Hartley Neita LAST WEEK, Corina Meeks, one of Jamaica's communications icons, invited me to be associated with her at a presentation to the Caribbean chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, on the development of the Government public relations/ communications system in Jamaica.
We met the day before to travel together down the memory lane of this topic and to remember our association with this system. And it has been a long walk. For one thing, most of you have grown your career years in communications knowing of the Jamaica Information Service. Others might also remember that there was an Agency for Public Information (API), and a few will recall that before these agencies there was the Government Public Relations Office (GPRO).
However, it, started before. The genesis was during the war between England and Germany from 1939 to 1945, in what has been described as World War II. From very early, England realised it had to depend on the support it could receive from its Dominions, Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand, and its colonies scattered all over the world, such as Jamaica. That support was to be in the form of manpower and money. It needed to persuade thousands of men and women from these Dominions and colonies to join its armed forces and to go to England to work in the munitions factories. Thousands of Jamaicans joined Britain in this fight, men such as Keble Munn, Eli Matalon, Michael Manley and Dudley Thompson, and women such as Ena Collymore.
INFORMATION
Information was the tool used by England to obtain this support. Britain sent thousands of posters to Jamaica which were sent to schools, Post Offices and other public places for display. These posters were of the King and Queen and their two pretty Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, walking through the bombed streets of London to show the world that its leaders were defiant in the face of the mighty German army and air force. Long-playing recordings of poems by British poets like William Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, and British national songs such as "There'll Always Be An England" and "Rule Britannia" were also sent to be played on the Government Broadcasting Station, ZQI.
To demonstrate the international support for England, thousands of maps of the world were also sent, showing England and her Empire of countries, coloured red. We colonials felt we were part of the world's greatest power. And we responded by contributing our pennies and shillings to funds to buy airplanes and tanks for Britain's Royal Air Force. Our Legislature even voted a loan of a couple thousand pounds to Britain.
When the People's National Party won the General Elections of 1955, its leader Norman Manley decided that in the same way Jamaica and Jamaicans were persuaded to be loyal Britons, an agency could be created by the Jamaican Government to provide Jamaicans with information about Government's policies, programmes and projects and explain why these were being implemented. There was also a political necessity to do so as the PNP was then believed to be communist. Manley therefore felt it necessary to have a Government which was as transparent as possible so that the public could see there was nothing communist in its ideology. That agency was the Government Public Relations Office, consisting of a press, films, broadcasting, and later a publications and campaigns departments.
To head this organisation he went to England and persuaded a journalist, A.E.T. Henry, to return home. Henry was a former reporter and sub-editor on the staff of Public Opinion, a weekly newspaper, and had gone to England where he had made a name for himself as a broadcaster on the staff of the BBC.
The early GPRO staff knew absolutely nothing about 'public relations'. The organisation was really a press agency, preparing releases and articles for distribution to The Gleaner, Jamaica Times, Public Opinion, Radio Jamaica, and in later years to Pepperpot, Spotlight, Newday, the West Indian Economist, Vanity and other magazines, and others of dubious pedigree.
The organisation published the annual Handbook of Jamaica and a monthly magazine, Jamaica Now. Later it became involved in the organisation of visits by British prime ministers and other world leaders.
BROADCASTERS
It was the GPRO which became the foundation for the Jamaica Information Service. Through its doors passed many well-known Jamaican journalists and broadcasters. Some names include Carey Robinson, John Hearne, Martin Rennalls, Franklyn St. Juste, Ken Maxwell, Garth Morgan, Errol Harvey, Sylvia Carew, Gloria Lannaman, Desmond Henry, Slade Hopkinson, Hope and Dorothy Sealy, Elaine Perkins, Audrey Chong, Easton Lee, Ken Jones, Cliff Lashley, and many others.
