Claire Lowry (Whitehead

The one thing people should know about Roberta is that she found it very challenging to support John in his work and in the home whilst also maintaining her own personal life and interests.

Although she had a great admiration for John’s work and felt obliged, and motivated, to prioritise John’s career, she always had her own thoughts and opinions and wasn’t afraid to share them. She was very much her own person as well as being a supportive wife:

“When he is really interested in something he expounds it to me in great earnestness, sometimes when I am rushed to death & trying to cook or thinking of what I am going to give our numerous callers to eat. I listen with one ear & then I get some rather wonderful thought from him. I feel like a proper Martha & know I should listen to him & remember. He must talk out what he is thinking & working at. He should have married a more intelligent woman with money. It is sometimes too much for me to be cook & cleaner, literary confident, wife & fan & then try to keep a person on the boards that is Roberta & not just Johnny's wife. Maybe one shouldn't try. Should I say Johnny is obviously the nominated Bard. my job is too [sic] keep the wheels greased & remain a nonentity. But I can't remain quiet anyway for if there is any conversation I am into it before I know.”35

Roberta and John. John Hewitt Society

35 Roberta Hewitt's 1947-1950 Diary (D3838/4/2/1): p.73-74

"It is sometimes too much for me to be cook & cleaner, literary confident, wife & fan & then try to keep a person on the boards that is Roberta & not just Johnny's wife."

“I was getting restive. He was reading old poets & I said ‘You’re reading too much at those old poets & it is holding up your own work’. He said not but he got out some old notes & started working over them […]”36

She was a very active volunteer for various political, health and social causes. Her involvement in politics stemmed from compassion, a concern for human rights and a desire for peace. She worked behind the scenes for many of these causes in unacknowledged and unrecorded but vital roles such as secretary and cook. “Andres & Fedora & Rosita Gueneshea [sp?] called to say good-bye they sail for South America (I must ask Jonny where) tomorrow we drank a little Sherry & I was sad to see them go. This is the end of the Spanish War to us. 1938 or thereabouts we worked very hard for "Aid to Spain" against Franco. It was not a popular cause here. We collected a ship load of goods food & clothes & medical aid. Then we kept a house full of Refugees in a house in Duncairn Gds. which was called the ‘Red House’ for a couple of years for our Government wouldn't allow them to work. Then this order was withdrawn & Andres & Fedora,

36 Roberta Hewitt's 1951-1974 Diary (D3838/4/2/2): p.624

Newspaper clipping (John Hewitt Society)

Rosita was born 1940, after knocking about went to work on a farm in Strabane. They have had it hard & now they the last of them go to a Spanish Country."37

“I am a Socialist because I believe in equality of opportunity for all human beings regardless of birth, creed or colour. I feel any exploitation of man by man, class by class or nation by nation to be morally wrong. My ideas came from my home background, which was Christian Socialist, and later working in nursery schools in industrial areas in the 1930s I was shocked by the consequences of insecurity, unemployment and illness”.38

37 Roberta Hewitt's 1946-1950 Diary (D3838/4/2/1): p.43 38 Newspaper clipping (John Hewitt Society)