By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE late Edmund Moxey espoused ideas and introduced projects that historians will come to view as being way ahead of their time, Prime Minister Perry Christie said during the state funeral for one of the Bahamas cultural icons at the Parish Church of the Most Holy Trinity on Stapleton Gardens yesterday.

The ultimate tribute to Mr Moxey would be to integrate his acclaimed Jumbey Village project into the current Urban Renewal 2.0 programme, Mr Christie said as he heaped lavish praise upon the 80-year-old with “fiery passions and strong convictions” who died last month.

Jumbey Village was conceived by Mr Moxey as a cultural centre to unite people who struggled to improve themselves. It was envisioned as a centre where participants would have a school, library, social centre, clinics, sports, and music of their own, as well as arts and crafts stalls from which they could sell their own creations. When the village and the construction of a new community centre were not included in the 1974 budget as promised, Mr Moxey resigned from the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), eventually joining the Free National Movement.

“For better or for ill, priorities were ordered differently back then and, frankly, Ed was something of a lone ranger around the proverbial table of national decision-making,” Mr Christie said. “Culture was for many a dispensable sideline to national development. It was not a big thing. But for Ed it was the heart and soul of the Bahamian people. He was absolutely convinced that it was the key to the re-building of broken communities and broken lives.

“And he was equally convinced that it was only through cultural development that we could spiritually re-connect with our African roots, something that he saw as essential to the emerging sense of national identity and our own individual appreciation of who and what we are.”

Mr Christie hailed Mr Moxey as a man who loved people and strove to help them however he could.

“It was from this wellspring of affection for people and his concern for the plight of the underprivileged, that Ed’s passion for politics came,” he said. “He wanted to be in a position to help people. This deep and sincere love of people lay at the heart of his career as a politician. He was a man of the people and for the people. Even today, several decades after he exited politics, the old people of Coconut Grove still remember Ed fondly as an attentive and caring member of parliament; as someone who went to bat for them, and as someone who stayed in close touch with them as an MP.

In addition to discussing Mr Moxey’s musical contributions, Mr Christie said he was partly responsible for getting his own career in politics started.

“As fine a record as Ed had in that regard as an MP, his cultural contributions rank even higher,” he said. “Having inherited his father’s musical genius, Ed brought it to full flower. He had a particular passion for indigenous music, especially rake ‘n’ scrape.  It was not surprising that he sought to infuse this and other forms of artistic expression into the Bahamian cultural scene.

He added: “Indeed I have always credited Ed Moxey as one of the persons who was chiefly responsible for introducing me to politics. Back in the mid 60’s when the struggle for Majority Rule was gaining  momentum among the youth of our country, a group called the National Committee for Positive Action - the NCPA -entered the fray.

“It was a pressure group and think-tank for the PLP but, even more than that, because of its high-octane energy and outspokenness, it opened up a new front for the war on the minority government at the time. Ed Moxey was an important member of the NCPA, ‘this happy band of brothers’, as Shakespeare would have termed it, and it was this same Ed Moxey who personally introduced Lionel Carey and myself to the NCPA. 

“He took us under his wing and took us along to the meetings. 

“He was the person who recruited me and who sponsored me for membership in the NCPA. Thus began my political career, a career that Ed Moxey launched for me all those many years ago.”