Gordon Barclay Vietnam Fund laid down
The Gordon Barclay Vietnam Fund has been laid down
The Gordon Barclay Vietnam Fund (GBVF) has been laid down. Ratcliffe and Barking Monthly Meeting established the fund in 1968 when the Vietnam war was at its height and it became an independent registered charity in 1971 with Quaker trustees. The trustees met earlier this summer at the nursing home where Gordon Barclay is now living and agreed ‘with regret’ to proceed with laying down of the GBVF.
In the late 1960s Gordon was one of a medical team appointed by the British government to go to Saigon in a response to presdent Lyndon B Johnson’s request for British military support. Harold Wilson refused to send troops. Gordon, a general surgeon, went out for almost a year initially and then, during his annual leave, for a couple of months at a time, worked in a paediatric hospital. When Gordon’s wife Celia followed him she found orphanages where children were languishing in dreadful conditions. This led to the founding of the GBVF. The main thrust of the new charity was to set up a toy-making workshop with Buddhist monks in a pagoda and then to appoint a team of mostly British and Australian Quakers who worked to improve the conditions of the orphanages.
When the war ended in 1975 all foreign NGOs were forced to leave Vietnam but Gordon and Celia’s work didn’t end there. Gordon went out to South East Asia, working in the refugee camps on the borders of Thailand and Laos doing surgery in field hospitals. Celia and he supported craft making and other enterprises and would return to Britain with beautifully made craftwork, which was sold to help boost the funds. Gordon also spent time helping the Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong.
In 1991, after many failed requests to return, Gordon was eventually allowed back to Vietnam by the communist government and worked with the blind and deaf in institutions in the northern city of Haiphong.
The GBVF, over several decades, has done an enormous amount of work in Vietnam, helping schools for the blind, working in close association with the Blind Association, and supporting eye operations and the sponsorship of blind students. Celia and Gordon Barclay paid annual visits to the projects for many years and formed very close relationships in Vietnam. Celia Barclay died in 2001. The fund has been administered by Gordon Barclay.
Recently, Gordon was awarded a medal for services to Vietnam by the Vietnamese government.
Gordon Barclay said that he never wanted to lay down the work and would say ‘as long as we have money coming in we will keep going’. Without Gordon’s leadership, however, the remaining trustees do not feel able, or that it is right, to carry on.
