Jock Campbell, Baron Campbell of Eskan

By the 1780s they were supplying the two most important British exports to the West Indies, herring and coarse linen goods.

Among the principal beneficiaries of this booming trade were John Campbell (Senior) and Company, which supplied merchandise to the slave plantations along the coast of Guiana, then in Dutch hands.

It was in this role of supplier that the company first began to acquire plantations along the Essequibo Coast of Guiana, from planters facing bankruptcy.

By the 20th century, the company of Curtis, Campbell and Co had its established place in the British Guiana plantocracy; When Jock's great-grandfather, Colin Campbell of Colgrain, died in 1886 he left £627,000.

Jock's paternal grandfather, William Middleton Campbell, was Governor of the Bank of England between 1907 and 1909.

His mother Mary was of aristocratic Irish stock.

Jock was sent at the age of three, during the First World War, to the family seat of his mother's family, Glenstal Castle in south-west Ireland, to be safe from the bombs of the German Zeppelins.

After the war, Jock returned to the family home in Kent.

He later attended Eton and Exeter College, Oxford.

John Middleton Campbell, Baron Campbell of Eskan (8 August 1912 – 26 December 1994), known familiarly as "Jock", was a British businessman and entrepreneur, who the Chairman of Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co (later Booker-McConnell) in British Guiana (now Guyana) between 1952 and 1967.

Jock Campbell was born on 8 August 1912 to Mary Charlotte Gladys Barrington (1889–1981) and Colin Algernon Campbell, in Kensington, London.

When his grandfather, William Middleton Campbell died in 1919, he left £711,000.

Campbell later remarked often that, in acquiring estates through foreclosure, his ancestors became de facto slave-owners.

Campbell himself abhorred slavery, and it was in fact the urge to make good the misdeeds of his own family that was the catalyst for his own reformist ideals.

Jock Campbell went to British Guiana for the first time to take charge of the family estates, arriving in 1934.

The Campbells owned Las Penitence Wharf on the Demerara River, Georgetown, where they were agents for the Harrison line of shipping.

They also owned Ogle Estate, up the East Coast from Demerara, and Albion, further Eastward in the Berbice district.

In his first few months in the colony, Campbell worked at the family's wharf, assessing the claims made by merchants whose goods had been broached, broken or stolen.

After several months on the wharf, he went to continue his apprenticeship at Albion Estate in the Essequibo District.

One anecdote of this time is characteristic of the shock he suffered on seeing the appalling conditions of the workers:

When shown around the family plantation at Albion, in the Corentyne district of British Guiana, Campbell was appalled by the living conditions of the East Indian cane cutters.

The East Indians had been brought into the country after the liberation of the slaves, and were housed in the same tiny, dark, vermin-infested, earth-floored "logies".

Next to the logies was a more pretentious building, clean, painted, smart-looking, a mansion in comparison to the shacks.

"Jock enquired who lived in the hovels: 'Our coolies,' replied Bee (the estate manager). He then asked of the residents of the trimmed building. Bee said, 'Oh! We keep our mules there.' A naïve 22-year-old Jock asked flippantly: 'Why don’t you move your coolies to the mules' palace and put your mules in the hovels?' A stunned Bee exclaimed cryptically: 'Mules cost money, sir!

As the son of the estate owner, Campbell had enormous influence in spite of his youth and soon embarked on a mission of reform, and this became his life work.

As the first step of plan, he urged his father and uncle to merge the family company the giant company Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co. The take-over took place in 1934, after which Campbell quickly rose to chairman.

Bookers, as it was then known, at the time was a state within a state, owning almost all the colony’s sugar plantations and dominating the economic life of the country so much it was called "Booker’s Guiana".

As head of this state, Campbell went about implementing his reforms.

He was partly driven by the guilt of his family background, but also by the conviction that every business has a responsibility towards its workers; and that profit alone should not be the guiding principle of society.

His reforms continued on a grander scale.

According to Ian McDonald, one of his employees: "All Jock's abundant energy was converted to a faith that Booker had to mean something in a new deal for the West Indies… Demerara was his Damascus."

I believe that there should be values other than money in a civilised society.

I believe that truth, beauty and goodness have a place.

Moreover, I believe that if businessmen put money, profit, greed and acquisition among the highest virtues, they cannot be surprised if, for instance, nurses, teachers and ambulance men are inclined to do the same.

He was Chairman of the Commonwealth Sugar Exporters Association (1950–84).

He was additionally notable as chairman of Booker McConnell, Chairman of the New Statesman and Nation and the first chairman of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation.

He was knighted in 1957 and was created a Labour Party life peer on 14 January 1966, taking the title Baron Campbell of Eskan, of Camis Eskan in the County of Dumbarton.

On 5 May 1971, in the House of Lords, Campbell dissociated himself from his ancestors, arguing that "maximising profits cannot and should not be the sole purpose, or even the primary purpose, of business."

It was John Campbell (Senior), Jock's great-great-grandfather, ship owner and merchant of Glasgow, who, towards the end of the 18th century, first established the fortunes of the Campbell family in the West Indies, through the slave trade.

At the time, Glasgow trading houses, long-experienced in servicing the needs of North American slave plantations, were ready to capitalise on new opportunities in the sugar industry arising on the West Indies.