01 September 2023 , 18:35
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IT’S been one of those years in which heroes seem to be bowing out by the week.
Paul O’Grady, Barry Humphries, Tony Bennett, Glenda Jackson, Sinead O’Connor and Michael Parkinson are just a few of the great talents who have recently left us to mass outpourings of love. But unsung heroes who do not receive a scintilla of that fanfare die around us all the time.
Take the exceptional man whose funeral I attended this week called Terry Craven. You’ve probably never heard of the 72-year-old welfare rights adviser, but you may have noticed his tireless work for the poor through this story which made national headlines.
Five years ago, 63-year-old Stephen Smith was so ill that his weight plummeted to six stone and he couldn’t walk 10 metres without losing his breath, yet the Department for Work and Pensions denied him benefits and told him to find a job. He contacted Terry, a retired council benefits adviser volunteering at Liverpool’s Casa community centre, who tenaciously battled the DWP for more than a year, eventually winning the case.
Stephen (pictured) was awarded £4,000 in benefits but the drama took its toll and the emaciated man died months after his tribunal victory, his award paying for the funeral.
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Warning: Graphic image below
Terry said at the time: “Stephen was simply a nice man who fell on hard times and when he asked the Government for help they humiliated him.”
It was this humiliation of the voiceless that inspired Terry to devote the last decade of his life to fighting the Tories’ vicious austerity policies.
He was there for asylum seekers and the homeless, for illiterate people who couldn’t fill in forms, for the elderly who needed extra care, for mothers who couldn’t provide for sick children. For anyone who didn’t know where to turn and were on the verge of giving up.
He went into strangers’ homes during Covid and in his dying days, despite being on morphine, he would ring up officialdom badgering them to help the weak and vulnerable.
As Tony Nelson, who worked with him at the Casa, said at Terry’s funeral: “He made a real difference to hundreds of people’s lives by putting food on their table. In an era when so many want to be famous, Terry never wanted recognition. He just wanted to enhance people’s lives.”
As I heard that, I thought of Nadine Dorries and the lengthy, self-pitying strop she threw after being denied the damehood that Boris Johnson had promised her. How she claimed the snub was a kick in the teeth for the working classes, because “a girl from Liverpool” had been denied the chance to speak for the underdog in the House of Lords.
This from an absentee MP who, despite being paid a £86,584 salary, had not held a constituency surgery to answer pleas for help from underdogs for three years.
To say Dosser Dorries is not fit to tie the boots of fellow Scouser Terry Craven, who never stopped fighting for the underdog, and sought no reward for his work – let alone a seat in the Lords – is to insult shoelaces.
If you know an unsung hero who devotes their life to getting something for those who have nothing, do me a favour before it’s too late.
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Tell them they are the finest of us. And that you are blessed to know them.