At the time of her death Pat Bish­op was very con­cerned about the state of the na­tion and the way that many work­ing peo­ple, through no fault of their own, were be­ing mar­gin­alised. That side of Bish­op, known by many for her con­tri­bu­tion to cul­ture, was re­vealed by for­mer trade union leader Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah, chair­man of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice. "Be­ing im­bued with the artist's in­stinct, she feared for the na­tion's fu­ture," he said in a re­lease. Not­ing that her lega­cy was not lim­it­ed to her paint­ings and the mu­sic she com­posed or arranged, Ab­du­lah, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, said Bish­op was a trust­ed friend of the pro­gres­sive trade unions. She was par­tic­u­lar­ly close to the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union and col­lab­o­rat­ed on many oc­ca­sions with the unions, Ab­du­lah said.

He added: "She was deeply con­cerned about is­sues of so­cial jus­tice and qui­et­ly but ef­fec­tive­ly iden­ti­fied with the strug­gles of work­ing peo­ple. "Though not be­ing ac­tive in par­ty pol­i­tics, Pat con­tributed in many im­por­tant ways to the pol­i­tics of the or­di­nary man and woman fight­ing for so­cial jus­tice." Ab­du­lah said like prophets in their own land, T&T failed Bish­op, in that, while ap­plaud­ing her mu­sic and art, her con­stant mes­sage of the need to re­fash­ion so­ci­ety was ig­nored. Mark Lo­quan said Bish­op was one of the first peo­ple he went to when he set up the Mu­sic Lit­er­a­cy Trust in 2004, ini­tial­ly tar­get­ed to fi­nan­cial­ly as­sist tal­ent­ed young pan­nists through ter­tiary lev­el mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion. He said she served as di­rec­tor of the board from its in­cep­tion un­til the time of her pass­ing. He said Des­per­a­does steel­band was close to her heart and the vi­o­lence in the area sad­dened her.

Lo­quan said Bish­op even worked for CEPEP try­ing to get work­ers to think dif­fer­ent­ly about them­selves.

The Of­fice of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my where Bish­op col­lapsed dur­ing a pan­el meet­ing last Sat­ur­day al­so paid trib­ute to her. A re­lease from the of­fice yes­ter­day said all mem­bers of the High Lev­el Ex­pert Pan­el, which was meet­ing when she col­lapsed on is­sues re­lat­ing to arts, cul­ture and pa­tri­o­tism projects, mourned her pass­ing. The T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce said Bish­op sold T&T as a place of enor­mous wealth of cul­ture and said it shared in the na­tion's mo­ment of grief over her pass­ing.