Obituary – Richard Headicar
In January, we received the sad news that our very popular, long-standing member, Richard Headicar had died shortly after Christmas, aged 91, having been in ill-health for some time. Years ago, he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. After treatment, his voice was considerably weaker, which unfortunately curtailed his public speaking activities that he performed so well. Nevertheless, he remained cheerful and positive, as always.
I first met Richard in the mid-1980s when he gave a talk as a non-member at a public meeting of the old Islington Branch. At that meeting, although he spoke as a critical visitor, he continued the friendly and non-judgemental dialogue with several members at his regular platform at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Richard continued to attend our meetings to discuss his evolving political ideas and he joined the Party in 1988. He subsequently represented us with great oratorical skill, passion and humour at many indoor and outdoor meetings. He was particularly experienced and adept at dealing with hecklers at public meetings. He was a regular and committed attendee of Islington Branch and stood as the Party’s candidate in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency for the 1992 General Election. His friendly and engaging manner and persuasive ability helped the branch thrive in terms of making new members, talks, debates and social events. He was very sociable and always keen to continue the discussion/debate in the pub after meetings. At Head Office, he served on the Executive Committee for a few years and ran classes for new speakers, passing on to members the benefit of his long and valuable experience.
Richard and I soon discovered that we shared an interest in football and tennis. This led to regular games of tennis, and we were often joined on court by a number of members and friends. With his wicked sense of humour, he loved to wind people up on various subjects. Knowing that I dislike and don’t celebrate Christmas because of its awful mix of intense commercialism, nonsensical religion and tiresome clichés, he would gleefully wind me up by sending me ghastly Christmas cards every year with a personal message cheekily explaining that he’d deliberately chosen the worst-taste card he could find, with a picture of angels, a snowy scene with Santa Claus or maybe a cute-looking robin.
He had become a vegetarian in 1960, when there were very few veggie restaurants in London. He enjoyed good food, beer and wine (especially a good Rioja) and often invited friends and comrades to his philosophy-focused dinner parties. His wide-ranging interests included philosophy, environmentalism, music, sport, politics, literature, music and perhaps more bizarrely, watching ‘B’ movies; he was also fond of board and other games, e.g the classic table football game Subbuteo (way back, he’d taken on the inventor, P.A. Adolph, and proudly told me he’d only narrowly lost 2-1).
He was a bit of a technophobe and a critical observer of certain modern social trends, particularly the growing obsession with computers and mobile phones. We had a good laugh when he told me about several cities introducing a ’texting lane’ on pavements in an attempt to prevent collisions between pedestrians.
Later in life, he retired to Hethersett near Norwich where he lived in a sheltered housing complex. Ever the activist, and as a champion of social housing, he worked hard to support the residents and further their interests. He also participated in diverse village groups such as dementia support, pensioners’ rights, bereavement and bowls.
Across his life Richard had been greatly influenced by the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds, so much so that in recent years he wrote a biography of him that was reviewed in the March 2024 Socialist Standard. Without doubt, all those who met him will recognise that Richard was a real character and he will be greatly missed by the party and all who knew him. Our condolences go to his family and friends.
CHRIS DUFTON
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Thank you very much for this lovely piece, which really captures the spirit and good humour of the man I loved. One of the very many things I admired about him was that he never entirely turned his back on or scorned the beliefs and ideas he had left behind, but took what was positive from them and incorporated them into his worldview and life. His enthusiasm for and brilliance at public speaking, for example, took much, by his own account, from the Christian preachers he had admired. The philosophical anarchism he to some extent left behind continued to inform his political views. His pacifism and commitment to non-violence remained a cornerstone of his beliefs long after he left CND. And he always placed the spirit of friendship and democracy above narrow ideological or political commitments, and remained on good terms with those with whom he disagreed (“even with Tories like you, Watkins!” I can just hear him saying) or who left the party, without compromising in the slightest his unwavering devotion and loyalty to the socialist ideal. Above all, I don’t think I ever met anyone who was of such good cheer and had so mastered the art of living. To list all the other debts I owe to him would be to go on too long, just as I used to after one of his superlative meals and over a bottle of wine round his kitchen table. Goodbye, Richard. I miss you.