Val Irvine McCalla was a Jamaican accountant and media entrepreneur who settled in Britain in 1959.
10 Facts About Val McCalla
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Val McCalla is best known as the founder of The Voice, a British weekly newspaper aimed at the Britain's black community, which he established in 1982 as a voice for the British African-Caribbean community.
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Val McCalla was honoured as a pioneering publisher for the community, but faced critics who deemed him sensationalistic.
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Val McCalla was born in a poor part of Kingston, Jamaica.
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Val McCalla joined the RAF, but a perforated eardrum put paid to his dreams of becoming a pilot and instead he honed his skills as a bookkeeper, leaving in the mid-1960s.
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Val McCalla then found employment in various accounts and book-keeping positions, before working part-time on a community newspaper, East End News, based near his flat in Bethnal Green.
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Val McCalla started The Voice newspaper in 1982, Britain's first Black-owned paper, with a team that included broadcaster Alex Pascall, launching it at the Notting Hill carnival that August, and bringing in Viv Broughton as marketing manager.
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Val McCalla owned Chic and Pride magazines, and in 1991 founded The Weekly Journal.
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Val McCalla died of liver failure on 22 August 2002, aged 58, in Seaford, East Sussex, where he was buried.
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In June 2021, on Windrush Day, Val McCalla was honoured as the founder of The Voice with the installation of a plaque by the Nubian Jak Community Trust outside the newspaper's Brixton offices, Blue Star House.