure for more than 40 years in the King’s Cross area.
Mr Dobson added: “Hugh knew how the world worked and the young people at the Mary Ward centre could see that. He didn’t expect the impossible so they knew when he set standards they should keep to them because there was a good reason behind them.
“He was also good fun. Both with members of the youth club and with grown-ups, he was good at lightening the conversation. It was a sad day for our area when he retired.
“His death is sadder still.
“ Wordsworth said that the best portion of a good man’s life is ‘his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love’. But I know that people now in their 30s, 40s and 50s who went to the Mary Ward centre in their youth do remember Hugh’s acts of kindness and of love.
“They join in mourning a good man gone.”
DAN CARRIER |
 |
|
|
|
