Merton Council gets new mayor

LONDON:

Joan Henry, the new labour party mayor of Merton Council in South London, is a Jamaican from Thornton district in St Thomas.

In a glittering ceremony in the Council chamber at Merton Civic Centre, Morden on May 25, Joan Henry, who hails from the same parish as Paul Bogle, one of Jamaica’s national heroes, was nominated and duly elected as the mayor of the London borough of Merton for the municipal year 2022-23, and received her chain and badge of office.

Mayor Henry announced that Councillor Akyigyina would be her deputy mayor and she also received her badge of office. The outgoing labour party mayor Councillor Michael Brunt and his group were also presented with their badges.

Mayor Joan Henry was born July 20, 1954 in Thornton district in St Thomas on her grandparents’ sugar estate. Seaforth and Sunning Hill are nearby districts. Her parents migrated to Britain in 1959 and left her in the care of her grandparents and older siblings.

She started to attend Middleton Primary School when she was seven years old, which was some miles away from Thornton and, though she had to walk to school, the journey was fun because there were other children and their parents on the same journey.

The new mayor of Merton came to England in July 1979 with her three children and lived with her parents in Tooting Bec, south London. She worked at St George’s Hospital in Tooting and Bolingbroke Hospital at Wakehurst Road in Battersea.

Her mother died 12 years ago and her father, who retired to Jamaica, is 94 years old.

As Jamaicans get ready to commemorate 60 years of political independence on August 6, it can be said the celebrations have already started with the election of Henry as mayor of Merton Council in London, England.