Dear Editor,
Hanna Barrington, an Englishwoman of Austrian origin, died at the age of 101 at her home in Battersea, London, a few weeks ago. Hanna, a young communist activist, escaped the Nazis from Vienna, Austria, in the late 1930s, just before the Second World War. She was later followed by her Jewish mother. She settled in the UK where she remained, assisted in the war effort and resumed her activities in left wing politics in Britain.
She somehow got involved in Guyana’s and West Indian politics, following Billy Strachan and many other students and young West Indians, including Forbes Burnham. She later became lifelong friends with Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Hanna had been involved in the British Guiana Freedom Association, a UK group of Guyanese, West Indians and British friends, which fought for Guyana’s Independence during the 1960s.
Hanna visited Guyana in the early 1960s and spent about six months deciding whether or not to settle. She was not a stranger while here as she had numerous Guyanese friends. She stayed at my parents’ home. Her presence did not go unnoticed. At a public meeting in Bel Air at that time, Peter D’Aguiar, the Leader of the United Force said: “I have nothing against Mr. Ramkarran. But I have a lot against that communist woman that he has staying at his house.” Hanna’s loud mocking laughter from the open widow could have been heard by D’Aguiar.
Eventually she returned to the UK. When I went there a few years later as a student, Hanna took charge of me, provided a refuge at weekends for me and my then girlfriend (now wife) and pampered us with Viennese and German food. Many were the political stories and experiences. We left in the early 1970s but visited every time we were on holiday.
In an Obituary in the Guardian, Helen Braunholtz Smith, referring to Hanna by the nickname that she acquired along the way, “the Empress of Habsburg,” related her exploits during the War as a bus conductor who was dismissed for refusing to charge servicemen and as a driver of RAF trucks which had to have their pedals built up because of her diminutive size.
In later years, she operated a Viennese wine bar, the Corkscrew, in which she maintained an imperious but, to her friends, a tolerant discipline. She once threw out Sarah Ferguson, later the Duchess of York, for making too much noise. “I don’t like riff-raff at either end of ze social scale,” Hanna is alleged to have complained.
I did experience her parties while a student and can confirm Ms. Smith’s description: “Her parties, reminiscent of a 19th century Paris salon, were legendary. Artists and academics, socialists and socialites of every hue and sexual orientation would gather with the ‘Empress of Habsburg’ as she danced on the tables well into her 70s.”
Hanna would not now be known in Guyana as she has outlived all of those who knew her. But she was a great friend of Guyana, contributed to our Independence, and had numerous Guyanese friends to whom she offered exceptional warmth and kindness, as she did to all who knew her. Her political views, modified by time and developments as she got older, but not abandoned, placed no limitation on her capacity to extend her friendship and generosity to all to encountered her.
Hannah was married to Patrick Barrington, a noted Guyanese painter, who has survived her.
Yours faithfully,
Ralph Ramkarran
