MR ANTONIS ANTONIADES

I was born in the pleasant village of Anaphotia, Larnaca. In 1950, I graduated from the Lyceum but I could not find a job. Such realities were a sign of the times. Progressive people were hounded and in my case being a left-wing ‘known’ activist I suffered even more. I was offered several good jobs but every time I was asked to renounce my political views. I refused to do so therefore, I was unemployed for two years. Then I received an invitation from a school in England to come and study. I did exactly that.

In 1952 I managed to pay for a passenger ticket and boarded a ship in Larnaca which was scheduled to stop in Piraeus/ Athens. Whilst there I visited the very impressive ‘Acropolis’.  Genoa in Italy was our next stop and then a train took us to Calais. Soon we were in Dover, England.  I was met at Victoria Station by one of my father’s friends who took me straight to my father’s house. I stayed there for two years. I must say that when I arrived my first thoughts were to find employment and to get in touch with progressive organisations. For two years or so I was employed at the high class ‘Acropolis’ restaurant. For several years after that I worked for the Greek Cypriot weekly newspaper ‘Vema’. I was involved more with the newspaper’s advertising section. Because of the kind of work I was doing I became very friendly with one of the advertisers - a company which supplied foodstuffs to restaurants. I was therefore employed as a salesman for around seventeen years.

During those years, festivals were regularly organised which took place in socialist countries. Britain also had an organising committee which worked tirelessly for the success of such celebrations. It was in such circles that I met my wife. We have two children. We have subsequently divorced, after twenty years of marriage. However we still remain very good friends- for the sake of our children. As luck would  have it the Israeli- Arab conflict took me back to “our newspaper”. Even though my boss was an Israeli, I was not pushed out of the company. I was approached at the time by the ‘Vema’ management and was asked to “join the family”. I did exactly that. I wanted to serve our community and the newspaper was one of the best ways to do exactly that. I was there for fifteen years. I served as the head of the advertising section and for a time as manager. When ‘Parikiaki’ came to the scene, ‘Vema’ eventually ceased publication. Once more, I was unemployed. Then the Greek Parents Association offered me the post of Organising Secretary. I served for twelve years until I retired.

At the GPA I worked very hard. We laid the foundations so that the forthcoming generations can continue to learn our language, our culture, our civilisation and our religion. In all our schools we had around 1,000 children and most of us were glad to help on a voluntary capacity. And now something about the history of the GPA:

It was set up in 1952 by Tefkros Anthias and the first management committee was composed of seven hardworking and dedicated individuals. These were – T. Anthias, T. Frangofinos (actor), T.Morfitis (businessman), A.Charalambides (businessman), S. Petrou (shoemaker), Vivi Doghani and Maritsa Tsioupra. But, we needed premises for teaching our children. We then decided to buy a property to act really as our base. Thanks to individuals such as Alexandos Ftiakas and Loukis Petri, we purchased a house in Camden Town for the sum of £10,000. We named our school ‘London’s First Greek School’. It was the first organised grouping in the British capital. But we needed teachers, desks, and books. We started fund-raising. We had to keep the school ‘alive’. We also bought a mini-bus in order to collect the children from places such as Camden Town, Kentish Town, Brecknock Road, Tufnell Park and Archway. I recall the Bishop of St. Andreas Church telling us at one of our functions at Winkfield Road that, he would never forget our mini-bus which was always full of happy, black-haired Cypriot children “singing Greek songs”. Yes, they were very happy.

Surely, I experienced good but also bad times. Especially in the 1950s, life was not easy. At times I even had to share a plate of food with a friend.