About the Author

Leroy Ethelred Cooke

Leroy E. Cooke (Leroy Ethelred Cooke) is the author of Land of My Birth: A Historical Sketch of the First Forty Years of the People’s National Party of Jamaica

L.E. Cooke has seen how PNP put Jamaica’s fight for Independence as it main agenda. He has seen the birth and struggles of the party. These he has brought forward in his book – “Land of My Birth”.

Leroy E. Cooke (Leroy Ethelred Cooke) the first full-time Deputy General Secretary of the PNP, started following Jamaican politics during the 1955 General Elections. He became a member of the PNP in 1964 and worked in the Party Secretariat from 1968 to 1977, starting as the party’s first National Youth Organizer. He was also a member of the party’s National Executive Council between 1978 and 1988. Outside of politics, Cooke has worked at one time or another as a teacher, government clerk, rum-warehouse supervisor, community organizer, bauxite industry analyst, journal editor, radio actor and producer, trader, banker, plumbing operative, and consultant on agricultural and cooperative development.

His father- Almerick Constantine Cooke- helped him uncover the diversity of Jamaican life because of the frequent transfers of the family to different small towns in Jamaica. A.C. Cooke was an early member of the People’s National Party (PNP). A.C. Cooke was a regular speaker at the PNP meetings which were often disrupted by stoning. The political involvement of A.C. Cooke got L.E. Cooke fascinated into politics.
In the year 1955, Leroy Cooke attended political meetings with his father and saw PNP winning the constituency for the first time.
Soon after in 1957, Cooke took up a scholarship at Munro College. Here he became an avid reader often reading political journals including Public Opinion (a Jamaican weekly) and The New Statesman.

After Munro, Cooke joined the University of the West Indies where he studied French, History and Government. While studying in the University, Cooke became the member of the PNP in 1964. In 1967, he re-formed the UWI PNP group and became its Secretary.

In 1968, Cooke was drafted as the party’s first National Youth Organizer. In this role he worked to eventually set up what became the PNP Youth Organization. He also served as Secretary of the party’s Organizing Committee until its victory in 1972. Continuing in the Party Secretariat, Cooke became Assistant National Organizer and in January 1977, he became the first full-time Deputy General Secretary. He resigned this position the following September.

After working at the Social Development Commission as its Director of Youth and Community Services, Cooke was an unsuccessful candidate in the General Elections in 1980, when the PNP suffered its worst electoral defeat since its foundation. In the 1980s, he remained a member of the party’s National Executive Council and its Executive Committee.

He also represented the party at international conferences, seminars and lectures in countries including Venezuela, Germany, Cuba, Canada and the United States of America.