WHEN veteran political warrior Sir Frederick Smith, died in July last year he was the finishing erstwhile colleague of Sir Grantley Adams and the only remaining opportunity for an eyewitness account of those early years of combative engagement with the exploitative colonial office.
And no one who was born in Sir Grantley’s epoch (April 1898) is alive to offer first hand details of the unprecedented story of the epic struggles that transformed the conditions of his people, particularly the poor masses and unrepresented labouring class.
It was therefore apposite for the party which Adams others founded, the Barbados Labour Party, (BLP) to use the 2017 anniversary of his birth to recall and document the often daring undertakings of a political legend, a national
hero, a distinguished leader and a regional visionary.
The endeavours and accomplishments of the first premier of Barbados are too often forgotten because of the passage of time and they are bypassed in favour of the more recent and more glittering record of Errol Barrow, who, like Sir Frederick, a former colleague of Adams, turned opponent and went on to found the rival Democratic Labour Party, which carved its own rightful place of prominence in the history of modern Barbados.
If Barrow is recognised as the father of our independence, then surely Adams is the father of our political and social liberation, for Barbados before Sir Grantley was no match for Barbados after Sir Grantley.
The tribute paid to him in a paid advertisement last Sunday stated: “Nothing of anything we take for granted today was even on the horizon in that period.”
Life for black plantation workers was a sordid existence at the pleasure of the planter class. There were no roads, no concept of land or home ownership, no respect for family, no rights or protection for people being paid the equivalent
of a shilling (24 cents) a week for hours that far exceeded, even doubled, the 40-hour week we enjoy today. “Holiday” was not a part of the vocabulary of workers, and sick leave was just as vague a concept.
Two years after Sir Grantley first entered the House of Assembly as merely a 36-year-old lawyer and agitator, there was such a tide of protest against the repressive system of government that preferred lingering and widespread poverty and deprivation among the masses that the historic disturbances followed three years later, the catalyst for change.
Because Sir Grantley’s base was unalterably located among the workers of the country, mainly the sugar workers, he earned an unparalleled level of respect from this the most exploited sector of the population, securing both the BLP and the Barbados Workers’ Union a sheltered place of honour in the annals of Barbados’ development.
Indeed today, almost 50 years after his death, his party’s unshakeable strength lingers among the working people of rural parishes like St Thomas, St George and St Joseph.
Sunday’s published tribute highlighted several of the educational and social attainments that are credited to this trailblazer for democracy: adult suffrage, self-government, workers’ holidays and then holidays with pay, partial free secondary education, the airport at Seawell which is named after him and the deep water harbour at Bridgetown, public housing, provision of housing loans and the enactment of the Protection of Wages Act, fundamental to altering the anachronistic system of exploitative employment practices that prevailed at the time.
Sir Grantley wrote his name on history’s page with great expectations. This generation must not let him down for there can be no doubt that he is among our brave forefathers who sowed the seed from which our pride is sprung.