Here lies a man who has, in his own way, made a contribution to his country – Frederick Gladstone “Sleepy” Smith, 1978, on what he would like his epitaph to say.
MY FIRST encounter with the man universally known as “Sleepy” Smith – an appellation used without disrespect or condescension – was at the opening ceremony of a sporting facility at the National Stadium.
Then, I was a young sports reporter at the Old Lady next door, and after the speeches, managed to get him alone as he approached the car. As instructed, I asked him a few questions seeking the scoop away from the competitors, and then: “By the way, Mr Minister, how much does this facility cost?”
To my surprise, he seemed to suddenly turn angry and launched into a tirade against me and the Press generally.
“Instead of you asking me how the people going to enjoy this place, wunnah want to how much must it cost. The Press always know the cost of everything but the value of nuttin’.”
He went on in that vein for a few moments before the apparent anger subsided.
“I doan have the figures with me now but when I get back to the office, I will get them from the Permanent Secretary and leh you know.”
Then, he got in the car and left.
Needless to say, I never got that call about the cost of the stadium facility and in our subsequent conversations in the precincts of Parliament or the courts after I had switched from sports to news, the matter was never mentioned again.
But after the 1976 general election which ended the Democratic Labour Party’s 15-year reign, he became Leader of the Opposition (briefly) and was a boundless source of information and insights into the workings of the political system and the strengths and weaknesses of the major players.
I have never forgotten that first meeting with “Sleepy” Smith whose initial reaction on the cost issue might have been misinterpreted as that of a typical politician – reckless in the expenditure of public funds, and hubristic about the notion of accountability to voters. He was neither.
And the man that he had become – lawyer, politician and later Appeals Court judge – was probably the result of the circumstances of his birth and Christian upbringing as a typical country boy from a big family (five boys and five girls) who was ambitious but kept his humility through his long life.
Throughout his active life in politics and at the Bar, Smith experienced disappointment, betrayals and bigotry, but insisted he bore no grudges or bitterness.
“I treat a human being as a human being,” he told an interviewer. I never start out looking at a man as a black man or a white man. But if he comes with any racial foolishness, he would get the full treatment.”
In his book, Political Warriors, NATION Editor Emeritus Harold Hoyte recalls that in paying tribute to Sleepy Smith at the time of his retirement from political service, long-time colleague Cameron (later Sir James) Tudor precisely captured the essence of this durable associate of the working class when he quoted Friedrich von Schuller: “His heart, rather than his opinion, brings honour to a man.”
Tudor, Hoyte notes, added his own view: “If it is true that graciousness makes a man irresistible, then an honest man has no choice but to endure malice and spite . . . his grateful companions will rate him far higher than he now suspects, as one who shared with them, not only the fruits of undisputed victory, but also the salvage of honourable defeat.”
As Hoyte recalls, Sleepy Smith was tagged as a grassroots politician but saw himself as far more.
“I have always felt that whereas you champion the grassroots, Barbados is not all grassroots. It is made up of black, white, middle class, lower middle class, lower income and whatever category. Even though I feel I am grassroots, I still feel the middle class and upper class have a right to benefit from the total output of the society. Therefore, I would like to think that I was not only grassroots, but that I could have rapport with, and articulate the problems of all sectors.”
With his passing last Monday at the age of 92, Sleepy Smith brought an end to an epoch of social and political struggle that stretched from the 1930s and saw Barbados transformed from a little British colonial backwater into the most progressive and richest island in the Eastern Caribbean.
Though he never hid his ambitions, Sleepy Smith bared his back and his soul for the masses and they would in turn share and exchange mutual disappointments: him in them, and they in him.
He was, for example, the only MP to have resigned a seat in the House of Assembly twice after serving just two years each time: in April 1958, when he felt he had lost the confidence of his colleagues in the House over some differences between them; and again in 1978 after he was stung by a narrow 20-vote victory over a Barbados Labour Party neophyte.
“If I could only beat Charlie Hinds by 20 votes, then it means the people of St Michael South Central don’t want me. I dun wid dat.”
It was a typically forthright response to the general election result from a man who lived to represent people and demonstrated a keen understanding of Barbados and Barbadians.
Through his years of service and sacrifice, Sleepy Smith remained steadfast to that commitment, and though he would later admit to some regrets about his political life, there was never any bitterness.
“Politicians don’t sacrifice for politics,” he told an interviewer. “Politics enables you to see places in the world; meet and mix with people all over the world . . . so when ministers and others talk about sacrifices, it is bare phooey. As ordinary F.G. Smith Q.C., I could not have done any of that.
“I have no real regrets because the only jobs I haven’t held in Barbados are Prime Minister and Governor General.”
Yes, he can without immodesty now state with Othello: “I have done the State some service, and they know’t.”
Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent. Email: [email protected]
