In the late autumn of 1973, Colin Henfrey, a young sociology lecturer at Liverpool University, was ushered into the closely guarded headquarters of the Liverpool dockers’ union.
His address helped persuade the traditionally militant shop stewards to boycott Chilean cargoes, contributing to the international isolation of the regime of Gen Augusto Pinochet, who a few weeks earlier had seized power in a military coup. Colin subsequently played a big role in establishing what was to become one of Britain’s most effective campaigns of solidarity.
Colin, who has died aged 83 of lung cancer, was also a notable writer and researcher, and an inspirational teacher. He had established a stellar reputation even before arriving at Liverpool in 1971. While still in his 20s, he had written two acclaimed books: The Gentle People (1964), which detailed his travels among the Indigenous groups of Guyana, where in his late teens he had worked as a volunteer, and Manscapes, a rambling journey among down and outs in the US, which would be published in 1973.
His parents, Charles Henfrey, a British army officer, and Ethne (nee Turner) were stationed in Nairobi when Colin, their third child, was born during the second world war. After Marlborough college in Wiltshire, he went to New College, Oxford, where he studied classics before switching to English, graduating in the mid-60s.
In Oxford he met June Gollop, a fellow student on an island scholarship from her native Barbados, and they married in 1964. For his doctoral research, Colin, June and their two young sons lived in the Liberdade district of Salvador in Brazil (1968-71), while he studied candomblé, samba schools and other manifestations of Afro-Brazilian culture.
At Liverpool, his courses focused on development issues. They were colourful, drawing as much from journalism and novels as standard academic texts, and were very immediate. Within weeks of the Chilean coup in 1973, Colin had introduced a course unit on that country’s recent history. And they were popular. He attracted a coterie of proteges, including me.
His involvement in the Chile campaign gave a political direction to his underdog sympathies. Colin was joint secretary and helped many refugees settle in Britain. Several obtained places on his courses. One Chilean trade union leader lived with the Henfreys at their Wallasey home in Merseyside for several months.
Colin’s third book, Chilean Voices (1977), focused on the leftwing Allende government, but his most striking scholarly research, carried out from 1975 and still ongoing at the time of his death, was on Jaguar’s Den, a remote and poor rural community of 50 families in the north-east of Brazil. During regular visits Colin became an intimate of successive generations. His articles tell a story that stretches from the mid-1970s when they were kicked off their land to their successful fight to win it back.
He retired from Liverpool as a senior lecturer in 1994, two years after June died of cancer, going back on a temporary basis to lecture in sociology later in the 1990s.
Colin is survived by his second wife, Claire Dove, whom he married in 2003, their sons, Laurie and Josh, his sons, Steve, Neil, Tom, from his first marriage, and his sister, Janet.
