Shropshire Star

Terry Waite in Shropshire: Still dedicated to helping others

He is a larger than life character with an extraordinary insight and understanding of the problems of the world.

Published

Former British peace envoy Terry Waite has talked and laughed and been friends with with some of the greatest figures in our lifetime – and had to negotiate with some of the most evil.

Yet he still gives up his life to making lives better for the individual, be that a mother whose son is held hostage, or a young South African wanting to make a better life for himself.

The former peace envoy was in Shropshire at the weekend to meet up again with a county businessman who has joined his project to help young artists in Africa to make a living. He was also promoting his book, a comic novel that shows the sense of humour that helped him through those dark days of confinement in Beirut.

And during a VIP evening at the British Ironwork Centre, hosted by that businessman, Clive Knowles, he talked about his life, and his feelings about the problems of the world, from mass migration to Isis.

Mr Waite, now 76, was taken hostage in Lebanon on January 20 1987. He had travelled there as an envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury to try to secure the release of British hostage John McCarthy and other western captives. But he was accused of being a CIA agent and kidnapped.

He was held captive for 1,763 days, the first four years of which were spent in solitary confinement.

For the first year of his captivity, he was subjected to beatings and a mock execution. He was chained to a wall by his hands and feet for 23 hours and 50 minutes a day with no-one to talk to, no books, no pen or paper. He was finally released on November 18 1991.

"You have to live an interior life," he says. "I wrote stories in my head, funny stories. And when I dreamt it would often be funny dreams as if my mind was giving me some relief in my sleep. I would often wake laughing.

Terry Waite at The British Ironworks Centre near Oswestry

"My sense of humour kept me going."

His humour can now be shared through his novel, The Voyage of the Golden Handshake, described as Fawlty Towers on a cruise ship.

He admitted that, when he contracted bronchial pneumonia and could not even sleep lying down, instead sitting struggling to breathe, thoughts of death did enter his head.

"I did think that death would be preferable to what was becoming a living death."

But while having an amazing sense of fun and love of the world around him, Mr Waite still retains a passion for helping others, and has a view on why the Middle East has fallen into such crisis.

Before he was taken hostage himself he successfully negotiated with many of the world's dictators for the release of others, from Amin in Uganda, where Waite and his family escaped death themselves, to Gaddafi in Libya.

He says people like Gaddafi and Saddam in Iraq could not be condoned, but getting rid of them brought other problems.

"If you remove dictators you will release forces you are not able to contain," he says. "In Syria, while in no way supporting Assad, he kept the country together by keeping the people down. We have been too quick to support warfare rather than find long term solutions to the problems."

Asked if he was ever approached by the UK's politicians for his views he said no.

"Politicians would neither listen to me nor to others. During the Iraq crisis they did not listen to the 18 very experienced former diplomats who warned against removing Saddam. Politicians often think they know best. Syria is in pieces and Libya will be next."

Mr Waite said he believed the problems of the Middle East and of Isis had to be dealt with from the inside.

"There is a disillusionment with the Western life and materialism that is now extending into the Middle East. These people are attempting to gain their identity in a rigid way, the fundamental view of Islam which in my view is the wrong view of Islam.

"Any terrorist organisation will attract people with psychotic tendencies but they are not all like that, they join for fundamental reasons then they realise they are trapped.

"Mass migration is symptomatic of problems back home, be that warfare, gang violence or economic poverty. We have to look at the root cause of the migration and try to fix it.

"That is why myself and Clive from the British Ironwork Centre work with the charity, Y Care to South Africa and Zimbabwe. We want to set up projects in which people can set up businesses and make a living."

The project intends to train young Africans to create art and sculptures from recycled materials. The artwork will then be sold through Mr Knowles' British Ironwork Centre and the profits ploughed back into the projects. In a fact-finding missing the pair recently travelled to South Africa and Zimbabwe to visit art and sculpture centres.

Sculptors from the British Ironwork Centre will travel to Africa to work with young artists before their finished products are to be shipped to the Oswestry centre for sale.

"In this project with Clive and the British Ironworks we have an excellent model I hope other businessmen and women throughout Britain will follow," Mr Waite says.

"We want to help, in a very small way, individuals to remain in their own countries, to stop them having to migrate."

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