AS BARBADIANS RECENTLY celebrated Errol Barrow Day, I hope they took time to reflect on the life of the man who played a major role in fashioning the way Barbadians viewed themselves, and the way they saw their brothers and sisters in the Caribbean. His was the gospel of self-reliance, self-esteem and independence.
He always sought an opportunity to remind the people of the Caribbean of their own capacity to solve their problems.
He said we have been a people who have been imbued with a sense of our own inadequacy. Many of his speeches were designed to disabuse peoples’ minds of this sense of inadequacy and to build up the self-confidence, not only of Barbadians but of the people of the Caribbean, in general.
Barrow’s adult life was one of service. He spent seven years in the Royal Air Force, starting in 1940, and consequently sought service in the Second World War. He returned home equipped with a degree in law and joined the then ruling Barbados Labour Party, serving as one of its members of Parliament.
From 1951 to 1955, he led a breakaway from the Barbados Labour Party to the Democratic Labour Party. Six years later the party swept to power and held office for 15 unbroken years.
In these 15 years Errol Walton Barrow presided over a quiet revolution in Barbados that transformed the society and opened educational opportunities to the masses of poor Barbadians.
The mass outpouring of grief that followed his death was testimony to the high esteem in which he was held.
However, the real testimony to Errol Barrow’s contribution to Barbados is the thousands of poor blacks who now find education within their reach and through education, a better life for thousands of their children.
– DONOVAN HOWELL