Henry speaks his mind

Title: Many Rivers to Cross - A Political Journey of Audacious Hope

Authors: Mike Henry and Reginald Allen

Foreword by: Professor Oswald G. Harding

Central Clarendon Member of Parliament (MP) Lester 'Mike' Henry just-published Many Rivers to Cross is a lesson in political statesmanship and a must-read for even the greatest cynics among us. The 180-page publication, the first in a series that the 78-year-old politician indicated he will publish in the coming years, is packed with colourful speeches that span his 33 years as a legislator.

Mike, as he is affectionately called, is oftentimes described as one of Jamaica's most colourful, independent, outspoken and daring politicians to ever sit in Gordon House, and with almost five decades of representational political experience under his belt, it can be safely said that he has earned the right to speak his mind.

"This book covers my important parliamentary speeches and parts of my unfinished political life, and assesses if I have been consistent in my pursuits; and in my analysis. How much did I seek to change and did I make an impact?" Mike reasoned in the book's author's note.

And he invited, "Read, analyse, reflect, and, of course, as is the exercised right of all Jamaicans, criticise and be automatically cynical, as all Jamaicans naturally are."

PROMINENT SPEECHES

The book, which also carries a sub-title 'A Political Journey of Audacious Hope' chronicles Henry's most prominent speeches in 17 chapters with an elaborate foreword by the University of Technology Faculty of Law's dean, Professor Oswald G. Harding. Professor Harding described Henry as an intrepid campaigner who isn't afraid of controversy, and who speaks with a strident advocacy for his constituency, the less privileged and the defenseless.

An excerpt from Many Rivers to Cross detailed that Henry began his political career after joining the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in 1973 and was subsequently chosen to be the party's standard-bearer in Central Clarendon where he locked horns with the People National Party's bigwig, O. D. Ramtallie, who gave him a political whipping in a fiery political baptism, after he was shot on the campaign trail in York Town, Clarendon, in the 1976 general election.

However, the never-say-die Labourite persisted and turned the table on Ramtallie in the 1980 election and remained undefeated in a number of political battles, except for the lone occasion when he went up against the JLP's supreme leader Edward Seaga and got a political battering.

Readers of Many Rivers to Cross will realise immediately that Henry isn't planning on leaving the political landscape anytime soon because of his comment that "Hope springs eternal" and, given good health, he has a lot left to be done.