It is with deep sorrow, enduring love and profound gratitude that I pay tribute to Eric Huntley, affectionately known to me as Uncle Eric, Guyanese-born activist, publisher, educator, community elder and one of the most influential figures in my life and in the cultural and political life of Ealing and beyond.
Before many knew his name, Uncle Eric was already doing the work, alongside his beloved life partner Jessica Huntley, ensuring that Black voices, histories and imaginations were not marginalised, erased or silenced. Together, the Huntleys published and championed the work of revolutionary thinkers, poets and writers including Walter Rodney, Lemn Sissay, Valerie Bloom, Andrew Salkey, Beryl Gilroy and many others, alongside Eric’s own writings rooted in political clarity, Pan-African consciousness and working-class struggle.
Their political and cultural grounding was forged in British Guiana (now Guyana), a society shaped by anti-colonial struggle, labour organising and Black internationalist thought. Eric and Jessica married in 1950 and began raising their family there; their sons Karl and Chauncey were born in Guiana. In 1957, amid political instability and economic constraint, Eric travelled to Britain first, making the painful decision to leave behind Jessica and their young sons while he worked, studied and saved for their passage. Jessica and the boys joined him in 1962, and the family later welcomed their daughter Accabre in London. This period of separation and reunion, lived against the realities of colonial inequality and migration, profoundly shaped their understanding of displacement, resilience and responsibility, and would later inform the purpose that animated their publishing and community organising in Britain.
Those early motivations found powerful expression through their close association with Walter Rodney, whose seminal works The Groundings With My Brothers (1969) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) were brought into the world through the Huntleys’ courage and commitment. From this work grew the Walter Rodney Bookshop/Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, which became far more than a bookshop. It was a cultural mecca, a political classroom, a meeting place, a sanctuary and a site of resistance, where ideas were exchanged, movements were nourished and futures were imagined.
As a child growing up in Ealing, through a school friend, I first encountered the Huntleys’ world through visits to the bookshop at Chigwell Place, absorbing the atmosphere of books, debate, music and Black self-determination. Later, from around 2006 onwards, I spent time with Uncle Eric at their home on Coldershaw Road, a place that continued to radiate warmth, intellect and welcome. That home, like the bookshop before it, was a living archive.
Uncle Eric and Jessica (known affectionately as ‘Mother Jess’) were foundational figures in Ealing’s Windrush Consortium, working alongside activists including Molly Hunte and Willis Wilkie to ensure that Caribbean and African histories were recognised locally. Their collective efforts contributed to lasting public remembrance, including the installation of the Windrush and Abolition plaques, later re-installed in 2022, ceremonies I was honoured to organise in collaboration with Uncle Eric and Ealing Council. These moments were not symbolic alone; they were acts of reclamation, education and dignity.
Uncle Eric was also closely involved with FHALMA (Friends of the Huntley Archives at the London Metropolitan Archives), helping to ensure that Black British publishing and political history was preserved, catalogued and made accessible. Through this work, the Huntleys’ legacy became part of the public record. Later, young people from WAPPY participated in annual Huntley Archive conferences at the LMA, reinforcing the intergenerational transmission of this history.
WAPPY — Writing, Acting & Publishing Project for Youngsters, is the organisation I founded in 2008 and continue to direct, which supports young people and young adults creativity; Uncle Eric was its Patron. From WAPPY’s early beginnings at Judy Wellington’s Lifeline Learning Centre, he and Mother Jess encouraged young people to see their words as powerful and necessary. He supported the publishing of hundreds of children’s writings and creative expressions across Ealing and neighbouring boroughs of Brent, Hillingdon, Hounslow, and Hammersmith & Fulham.
In 2011, with funding donated by the London Metropolitan Archives, WAPPY’s first anthology, The Soul of a Child, was published by Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, a moment of deep pride and symbolic continuity. Uncle Eric later contributed to the 2018 Arts Council funded anthology ‘Wonderful World of WAPPY,’ alongside, the late Benjamin Zephaniah and Patrice Lawrence, affirming young people’s voices as essential to cultural survival and social change. Seeing that book sitting among legendary texts at his home remains one of my quietest yet proudest moments!
Uncle Eric’s influence extended into heritage and the arts: No Colour Bar at Guildhall, the Nubian Jak plaque installation in 2018 outside his home, collaborations with Gunnersbury Park Museum, and the Huntleys’ artwork by Kaic Studios displayed on West Ealing Library windows in 2025. Their legacy was further honoured through a National Portrait Gallery-associated exhibition curated by Sharon Walters in 2024.
Although I now serve as a councillor in Walpole Ward, where Eric lived from the 1970s, my relationship with him was first and foremost deeply personal. Having lost my own father, a Ghanaian Black Star Line naval officer, in childhood, Uncle Eric stepped into my life not as a replacement, but as a steady, loving presence. He later gave me away in marriage and stood beside me as my literary mentor. Both he and Jessica are foundational to my development as a writer, editor, cultural organiser and Director of WAPPY. For all that I have become, I remain profoundly indebted to them as well as my mother, Esther Ackah,
Eric Huntley was predeceased by his son Karl Huntley, who died in 2011, and by his beloved wife and partner Jessica Huntley, who passed away in 2013. He is survived by his children Chauncey and Accabre, nine grandchildren, fifteen great grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. Family mattered deeply to Uncle Eric, and the values that shaped his public life, generosity, clarity, discipline and love, were lived first within his home.
Tributes have been pouring in on the Coldershaw Community Facebook group to Coldershaw Road neighbour Eric Huntley who was not only instrumental in organising several street parties and community events but who always had time to stop and talk to people on his daily walks. As one neighbour put it “He was calm. encouraging and consistent in his support for anyone who came his way,” another added “A truly inspiring man” and many spoke of Eric and Jessica’s kindness in welcoming them when they first moved into the street. He will be sorely missed in our community
Uncle Eric’s legacy lives most vividly in the words of those he nurtured. WAPPY alumni and participants, children and young people across generations, have shared poems and reflections capturing his gentleness, political clarity and unwavering belief in them.
One alumna writes of him as “a beloved elder whose life was rooted in Pan-African consciousness and a socialist ethic of care.”
— Georgiana Jackson-Callen (WAPPY alumna; 2008-2020)
Another imagines him reunited with Jessica in “a heavenly bookshop, where stories are written in love and open for eternity.”
— Ivy Oppong (WAPPY alumna, 2012 – 2025)
A teenage poet reflects that elders like Uncle Eric are the “roots that allow the tree to grow tall.”
— Nyah Walcott-Quansah (age 15 – 2017 – 2026)
One writer honours Eric’s commitment to visibility and legitimacy, reminding us that he helped make space for our stories to be recognised and taken seriously.
— Sadé Ettienne (age 14 – 2021)
A former participant speaks of gratitude — learning to be a “steward of good things.”
— David Larbi (WAPPY alumnus -2009-2014)
Younger voices echo this legacy simply and beautifully: one child remembers being gifted a book and feeling honoured.
— Joylen Teixeira (age 10 – 2026)
Another writes of how Uncle Eric made people feel safe, seen and valued.
— Lauryn Rose Teixeira (age 13 – 2026)
Perhaps Endless Chapter (2021), co-created during the Covid -19 pandemic by WAPPY researchers Effie Quansah-George and Ivy Oppong, as part of a collaborative project with the National Portrait Gallery, Gunnersbury Park Museum, and the Ealing Local History Centre Archives and artists Asia Ahmed and Narvir Singh, best encapsulates the Huntleys’ story through the lenses of young people. They conclude that “even though the story may seem like it’s done there is plenty in store, and plenty to come, an endless chapter, the chapter will never end.” : https://youtu.be/2o7a8qxJFUc?si=lr0lGwMpJgy6etMx.
The work reflected intergenerational storytelling, archival memory and creative resilience, echoing the Huntleys’ lifelong commitment to preserving Black British histories through culture, education and youth-led expression
My own poem, THE Only Option, (2026), completed recently, following Uncle Eric’s Nine Night, draws directly from Coldershaw Road, from the drums, the books, the gathered faces, and from Uncle Eric’s lifelong insistence that action, not indifference, is the only response to injustice.
These tributes and reflections are now published in full on the WAPPY website ensuring that young voices continue to speak within the legacy Uncle Eric helped build. The written pieces are also attached for reference, except my poem which I will launch at the Celebration of Eric Huntley’s Life.
Like Jessica Huntley, Eric Huntley believed that doing something was always the only option. The biographic publication, ‘Doing Nothing is Not an Option’ (2014) by Margaret Andrews, elaborates clearly on this point. Not performative gestures, but sustained, principled action. His life, shared inseparably with Jessica Huntley, who herself was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough of Ealing in 2008, stands as a testament to what it means to live with integrity, imagination and purpose.
Uncle Eric did not simply leave a legacy. He planted it, watered it, and trusted us to carry it forward.
Celebration of Life & Donations
A service to celebrate the life and legacy of Eric Huntley will take place on 17 February 2026 and will be live streamed. Further details on how to access the livestream will be shared nearer the time.
Donations and messages of remembrance are welcome and can be made via Eric’s official MuchLoved page: https://erichuntley.muchloved.com
The 20th Annual Conference, I Am an Archive. We Are an Archive, taking place on Saturday 21 February 2026 at the London Metropolitan Archives, will honour Eric Huntley’s memory and his lifelong dedication to preserving Black history, culture, and community archives. For further details, please visit:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/i-am-an-archive-we-are-an-archive-20th-annual-huntley-conference-tickets-1980363506558
