JACK ENSOLL, EDITOR, REMEMBERED

 

Jack Ensoll, pioneering editor passes on

Saturday, August 11, 2012 — updated on July 04, 2020

 

Courtesy of the Nation Nairobi.

 

Jack Ensoll, one-time editor of the Kenya Weekly News and later the Sunday Post.

I think this tribute is by the late Gerard Loughran, one of the finest journalists who blessed the Kenya media scene with his brilliance.:

 

I learned with great sadness last week of the death of an old friend from bygone Kenya – Jack Ensoll, one-time editor of the Kenya Weekly News and later the Sunday Post. His name and the titles of those papers will mean nothing to the vast majority of Kenyans today but, in the hectic years preceding Uhuru, they were active combatants in the fiery debate about what sort of country independent Kenya should be.

 

Jack fought vigorously, if naively, for a rainbow-hued, multi-racial future, arguing that significant power should be apportioned to Europeans in the new constitution since they were so important to the economy. If not, what on earth would happen? To which Dr Julius Kiano, minister for Industry in waiting, responded coolly: “You will have to rely on African goodwill”.

 

That, Jack, told me years later, was a big message. Quibbling about constitutional powers was irrelevant; the right-wingers, the settlers and the liberals finally realised that with Tom Mboya leading the charge, there was to be “none of this multi-racial nonsense, it was going to be one-man, one-vote, African majority rule”.

 

Jack, Yorkshire-born but brought up in Devon, arrived in Kenya from England in 1952 and became Nairobi editor of the Nakuru-based Kenya Weekly News, then edited by the formidable Mervyn F. Hill, author of Permanent Way, the classic 1950 account of the Kenya-Uganda railway. Wholly devoted to settlers’ interests (the KWN’s first edition carried an article about the price of maize, and so did its last), it was known as the “pea-green incorruptible” for the colour of its cover and its staunchness in the farmers’ cause.

My book about the Nation Media Group, Birth of a Nation (2010, I.B. Tauris), sketches in the sociological outlines of Kenya in the early 1960s as the country raced towards 1963. It was a society where everyone knew his place on the ladder.

While there was no official colour bar under colonial rule, there were invisible barriers which Africans and Asians were expected to know and respect.

 

The European community, too, was susceptible to minuscule gradations of class and status more appropriate to the 18th century world of Jane Austen than to Africa in the 1960s. The famous clubs, for instance. They may have been all-European but some seemed more European than others.

In Nakuru, the top people went to the Rift Valley Sports Club and lesser whites to the Nakuru Athletics Club. In Nairobi, the Muthaiga Club was the settlers’ stronghold while Nairobi Club favoured government officials, bankers and businessmen.

It wasn’t all about colour, however. When Michael Curtis, the effective founder of the Nation Group, a decorated soldier from WW2 and a Cambridge graduate, first sought membership at Muthaiga, he was black-balled. The Nation had proclaimed itself in favour of African majority rule, so there was no place for its editor-in-chief at the bars of the Muthaiga Club.

 

The clubs could not see eye to eye. The white-collar government men pictured themselves as conscientious administrators of the law but the sunburnt settlers saw them as short-term Johnnies, working a five-day week for a pension to spend back in Britain.

 

There is a popular story of a District Officer who seduced a settler’s daughter and begot twins. Honourably, he offered marriage. Responded the settler: “I would rather have two bastards in my family than one official.”

 

From the KWN, Jack Ensoll moved to editorship of the Sunday Post, fighting a losing battle to keep his ageing Cosser presses moving and a tiny staff competitive with the energetic young arrivals from Britain who staffed the Aga Khan’s papers in Government Road. He was never going to win this unequal battle and, though Jack steered his charges admirably through the turmoil of independence, eventually both the Post and the Kenya Weekly went to the wall.

 

Jack Ensoll loved Kenya, but some time in the 1970s, he returned to Britain with his family and joined the British Government information department.

There, his bluff, easy-going charm won him a wide circle of friends, including, some did say, the Prime Minister of the day, Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

 

Eventually Jack retired to his beloved Devon, where he died last week, aged 87. His funeral was arranged at the parish church, Saint Nectan’s, in Hartland, which he attended. Saint Nectan was a man after Jack’s own heart.

A fifth century Celtic hermit, he was attacked by robbers and beheaded. He then picked up his head and walked home before collapsing. One of the robbers went blind and the other died. Jack loved that story.

 * * *

I do not recall Jack being a great Kiswahili speaker but he did enjoy that silly game some Europeans played which involved figuring out the meaning of ridiculous Swahili phrases:

1. Maridadi simba.

2. Maji baridi askari.

3.Wewe kunu kuni wewe.

 

The answers being (1) Dandelion (2) Coldstream Guard (3) You would, would you!

 

IN Birth of a Nation, the story of a newspaper in Kenya, author Gerard Loughran included this appreciation:

 

I want to thank also all those current and former Nation staffers, and media people outside of the company, who gave generously of their time and hospitality to recall and explain events of the past half-century, along with those who responded with written recollections and in a variety of other ways. Essentially, this is history as seen by contemporary eye-witnesses, and the book could not have been written in this way without their memories. Gerry Wilkinson was particularly generous not only with his time, encouragement and suggestions over the lengthy period of writing and pre-publication, but crucially for his moral support at times when the way ahead looked obscure. If I have missed anyone who assisted me from the following list, please accept my apologies and take my gratitude as read:

Mahmood Ahamed, Dennis Aluanga, Violet Anyango, Allen Armstrong, Olive Armstrong, Robbie Armstrong, Frank Barton, Dick Beeston, Gavin Bennett, Aziz Bhaloo, Peter Biddlecombe, John Bierman, Brian Carter, Peter Chadwick, Alan Chester, Michael Chester, Nick Chitty, Tom Clark, John Collier, Ivor Davis, Paddy Deacon, Stan Denman, Tony Dunn, John Eames, John and Mary Edwards, Sean Egan, Albert A.A. Ekirapa, Sarah Elderkin, Jack Ensoll, Cyprian Fernandes, Ian Fernandes, Aidan Flannery, Gado (Godfrey Mwampembwa), Dr B.M. Gecaga, Linus Gitahi, John Githongo, Michael Griffin, Desmond Harney, Charles Hayes, Margaret Hayes, Dr Peter Hengel, Richard Henry, Bob Hitchcock, Gloria Hitchcock, Mark Holden, Joe Kadhi, Paul Kalemba, A.R. Kapila, Irene Karanja, Paddy Kearney, Charles Kimathi, James Kinyua, Andrew Kuria, Tony Lavers, John Lawrence, Eric Marsden, Ros Marsden, Joseph Mathenge, Alastair Matheson, Ian Matheson, Julius Mbaluto, Chege Mbitiru, George Mbugguss, Helen Mbugua, Colin MacBeth, Peter McCardle, John McHaffie, Mike Mills, Tom Mshindi, Njonjo Mue, Wamahiu Muya, Mburu Mwangi, Cyrille Nabutollah, Mbatau wa Ngai, Dugal Nisbet-Smith, Mutegi Njau, Bernard K. Njeru, Philip Ochieng, Charles Onyango-Obbo, Albert Odero, Joseph Odindo, Blasto Ogindo, Patrick Orr, Malcolm Payne, John Platter, Ian Raitt, Arnold Raphael, Paul Redfern, Cyrilla Rodrigues, Jim Rose, Nick Russell, Robert Shaw, Mr Justice J.F. Shields, John Silvester, Peter Smith, Roger Steadman, Althea Tebbutt-Berryman, Louise Tunbridge, Errol Trzebinski, Yussuf Wachira, Neema Wamai, Mohammed Warsama, Frank Whalley, Ray Wilkinson, Ali Zaidi, Karl Ziegler.