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We are here to honour John Southgate's eighty-six years from 1934 to 2021 and are delighted we have people here and films to represent all the different strands of his life. These include his personal life, his music, his psychotherapy theory and practice, and his experience of living well with Alzheimer's, all of which were informed by his radical socialist politics and attachment theory.
To open this celebration, the first piece of music, chosen in the context of John's life as a freedom fighter against injustice and the black lives matter movement, is a Hymn to Freedom by Oscar Peterson composed in 1963 when John was just twenty-nine. We've got the essence of John's fighting spirit here in this film clip of Oscar describing the background to his composition and playing it. Listen out for the refrain: “When every heart, joins every heart, and together yearns for liberty, that's when we'll be free.”
John was born in 1934 in Carlton, Nottingham. His father, Nolan Southgate, a bus driver, union leader and wonderful singer, married a Jewish woman, Daisy (from the Rudzinski family), against family wishes. Daisy managed to support her family by the way she stood market in Grantham, selling clothing in exchange for food from farmers. John, their only child, called his dog, Bill, his brother, and I am delighted to say that his son Leon and Leon's partner have followed such family tradition and have brought their dogs here with them today.
We can see in that ambitious marriage John's own pleasure in bringing together opposites as well as identification with his musical, political family.
His childhood education, at The Bluecoat school, until he left at only fourteen, spanned the Second World War with all that that meant. This included the death of his uncle, a rear gunner killed in action, which had a big impact on his mother, and some of his “university of life” coming from accompanying his father on the piano in working men's clubs.
Early jobs included being a filing clerk in