Nadia Cattouse, who has died aged 99, had a distinguished career as a singer and actor that began in groundbreaking productions of the 1950s and continued across several decades.
Her theatre work included Barry Reckord’s Flesh to a Tiger (1958) at the Royal Court, one of the first postwar plays staged in London by a dramatist from the Caribbean; Jean Genet’s The Blacks (1970) at the Round House, which used the framework of a play within a play to expose racism and racial stereotypes, while at the same time exploring black identity; and the Black Theatre Co-operative’s 1983 staging of the African American dramatist Steve Carter’s Nevis Mountain Dew at the Arts Theatre.
On television, in 1964, alongside Cleo Laine and Cy Grant, she took part in ITV’s Freedom Road, an impressive documentary with a concert format that featured songs of protest dating from the days of slavery to the civil rights movement. She also appeared in play anthology series such as Armchair Theatre and Drama ’61, and had roles in two popular drama series of the 70s: as Clemency in the prison drama Within These Walls and as Sister Young in Angels, about student nurses in a London hospital.
Nadia often broadcast to the Caribbean on the BBC Overseas Service (later the World Service). As well as being an announcer she was a reader in the literary programme Caribbean Voices in 1953. This later led to an offer to present Woman’s Hour on the BBC Light Programme station in 1964. She said: “It was for one week only but it was exciting and I really enjoyed myself.”
As a singer during the “folk revival” of the 60s, Nadia appeared in the acclaimed Grief and Glory TV series in 1967, and at folk clubs and concerts, often accompanying herself on the guitar. Her most popular recording was Long Time Boy, which she wrote under the name Eva Dayne, released on Parlophone in 1960. Her 1970 album Earth Mother was partly recorded at the 1969 Edinburgh festival.
However, when Nadia first travelled to Britain from her native Belize, it was not to pursue a career in entertainment, but to support the war effort. One of the three children of Kathleen (nee Fairweather) and Albert Cattouse, she was born in what was then British Honduras, a crown colony in central America. Her father was a civil servant who, after his retirement, entered politics and became the deputy prime minister. Her mother was a school teacher and griot – a traditional storyteller.
During the second world war, volunteers from across the British empire were called upon to join the armed services but, until 1943, a “colour bar” prevented black Caribbean women from enlisting. As soon as this obstacle was removed, Nadia was among the first group to join the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service). After basic training in Jamaica, she arrived in Britain in June 1944 and was sent to Edinburgh for specialist training as a signals operator. She had a wonderful time: “There was no racial tension, only a great deal of camaraderie and local hospitality.”
After leaving the ATS, Nadia trained as a school teacher in Glasgow before returning to British Honduras in 1949. However, having experienced “freedom” from colonial rule, she found life there oppressive. She told the TV Times in 1970: “I think you can contribute wherever you are in the world. Sometimes if you go home, you contribute less. Any talent you have can shrivel up with restrictions.”
Back in Britain in 1951, she studied sociology at the London School of Economics, paying her way by working in a kitchen and as a telephone receptionist. She was also seconded to work for the Colonial Office, looking after newly arrived Caribbean migrants, and helping them find accommodation. Early experience as a performer came through the Commonwealth Students’ Drama Group. When I interviewed Nadia in 1989, she told me: “At first I did acting and singing for fun, and to help pay my way through college. Eventually it crystallised into a professional career.”
One of Nadia’s earliest television roles was in the BBC drama-documentary A Man from the Sun (1956), which focused on the lives of Caribbean settlers in postwar Britain. She acknowledged the existence of a small but important group of liberal-minded white producers and writers at the BBC who succeeded in making programmes with black casts or themes. She said: “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have worked.” She added that it wasn’t always easy: “Others had this fixed idea that, if you were American, you were better than anyone who came from the Caribbean. Our accents bothered them. Usually we could use our intelligence to guide ourselves through.”
In the 50s Nadia befriended the Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones, who had been persecuted in America for her political beliefs. In 1959 Jones pulled together a group of black artists, including Nadia, to launch the first West Indian carnival in Britain, at St Pancras Town Hall in north London. It took to the streets of Notting Hill in 1966.
When she reflected on her career, Nadia felt that some of the early productions she appeared in were made possible because “there was goodwill and serious attempts to create drama for us. Others ignored us, or said things like Enoch Powell, which put a threat over us. In the 1960s Powell’s speeches led to hostility and attempts to either pretend we weren’t here, or make sure we weren’t visible.”
By the mid-80s Nadia was living quietly in semi-retirement in south-west London. In 1990 she made a rare television appearance in Lest We Forget, Channel 4’s documentary about the wartime contribution of Caribbean men and women. In 1999 she was interviewed for the American Masters TV documentary Paul Robeson: Here I Stand. In 2003, the Windrush Foundation honoured her with their lifetime achievement award for contribution to the arts.
In 1958 Nadia married David Lindup, an arranger-composer with Johnny Dankworth’s orchestra, with whom she had two children, Michael and Pepita. The couple divorced in the mid-60s and in 1969 Nadia married Bryan Webb.
• Nadia Evadne Cattouse, singer and actor, born 2 November 1924; died 29 October 2024
