TODAY IS ERROL BARROW DAY. The former Prime Minister of Barbados was known as a master orator. Some of the words of his most famous addresses are as relevant now as they were then.
Here are excerpts from some of his speeches, taken from the book Speeches by Errol Barrow, edited by late journalist Yussuff Haniff.
Insurance for the pedestrian
“I do not think that insurance companies are run on the line of provident associations; my experience is that they always fight cases bitterly even when they have been advised by their own legal staff that they are in the wrong. As a matter of principle, they always resort to some legal subtlety in order to escape paying money out of their coffers. An insurance company does not like to settle claims outside the Court, and in nearly 100 per cent of the cases, the accidents will end by litigation: it is only when judgement is pronounced in the court that liability is brought home to the insurance company.”
Taken from his first address in Parliament, February 7, 1952. Mr Barrow was a member of the Barbados Labour Party, the senior member for St George.
READ: Remembering Barrow – Biography
No taxation without representation
“I agree that in our archaic system of the Mosaic Law, a man can suffer capital punishment at the age of 18 years, he can marry at the age of 18 years, he is also subject to the payment of income tax, and if we follow the principle of no taxation without representation to its logical conclusion, it is clear that we cannot disenfranchise the people who are taxpayers of this colony.”
An address in Parliament on January 30, 1962 on the measure to lower the voting age from 21 years to 18.
READ: Remembering Barrow – Why he parted with BLP
The first Barbados Budget
“I think that we in the West Indies should not be afraid to speak our minds. I think that we in the West Indies should not be looking around for somebody to lead and work out our own political and economic philosophy and I do not think that it pays any West Indian politician to either look too rapidly in the direction of Europe or Asiatic countries for our basic philosophies of life.”
The first Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposal was presented in Parliament on June 26, 1962.
READ: Remembering Barrow – The father of Barbados’ Independence
Friends of All
“We shall not involve ourselves in sterile ideological wranglings because we are exponents not of the diplomacy of power, but of the diplomacy of peace and prosperity. We will not regard any great power as necessarily right in a given dispute unless we are convinced of this, yet at the same time we will not view the great powers with perennial suspicion merely on account of their size, their wealth, or their nuclear potential. We will be friends of all, satellites of none.”
An address made to the United Nations when Barbados was admitted in December 1966.
READ: Remembering Barrow – A towering figure in the region
A giant step …
“The Community and Common Market are intended to promote the co-ordinated development of the region and to increase intra-regional trade thereby reducing dependence on extra-regional sources. The community will institutionalise the machinery for the many shared services, which already exist and which even the most prosperous of the More Developed Countries, could not operate on its own.”
This address was made on July 4, 1973 when the Treaty of Chaguaramas was signed, establishing the Caribbean Community and Common Market or CARICOM.
Mirror Image
“Your mirror image of yourself is that your ambition in life is to and get away from this country. And we could call ourselves an independent nation? When all we want do is to go and scrub somebody’s floors and run somebody’s elevator or work in somebody’s store or drive somebody’s taxi in a country where you catching your royal when the winter sets in?
What kind of mirror image do you have of yourself? Let me tell you what kind of mirror image I have of you, or what the Democratic Labour Party has of you. The Democratic Labour Party has an image that the people of Barbados would be able to run their own affairs, to pay for the cost of running their own country, to have an education system which is as good as what can be obtained in any industrialised country, anywhere in the world.”
Prime Minister Errol Barrow addressed a political rally on May 13, 1986 where he introduced the 27 candidates for the next general election.
