My name is Leo Wringer, a European surname — my African name being lost some way along at Middle Passage. My late father, Aston Charles Wringer, was a carpenter, and my mother, Cynthia, still strong at 83, was and is the moral backbone of the family. My parents left Jamaica in the late 1950s for economic reasons, settled in Tottenham, north London, and “sent” for me five years later.
They quickly found work here, but unwittingly ran into racial abuse in Britain like so many others.
Even so, they were determined to bring me and my siblings up in a way that enabled us to deal with such adversity with dignity, and above all to respect other people no matter what their background, class or