My friend and mentor Edwin Jones, who has died aged 80, was for many years a teacher and scholar of public administration in Jamaica, a career he combined with public service and a role as a government adviser.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to Ruby MacDonald, a dancer, and her husband, Stanford Jones, a salesman, Edwin went to Anchovy school in St James parish. He grew up during a formative time for the West Indian nationalist movement and became an adult around the time Jamaica attained independence in 1962.
Qualifying as a teacher at the Mico teachers’ college in Kingston, he taught history for a while at St George’s college, also in Kingston, before leaving to study economics at the recently founded University of the West Indies on a government bursary, graduating with a first class degree in 1967.
Postgraduate study followed, first at UWI, then in 1968 in England at the University of Manchester on a Ministry of Overseas Development scholarship. An academic appointment followed in 1971 at the University of Zambia, where he was a lecturer in public administration; two years later he returned to UWI in Jamaica, where he took on the same role.
While continuing his career at UWI, Edwin entered public service in 1974 at the height of Michael Manley’s transformative period as prime minister. He was a member of the Public Services Commission for more than 20 years, a special adviser to various ministers, and chairperson of the Police Reform Board in the 1990s.
An unabashed supporter of Manley’s People’s National party, Edwin was never interested in trying to appear neutral. Yet his competence and commitment were admired across party lines, and he held public appointments even when the rival Jamaica Labour party was in power. His most significant book, Development Administration: Jamaican Adaptations (1992) is an honest yet unapologetic assessment of Manley-era institution-building policies.
At UWI he was promoted to the post of professor of public administration in 1990, teaching, conducting research and undertaking public and university service. He remained in that position until retirement in 2006, after which he returned to Mico to take on a research leadership role. His last book, Contending with Administrivia (2015), addressed some of the persistent challenges of reforming a post-colonial civil service. He was awarded Jamaica’s Order of Distinction, commander class, in 1988, and the Order of Jamaica in 2007.
Edwin was a collector of West Indian art and a keen follower of West Indies cricket, as well as a fan of Manchester United. He married Maria Williams in 1993, and together they entertained visitors with great warmth and charisma at their Kingston home, where Edwin loved to provoke fierce intellectual conversation.
He is survived by Maria, their children, Nandi, Asif, Kashka and Keisha, and his siblings, Gladstone, Beryl and Norma.
