The little church there had no priest and Dehqani-Tafti agreed to ordain Coleman. For the next 14 years, John Coleman was Superintendent of the Bethnal Green Medical Mission, founded pre-NHS to offer healthcare to the urban poor. Often whole families would accompany a sick relative, and would tap Coleman on the knee to offer their diagnoses. He always finished his clinic with a short talk, usually based on a bible story.In 1964, the Colemans returned to England for the education of their four sons. War in Palestine necessitated a transfer and the couple moved to Iran where they worked for 17 years, based at a church hospital in Shiraz.John Coleman particularly enjoyed running mobile clinics in remote villages. At the age of eight, he resolved to follow in his father's footsteps as a medical missionary.
He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and St Thomas' Hospital in London and married Audrey Ponsford, a pharmacist, in 1946.The Colemans' missionary career began in 1948 in Palestine with the Church Mission Society (CMS). He lived in Egypt long enough for it to leave a powerful impression and he loved hot climates. On his return to Britain, Marks and Spencer presented him with several new pairs - they lasted two decades.Coleman was born in 1924 in Cairo, the son of a missionary doctor. He always spoke sympathetically about Iranians and their national aspirations. Years later, he would laugh about wearing the same vest and Marks and Spencer trousers throughout the entire 200 days. Waite and Coleman were very different in their style of Christianity but that did not stand in the way of a friendship that continued.Captivity meant a lot of suffering and deprivation, but it did not embitter Coleman.
Some church members, including the Bishop's son, lost their lives. The Bishop, the Right Rev Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, fled into exile. John Coleman and his wife Audrey, with Jean Waddell (secretary to the bishop) and several local church workers, including the future bishop, Iraj Muttahedeh, were imprisoned.This crisis marked the start of the career of Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy, as an international hostage negotiator. He was a devoted husband and father, a generous man of action, blessed with a great sense of humour, with little time for theological fineries, preferring to express a deep faith through actions rather than words.In August 1980, however, the small Episcopal (Anglican) community in Iran found itself the target of revolutionary radicals. John Coleman was one of the British missionaries detained in 1981 during the Iran crisis and freed through the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy Terry Waite. John Wycliffe Coleman, medical missionary and priest: born Cairo 10 May 1924; ordained deacon 1977, priest 1978; married 1946 Audrey Ponsford (died 2001; four sons); died London 16 August 2003. John Coleman was one of the British missionaries detained in 1981 during the Iran crisis and freed through the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy Terry Waite.But for the Iranian Revolution, Coleman might have lived out his life in relative obscurity and he probably would have preferred that.
He supported Mitterrand in the 1981 elections and kept a prudent distance from Le Pen (whom he dismissed with the comment that supporting him was "the worst thing I ever did") when the Front National became a force in the 1980s.From the 1970s, he made up for his lack of success in politics by investing his energy in building up his businesses.D.S Bell. He was consulted occasionally on issues affecting small business but he polled a mere 1.6 per cent at the 1979 European parliament elections, and his re-entry into politics was not to be. For the 1965 presidential elections he supported the Christian Democrat Jean Lecanuet and in 1966 rallied to the Fifth Republic.Poujade's political career after that went into eclipse and he devoted himself to the business side of the pressure group's activity though without wholly abandoning politics. Poujade was humiliated at a by-election in Paris and one by one his major backers quit. His aggressive anti-Gaullism in the elections of September 1958 lost him his remaining support.His activity became more vigorously anti-Gaullist as the decolonisation of Algeria proceeded under the General's aegis but he called for Poujadists to abstain and not to vote "no" on the 1962 referendum (on the direct election of the president) that was seen as a plebiscite on de Gaulle's rule.
