Canon Collins Biography

John Collins, priest and political crusader, was Canon of St Paul's Cathedral for 33 years. A radical cleric at the heart of Britain's establishment church, he is well known for his leadership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. He founded the latter in the early 1950s to raise the legal defence costs for political activists on trail in South Africa and to provide aid for their families.

Collins was born in 1905 into a middle-class, Anglican and conservative background. He was educated at Cambridge, became Dean and Fellow of Oriel College Oxford and then served as an RAF chaplain in World War II. His war experience was a turning point that radicalised his religious and political views. He returned home determined to translate his faith into social and political action and in 1946 abandoned academia to found Christian Action - an organisation aimed at relating Christianity to economic, social and political life, and that worked towards reconciliation with Germany and help for the starving people of Europe.

In 1948 Collins was appointed Canon of St Paul's Cathedral. The official Church, nervous of his energy and radicalism, attempted to block this appointment but Prime Minister Clement Attlee intervened. That same year, Canon Collins read Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. He invited Paton to preach in St Paul's and undertake a lecture tour of England - and so Christian Action became committed to opposing apartheid.

In 1953 a request arrived from a young Anglican priest then working in Soweto. Father Trevor Huddleston asked Christian Action to raise funds to support the families and dependants of those who voluntarily went to prison during the ANC's non-violent Defiance Campaign against the Nationalist Government's hated pass laws. This Christian Action successfully did. In 1954 John went to South Africa where he saw apartheid and its effects for himself, and met activists and leaders in the liberation movements. He returned to Britain with his commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle intensified.

In 1956, when 156 activists were arrested and charged with High Treason, Canon Collins sent £100 to Ambrose Reeves, Bishop of Johannesburg, asking him to brief the best available defence lawyers and pledging Christian Action to raise the funds to pay legal expenses and care for the families of the Treason Trialists. Reeves, foreseeing further repression, suggested widening the Christian Action terms of reference and so the Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa was born.

Meanwhile, the Cold War was flourishing and the arms race, with its building of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing, began to attract opposition. Collins was vehemently opposed to the use of nuclear weaponry and when CND was launched in 1958 he became its chairman.

As repression in South Africa increased, Defence and Aid responded to ever more pressing political and legal defence needs. The organisation grew and began to receive international recognition and support, mainly from the Scandinavian countries and the United Nations. Several countries formed aid committees. The International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa was established while British Defence and Aid and other Defence and Aid committees became national affiliates.

When Defence and Aid was banned in South Africa, the organisation's head office in the United Kingdom continued to send aid through secret channels. Over a period of 25 years, £100 million was smuggled into South Africa. The organisation made a crucial contribution to the ending of apartheid. But for the high-level expertise funded by Defence and Aid, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and many other members of South Africa's leadership of the time might not be alive today.

With the release of Mr Mandela in 1990 and the unbanning of organisations, Defence and Aid's base in Europe was absorbed into development structures inside South Africa.

Canon Collins died in 1982, his vision of religious faith in social action achieved beyond expectation, and the lives of the thousands he helped a testimony to his work. His widow, Diana, continued to work with Defence and Aid and was until her death in May 2003 a trustee of the CCETSA.