Martin Henry
BY NEXT WEEK this time, Sir Howard Cooke will be out of King's House. He is perhaps the only surviving founding member of the People's National Party and with close to 70 years of public service behind him he is an amazing national treasure. Howard Cooke has never resigned as a member of the party and, now back in private life, he will perhaps want to catch the special delegates conference on Saturday, February 25, to elect a new party leader.
Sir Howard is such a multi-faceted man that all who have interacted with him will have their own special memories of who he is. I have had the pleasure of interviewing him twice on matters far removed from matters of state, and of working with him in Moral Rearmament (MRA) - a quasi-religious movement that seeks to promote religious tolerance and diversity in human cultures - an area of engagement which is at least as important to him as his political and church lives.
Years ago, I wrote a column, in which, in passing, I proposed the need for 'moral rearmament' to solve the country's problems. I must have unconsciously picked up the jargon because I had no idea that there was, in fact, something called Moral Rear-mament. A member of the Movement, a Guyanese national then living in Jamaica got in touch with me and put me in touch with old man Louis Byles a pioneer member of MRA in Jamaica. Byles introduced me to the Edwardses in Walkerswood, St. Ann, whose matriarch Fiona and her mother Minnie Simson were among the founders of MRA in Jamaica. Fiona is only slightly younger than Sir Howard and both will be honoured for their work with MRA on Sunday, March 12 in Walkerswood.
DELEGATION TO CAUX
When For A Change, a British MRA magazine wanted to run a story on Sir Howard, I was handed the task of interviewing him and writing the story, which appeared in the February/March 1994 issue.
In the summer of that year, Sir Howard led a Jamaican contingent of some 25 Jamaicans to the annual international conference of MRA at its conference centre at Caux in the mountains of Switzerland overlooking Lake Geneva. This was one of several such pilgrimages led by Sir Howard.
Sir Howard's 1994 Jamaican delegation to Caux consisted of a carefully crafted balance of young political leadership, business leadership, media influencers among whom I fell, civil society and church leadership. Deploying MRA strategy, Cooke felt that if Jamaican leaders and influencers were lifted out of their situation for quiet reflection and dialogue elsewhere, solutions could be found to many of the contentious issues which were dividing us.
Using his insurance salesman skills and the authority of his office, Sir Howard raised the money to help sponsor attendees like myself, who couldn't meet full costs.
A decade later, while writing the fascinating story of community development in Walkerswood, St. Ann, I got back to Sir Howard for another interview. Minnie Pringle-Simson had inherited the Bromley estate from her father Sir John Pringle (the Father of the famous Pringle family) a Scotsman come to Jamaica and who married a local Levy (Jamaica Broilers stock). Miss Minnie turned her place into a centre for MRA in Jamaica. She shared Norman Manley's social development ideals, as did the young Mico teacher, Howard Cooke.
ROOT OF WALKERSWOOD
When Manley established Jamaica Welfare with grant money from the United Fruit Company and was casting around, along with his personally recruited community development officer, Thom Girvan, for pioneer villages for development, Walkerswood with its Bromley centre naturally became one of them. Walkers-wood became a leader in community development from the 1940s and today is home to Walkerswood Caribbean Foods, a major food company which grew from small beginnings out of this base of community development activities.
I wanted to find out from Sir Howard his own engagement with Bromley and his personal knowledge of Minnie Pringle-Simson. He gave me much more. We spoke about Jamaican history, Garvey, race relations, politics, development, the influence of the church, the role of spirituality in nation-building, his involvement with MRA and how it had changed his life from being a rabble-rousing politician hostile to whites to a man of peace.
Sir Howard passionately shared his dream of having more of this story of the Jamaican past, at the level of the involvement of the people, researched and docu-mented for the enlightenment and upliftment of young Jamaicans. Sir Howard wants to build a team, secure business support and get the job done.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
