CONTROVERSIES OVER EATING ROASTED breadfruit by the roadside and imported “queens” have in recent times conspired to sully the noble contribution the constituency of St John has made to the political development of Barbados.
And they unfortunately erupted just when the constituency seemed content to rest on its laurels having produced two Prime Ministers of Barbados and with the fates appearing to have moved once again lining up the parish for a possible third.
The vagaries of St John politics, however, are such that politicians whom the electorate once warmly embraced in a particular era were roundly rejected as circumstances changed and the voters moved on.
That the quality of representative on offer in this January 20 by-election is poor is no reflection on the people of the parish who may have had choices made for them, but rather an indictment of the national political system itself.
This, after all is the parish that rejected one of its own, the retired judge and renowned classical scholar J.W.B. Chenery; ignored the distinguished educator Luther A. Thorne; embraced for nearly a decade and then discarded perhaps the greatest, but certainly one of the earliest grassroots politicians, Owen T. Allder; and then fulfilled the destiny of the “Father of Independence” National Hero Errol Walton Barrow.
So that the steadfastness of the St John voter who has kept faith with Barrow and his political descendants over the past half-century should not be taken for granted.
The planter and merchant class which held sway in this rural parish until the middle of the last century learnt that lesson the hard way, even though the writing had been on the wall from the late 1930s with the ascent of people like the popular vestryman Bernard L. (“B.L.”) Barrow.
“B.L.” Barrow was a strong personality who railed against the historical hegemony of the planter class that gradually gave way in the face of the social revolution of the 1930s and paved the way for worthy successors such as Hugh Blackman and Allder, among others.
The so-called oligarchy had ruled St John in the manner befitting what it was essentially – one large plantation.
To this day, the parish in many ways still physically reflects the power of the planter class which had dominated political life from the earliest times.
Daily bread
Though industrialisation and the public service have together provided jobs for some outside the parish, many still earn their daily bread from the fertile soil.
They are a strong peple, and so, they look to strong leaders for representation.
For example, of the early group of progressives, it was Allder – a forceful and dynamic speaker – whose independence as as an auctioneer and real estate agent stamped him as a favourite among the people.
At a time when many emerging black politicians were still trying to find their footing in an arena largely dominated by conservative elements, Allder won a seat in the House of Assembly for the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) in 1948 and was to control the parish for the next eight years.
But he, like many of the young stalwarts of the BLP (including Errol Barrow), was to part ways with the party in the 1950s. It was a separation that would not only eventually cost the party dearly but also Allder his political career.
Though he continued to represent the parish as an Independent until 1956, Allder’s influence was clearly on the wane. In that election, the BLP as the major organised political force in the country, took both seats.
It was a general election of enormous portent. Not only did Allder lose his grip on St John, but in the neighbouring parish of St George (where Errol Barrow had held a seat since 1951) the weight of the BLP’s machinery was also felt with Barrow losing his seat as well.
As Barbados, and indeed the region, advanced politically, it was significant that one of these important developments – the introduction of Federal Government – should have given Errol Barrow the chance he longed for to return to the House.
It was almost automatic for the political leader of the fledgling DLP to be selected to contest a by-election in 1958 for the seat made vacant by the resignation of Victor Vaughan, who was one of five Barbadians elected to the Federal Parliament.
In this poll, held amidst an unsanctioned strike by sugar workers, Errol Barrow defeated both Allder and the retired judge Chenery, the BLP’s standard-bearer, by a comfortable margin.
He polled 1 430 to Allder’s 873 and Chenery’s 554, and commented that the result was “only the first blow against political corruption and economic stagnation”.
The vanquished Chenery said: “The strike situation played into the hands of the Democratic Labour Party. Mr Barrow had a grip on the parish generally that nobody imagined. As the campaign progressed, it became increasingly obvious that the people of St John were not all solidly behind the Barbados Labour Party, largely because of the unsettled labour situation.”
One observer said Chenery was totally unsuited for the contest, especially against the charismatic Barrow, now honing his relentlessly attacking style.
“Chenery was regarded as an academic whose classical allusions on the platforms had little appeal for the man in the street of a barely literate constituency,” he wrote.
“On the other hand, Allder, a small auctioneer, who though slightly better off than those from among whom he had sprung, nevertheless was clearly better able to relate to them and articulate their concerns in language they could understand.
“The BLP had made every other possible effort to defeat Barrow again and if possible run him out of politics which made many people wonder at the party’s choice of candidate.”
This was the beginning of Errol Barrow’s long association with the parish, which was broken only by his death in 1987.
Errol Barrow’s many opponents over the years frequently levelled the now oft heard charge that he neglected the parish for his national duties, first as Premier, twice as Prime Minister, and as Leader of the Opposition.
But if that were to be regarded as a negative factor, then the response of the electorate to him seemed to indicate just how much store they placed in the accusation.
Following the defeat of his Government in 1976, Barrow returned to the parochial aspects of representation – opening the DLP’s first constituency branch office in the parish and was also involved in providing a park for the enjoyment of parishioners and visitors.
But as he did in the hurly-burly of Government, he again came face to face with it in the relative leisure of Opposition – the scourge of unemployment.
One of the more striking similarities between the 1958 by-election, that of 1987 and this one in 2011, is the issue of joblessness.
It has been the major complaint canvassers from the two politicial parties would have heard, especially among the youth in all three campaigns.
Though official figures were hard to obtain in 1958, a board of inquiry, set up to look into the protracted sugar workers’ strike, discovered that there were about 22 000 workers in the industry while another 10 000 were unemployed.
It seemed fair to conclude then that a significant portion of that number would have been from a basically agricultural parish such as St John.
In 1987, while the national unemployment figure was about 20 per cent, unofficial surveys placed that for St John at about 42 per cent, a figure neither major party disputed.
In fact, some estimates placed unemployment in pockets of the parish as high as 90 per cent.
Today, the national unemployment rate, as revealed by Governor of the Central Bank Dr DeLisle Worrell last week, is above 11 per cent, and there are suggestions that it could be twice that rate in St John.
But in the end, issues such as unemployment, drugs, crime, roads – even the unfinished polyclinic – may matter little to voters on January 20.
As the island’s only daily newspaper said in an editorial after Errol Barrow’s 1958 victory, the people of St John “have less political allegiance than those of other parishes and are more inclined to vote for a personality than for a party”.
• Albert Brandford is an independent freelance political correspondent.
