He joined an Anglican religious order, the Community of the Resurrection (CR), in 1939, taking vows in 1941,[2] having already served for three years as a curate at St Mark's Swindon.

[4] In September 1940 Huddleston sailed to Cape Town, and in 1943 he went to the Community of the Resurrection mission station at Rosettenville (Johannesburg, South Africa).

[5] Over the course of the next 13 years in Sophiatown, Huddleston developed into a much-loved priest and respected anti-apartheid activist, earning him the nickname Makhalipile ("dauntless one").

[7] He was particularly concerned about the Nationalist Government's decision to bulldoze Sophiatown and forcibly remove all its inhabitants sixteen miles further away from Johannesburg.

Soon after the ‘Huddleston Jazz Band’ was formed, sparking a global career for Masekela and his fellow South African, Jonas Gwangwa.

They hosted many conferences, protests and actions together, in the face of fierce opposition from both Margaret Thatcher, and the South African government and their allies.

Huddleston's community asked him to return to England in 1955 (and he left South Africa in early 1956), some say due to the controversy he was attracting in speaking out against apartheid.

He was consecrated a bishop on St Andrew's Day 1960[10] (30 November) by Leonard Beecher, Archbishop of East Africa, at St Nicholas', Ilala, Dar es Salaam,[11] to serve as Bishop of Masasi (Tanzania), where he worked for eight years, primarily in re-organising the mission schools to be run by the newly independent government of Julius Nyerere, with whom he became a firm friend.

The police report recommended charging him with four counts of gross indecency, but because of his high profile, the matter was referred to the director of public prosecutions, Sir Norman Skelhorn.

[14] In his biography, Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest, Piers McGrandle quotes Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Bishop Gerald Ellison dismissing the claims as a plot by the South African Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.)

[citation needed] On 14 February 1995, Desmond Tutu, the then Archbishop of Cape Town wrote: "He [Huddleston] was an enormous thorn in the side of the apartheid regime and was effectively the real spokesman for the anti-apartheid movement for a considerable period.

No one did more to keep apartheid on the world's agenda than he and therefore it would have been a devastating victory for the forces of evil and darkness had he been discredited", adding "How ghastly to want to besmirch such a remarkable man, so holy and so good.

"[citation needed] Ellison was also clear that neither he, nor his legal advisers, believed anyone had the right to impede justice if there was any real evidence of guilt.

However Sam Silkin, the Attorney General at the time who had taken the decision not to prosecute, later said on the radio: After 10 years in England, Huddleston was appointed (1978) as the Bishop of Mauritius, a diocese of the Province of the Indian Ocean.

In October 1994 he was involved in the establishment of the Living South Africa Memorial, the UK's memorial to all those who lost lives under political violence, at St Martin-in-the-Fields church, London, which raised funds for education in the newly democratic South Africa, and campaigned for ongoing investment in the region, under a call to action 'It takes more than a vote to get over apartheid'.

The centre bears Huddleston's name after he intervened to ensure that part of a church building was converted to provide an accessible nursery, play (and latterly youth club) space for disabled young people in Hackney, regardless of their faith.

[18] Aged 21, Masekela left South Africa for the UK where Huddleston helped him secure a place at the Guildhall School of Music, and then he went to New York, where he began to craft his signature Afro-jazz style, under both Armstrong and Gillespie.