By Claudia Gardner, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
JAMAICAN-BORN, Lord Mayor of Nottingham, England, Councillor Desmond Wilson, was hosted at a special sitting of the Hanover Parish Council, held in his honour on Thursday at the Lucea Town Hall.
The Lord Mayor was born in Greenland district in Lucea, Hanover in 1939, and attended the Middlesex Corner Elementary School in the parish.
He said he was refused enrolment into the Rusea's High School, because of what he said was "how the system worked in those days."
At the time, he said, only children of wealthy parents were admitted to the school, and, his mother, who was his only source of support, with a limited income, was also unable to foot the cost. As a result he had to take up an apprenticeship with noted Hanover mechanic Jack Frater of Lucea, at the time.
He was sent to live with relatives in Nottingham in 1957 and worked as a coal miner with the Nottingham City Council from 1958 to 1962.
In an interview following his address to the Council, the Lord Mayor said he was not familiar with the new regulations for visas for Jamaicans visiting England, as the said regulations were made during his current visit to the island.
He said, however, that as a Councillor in England, he had been involved in a lot of immigration issues and said one of the concerns of how things were before the introduction of the visa system, was that it proved at times to be unfair to people who genuinely wanted to visit or to educate themselves in the UK, he stated.
'If by introducing the visa system, it means that people will be treated more fairly, and as long as people coming from Jamaica will not continue to be interrogated when they come to the airport to try to get through immigration, it would then be a better experience for us.
In his address to Council, the Lord Mayor told the audience that he worked as a coal miner with the Nottingham City Council until 1965, when he took up training in precision engineering until 1970 when there was a sudden decline in the industry.
He then ventured into self-employment by investing in a cafe in the Radford area. He was elected as Councillor to the St Anns Ward in 1991 to serve the citizens of Nottingham for the Labour Party and has served as school governor at various schools in the city.
The Lord Mayor now presides over a Council with 13,000 employees with an average annual expenditure of 600 million pounds and has a key position as First Citizen of the city and a legal position as Chair of the council.. A frequent visitor to Jamaica, The Lord Mayor said that he does not forget the parish of his birth.
"I always come back to Hanover," he said. "This is my first port of call and when I come. I arrive and leave from here."
The Lord Mayor said he was hoping to return to Jamaica in 2004 for the Hanover Homecoming Week.
Also present at the function were Mayor of Lucea Lloyd Hill and his three remaining councillors, Member of Parliament Barrington Gray, Custos of Hanover, Mavis Whitter-King.
