In 1959 Lloyd was being interviewed by five senior officials at the British Council Building in London for a teaching post in Aitchison College, Lahore, Pakistan. The chairperson suddenly asked, “Have you been trained in Moral Re-Armament?” His response to Lloyd’s ‘yes’ was “Thank goodness. The Principal has told us he wants people if possible trained in Moral Re-Armament, or at least people who believe in God.”
Lloyd already had ten years experience of working in boys boarding schools in UK as a highly competent teacher, housemaster, sports coach and event organiser. This with the element of faith helped him get the job at Aitchison. Thus began an unbroken association with Asia, sealed nine years later by marriage to Promilla, a gifted Pakistani Christian.
Arriving at the College, he found the Principal relied on the British Council to provide access for his students to an international range of scholarship and artistry. He saw MRA as a way in which people of goodwill but of different basic beliefs could work together, avoiding the conflict he had seen in the Partition of his country India. It had already played a part in reconciliation after the hideous events of World War Two.
Lloyd himself regarded the Foreign Office as looking after British interests, while the Council promoted British ideals. Following nine years teaching at Aitchison, the rest of his career was in administrative Council posts, mostly linked to the teaching of English as a foreign language. He was in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan again, the London headquarters for two spells, and finally Council Representative in Uganda for four years until retirement in 1991.
Moral Re-Armament had trained him into an integrity of personal life, the hope of a new world under God’s guidance, and a care that sought to bring out the best in everyone he met. With retentive memory and boundless curiosity, he garnered a vast knowledge of the history and culture of the peoples he worked amongst. Committed to the teachings of Jesus, he saw the Gospel life summarised as Absolute Honesty, Absolute Purity, Absolute Unselfishness and Absolute Love. He found comradeship with sincere Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others who reckoned to bring up children with such standards from their own tradition. And Promilla brought him further deep comprehension
Childhood for himself had been marred by tragedy. His father, a lawyer in the Republic of Ireland, died when Lloyd and his twin sister were 9. Having a younger sister and a grieving mother, he sensed an unwelcome adulthood as the man of the family. At school he excelled in exams and sport, and on merit won a university place in Dublin. Even with a bursary, the family finances could not cover this. So he went to teach at Mourne Grange, a boarding school in Northern Ireland for boys aged 7 to 13, doubling as cricket master, and responsible for 11 boys in an annexe of the school. After seeing them to bed, he stayed up late studying for an external degree, which could secure his career.
It was in this exacting phase that I first met him. I had come for a summer term at Mourne Grange as teacher and assistant cricket master, between my military service in Hong Kong and entry to Cambridge University. After bedtime for the boys, I selfishly kept Lloyd up with my talk, making his nights even shorter. Yet he retained his Irish humour, and astonished me by getting up an hour earlier than was necessary to get to school breakfast. He described this as a ‘quiet time’ when you prayed, read the Bible, and listened for any guidance from the Almighty, noting on paper any specific thoughts for action. He suggested I try it with him for ten minutes one evening. When no thoughts came, he recommended I examine my whole life by the four absolute moral standards. This he had started the year before, and he gave me examples of things he’d had to put right with people. He also told me stories of people he’d met at an MRA conference in Switzerland, who were bringing hope to areas of despair in their countries, starting with their personal experience of change.
After long argument and last-wicket resistance, I went off alone and tried. A flood of guilty thoughts came, requiring several sheets of paper. Parents to be honest with about life in Hong Kong, forgiveness to ask from a younger brother, new habits of genuine care to cultivate. I knew the Bible verse: Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another to be healed. Lloyd was the first Christian who had done that to me. As I with fear and trembling did it to him, for the first time ever, a wave of cleansing liberation swept through body and soul. I had stumbled into a new dimension of God’s grace and could be part of his plan for a new world.
That was May 1955, to be followed by nearly 70 years of friendship. We have stood alongside the peacemakers in countries where we have taught, and used our energies and resources in voluntary support of the world cause we committed our lives to. Former students, some carrying great responsibility in their nations, have honoured us and even sought our counsel. We have received the blessing of family life, he with Promilla, and Jean with me. Lloyd was godfather to our John, and I am godfather to their Cherry.
In our day we have introduced Shakespeare, Lloyd to Urdu speakers in Pakistan, I to Arabic speakers in Sudan. Both of us could echo Hamlet’s remark to his old friend Horatio:
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will –
Horatio replies: That is most certain.
Farewell, Old Friend
Rest in peace
Peter Everington
1st May 2025
