He is one of the most fondly remembered cricketers of the 20th century, but it may be that his greatest memorial is found in the law books - from the time he sued a London hotel for breach of contract.
Learie Constantine of Trinidad was born in 1901. His grandparents had been enslaved; his father was a fine cricketer. Learie took after him, and surpassed him. An extraordinary fielder, he was also a match-winner with bat and ball. He made his Test debut on June 23 1928. For the following decade he played as the professional for Nelson in the mighty Lancashire League, becoming one of the highest-paid sportsmen in Britain. Any appearance by Constantine guaranteed thousands of extra ticket sales, and he was soon one of Nelson's leading citizens. On one occasion a rumour spread that he was thinking of moving to another club; play had to be temporarily halted as the whole crowd sang Abide With Me.
Constantine could have taken his family home to peaceful Trinidad when war was declared, but "I would have felt like a little dog to have run away from England" in its time of greatest need. Instead he made himself available for war work, and various ministries of the British government made good use of him. He undertook many different duties, but his primary role was in north-west England as a community worker and go-between for the many Caribbean and African workers who had been urgently recruited to fill gaps in the labour force.
It was a more-than-full-time and essential job. Constantine was responsible for helping the newcomers with employment, housing and every other aspect of their lives in a strange country. A mild man, who always preferred discussion to confrontation, Constantine spent a lot of time in negotiation with employers, unions, government officials and landlords.
But polite negotiation wasn't always sufficient; years later he wrote of one method he used to deal with employers who refused to take on black workers. "I used to get the Ministry to press those firms for most urgent deliveries of orders, and then they found that they must take some coloured workers or get none of any kind."
Along with being a regular broadcaster, occasionally starring in short propaganda films, and giving lectures to troops, Constantine also played in fund-raising cricket matches. He was not only a national celebrity, but a universally respected public figure.
In July 1943, as a temporary civil servant, he requested and received permission to take part in a match at Lord's. He booked a room at the Imperial Hotel in central London, being careful to make it clear that he and his family were black. He'd encountered racist hoteliers before, and wanted to be certain that there'd be no problems this time.
However, when his party arrived at the hotel, the manageress told him that she could not admit black guests, because American guests would object - though "black" was not the word she used. Constantine, a British subject, had previous experience of American servicemen trying to order him out of public places in Britain which they had unilaterally declared to be segregated in accordance with the laws of their own country.
Learie Constantine was far from a rebel by natural inclination, but he could not ignore the insult done to his wife and daughter. He took legal action against the hotel chain in the High Court. Public and press opinion were on Constantine's side - as was the government, which was eager to reassure the much-needed black workforce - and as it turned out, so was the judge. The manageress, he said in his summing up, was a "lamentable figure," who in her evidence "was not speaking the truth," and had been "grossly insulting" to the cricketer and his family. Mr Constantine, by contrast, was "a man of high character," who "bore himself with modesty and dignity, and dealt with questions with intelligence and truth." His race could not constitute a "just cause" for the hotel's refusal to "receive and lodge him," as they were legally obliged to do. He was awarded nominal damages. Questions were asked in parliament, and the pressure for legislation to ban what was known as the colour bar became irresistible - even though it was many more years before such a law was enacted.
In recognition of his war work Constantine received an MBE in 1947. He was knighted in 1962 and made a lord in 1969. He'd qualified as a barrister in his fifties and returned to Trinidad and Tobago where he served as a government minister before being appointed the country's first High Commissioner in London. He spent the rest of his life in London, becoming a governor of the BBC and a member of the Sports Council and the Race Relations Board.
He had campaigned against racial discrimination even before the Imperial Hotel incident, and continued to do so for the rest of his life, often to his own disadvantage. Nonetheless, his political reputation then and subsequently is controversial; many of the post-war generation of black activists criticised his identity as a "Black Englishman," his conciliatory rather than militant approach to racists, his belief in assimilation, and his comfortable membership of the British establishment. On the other hand, some of that same establishment accused him of being a communist when he wrote a book which dared to criticise not merely racialism, but British imperialism.
Even so, when Lord Constantine died in 1971 he received both a state funeral in Trinidad and Tobago, and a memorial service in Westminster Abbey.
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Sources:
Connie by Harry Pearson (Abacus, 2018)
Mother country by Stephen Bourne (History Press, 2010)
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/sir-learie-constantine
www.icc-cricket.com/hall-of-fame/hall-of-famers/hall-of-famer-learie-constantine
Edinburgh Evening News 30 October 1954
Daily Mirror 3 September 1943, 27 November 1954
Evening News 28 June 1944
Birmingham Daily Gazette 29 June 1944