Official funeral honours Professor Oswald Gaskell Harding’s life of law, politics and public service

An official funeral was held in Kingston for Professor the Hon. Oswald Gaskell Harding, OJ, CD, KC, PhD, with church leaders, family members and state officials gathering to honour his life and national contribution. Among those acknowledged were Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness and his wife, Custos Steadman Fuller representing Governor-General Sir Patrick Allen, Senator Donna Scott-Mottley representing Opposition Leader Mark Golding, and former Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

From the pulpit and the lectern, speakers described Harding as a major figure in Jamaica’s public life and a long-serving parliamentarian. Family tributes said he was born in Kingston on November 3, 1935, attended Kingston College, then continued studies in Canada and at the London School of Economics before being called to the Bar in 1962 through the Inner Temple. He served in the Attorney General’s Department, later in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in 1967 took up duties at Jamaica’s embassy in Mexico as charge d’affaires.

Tributes also traced his work in private and public sectors: company secretary and general counsel at Jamaica Life Insurance Company, senior partner in his own law practice, and service in the Senate beginning in the late 1970s. He went on to serve as President of the Senate, Leader of Government Business in the Senate, Minister without Portfolio in Foreign Affairs, and later Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Speakers said he became the first Jamaican to serve two non-consecutive terms as President of the Senate and was recognised as the country’s longest-serving senator by the time he retired from active politics in 2011.

Family members highlighted his academic and cultural interests, including a PhD from The University of the West Indies, teaching at the University of Technology, and work helping to build its law faculty. They also pointed to his documentation and collection of Jamaican pottery and ceramics, described as one of the largest such collections in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. At home, relatives remembered him as disciplined, humorous and deeply committed to mentoring younger generations.

The service included scripture readings, hymns, prayers and multiple tributes before the body’s recession for burial rites.