Heather Rabbatts: Desert Island Disc

‘I’ll fight my corner’

Coming from a mixed heritage background-mother Jamaican, father English- in the sixties Britain, Heather Rabbatts knew she was never going to through her early life being unnoticed. So instead of being shackled by her outsider label, particularly when it was often accompanied by a racist remarks, Rabbatts’s decided that she would stand out, but on her terms.

And boy as this woman stood out. Listening to her life in thirty minutes or so on Radio 4’s Desert Island Disc, you feel she has had at least three successful lives and has not finished yet. In the early nineties she became the first woman of Caribbean decent to run local authority taking on the huge challenge of Lambeth in 1995. Not satisfied with taking on one of the biggest jobs in local government she then moved to the private sector eventually becoming the deputy Chair of perhaps one of the most notorious football clubs in English history-Millwall FC - In the four years she spent at Millwall the club went from having one of the worst records of race hatred in the country to become a role model football club that embraces all communities from the area.

Heather Rabbatts’s has written her own script, determined to be respected and listened to has a woman, and a Black woman too. All this in some of the most hostile of social-economic and political environments. Listening to her choice of music-Bob Marley, Corinne Bailey Rae and Dina Washington, Black political consciousness has always been a constant.

Not satisfied with her achievements she takes her talent to another arena that stereotype might dictate she shouldn’t be there-The Royal Opera House. But stereotype is no match for Heather Rabbatts.

Rabbatts story relates a remarkable journey that is sad in part but joyous in its determination to succeed against the odds.

Have a listen and enjoy.

Simon Woolley

Picture: Heather Rabbatts