To have a crisis and act upon it is one thing. To dwell in perpetual crisis is another. – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison.
IT WAS NOT rubbing shoulders for more than 20 years with diplomats of some of the world’s super powers that takes prominence in his career.
Besley Maycock explains: “Funny enough, it was the three years I spent as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education.
“I went to the ministry just after they had signed the loan agreement with the World Bank and the IDB to assist with the building and rebuilding of schools,” he said. “I was part of the rejuvenation of the Students’ Revolving Loan Fund.”
Things were happening during that period, unlike in diplomacy where you could negotiate and so forth but at the end of the day you don’t know what is going to become of it or you end up with something that stays on the shelf.
“But when you drive by and you see a school in which you played a part, there is that great feeling of satisfaction,” he said.
“When the Queen – [Elizabeth II] – came to lay the cornerstone for the new Queen’s College building, I was part of that. I handled the plans for what is now the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.”
Sharing the journey with him is his Jamaican-born wife Kitty. The love affair began while he was at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies. He graduated in 1958, came back and taught at Combermere at Waterford for a term. (Incidentally, all the time I spent at Combermere as a student was at Roebuck Street.) He returned to Jamaica the following year and married Kitty. They are the parents of a son and a daughter.
He recalled: “She was teaching at the Titchfield High School in Port Antonio. The University Club would pay an annual visit to Titchfield to engage in hockey, netball and that kind of thing. That’s when I met her.
“She played netball, and hockey had always been my favourite sport.”
I enquired: Do you miss New York and all the trappings associated with the UN?
“Not really!,” Besley said. “When I retired I continued with the ACBQ [the Advisory Committee on Budgetary Questions] for 12 years, so I was commuting from Barbados to New York for meetings.
“The Government of Barbados couldn’t tell me what to do since I was there in personal capacity. We weren’t working for the UN; we were a completely independent body. We had to revise UN budgets and then advise the General Assembly how to react to them – what to cut out, what to approve and that kind of thing.
“The proposal from the Secretary General would go to the General Assembly, along with our report, and the chairman of our committee sat in on the meetings to explain our thinking. It was a very powerful report.”
In 1969/70 Besley undertook part of his training in diplomacy at the Graduate Institute of Higher Studies in Geneva. By then he had decided that his career would be in the diplomatic service.
