Official_portrait_of_Lord_Higgins CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Club Patron Terence Langley Higgins, Baron Higgins, sadly passed away on 25th November 2025. Full title, The Rt Hon. the Lord Higgins KBE DL. Terence Higgins was born in Norwood, south London, in 1928, the eldest child of Reginald and Rose (née Langley). He attended the local Alleyn’s School, in Dulwich, where he showed significant athletic prowess, including a win at the Public School Championships over 440y, in 52.0.
In early 1945, officials of Herne Hill Harriers (HHH) met to discuss the resuscitation of the Club, anticipating the end of the Second World War. With alacrity, the Club resumed business by May 1945, aided by financial contributions from former and current members. On 22 September 1945, contesting an event that was the forerunner of the London Championships, new member Terence Higgins won both the 100y and 440y junior events, beginning an association with HHH that lasted more than 80 years. From 1946-48, Terence completed his National Service with the RAF, where he contested and won various inter-services and international military athletics titles.
In his first three years of Club membership, Terence Higgins enjoyed an impressive upward trajectory in his athletic performances, culminating with his selection for the 1948 Olympic Games, London. He was a member of the 4 x 400m relay squad but did not actually race at the Games. In 2011, the year before the most recent London Olympics, a run was organised by HHH, featuring an original 1948 Olympic torch, from the Herne Hill Velodrome, home of the Harriers until the 1930s and the last remaining sports venue from the 1948 London Olympics to still be in use, and finishing at Tooting Bec Athletics Track, where the torch was received by HHH Club Patron and 1948 Olympian, Terence Higgins.
Terence Higgins qualified for the 1950 Empire (now Commonwealth) Games in Auckland, New Zealand, having finished third in the AAA 440y Championships. At the Games, Terence produced a Club record in the individual event running 49.0, and won a silver medal in the 4 x 440y relay team.
Over this period, Terence regularly competed for Surrey County in inter-counties matches, as chronicled on Surrey County Athletics Association’s website, which includes a tribute. In 1951 he made a significant revision to his own Club record, running 47.8 for 400m, a time that still ranked as third quickest ever HHH athlete almost 50 years on, in 2000. In 1952, another third place finish at the AAA Championships qualified Terence for Olympic selection, Helsinki. At the Olympics, he made it through to the second round of the 400m, and helped the relay team to a 5th place finish in the 4 x 400m final. https://surreyathletics.uk/
Terence remained an active top level athlete over the subsequent years, with one memorable appearance in 1954. From The Times obituary ‘he sometimes referred to his role in the “greatest anti-climax in athletics” in 1954. At Oxford, he had run in the race immediately after Roger Bannister’s success in running the first sub-four-minute mile. In the much-viewed newsreel of Bannister’s historic run, Higgins can be seen warming up for his own race’.
In 1955, aged 26, Terence accepted a place at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, to study economics. Higgins was active in the University Conservative association and in 1958 was elected president of the Cambridge Union. While at Cambridge he met his future wife, Rosalyn Cohen, whom he married in 1961. In October 1964 Terence was elected to the Worthing seat as a Member of Parliament, a seat he won on eight further occasions until he stood down in 1997. He held various ministerial and shadow ministerial roles as well as being honoured as a Knight of the Realm over these 33 years, and then became an active member of the House of Lords.
Terence’s association with the Club was reinvigorated in 1984, 95 years after the Club’s formation. The Club invited Terence to become the Club Patron, a position he accepted. Over the next thirty plus years Terence was engaged in Club activity, from time to time attending annual dinners and exchanging sage advice with Presidents. He was always interested to hear of the Club’s successes, but also the challenges it has faced over the decades and, as Patron, contributed generously to the Club’s finances. In this year of his passing, I am sure he would be very proud that his 400m legacy continues, with the English Schools win and U20 Club record by Fred Hake, 47.64.
Our condolences are with his wife, an eminent barrister, Rosalyn Cohen Higgins, Baroness Higgins, GBE, KC, and two children.
Keith Newton, HHH Life Member. 18/12/2025
Acknowledgements: Herne Hill Harriers, Into The Millenium, A History of the Herne Hill Harriers compiled by Kevin Kelly, 1889-2001; The Times Obituary.