SOMETIMES the word ‘shock’ and its various inflections are used loosely. However, in this instance, I use it with due deliberation. I spoke to Ray two days before his departure on Friday, 9th July. He sounded vibrant, his voice was vigorous. He said he felt well and was looking forward with confidence to a much longer innings. So I was deeply shocked when the telephone call came through on Sunday 11 that he was no longer with us. It is a tragedy that he was cut down in the relative prime of his life at a time when he still had so much to offer. We know his departure represents a tragic loss to his immediate family, Juliet, Penny, Cheddie, and Athene, and also to the extended family. He will be missed by many of his friends and associates both in the Guyanese diaspora as well as in Guyana itself. His going also represents a loss to the PPP.
Our relationship went back decades. I knew him in Guyana but not well.
I used to manage the family business with my mother in the fifties, until October, 1960, when I came to England. Raymond used to come into the shop occasionally and our exchanges were confined to commercial transactions. However, it was here in Britain that we became close friends and comrades.
We had many good times together in the company of other dear and close friends from Rose Hall Village, Corentyne, now Rose Hall Town. We shared accommodation together, we were separate tenants in the same house (32 Elm’s Road SW 4) for many years. We socialised, partied, politicised, debated and argued together with our other close associates and friends. In the pub, someone would run to our nearby room, not flat, only one street away, for an English Dictionary to settle a spelling or grammatical dispute. As newcomers, we held together and were always there for each other unlike what is largely happening today.
We were all fired up with ambition. Ray came to England to further his education with a lot of fire and vinegar in his stomach. He pursued that ambition relentlessly, almost single mindedly. Rain or shine, or snow, he would attend college regularly. He would sometimes return in heavy rain or snow to find us, including our landlord and landlady, in the warm watching television. He was a very disciplined student. He would never let pleasure interfere with his study.
I introduced him to PPP UK Branch politics in this country. I facilitated his membership into the branch in the early 1970s.

He was a political activist with a strong conviction. Whenever he spoke there was always conviction in his voice whether you agreed with him or not. He was a man of political stamina and consistency; a quiet revolutionary democrat. He remained a stalwart supporter and member of the PPP right up to his death. In fact, last March, though still not well, he was seeking re-election, by proxy, to the Branch Executive Committee of which he was a member for most of his membership of the Branch – over 30 years of selfless activism and service. So eager he was to continue to serve! He was very loyal to the PPP. For him loyalty was, as well as for others, the most important attribute of membership. During most of that time, the long, hard, political, almost wilderness years, he took part in scores of activities which finally culminated in the restoration of democracy in Guyana in October 1992. He was there in the rain, the snow, sometimes in bitter cold or in sunshine, never for one moment wavering nor losing faith in his cause; often ran the gauntlet of discouragement or abuse or worse. Throughout, he never sought any award or favour nor expected any. His contributions were purely voluntary and sometimes made at the cost of family commitments and parental duties: putting political work ahead of his family.

He was a civil servant, yet he took risk with his job and family without any attempt at disguise by openly taking part in political activities in defiance of the Civil Service Code, even protesting British government support or acquiescence of the former Guyanese government.
He took part in many picketing exercises outside the Guyana High Commission; the Commonwealth Institute and the Commonwealth Secretariat.
He did a lot of representational work for the Branch and by extension the Party.
For instance, at Liberation, formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom; at Caribbean Labour Solidarity (CLS) at Labour party national conferences.
He took part in dozens of marches and demonstrations.
He spoke at the Palace of Westminster which houses the British Houses of Parliament.

He allowed the family home to be used as a venue for political discussion and meetings; and thereby saving the branch money; not many would do that then nor now. So there was more to Ray than met the eye. That was the other, more serious, generally unknown side to him that was beneath the laugh, beneath the joke, beneath his flashy dress code. However,  we had our disagreements. He was often as we say in diplomacy, frank, openly speaking his mind.
Everyone leaves a legacy. I am sure in due course there will be considered, if informal, assessments of his political achievement. Meanwhile, let me make a few preliminary remarks. He was a true internationalist, combining patriotism and nationalism with supporting other good causes abroad, such as marching and demonstrating, and not just talking, against Apartheid in South Africa, or the war in Vietnam. He mixed easily with other nationalities and races. His internationalism was exemplary. His was a demonstration that expatriates could help the country of their birth or ancestry as millions of Chinese, French, Americans, Germans, Indians, British, Jamaicans do, whether they want to return and live at home or not. He was a diasporan long before the concept Diaspora was popularised. The changes he helped to bring about together with millions or thousands of others, as the case may be, both in South Africa and Guyana, and his Jaganite internationalism, are the substance of his legacy and no one can take that away from him. As Dr Walter Rodney says, echoing Karl Marx, the masses, the people, make history. Ray was part of the masses, of the people. That is why we have organisations, unions, and parties. I conclude with a comment on a Shakespearean paraphrase: the faltering steps of people do live after them; but the good is often interred with their bones. This must not be allowed to happen in the case of Raymond Kudrath. Hence, I strongly believe he deserves a posthumous award.