Charles Kong Soo

Con­fu­sion and con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed at the fu­ner­al of for­mer Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Desmond Bish­op at the Mt Carmel Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church, St Joseph, yes­ter­day. The furore be­gan when there was no ac­knowl­edg­ment of his three wives, stepchil­dren or spir­i­tu­al chil­dren and ques­tions arose as to who con­trols the church's prop­er­ty since it was re­port­ed to be in the name of his sec­ond, de­ceased wife.

Ac­cord­ing to Mavis Si­mon, her sis­ter Veron­i­ca, now de­ceased, was mar­ried to Bish­op and was his sec­ond wife. He was di­vorced from his first wife Althea. Veron­i­ca had no chil­dren with Bish­op but had two chil­dren of her own. She had bought the land where the church is sit­u­at­ed. Si­mon said: "That is not the Desmond Bish­op I had known. He was a hard taskmas­ter and if you didn't know him, he would sink you down in­to the grave.

"The spir­i­tu­al­i­ty be­longs to my sis­ter and he is not the back­bone of the church. Now that the fam­i­ly is read­ing the eu­lo­gy and giv­ing him all the cred­it, there is no men­tion of my sis­ter, al­though she is de­ceased," Frank Lewis, an el­der and first spir­i­tu­al leader and bap­tis­er of the church, said he felt "great sur­prise" when the eu­lo­gy was read and Bish­op's three chil­dren, the spir­i­tu­al chil­dren he bap­tised, and his last wife, Veron­i­ca, were not men­tioned.

Mourn­ers and church of­fi­cials al­so were un­sure of the mar­i­tal sta­tus of the pur­port­ed third wife, Nalon, who was al­so not men­tioned in the eu­lo­gy. "We don't know if the church is owned by the de­ceased wife, the present wife or mem­bers of the church," Lewis said. An­na Lewis, one of Bish­op's spir­i­tu­al chil­dren, said it was Veron­i­ca who fi­nanced the church and mould­ed her hus­band to be­come a Bap­tist, as he con­vert­ed from Ro­man Catholi­cism.

For­mer TI­WU pres­i­dent Clive Nunez said he met Bish­op dur­ing the 1970s. Nunez said he was one of the key peo­ple in­volved in the Neal & Massy ne­go­ti­a­tions dur­ing the 80s and Bish­op be­came an of­fi­cer in the union and worked his way up to gen­er­al sec­re­tary. Nunez said even though he and Bish­op stood on op­po­site sides dur­ing the TI­WU strug­gle in the 1980s, he saw it fit to pay re­spects to a union com­rade.

Al­so present at the fu­ner­al ser­vice were In­dus­tri­al Court judge Al­bert Ab­erdeen and for­mer TI­WU pres­i­dent Ald­wyn Brew­ster. Bish­op was lat­er laid to rest at the Mu­cu­rapo Ceme­tery.