Terry Waite

Terry Waite at April 1993 Allentown College speech

Terry Waite CBE (born 31 May 1939 in Bollington, Cheshire) is an English humanitarian and author.

Waite was Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of England, he travelled to Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages including journalist John McCarthy. He was himself held captive between 1987 and 1991.

He is also president of the charity, Y Care International (the YMCA's international development and relief agency), and patron of AbleChildAfrica and Habitat for Humanity Great Britain. He is also president of Emmaus UK, a charity for formerly homeless people.

Early life

The son of a village policeman, Waite was educated at Stockton Heath County Secondary school where he became head boy. Although his parents were only nominally religious, he showed a commitment to Christianity from an early age.

Early career

Waite joined the Grenadier Guards at Caterham Barracks, but an allergy to a dye in the uniform obliged him to depart after a few months. He then considered a monastic life, but instead joined the Church Army, the evangelistic arm of the Anglican Church, undergoing training and studies in London. While he was held captive in the 1980s, many Church Army officers wore a simple badge with the letter H on it, to remind people that one of their members was still a hostage, and was being supported in prayer daily by them and many others.

In 1963, Waite was appointed Education Advisor to the Anglican Bishop of Bristol, Oliver Tomkins, and assisted with Tomkins's implementation of the SALT (Stewardship and Laity Training) programme in the diocese, along with the Rev. Canon Basil Moss. This position required Waite to master psychological T-group methods, with the aim of promoting increased active involvement from the laity of the Church. During this time, he married Helen Frances Watters. As a student, Waite was greatly influenced by the teachings of the Rev. Ralph Baldry.

In 1969, he moved to Uganda where he worked as Provincial Training Advisor to Eric Sabiti, the first African Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, and, in that capacity, travelled extensively throughout East Africa. Together with his wife, Frances, and their four children, Waite witnessed the Idi Amin coup in Uganda, he and his wife narrowly escaping death on several occasions. From his office in Kampala, Waite founded the Southern Sudan Project and was responsible for developing aid and development programmes for this war-torn region.

His next post was in Rome, where, from 1972, he worked as an International Consultant to the Medical Mission Sisters, a Roman Catholic order seeking to adapt to the leadership reforms of Vatican II. From this base, he travelled extensively throughout Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, conducting and advising on programmes concerned with institutional change and development, inter-cultural relations, group and inter-group dynamics, and a broad range of development issues connected with health and education.

Archbishop's Special Envoy

Terry Waite returned to the U.K. in 1978, where he took a job with the British Council of Churches. In 1980, then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury's Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs, on the recommendation of Tomkins and Bishop John Howe. Based at Lambeth Palace, Waite again travelled extensively throughout the world, and had a responsibility for the archbishop’s diplomatic and ecclesiastical exchanges. He arranged and travelled with the archbishop on the first-ever visit of an archbishop of Canterbury to China and had responsibility for travels to Australia, New Zealand, Burma, the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and South Africa.

Hostage negotiator

In 1980, Waite successfully negotiated the release of several hostages in Iran: the Rev. Iraj Mottahedeh (Anglican priest in Esfahan), Dimitri Bellos (diocesan officer), the Rev. Nosrat Sharifian (Anglican priest in Kerman), Fazeli (church member), Jean Waddell (who was secretary to the Iranian Anglican bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti), John Coleman, and Coleman's wife. On 10th Nov 1984, he negotiated with Colonel Gaddafi for the release of the four remaining British hostages held in the Libyan Hostage Situation, Michael Berdinner, Alan Russell, Malcolm Anderson and Robin Plummer and was again successful.

From 1985, Waite became involved in hostage negotiation in Lebanon, and he assisted in successful negotiations which secured the release of Lawrence Jenco and David Jacobsen. His use of an American helicopter to travel secretly between Cyprus and Lebanon and his appearance with Capt. Oliver North, however, meant that he was compromised when the Irangate scandal broke. Against advice, Waite felt a need to demonstrate his continuing trust and integrity, and his commitment to the remaining hostages. He arrived in Beirut on 12 January 1987 with the intention of negotiating with the Islamic Jihad Organization, which was holding the men. On 20 January 1987, he agreed to meet with the captors of the hostages as he was promised safe conduct to visit the hostages, who, he was told, were ill. The group broke trust and took him hostage on 20 January 1987. Waite remained in captivity for 1,763 days, the first four years of which were spent in total solitary confinement, and it was not until 18 November 1991 that he was released.

Release and after

Following his release he was elected a Fellow Commoner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, England, where he wrote his first book, Taken on Trust. This quickly became an international best-seller, and headed the lists in the U.K. and elsewhere. He also decided to make a career change, and determined to devote himself to study, writing, lecturing, and humanitarian activities. His second book, Footfalls in Memory, was published in the U.K. in 1995, and was also a best-seller. His latest book, published in October 2000, Travels with a Primate, is a humorous account of his journeys with his former boss, Robert Runcie.

Waite has also contributed articles to many journals and periodicals, ranging from Reader's Digest to the Kipling Journal, and has also supplied articles and forewords to many books. In 1992, Durham University awarded him an honorary degree. He currently holds the position of Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.

In January 1996, he became patron of the Warrington Male Voice Choir in recognition of the humanitarian role adopted by the choir following the Warrington bomb attacks. Since then, he has appeared with the choir for performances in prisons in England and Ireland to assist rehabilitation programmes. Prison concerts have become a regular feature of the choir’s Christmas activities.

He is also a co-founder of Y Care International, a development agency linked to the YMCA movement. Recently he founded Hostage UK, an organisation designed to give support to hostage families. He is also president of Emmaus UK, and patron of the Romany Society.

On 31 March 2007, Waite offered to travel to Iran to negotiate with those holding British sailors and marines seized by Iran in disputed waters on 23 March 2007.

Waite was awarded an honorary degree (D.Univ) by the Open University at an award ceremony in Ely Cathedral on 30 May 2009.

He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Chester in 2009 at Chester Cathedral.

Faith perspective

Waite has a particular regard for Eastern Orthodoxy and the writings of C.G. Jung. In 2008, he joined the Religious Society of Friends.

In popular culture

• Waite was the subject of a song by the British post-punk group, The Fall, in 1986, entitled Terry Waite Sez.
• Before he was taken hostage, the satyrical programme, Spitting Image, featured a puppet of Waite returning from his foreign trips laden with duty-free goods which he would bring surreptitiously to an eagerly waiting Robert Runcie.
• The term Terry is synonymous with the method of cutting a straight line into the back of someone’s hair on the nape of the neck. This is due to the rhyming slang Terry Waite - Straight.
• Robin Soans used an interview with Waite as a character for his verbatim-style play Talking to Terrorists. The interview is used as the dialogue for the character, Archbishop's Envoy.
• Chris Ryans book, Strike Back, centred the first part of the book's plot around an SAS raid on a site where Terry Waite was being held in an attempt to free him and the two other hostages.

Bibliography

• Barnes, Trevor (1987). Terry Waite: Man with a Mission. London: Collins Fontana. ISBN 0802803326. 

See also

• Lebanon hostage crisis
• Irangate
• Brian Keenan (writer)

External links

• 1987 BBC News Peace envoy imprisoned in Beirut] On This Day, BBC
• Taken Hostage On This Day
• It's Over — Terry Waite Returns Home On This Day, BBC
• 1991: Church envoy Waite freed in Beirut On This Day, BBC