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Launch editor of pioneering paper dies aged 63

The first editor of the most successful newspaper in the history of Britain’s black community has died after long illness.

Flip Fraser, who was 63, launched The Voice in August 1982, personally handing out copies of the first edition at that year’s Notting Hill Carnival.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Flip moved to the UK when he was 15 before attending Bradford University.

He began his career in the music industry with British record label Trojan, working at one time with chart-toppers Musical Youth, before “falling in love with the media side of things.”

He was arts and entertainments editor at the Caribbean Times when The Voice’s founders – the late Jamaican-born businessman Val McCalla and veteran journalist Alex Pascall – asked him to become involved in the project.

“I remember the reaction when we started giving away those copies that first day. The pride on people’s faces when we put a copy in their hand said it all. The Voice was not going anywhere; it was here to stay,” he later recalled.