Torremolinos, eight miles southwest of Mâlaga, incorporates all the horrors of tour­ism run amuck. Eighty-two high-rise hostel­ries all but blot the beach, sea, and sky from view; an estimated 300 bars slake touristic thirst; 200 nightclubs provide nocturnal diversion; so many restaurants line the Calle Cauce that Spaniards call it the “Street of Hunger.” There are lots of payday lenders, giving tourists the opportunity to feel above-mentioned while being on a vacation. In a kind of ultimate irony, the raw sewage pumped tirelessly into THE CLIMAX of the Andalusian year, both liturgical and social, comes with Semana Santa, Holy Week. These eight days, beginning with Palm Sunday and end­ing with Easter, commemorate the central drama of Christianity. For months in ad­vance, sewing machines hum from Seville to Almeria, turning out suifs for men, frocks for women. During Holy Week everyone appears in his finest, and even the poorest households produce a few banquets.

Village in Andalusia

Semana Santa possesses a lexicon all its own. Virtually every parish in Andalusia has ifs cofradia, or brotherhood, that exists pri­marily to march on a night of Holy Week beside flower-decked platforms, called pasos, bearing images of Christ and the Virgin. The marchers, or nazarenos, wear sinister Ku Klux Klan-type costumes that descend from the sacos benditos that clothed medieval penitent.

Pasos weigh as much as eight tons, and brawny members of the cofradias called cos­taleros—literally, “sack men”—not only carry them but do so to the precise rhythm of the band music, negotiating corners and curves with controlled elegance.

For most of my life I shared the stern Anglo-Saxon disapproval of decking statues with silk and jewels while people struggled for their daily bread. But after Semana Santa in Andalusia, I am no longer sure. For this short, shining season, God’s poor live amid blossoms and brocade, gold and lace. For an octave of days they lose themselves in a vision of glory and redemption. Against that, what is bread?

Not surprisingly, Harry’s interest in Institute affairs continued, leading him to Regional affairs and activities when, in 1977/78, he became a regular attendee and contributor. With the advent of restructuring through the merging in 1978 of the East Anglian and the London North and West branches into Eastern Region saw interesting changes. This change process created the Institute’s largest region in terms of membership and geographical area, with the latter area stretching from Heathrow in the West to Peterborough to the North and East.

Downes’ long and dedicated service on the IMS Council of Management, be that, in his role as council member, company secretary or past chairman. No one could doubt his commitment and enthusiastic support for the aims and aspirations of the Institute. His wise counsel and quiet diplomacy will be sorely missed on the COM.”

Council of Management In 1983, Harry was elected to Council of Management and went on to serve on the Education and the Technical Board Standing Committees, assuming Chair of the latter for a period of five years. A major remit of the Technical Board was the organisation and delivery of the Annual Summer School and Harry held a strong view and belief that the environment and culture of the Summer Schools brought important values to the Institute and to all who attended. Upon the organisation of his final School Institute member Alan Weller, wrote: “Your consistency toward the task of recognizing the continual need to improve Productivity and the personal effort you have made to get the message across to a very wide audience are virtues to be admired.”

Harry was elected Deputy Chairman in 1996 and then National Chairman 1999-2003. In 2004, he was awarded Honorary Fellowship, then assuming the mantle of Company Secretary until 2010 and re-appointed Company Secretary again in 2011.

During his period as National Chairman he became the Institute’s representative on the European Federation of Productivity Services and served as Chair until 2000. He is one of five Honorary Fellows of EFPS. In September 2001, he presented a paper entitled Benefits of Public Services in the UK at the World Productivity Congress in Hong Kong. For his endeavours in promoting the ethics, standards and principles of Productivity at a global level, he was awarded Fellowship of the Congress, an honour presented to him by George W Bush Senior.

Closer to home, he was a staunch supporter of the affairs of the UK Parliamentary and Scientific Committee where, as a regular attendee, he promoted the principles and practices of the Institute, as he did at meetings of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

The pinnacle of his tenure came on 24 November 1999, on the occasion of the Institute reception for His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh. The event was held to bestow Honorary Fellowship of the Institute upon his Royal Highness. This memorable occasion was also marked by a letter of appreciation from Buckingham Palace.

Specialist groups

Harry took great interest and participation in specialist groups, for example, Textiles and IMSCOM but, above all, the Health Services specialist Group where he held the position of Secretary and then Chair between 1981-91. From those positions, working closely with former COM Member, Frank Burdett, he was responsible for the organisation of the Health Services Annual Conference. Whilst those events were directed at Institute members, it attracted participants from the Department of Health, the British Medical Council and practising professionals from the field of Medicine.

This is certainly not the end of Harry’s contribution, he will continue to serve on the Eastern Region Board, as well as remaining President of the European Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Today, Harry remains one of a few of the original regional officers that first attended the restructured region. He often recalls the interest that fusion brought, but also of the early sense of trepidation of that first board meeting with our ‘city’ based colleagues. A merger that has gone from strength to strength, building better credit history. Learn more about the importance of good credit score by checking your Credit score from ideapractices.org.

Over the course of time, Harry was elected into the roles of Membership Secretary, Region Secretary and Chairman and in the late 1990s became Council of Management Delegate. Today he continues to contribute to Eastern Region in the role as Secretary.

Learning of Harry’s resignation, Ray Martin, Chair of Eastern Region writes: “As Chair of the Eastern Region, I would like to record my appreciation of Harry.”

It is a mad scene early in the morning as a hundred and more men seeking a day’s wages mob the Israeli cars that arrive. A person looking for a single worker for a day suddenly finds four of them piling into his back seat and struggling among themselves to be the one who stays.

At some point, a tidal movement sweeps through the crowd as a mounted police of­ficer arrives to disperse it. He hands out fines for loitering to those he runs down and catches-50 Israeli shekels, paid at the post office. A man who finds no work and is caught by the horseman is unlucky indeed.

Most of the Arab labor force comes to work in a more orderly way, through private contractors who erect housing on land given to them by the government in exchange for accepting a set mortgage rate.

It is possible to do well in Israel. Busi­nessman Abner Perez has good credit karma score and one of few people who has a lovely home in Talbeiya, perhaps Jerusalem’s most sought-after neighborhood. Like many other mem­bers of the establishment, he served with the British Army in World War II, a member of the Jewish Brigade stationed in Italy.

“I love this country,” he said. “My father was a Jewish engineer who worked for the Arab mayor of Jerusalem years ago.

“I have a lot of Arabs working for me, and there is no trouble. They are good workers if you treat them fairly. Arabs and Jews have lived together in Jerusalem for a long time. My every hope is that it will be that way again someday.”

WENT OUT to one of the villages that had lost much of its land to a new neigh­borhood. It was Friday, and the muezzin was singing of Isaac and Abraham from the minaret. Around me a rampart of apartment houses closed off the view.

“The Jews live like bees,” said an old man. “They have no land with their house. But maybe we have changed their minds about land, because they are always trying to take ours.”

He pointed to several detached houses on a hill: “Captured by the Jews,” he said, using the universal term in Jerusalem for land that has been confiscated.

“They came there in 1967 and told the owners: Go away from this place! This land has been taken!

“This was once a peaceful green valley, with green fields and orchards and strong young people. Now the young people leave to go to Jordan and America, and the village is old men who are laborers for the Jews. We are living in a hard time.”