Ronald Thwaites | Celebrating Dennis

C. Dennis Morrison epitomised the flourishing of black professional talent in the early post-Independence period. Born in a two-parent family devoted to public service and who would sacrifice everything to assure the character-building and education of their children, Dennis grew at ease with himself, quietly confident in his values, abilities and responsibilities. That roundedness among its leaders is still what Jamaica needs to prosper. People like him are in very short supply right now.

NURTURED TALENT

Wolmer’s and Jamaica College, where Morrison sharpened his talents, provided the foundation for his becoming one of the first graduates of the newly established Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies. There, under Ralph Carnegie, cut of the same Jamaican cloth, Dean Keith Patchett and later at Norman Manley Law School under the tutelage of the great Aubrey Fraser, Dennis, along with Roy Fairclough and Millicent Rickman, earned first-class degrees and thereby set the pace for a new era of excellence in law, trained and honed in the West Indian experience.

He was a natural for the Rhodes Scholarship. His was a quiet pride when his son Simon merited the same award years later, marking only the third time in its history (and all from the Caribbean) that two successive generations of one family shared that distinction.

LAW & SOCIAL UPLIFT

With the zeal of the 1970s to use law as an instrument for social change, Dennis Morrison interned at Kingston Legal Aid Clinic and later joined with us in the formation of Freedom Chambers where there was heady exposure to most of the legal controversies attendant on the fervour for transformation in those years. The struggle for human rights; against the death penalty, the resistance to the Gun Court and Suppression of Crime legislation: the fights for trade union representation and numerous other progressive causes, all of which gave the calcified legal atmosphere of the era a fair shake-up.

Dennis reminded me that I had paid him his first pay cheque . It wasn’t enough to live on though and he gained employment and a much wider range of experience with the established firm of Dunn Cox. Although probably unplanned, his many years at the private Bar, in advocacy, opinion writing and legal scholarship were ample preparation for the Appeal Bench he would later adorn. It is good for the make-up of the judiciary to include people who have been seasoned at the private Bar.

SUBSTANCE WITH STYLE

A small matter maybe. Dennis’s delicate handwriting reflected the elegance of his mind and the smoothness of his demeanour.

Morrison was never one for histrionics in court. Wry humour and sly, penetrating interrogation were his craft. His clarity of mind and calm expression had few equals. His uncluttered reasoning earned praise from the Law Lords at the Privy Council. That is an achievement very few attain.

I often thought of him as a natural for the presidency of the Caribbean Court of Justice – proof that one of us, indeed many of us, drawn from the crucible of our culture, have the virtue, the erudition to serve on the nation’s and the region’s ultimate justice tribunal. Pure justice is possible within the Caribbean soul. No visa needed. Always approachable for advice. No fee note to follow.

PUBLIC SERVICE

Dennis’s inbred and sensitively nurtured commitment to public causes never waned. No airs, no bombast – just thoroughness, empathy and capacity. He succeeded me as chair of the board of the Kingston Legal Aid Clinic. Through his commitment to the Bar Association, regional legal education, the Environment Trust, Mustard Seed and in numerous other roles, his generosity of spirit was genuine and constant.

As Aubrey Fraser was reported to have said of Archbishop Samuel Carter, it can be said of Dennis, “ This is a good man to be at sea with on a dark stormy night.” His spirit joins Dennis Daly, Jack Hines, Zack Harrison, Roy Fairclough and all the others who used their wit, courage and professional brilliance to advance the rights of the weakest and to craft the new creation of Caribbean jurisprudence.

Give thanks for his being.

ELSEWHERE

The latest from the Middle East is that Israel is announcing a massive blitzkrieg against Rafa, the city at the southern-most tip of the Gaza Strip where more than a million Palestinians have sought refuge from the destruction of the remainder of their homeland. Since there is nowhere else for them to flee, there they will die. And the international community is either conniving or mealy mouthed. Martin Luther King spoke truth that silence in the face of evil is complicity. Murderers must be condemned by defenders of humanity, even if only to affirm our own decency. Innocent human beings are being slaughtered as you read this. And the Jamaican Government says and does nothing.

Among our own close kith and kin, there is more. Almost within shouting distance, in Haiti, the United Nations reports 1,100 people killed during January alone. But we, with consummate cruelty, send back refugees into the same lion’s den from which the Lord delivered them to us.

Meanwhile our money- changers in the forecourt of the sacred temple of Jamaican humanity, unashamedly count out the bribe-price of bank notes at the car door while the green candidate in St Thomas whips out his gun like a horny proboscis. Same time as the Housing Trust does a secret settlement to our disadvantage with our money just like the one which was done with the concubine at the oil company a few years ago.

Soon we are being asked to legitimate all this with our vote. Really? We have castrated our consciences and call it righteousness. Morrison would never approve that.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.