Yes, it is Holy ThMorant bay High School ursday, and I would normally write on religion but two days ago, March 22, William Haydn Middleton turned 80 years old. Who is WH Middleton? Ask Bruce Golding, w ho was head boy of Jamaica College from 1965 to 1966. Ask Peter Phillips who served as a JC prefect from 1966 to 1967.



Middleton, a Welshman who worked in Jamaica as a teacher, was vice principal of Clarendon College from 1955 to 1960. He was also first principal of Morant Bay High School (1961-65) and was principal of Jamaica College (1965-70). He became JC's principal when I was in second form.

Other head boys of JC during Middleton's tenure as JC principal were Terrence Campbell, Pat Belinfanti, Tony James (former president of Jamaica Football Federation) and Jimmy Moss Solomon (general manager of Grace, Kennedy and Company).

It was in 1966, when Middleton was JC principal that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visited Jamaica. Part of his visit included a stop at Jamaica College where Selassie signed the school's visitors' book. It was certainly a memorable occasion, which was well written about by the editor of JC's 1966 magazine, Garth White, today a well-known Rastafarian.

When he left JC and was a student at the University of the West Indies, Peter Phillips became a Rastafarian. I have said and written many times that it was Peter Phillips as one of three joint editors of the JC Magazine of 1967 who insisted on my submitting an article, which was my first ever printed work.

It was widely believed that the JC board of management had appointed Middleton with the distinct mandate to bring back some upper class ways to JC. The upper classes had this expectation of Joseph Hardie when he was appointed JC principal in 1941.

In his inaugural assembly with the students in 1941 Hardie lambasted the previous principal in front of the boys. This was the start of rebellion because the previous principal was very popular and it caused the face-off between Michael Manley and the principal.

Michael Manley walked out of JC and his father Norman Manley threatened to sue the school if it was ever said that he was expelled. I know that not one of the old framed sports pictures containing Norman Manley could be found at JC. It is alleged that the pictures were destroyed around that time.

But Middleton was not Hardie. His background would make him anything but upper class. Yes, we would rebel against the European style of his leadership. We also found that Mrs Middleton, who taught at JC while her husband was principal, did not necessarily share his social vision.

Middleton's father had been a coal miner in Wales. And like his father, Middleton was also a coal miner until he was conscripted into the Royal Air Force. His university training in geography and geology would come later. I saw Bobby Fray on Tuesday and told him it was Middleton's 80th birthday.

Fray immediately recalled the day when the white racist Ian Smith refused to yield power in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Mr Middleton called the senior boys to assembly and said that it was one of the saddest days ever for the world. As a second former, I was not among those called to the assembly.

Yet during Middleton's time as JC principal, a good proportion of the students were white Jamaicans and white expatriates. As soon as Middleton left and the Jamaican Ruel Taylor took over as principal, many of those students were transferred to other schools.

And because it was the "rebellious 60s", Middleton's insistence on ruling in the way he knew best, with European overtones, was bound to cause trouble. Add to that the fact that the JC boys of the era shared the same general residential area with university students at a time when Walter Rodney was banned from Jamaica.

Small wonder then that the entire prefect body resigned one year on a matter of principle over the appointment of a prefect who the others felt should not hold the post. Small wonder also that one of the largest student demonstrations of the 1960s took place when Middleton was principal.

That demonstration was a boycott of the school's canteen, managed by Mrs Middleton, when she insisted that she owned the tuckshop and could serve whomever she liked.
And it was in Middleton's era that a student council would come about on the instrumentality of the same student who led the canteen boycott.

The 1960s were an era with a most acute shortage of teachers. As a result, Middleton would fill in and indeed at some time or other taught me mathematics, biology, physics, religious knowledge and geography.

While other students were afraid of Middleton, I was actually very amused by him. He once threatened to cane me as I did my best to suppress laughter (without much success) as he chastised me in a mathematics class for not knowing the meaning of the word "bisect". In any event he caned me on other occasions.

Have a reflective and meditative Easter.