What is the real hard history of majority rule day?

 P. Anthony
(For The Punch – 10 January 2013)
by P. Anthony White

Today, 10 January, just over eight months since the “new” Progressive Liberal Party again became the government of The Bahamas, all is not well as prime minister Perry Christie and his administration face some worrisome challenges, particularly with regard to the embarrassing fiasco at the National Insurance Board.

Today, 10 January, also marks the 46thanniversary of this date back in 1967, when the PLP first became the government, in coalition with Labour and an Independent, with the late Sir Lynden Pindling as premier.

That event ushered in majority rule in The Bahamas, and all modern Bahamian history and sociology take relevance and significance from that happening.

Indeed the late Sir Randol Fawkes and Sir Alvin Braynen were grudgingly though sweetly part and parcel of the revolution had to be recognised and acknowledged for their roles as independent accommodators of that historic people’s achievement.

Nineteen-sixty seven was a year of some marked movements and occurrences on several diverse fronts.

That was the year surgeons began experiencing problems with the new technology of heart transplants, and when a short war broke out between Arabs and Israelis, with Israel emerging as a regional power.

In this region Donald Sangsterwas Acting Prime Minister of Jamaica, and Vere Bird, Sr became premiere of Antigua.

In the movies in 1967, “In The Heat of The Night” was rated best picture and “Bonanza” was the most-watched television show.

In New York City, The White Boy was winding up his educational odyssey.

Yet in the region and around most of the free world, what had happened in the small British colony of The Bahamas caused a stir.

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Although independence was not to come until 1973, sections of the international press insisted on likening the outcome of the 1967 elections to those activities in African territories resulting in freedom from colonialism.

At home that perception was fine with many, many people, since it attracted international sympathy and rendered the local leaders of the revolution somewhat greater champions.

Indeed it must be admitted that both at home and abroad, the 1973 independence mood and celebrations paled by comparison to the drama and the hoo-ha on 10 January 1967.

The adoption of the musical them from the movie Exodus (“This land is mine, God gave this land to me”), coupled with the analogy of the new premier to Moses and the Biblical significance of The Tenth Day of the First Month (10 January) had conspired to render the PLP’s 1967 victory a matchless national wonder.

And indeed it was. Only a fool would balk at that reality. Only political paranoia would cause rejection of that momentous item of Bahamian history. Yet history is a continuously evolving affair. Like time, it marches on, and new developments, new technologies, and new human perspectives require wise men and nations to keep apace.

The sad alternative is to become stuck in time, to become a slave to an irrelevant time or period, and as a result to be rendered almost useless to the real, modern, today world.

Progressive from 1967 the PLP, as the government until 1992, much to the credit of the late prime minister Sir Lynden Pindling, moved with the times, letting in new light and technologies, and embracing many opportunities for advanced national development.

If there were shortcomings and negative commissions and omissions which led to the party’s defeat in the 1992 general elections, they stand beside the accomplishments like National Insurance and the College of The Bahamas, but can never in honesty erase them.

However, when that political wheel turned in another direction with that unforgettable election of 1992, which ended the quarter century rule by the PLP, a new political, historical and developmental era descended upon The Bahamas. A new culture and a new generation of modern Bahamians began to dominate The Bahamas.
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The country sensibly faced those new challenges with modern tools and new and modern political and developmental ideas. The clear indication was that under the new government of the Free National Movement and its leader Hubert Ingraham, the promise of a new culture would indeed become reality, even at the expense of the prime minister’s popularity inside his own FNM enclave.

Those Bahamians who were still unemployed, those citizens who safety was jeopardised by criminal elements, and those forward-looking local entrepreneurs seeking economic break-throughs all wanted to be presented with a new, modern set of plans for relief based on that refreshing new culture.

They all appreciated the historical and historic significance of what happened in The Bahamas in January of 1967, even, in the case of the youth, if they had only read about it or had been lectured on it.

Yet they understood well that their needs could not be met, their problems solved, or a bright future guaranteed by a nostalgic step backwards through the looking glass into the wonderful memorabilia of 1967.

When the Free National Movement captured the government in 1992, it was primarily because the Bahamian people were reacting to the difficult and dark realities of the time. Back in the late 1970s, for example,

The White Boy was forced to take the decision to relocate with his family to the Cayman Islands and then to the Seychelles, because politics had, deliberately or otherwise, prevented his economic progress in his hometown. But leave that there.

When the government changed in 1992 after 26 years of PLP rule, the voters had shelved the magnetic wonder of 1967, had stripped off the rose-coloured glasses, and had seen life fully and seen it whole.

When in 1992 the people voted overwhelmingly for the FNM, it was out of utter necessity and common sense, and not because anyone thought any less of the significance of 1967.

That was why, when another election came in 1997, it was difficult to understand why so many responsible figures in the then opposition PLP, led by Perry Christie who is the present prime minister, would have wanted again to attempt using the dram and the glory of 1997 as any pivotal part of any serious election campaign.

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Whilst there might indeed have been pockets of fairly senior citizens to whom the PLP which brought majority rule and the Square Deal and free high school education would have been considered a sacred cow never to be repudiated, that lot would have been a quaint minority.

Even today a majority of modern, intelligent PLPs are not sheepishly impressed with the 1967 razzmatazz. They are certainly proud of their PLP, and most probably will continue to vote or the PLP because they believe a new PLP order, especially that launched last year as a platform Charter for Governanceis still possible. However, they ought sensibly to leave the 1967 PLP on the historical shelf.

Political parties and movements and causes and personalities change. They change because the people and the communities they serve are ever evolving. Any political organisation or personality stuck in a time and mentality frame is doomed, like the ghost of Jacob Marley, forever to walk the night.

The Free National Movement which contested the general elections of 1972 and 1977 would not at all have been expected to have captured the polls in 1992, except that those Bahamians who voted FNM in 1992, and who became admirers and supporters of the party understood completely what had happened in 1972.

They had come to appreciate and applaud those original eight dissidents who had walked away from power and glory to found a political three which would not bear fruit for a full twenty years.

Indeed even now, when the PLP is the government, if they have not yet done so, the present leaders and frontliners of the ruling PLP could still learn a valuable lesson from a study of the FNM, why the party kept losing, and how and why the party won in 1992.

For four elections after the 1967 revolution which brought majority rule, a majority of Bahamians voted PLP because – coupled with the fact that they could see change and development taking place around them and they were politically trained to believe that the opposition FNM was the white man – the glowing spectre of 1967 was forever emblazoned before them.

That corporate vision was shattered in 1992, even though, in 2002 and again last year in 2012, the new PLP under leader Perry Christie was able to reach deep into the political consciences of old and new PLPs, and not doubt of others among the populace willing to go again with the party that brought majority rule.
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Today on the 46thanniversary of majority rule, it is almost vulgar to involve that singular glory in the mud and the mist of partisan politics. Rather, wreaths should be laid to the champions like Clarence Bain and Milo Butler and Uriah McPhee and Carlton Francis and Doris Johnson and remember how they always kept things in perspective.

Of course today’s new PLP and prime minister must lead the way in that new direction . . . for what it’s worth.

30

Bill Cartwright: A last farewell to a nation’s hero

For more than four decades in The Bahamas, stretching back to 1968, successive governments have failed properly to recognise and pay tribute to nationals who have contributed significantly to the development first of the colony, and then of the Bahamian nation.

Back in June 1972 as the Progressive Liberal Party government had set out the terms of independence the following year, the government caused the House of Assembly to pass a Special Resolution honouring and acclaiming the late Sir Milo Butler as a National Hero.

Independence came on 10 July 1973, and on 1 August that year Milo Butler, having been knighted in the queen’s 1973 Birthday Honours, was sworn in as the first Bahamian governor-general.

All that was quite fitting, yet at the time there were yet alive three Bahamians whose early vision, defiance, and revolutionary spirit had initially set the stage for majority rule, and for independence.

They were Henry Milton Taylor, Cyril St. John Stevenson, and William Wilton Cartwright. The three had established the Progressive Liberal Party in September 1953, twenty years before independence.

All three, to one degree or another, had suffered deprivation and dispossession because of what they had dared to do blatantly in the face of the oligarchical regime then governing the colony, yet, quite frankly, successive new peoples’ governments had failed to go again to Parliament with a proposition of new Special Resolutions to designate the three as national heroes.

A new government of the Free National Movement came to office in 1992, serving until 2002, when the PLP again became the government for a single term. This was succeeded in 2007 by the FNM, which served until May of 2012, when the PLP again became the government.

By May of this year two of the three founders of the PLP – Sir Henry Taylor and Cyril Stevenson – had already passed on to another kind of glory, but the third founder, the final keeper of that original revolutionary flame, William Cartwright, was still barely alive, in a home for the aged, cared for, literally, by good Samaritans.

That was until one month following this year’s general elections. In a way, the chronicle of Bill Cartwright continues to be a sort of neverending story in The Bahamas, and perhaps rightfully it ought to be, all things considered.

Finally this past Monday we laid William Wilton Joseph Cartwright to rest in Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Cemetery on Shirley Street, following a two-hour funeral service at the Anglican Church of St. Gregory the Great on Carmichael Road.

Bill Cartwright, as noted, was one of the three founders of the Progressive Liberal Party. He passed away on 7 June, four months short of his 90^th birthday.

The funeral, if one may be forgiven such a description of such a traditionally sad and mournful affair, was a splendid occasion upon which leading representatives of Church and State spoke of the departed social and political revolutionary in quite fitting terms, with family members and others in the church nodding in quiet acknowledgement.

Among those in attendance was the Roman Archbishop Patrick Pinder, no doubt in recognition of the fact that William Cartwright had for most of his life been a practising Roman Catholic.

 There were no tears shed.

Regardless of the disconsolate condition of his final years, when Bill Cartwright was forced to lean so heavily on the care and kindness of strangers, there was a diverse number of Bahamians who could relate to several stages of his life, either directly or else through tales told by their elders.

For example, one such was a fellow named Samuel Alexander Miller II, who was about 13 years younger than Bill Cartwright, but who was funeralised at Bethel Baptist Church on Meeting Street on Saturday 16 June this year, two days before Bill.

They used to call him “Bodyguard”, and he hailed originally from Knowles, Cat Island. In his final years he resided in a building at the corner of West and South Streets, opposite the gas station.

Even when Bodyguard’s health began to fail, he would sit inside the door of the residence, watching the world pass by unless and until some friend stopped by to say hello and spend some caring, quality time with him.

Each day a few years back he used to make his way slowly down West Street to sit and chat with regulars at the Bethel-Robertson bar near to Meadow’s Street, and often he would move across the street under the fig tree where he sat on a bench or box and impart pearls of wisdom to the eager, thirsty souls who desired to know, such as The White Boy.

Bodyguard delighted especially in relating old time stories of Cat Island, and we vividly remember his versions of some of the things that happened back in 1949 when Bill Cartwright was making his first bid to become an elected Member if the House of Assembly for that district.

That was about four years before the establishment of the PLP, and Cartwright was at the time an enterprising relatively young Bahamian in the real estate business, with an office on Bay Street.

Bodyguard told of how Cartwright had gone ahead as an independent and nominated to run for one of the two Cat Island seats. At that time Cat Island was pretty much a political stronghold of the powerful Harold G. Christie, but apparently that did not faze Bill Cartwright.

On the last night of his campaign, Bill Cartwright took along his old friend, Dr. Claudius Roland Walker, who was one of the candidates for the Southern District of New Providence, and who was considered a man of great persuasion on the campaign trail.

Cartwright especially wanted Dr. Walker to help him convince the patriarch of The Bight settlement, Sammie Swain, that for the first time he should consider voting for a black man.

Cat Island was a two-man constituency, and Dr. Walker appealed to Sammie Swain to try at least to convince the people to split their votes. Later Bill Cartwright was to tell of how greatly impressed he was with the powerful argument advanced by Dr. Walker, who had already won his New Providence seat.

The Cat Island candidate then put to Swain the plain question concerning the way the patriarch would vote the following day, and persuade others to vote.

Sammie Swain, after thinking deeply, informed Bill Cartwright that he, Swain, was fond of both Bill Cartwright and Harold Christie, so what he planned to do was to vote for Christie, and pray for Cartwright.

Both Christie and Cartwright won the Cat Island seats, and four years later he went on, with Taylor and Stevenson, to establish the PLP. In 1972, the bulk of the political movers and shakers in the new Free National Movement had actually been at the heart of the PLP before disenchantment had set in.

In fact at the outset, the original members of the Free PLP used to boast that they were indeed the “keepers of the dream” – the dream of freedom and social and political development initially advanced back in September 1953 when Bill Cartwright and two other Bahamian visionaries look that quantum political leap.

Now Bill Cartwright is gone, but his and how two valiant founders of the PLP will be a neverending story in the modern Bahamas, and beyond . . . for what it’s worth.

In today’s Bahamas, who truly deserves a happy Father’s Day?

This week, five and a half months into the year 2012, The Bahamas recorded its 66^th murder, that record outdistancing any in any year thus far in modern history.

A few of the murder victims were women, but by far they were men, a good number of them “known to police” as persons with criminal backgrounds, some of them mowed down by criminal opponents.

Some of the male murder victims were fathers, young and middle aged, which means there exists children, perhaps hundreds of them, who will grow up fatherless, as thousands of others through the years before have been forced to do.

But that is the way it is, and the mournful way it will continue to be through the end of this year, and beyond, save for dramatic social or moral reform, or, of course, divine intervention.

This Sunday The Bahamas, along with most of the western world, will observe Father’s Day, an idea born in Spokane, Washington just over a century ago, and made official in 1972 by former U.S. President Richard Nixon, who declared that the third Sunday in June each year should be set aside in tribute to fathers.

In that declaration Nixon explained that the Father’s Day observance ought to be “in honour of all good fathers that contribute as much to the family as a mother, in their own way.”

For many years that American tradition of Father’s Day has been followed by countries all over the world, including The Bahamas which cannot truly boast of any superabundance of good fathers that contribute as much to the family as a mother, in their own ways.

This Sunday across the bothered Bahamian landscape, in churches and at lavish lunches, thousands of Bahamians will fete fathers, good, bad, indifferent, gone missing, or simply, as the late Archdeacon William Thompson used to describe them, “worthless and good-for-nothing”.

Yet over time this country has had its share of caring fathers who tried their best, but who far too often find themselves, as they grow nearer the grave, neglected by offspring who know, but who simply do not give a tinker’s damn.

Far too many once caring fathers are left to lean heavily on the Christian charity of strangers.

Not many blocks south of Mount Fitzwilliam down Blue Hill Road, where the Governor-General resides, there exists a graphic reflection of what we truly are in this nation of nearly 39 years.

At that somewhat famous crossroads Over-the-Hill, there exists an historic church stretching back before emancipation, and atop of which there is a concrete cross stretching high into the heavens, as if beseeching special intercession for God’s dispossessed.

That is the point of conjoinment with Grant’s Town and Bain Town where in the faces and in the lives of so many in the surrounding area there is on the ground the pained and wounded, a sad and sorrowful reflection of the real Bahamas.

Morning after morning there sit a tiny congregation of elderly, obviously indigent Bahamian men, now and then accompanied by who seems an equally depressed and disadvantaged old lady in need.

They sit on boxes,makeshift benches, and sometimes one or two perch with a kind of decrepit elegance in wheelchairs, seeking alms from the stream of motorists who must stop at the juncture waiting for the light to change from red to green.

Those waiting there at the corner, like others long before them sitting at the Bible’s Gate Beautiful are proud and no doubt prideful fathers and grandfathers and perhaps even great grandfathers who no doubt wonder what happened to human and familial gratitude.

We remember well how about five years back there was a funeral service for an elderly dear departed lady, and the young woman reading the Epistle or New Testament Lesson was so consumed with deep grief as she made her way through the scriptural passage.

The departed was the “grandmother” of the young lady, the quiet and almost fragile Sabria Armbrister, and the surrounding story was one of caring and concern which could have taught the Bahamian nation volumes about caring and concern, despite the indifference and neglect of blood relatives. 

Sabria was at the time not even 30, and for a long time back in the 1990s she used to grieve over the death of her own grandmother, finding herself often at the graveside in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, putting down flowers and reflecting with a lingering, relentless fondness.

There was no blood relationship between Sabria and the departed matron over whom she grieved with a kind of beautiful sadness at St. Agnes Church that Saturday afternoon, and therein existed a tale of compassion, amazingly exuding from a lovely young Bahamian with apparently little time for discos and the cataclysm of the fast lane.

Sabria had played a major role in what, in the late 1990s became the Grandmothers and Grandfathers Association up at the Geriatrics division of the Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre, where a good number of the elderly residents were in need of caring relatives.

In the programme, caring members of the community, like The White Boy, were prevailed upon to “adopt” a grandmother or grandfather, paying visits from time to time, remembering birthdays, and on occasion taking their “grandparent” for an outing.

It was a wonderful testimony of true caring and outreach, and strong bonds were formed between grandparent and “child”. As one of those “children”, The White Boy was at the time nearly 60.

Of course time would eventually overtake a grandparent, and death, the inevitable, had to be faced. That death came to Sabria’s grandmother, and the girl was completely distraught, so entirely connected she had become with the old lady.

Why is there today such a dearth of Bahamians who care so deeply for the elderly of the land, even when the elderly is a flesh-and-blood mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, or even an old aunt, uncle, or cousin?

Indeed why is there so little carting or compassion, like the gentle Sabria’s, simply for the withered old woman who years ago used to live down the street in the old neighbourhood?

Many, for whatever reason, do not find themselves ensconced up at the Geriatrics Hospital where at least there is orderly and efficient care, even if close, personal love is missing. Instead they fend for themselves in the outside world, often living alone, never quite knowing what the next day will bring.

Incredibly, the children and grandchildren of some of them, both up at Sandilands and in that outside world, are fairly prominent citizens of the community, some of them, well, economically comfortable. No one, except perhaps God, knows the whys and wherefores of their indifference and disregard.

What is indeed known in this community, however, is that there are far too many elderly folks sitting at crossroads, some who are blind led by children or other guides, as they make their way to regular and familiar places and people where there is a reasonable assurance of a hand-out.

And all this in a land where, despite the effects of the recession, there is often yet the boast of economic success and prosperity, where, it is said, there is a greater percentage of of landed, middle class, and wealthy blacks than there has ever been before.

Well, if truth be told, many of those sitting and waiting patiently at the crossroads daily are the forebears of some of that same fortunate ebony, wealthy, not a small number of whom find themselves present to prayers in church, raising their hands to heaven.

Yes, they raise their hands and their voices, but perhaps dare not raise their eyes, fearing they would eyeball God.

Yes, this Sunday the fathers of the land will be gaily feted and showered with praises and prayers and thanks, and that is well, especially for those who, as the stained Nixon put it, contribute as much to the family as mothers.

However, in the days and weeks following, there will continue to be at the various crossroads, corners, junctures, on porches and roadsides all over the modern and successful Bahamas, the elderly, forgotten, and dispossessed.

They, except for the love and caring of such as Sabria Armbrister and such as her revolutionary Grandparents Club would, in the words of Robert Frost, have, “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”

Nevertheless, a Happy Father’s Day to all, especially the worthy . . . for what it’s worth.

The Silly Season? This Too Shall Pass Away

More and more these weeks and months leading up to the coming general elections are being described in various quarters as the “silly season”.

That is meant, presumably, that the players in the ongoing political debate are prone to saying things they would not ordinarily say, making charges and laying blames they know could never be substantiated, and generally entering into exchanges which are frivolous and sometimes asinine when there are genuine and pressing issues crying out for sensible argument.

To a degree, perhaps all that is fine, providing as it does a kind of comic relief – as Shakespeare often insinuated in his tragedies – in between the heavy sessions concentrating on the planks of the manifestos of the various contending political organisations.

Politicians of all shades are often fascinated by large crowds, particularly crowds of their own known supporters, and the more the crowd applauds and wave pom-poms and and yell for more, the more the speaker heaps on what often is largely and perhaps essentially bull, with some of them actually dancing to the music.

All that has become part of the silly season, when the chief objective is to impress the electorate to the extent that on election day the people will respond by voting for the most impressive party or individual.

Already, even before there is an indication of whether election day will be weeks or months away, the remarks of vitriol and vituperation have begun flying fast and to an extent furiously, with parties charging against one another with political ferocity.

Of course the insinuation of the Democratic National Alliance into the fray has tended to make a difference in the ongoing tenor of the debate, but that has only added a third dimension to what in this season, for a good part of the electorate, is reduced to little more than confusion.

Up through the years there have been incidents during campaigns which may have been considered ridiculous or laughable, but which, at the end of the day, have actually helped to dull the sharp edge of the constant contention.

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Back in 1946, for example, when the late Sir Henry Taylor tested the political waters for the first time, he encountered a variety of situations on the campaign trail which were alternately hilarious and heart-breaking.

Taylor, who seven years later was to become one of the three founders of the Progressive Liberal Party, had offered as a candidate for his native Long Island in a a bye-election necessitated by the resignation from the House of Assembly of the representative, Guilbert Dupuch.

Taylor was virtually penniless at the time, and in fact had to search around for the fifty pounds for his nomination fee. Yet this penniless man, who years later would become the third governor general of the Bahamas, had the gall to boast that he would not pay a penny for a vote.

His opponent in the face was Alexander Knowles, a successful farmer whose son, James, would one day represent Long Island in the House an serve as a cabinet minister in the Free National Movement government.

It was a rough campaign for the penniless Henry Taylor, but he roughed it and toughed it against a strong and well heeled adversary, some of whose campaign generals began spreading the word that Taylor was a heavy drinker and therefore not fit to sit in the House of Assembly.

One night when he was speaking during a campaign meeting in Glinton’s in the north of the island, when he knew that a cousin of Alexander Knowles was in the audience. He told the crowd that he was well aware of the accusations that he was a drunkard.

“I am not a drunkard,” he said, “but I have been talking to you for the last hour, and my throat is dry. Have any of you gentlemen in he audience a bottle in your pocket? Please bring it to the platform that that I can relieve my thirst.”

Several bottles were brought up, and Taylor took a sip from each.

“Now, gentlemen, if any of you do not drink, I want you to vote for the teetotaler, Mr, Alexander Knowles. Those of you that drink, please vote for me. I guarantee that I will beat him.”

Henry Taylor lost that election, but went on the win the seat in the general election of 1949.

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Sometimes the silly season turned tragic, as during the campaign for the fateful 1972 general election, the first in which the then infant Free National Movement was a contender.

The body of an FNM supporter and campaign worker, Barry Major from Grant’s Town, was murdered in Perpall Tract. There was an extended investigation, and his killers were eventually executed.

Then there were those incidents in the 1956 general elections which cold hardly have altered the outcome of that poll, but which were learning trees. The PLP had been established in 1953, and offered a full slate of 29 candidates in New Providence and the Out Islands.

One of those incidents involved the West End seat in Grand Bahama where the party’s candidate went missing on nomination day, and so he Bay Street candidate won the seat by acclamation. One report was that the PLP’s man had been “detained” in South Florida and couldn’t get back in time.

Another story was that he had received a handsome gift of several hundred pounds, via Bay Street, not to nominate.

Then there was the election in Acklins and Crooked Island, where the PLP’s candidate was young A. Loftus Roker.

The PLP had won four seats in New Providence, and one of the victors, Randol Fawkes, was traveling by mailboat to Crooked Island to assist the young candidate during the last days of the campaign there.

Apparently on that trip Roker revealed to Randol Fawkes that he, Loftus, was not quite 21, the legal voting age, which also meant the legal age for nominating to run for a seat.

The late Eugene Dupuch won the seat, and it was said that through the discretion of Kendal G.L. Isaacs, who was then Solicitor General, that legal action was not taken against Loftus Roker, who in later years was elected to the House of Assembly and served in several cabinet posts in the PLP government.

Most likely general elections this year will not take place until somewhat nearer the summer, and so the silly season will have to be endured for some time yet. The angry exchanges will continue, with even close friends or relatives lashing out in political anger, most of which will be regretted when the elections are over.

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In the meantime, the season must be endured, and Bahamians might find some solace in the story of an eastern monarch who had seen and done just about everything and, bored, he summoned some of his wisest advisors and ask them to go and search for an expression that would bring him hope.

They searched diligently, and after a time returned to the monarch and handed him a parchment on which they had written, “And this too shall pass away.”

So it shall. So it shall.

‘Hoolie’ Seymour: the epitome of the real Bahamas

(For The Punch – Issue 12 January 2012)

In each community, in New Providence and no doubt in the Family Islands, there has always existed a mainstream circle of male friends who come together at no designed, agreed or specified time to share memories of what used to be and what has transpired as a result, and to hold forth on the present passing scene.

They have traditionally been of diverse political and religious persuasions, mostly older men who have passed through several generations and have experienced all the changing scenes of life in The Bahamas, stretching far before the coming of majority rule in 1967.

When one passes there is a void, a vacuum, a terrible dent in the fabric of the fraternity, but the group moves on in a kind of wordless understanding that they have indeed over the years become a peculiar group.

This is about Kenneth Aaron Seymour, part of a Grant’s Town group of sporting,game-playing enthusiasts, who passed away last December. But let us first delve into the nature of such groups in Grant’s Town through the generations.

Most weekday afternoons down Blue Hill Road under an ageless seagrape tree, there has for years existed an interesting convention of older Bahamian men engaged in a hotly contested game of dominos.

The tree, located immediately south of Rodgers Corner, has a network of leaves so thick that residents underneath could easily withstand medium rainfall, especially when it came at a critical juncture of the game when quitting was beyond the thinking of any of the challengers, or the ever-present audience hovering.

Among the group of players there is a steady contingent of locals – older gentlemen who reside in the general Grant’s Town or Bain Town area, and who obviously find delight in spending leisure time in the company of old friends, playing or observing, and often engaging in casual conversation about the passing scene or the trend of current activities.

 From time to time the group is joined by game-playing zealots from outside the immediate community but who for years have added refreshing colour and challenge to the gathering. enthusiasts

These have included such as the Rev. Addison Turnquest, the unconventional Anglican priest some referred to as the Ayatollah, who, interestingly and obviously with the sanction of the late Anglican bishop Michael Eldon, contested a seat for the Free National Movement in the 1982 general elections.

Another fierce regular contender is attorney Sir Cyril Fountain, who once served as the Member of Parliament for North Long Island, then went on to become a justice of the Supreme Court. He ended up as Supreme Court Justice.

Over the years the gathering has been a sort of continuation of traditional male camaraderie in historic Grant’s Town. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, when the late MP Spurgeon Bethel operated Neely’s Bar at Rodgers Corner and Blue Hill Road, men used to gather to play Awari* and discuss the leading topics of the day.

Even more celebrated than that was the traditional gathering of men, led by the late, prolific undertaker Gerald Dean, playing Awari, dominos and checkers outside the Cotton Tree Bar farther up Blue Hill Road opposite the Southern Recreation Grounds.

Of historic interest is the fact that it was there at the front of the Cotton Tree Bar back in June 1942, as the Burma Road riot was bubbling, that the Provost Marshall officially read the Riot Act, declaring a dusk to dawn curfew.

Of course the centrepiece of that Grant’s Town male comradeship was the great silk cotton tree which was located on the eastern side of Blue Hill Road between Lewis and Cameron Streets, a half block south of St. Agnes Church, with its sprawling roots extending to the middle of the road, so that at that point traffic often became one-way.

There especially on Sunday mornings the men gathered to have their shoes shined by the legendary Ralph and his small team of workers. There the men, some of them leading professionals inside and beyond the community, debated the large and fatal issues.

The men, just about all of them now passed into eternity, included such as Members of the House of Assembly Bert Cambridge and Dr. C.R. Walker, Gerald Dean, Robert Turnquest, Spurgeon Bethel, Booze Rodgers, Big Hutch, Earl “Bing” Cambridge, Randol Fawkes, Jim Russell, and on occasion the quite knowing and loquacious Dr. Cleveland Eneas. 

Sometimes they debated well past noon, when the bell at St. Agnes would begin pealing, announcing the termination of the 10.30 a.m. Service, and it was not unusual for the church’s rector, Canon Milton Cooper, in his flowing black robe, to venture over to catch a piece of the action.

That had been the nature of Grant’s Town up through the years, where the men, their day’s work finished, would often gather for a game, for hearty argument and chatter, and, most of them, for a little of what St. Paul noted was good for the stomach’s sake.

It yet continues today under the seagrape tree, even though, from time to time, a member of that venerable band slips away forever.

That happened on 16 December last year, when Kenneth Aaron Seymour, who seemed always to light up all of Grant’s town, slipped into eternity following a bout with cancer. On 22 December, a handful of days before Christmas, his funeral services were held at his home Church of St. Mary the Virgin. .

He had been born in Cat Island in 1931, and at his homegoing service the sermon was delivered by the Rev. Canon Warren Rolle, a fellow Cat Islander, who had served as rector of St. Mary’s until 2007.

 A proud product of the old Government High School in Nassau Court, Kenneth Seymour, long called “Hoolie” by his friends, was one of those articulate Bahamians who, from boyhood, read voraciously, and in later years enjoyed watching films of worth and value.

It was no doubt he spoke with a stentorian tongue, his tenor and diction rising and falling according to the statement or the message it was his intent to convey. In that regard he often reminded one of classical educators like Rosalie “Rosa” Smith, Mildred Dillette, and headmaster Theodore Glover.

 It was no wonder that in the late 1940s and early 1950s he became keenly interested in plays written by then John Taylor, who had grown up in St. Mary’s Church. He began assisting in the stage work of the performances, which took place usually in St. Benedict’s Hall on the grounds of The Priory on West Street.

 Those were John Taylor’s productions of such as “Man with Maid”, “Gaolbird”, “Columbus”. and “O, Absolom”, and the main players were usually Calvin Cooper, Matthew Sawyer, Gertrude Gibson, and Sylvia Coakley.

Eventually John Taylor went off to New York to study, especially theatre, at Columbia University. However he switched to Theology instead, and was eventually ordained as a deacon and then a priest in the Episcopal Church.

In 1956 Fr. Taylor returned to The Bahamas, and eventually became a curate at St. Agnes Church in Grant’s Town, under Canon Milton Cooper. In 1958 he wrote a play,“The House on Calamity Street” for performance on the stage at St. Agnes Schoolroom. His carefully chosen cast included Kenneth Seymour, Edwin Archer, Frederica Turnquest, Gertrude Gibson, Cynthia Love, and The White Boy.

Years later after Fr. Taylor had returned to the U.S. And served in several churches there, he again returned to The Bahamas, and was attached to St. Mary’s. Whilst he was there St. Agnes observed its 150^th anniversary of Dedication, and the rector, Archdeacon William Thompson, requested Fr. Taylor to write an appropriate play to mark the occasion.

Thus came the historic work, “Agnes of Rome”, which Fr. Taylor personally directed. Among his chosen cast was his old standby, Kenneth Seymour. That was 1991 when Hoolie was 60 and still strutting his powerful stuff across the stage, which on that occasion was the Lower Gardens of Government House.

Often in Grant’s Town when he was not playing dominos, Hoolie would chat happily abut the old days and the thrill of theatre. It was a thrill, he used to remind, second only to his service, wherever required, in the sanctuary of St. Mary’s Church, right up until last summer, even when his health was failing.

Today in Grant’s Town, Hoolie is already missed as that exuberant, silver-haired fixture with the stentorian voice who enjoyed the company of his fellow Bahamians, who was once toasted as as outstanding thespian on he local stage, and who, for all his 80 years enjoyed every cycle of his colourful life.

 Kenneth Aaron “Hoolie” Seymour was truly the stuff of which the real Bahamas is made . . . for what it’s worth.

* AWARI: An abstract African game also known as the “African Bean Game”.

“Awari is an ancient game originating from Africa which consists of 12 holes in the ground (called houses) split up into 2 rows of 6. Designed for two players, each player selects a row as their territory. Each house starts with 4 seeds in it.” READ MORE

>> Read more about and PLAY ONLINE HERE

WHITE FILE: Thanks to the BCB, too many still walk in darkness

(Punch – 9 January 2012)

“I have always been glad of the company of my fellow sinners.

But, Lord, preserve me from these paper saints.”

ANONYMOUS

Last week the Royal Bahamas Police Force unveiled a bold strategic plan to make the year 2012 safer for citizens.

As part of that programme, Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade said that the Force will depend heavily on the Church in The Bahamas to assist in the massive effort to ensure that in the new year there is not a repetition of the bloody and lawless scourge of 2011.

As 2011 drew to a close, the Bahamas Christian Council issued a statement calling for peace, stating: “We appeal to all Bahamians to end this year and begin the new year in a culture of thanksgiving, prayers and intercessions. To do anything else opens the doors for a new year far worse than this dying one.”

The Council called on Bahamians everywhere to remember that the depth of thecountry’s social and moral problems all need divine intervention.

It was refreshing to hear the Christian Council speaking out in such a meaningful manner, but we were nevertheless bemused to read in a local newspaper last Friday a headline, “Call for Ban on Porn”.

The headline was followed by a story which revealed that the Bahamas Christian Council had called for a ban on pornographic movies appearing as part of on Cable Bahamas’ programming.

It seems the Council, following some intensive “research” on the subject, handed an official recommendation to the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s draft Code of Practise for Content Regulation.

Interestingly, the Council said it had arrived at a position on the matter after watching twelve X-rated films at the home of a senior citizen. The level of titillation in the room during those dozen showings must indeed have been frenzied, no matter how holy and devout and divinely led the members of the viewing panel.

WHITE FILE . . . 2

But let us not hastily judge the judges. Our chief concern here is that through the many years the Bahamas Christian Council has appeared to be extremely selective on the pubic issues the Council decides to address, to protest against, and, where sufficiently genuine and important, to attempt adjustment or change in the government’s posture or the public’s mindset.

We recall come time back when the Council raised a hue and cry against the arrival of a cruise ship whose passengers happened to be homosexual and lesbian couples. Yet time after time there are cases of gay Bahamians, some of them teachers, who sexually molest innocent children.

The protestations and recommendations of the Bahamas Christian Council are, to say the least, as the saying used to go, as quiet as a church mouse.

There has, of course, been the neverending case of the Council’s position on the matter of the numbers business in The Bahamas, an issue stretching back to years before majority rule.

It has been an issue with which successive governments of the old United Bahamian Party, the Progressive Liberal Party, and the Free National Movement have wrestled, but could arrive at no point of resolution because, it is widely believed, of the influence of the Bahamas Christian Council.

The Council, an organisation with what has been seen as a litany or flexible principles, has traditionally said NO to gambling, beginning in the early 1960s when the UBP government refused to bow and allowed casino gambling by issuing exemptions to the colony’s anti-gambling laws.

The Progressive Liberal Party government of the late prime minister Sir Lynden Pindling back in 1979 actually drafted legislation which would have legalised a lottery in The Bahamas. The matter went to Parliament for a First Reading, but never went any further.

The then powerful Bahamas Christian Council’s continuing position on gambling powerfully prevailed. Politicians were not prepared to risk their popularity and electability by angering the Church.

That position prevailed, ironic and hypocritical in its nature, despite the quite obvious fact that so much of the proceeds of winning numbers-players ended up each Sunday in the collection plate, to a great extent funding the rich and expensive lifestyles of pastors who shamelessly ascend pulpits and rave against gambling.

WHITE FILE . . . 3

Again and again over the years ministers of the gospel, real and spurious, married and single, have been accused of depraved social misconduct in their churches and in the community. Some have ended up before the courts, some in cells at Her Majesty’s Prison.

None can recall the Bahamas Christian Council expressing little more than disappointment that one of its own has fallen from the throne of grace and offering regrets to the affected families and congregations.

It is sad and unfortunate that last week the Bahamas Christian Council might have rendered itself ridiculous in the extreme with the statement regarding the broadcasting of pornographic movies as part of the programming of Cable Bahamas.

The BCB pushed the point that the decency and standards of The Bahamas will erode over time because of the showing of pornographic movies, and urged URCA put the protection of children above “the perverted preferences” of adults, going further to recommend times when explicit movies may be shown.

“Children are staying up later and getting up earlier, and many of them have radios, televisions, and internet access in their bedrooms. Accordingly, we believe that the watershed period should be between 11pm and 4am,” the BCB said.

Well, it would seem that is a matter of responsible parental control, and church pastors from their pulpits have an infinitely greater authority and responsibility to influence parents than Cable Bahamas or URCA.

In fact, just what the hell are members of the Bahamas Christian Council doing watching twelve dirty (or “art”?) movies in the home of a senior citizen who, the Council claimed “is ignorant about parental controls and who in any event can’t operate her set top box.”

The Council noted that the woman’s house was frequented by many minors who understand how to use the remote control to navigate the channels and view the pornographic content.

Clearly, it would seem, the Christian Council’s job is to deal with that situation where it exists, in the home and in the congregations. That is part of the proper and effective guidance, education, and shepherding of the flock, and hardly an issue aimed at attracting headlines whilst, somehow, the flock is still merrily watching porn.

WHITE FILE . . . 4

Back in 1973 when the late Dr. Reuben Cooper, as president of the Bahamas Christian Council delivered the Independence sermon on Clifford Park, he chose his text from the second chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter. The words of that text remain extremely relevant today:

“You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light”

Thanks to today’s Bahamas Christian Council – more concerned with closing an eye here, seeking the headlines there, speaking out only selectively everywhere, and too often ignoring the ignorance of the people – far too many Bahamians have yet to experience that marvellous light.

30

Memorable deaths and funerals we have known

(For The Punch – Issue 18 July 2011)
THE WHITE FILE by P.  Anthony White

 The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into
the next room always leave me unconvinced.
Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event.
~ J. B. Priestley ~

          Up through the years many writers, and especially poets, equally in former times and in the present, have had a morbid, incessant obsession with death, cemeteries, and the afterlife.

           Yes, even here in The Bahamas we live day after day, week after week with death and funerals, and, like the Irish who have always been passionate about death, wakes and funerals, death is hardly ever simply a passionate episode.

           Perhaps the most demonstrative example of that morbid, incessant obsession with death, funerals and cemeteries was the quite lengthy 19^th century poem by the English writer Thomas Gray titled ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD.

           In that work, the poet actually took his time walking through a cemetery in Stokes Poges in England, pausing to comment on what might have been in th elife of  the person buried there. At one point he paused to write:

 “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire,

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.”

            We recall back in 1959 how when we were only a youngster at school in New York the late American jazz singer Billie Holliday passed away after a long and tragic battle with drug addiction.

          They organised a memorial service  for the occasion, held on Riker’s Island, which sits in the East or Harlem River, midway between, between Manhattan and Queen’s. Thousands turned out and under the food lights paid endless tributes to an ebony songstress who had turn out simply and ruinously to have become an angel flying too close to the ground.

          Then around midnight came the announcement over the loudspeakers that they were about to turn off all the lights, and invited all in the audience to light a match or flick on a cigarette lighter. In the bleak blackness thousands of little lights flickered, and from the speakers came Perry Como’s voice intoning that haunting song:

It is better to light just one little candle,
Than to stumble in the dark!
Better far that you light just one little candle,
All you need’s a tiny spark!

If we’d all say a prayer that the world would be free,
The wonderful dawn of a new day we’ll see!
And, if everyone lit just one little candle,
What a bright world this would be!

          It was a sad, sombre, and  serene scenario in a city which seldom knew utter peace and quietude, but those who were there will never forget New York on that touching occasion when the death of a black megastar singer practically brought to tears the city that never slept.

          There was another occasion in Brooklyn in New York back in the 1960s when a beautiful Bahamian girl from East Street perished tragically.

          Ethel King was truly, as they say in modern parlance, drop dead gorgeous. She was part of the great King family of East Street, which had deep roots in Cat Island. Her sisters were Octavia, former registrar of insurance companies, and Gladys who, like Ethel, had migrated to New York.

           A brother, Roy, had studied law in New York and eventually became a judge in Rochester in upstate New York.

          Ethel had had an unsuccessful marriage to Percy Pinder Jr., son of the entrepreneurial elder Percy Pinder who in fact had been the first to build and operate a movie theatre Over-the-Hill. After she and Percy separated she used to be frequently on the arm of the late Ernest Strachan, then employed in the French Department of the United Nations, before he returned in Nassau to become Chief of Protocol for the Bahamas Government.

           Ethel took a job in Manhattan and was living in an apartment in Brooklyn. The full story will probably be never known, but there was apparently a young Puerto Rican fellow who fell desperately in love with Ethel who, it seemed, was not interested.

          Once morning as she left her apartment for work, walking through the basement of the building, the young fellow accosted Ethel and perhaps for the last time pleaded for her heart. According to the New York Amsterdam News, when she again spurned him he opened fire on her with a handgun, and then turned the weapon on himself.

          The two were discovered lying next to each other on the ground of the basement.

           The funeral for Ethel, who had grown up in St. Agnes in New Providence, was held not long afterwards at the Episcopal church of St. Mark’s  in Brooklyn. The little church was packed with Bahamians living in New York, and scores of others who travelled to the city for the sad occasion. Among that Nassau contingent was Lynden Oscar Pindling.

          Back in New Providence some years later – in early 1969 – there occurred the death of  a bright and promising young thespian who had striven since his teenage years to master 6the stage in The Bahamas and in so doing to bring along other youngsters with a yearning for the footlights.

          Basil Eric Antonio Saunders was a truly ambitious lad who quietly felt his reach should always exceed his grasp. After studies in London he returned to The Bahamas and began teaching English and drama in the public school system, whilst, along with The White Boy who had been his childhood histrionic partner, continued acting, producing and directing. At one point he had a stint as an insurance agent, but his heart was never really in it.

          Yet at an early age B.E.A., as many referred to him, developed diabetes, and at only 31 years old he passed away. The town was stunned that one so young, so talented, so brilliant, so filled with a lust for life should have been plucked so prematurely from that life.

          It seemed half that town showed up at St. Agnes Church for one of the most mournful yet flambouyant funerals seen in Grant’s Town, after which he was buried in the extreme northern section of the church’s cemetery on Nassau Street next to Gibbs Lane. To mark the occasion The White Boy penned and published a poem on the life of Basil Saunders. The final stanza read thus:

“Now up against the northern wall

where friendly footsteps seldom fall,

when others last to withered end,

you’ll still be smiling, childlike, Friend.”

The community was in a dither back in early May of 1990 with the passing of Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield who had for some years been afflicted with cancer. As Leader of the Opposition he had been  treated at home and abroad at the expense of the Bahamas Government, and had returned home to carry on his political assignment as best he could.

          He died in a Florida hospital surrounded by family and political colleagues. In the Free National Movement there was widespread speculation about the future leadership configurations of the party, especially since general elections were just over two years away.

          Orville Turnquest was at the time deputy leader of the party. That was about six years after Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie had been fired from the PLP cabinet of  Sir Lynden Pindling. Ingraham, then an independent Member of Parliament, had thrown his parliamentary support behind the FNM.

          Whitfield had pretty much handpicked  Ingraham as his successor, and subsequently the party’s Central Council concurred.

          The ornate funeral was held at Christ Church Cathedral, and amongst those paying  tribute to his old childhood friend and political nemesis was Sir Lynden. The interment was in the Eastern Cemetery, where his father, Kenneth Whitfield, was buried a few years earlier.

          Of course ten years later, in 2000. Sir Lynden himself succumbed to prostate cancer, and after some deliberation the decision was made to have the funeral services conducted at the Church of God on East Street.

          Following the funeral,  at which Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham spoke, there was a massive procession – joined in by political friend and foe alike – down East Street, west on Wulff Road, north on Blue Hill Road, then west on Meeting Street to St. Agnes Cemetery on Nassau Street.

          There the body was received by then Anglican bishop Drexel Gomez and St. Agnes rector the late Fr. Patrick Johnson, assisted by The White Boy. Afterwards Sir Lynden was entombed in a special and imposing mausoleum in the cemetery.

          Bahamians have over the years continued to have a fascination for funerals in all their forms and fashions, and it never really matters the identity of the deceased if there is something special about the arrangements.

          A few years ago with the brutal murder of fashion designer Harl Taylor, mortician Ted Sweeting introduced to The Bahamas an interesting new embalming trend imported from the United States, whereby in the viewing room of the funeral home the full-clothed body was sitting in a chair in front of a desk with pen in hand as if engaged in work.

           For two days it seemed the whole Bahamas had beaten a path to Sweeting’s Colonial Mortuary on Blue Hill Road just to have a view of the fantastical scene.

          And so death, wakes, funerals and the celebrations afterwards are still rudimentary parts of Bahamian life, and will perhaps persist in that way for hundreds of years, so long as Bahamians continue to be born, to live, and to die.

In The Bahamas Ignorant Armies Clash by Night

- for The Punch – Issue 24 March 2011
by P. Anthony White

“ . . . we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Matthew Arnold, DOVER BEACH

This marks the second occasion upon which we have commended the Member of Parliament for Bamboo Town, Branville McCartney, in this space or another, for a display of integrity.

Earlier this week Mr. McCartney, who had been elected to the House of Assembly in May 2007 as a candidate for the Free National Movement, announced that he had resigned his membership with the governing party.

After the elections, in which the FNM was successful and became the government, Mr. McCartney was appointed a state minister, first for Tourism, and subsequently of Immigration. Early last year he resigned his cabinet post, citing an opined difference with the government with regard to policy, but nevertheless expressing his continued support for the FNM and the government.

Again on that occasion, in this space or another, we traced political history back to 1970 when the late Sir Cecil Wallace-Whitfield led seven other Progressive Liberal Party Members of Parliament in supporting a House of Assembly vote of no confidence in the PLP government and in prime minister Lynden Pindling.

At that time the Member of South Beach, the late Carlton Francis, a former headmaster and educator, who was Minister of Finance, on his feet in Parliament reminded the eight dissidents that “there is a path for honourable men to follow when they find they can no longer follow their leader.”

The eight, of course, voluntarily or not, went in a different political direction from their leader, and the result ultimately evolved into the Free National Movement, which served as the government of The Bahamas from 1992 until 2002, and has again been the government since 2007.

For the record, the eight had taken the honourable path suggested by Carlton Francis, and which he was himself eventually to follow when as a cabinet minister he disagreed with the PLP government’s plan and policy to extend casino gambling in The Bahamas.

Today it seems Branville McCartney has chosen to follow that honourable path by tendering his resignation from the FNM, just as he did when he resigned as a cabinet minister.

Twice in relevantly recent times that has happened in the opposition Progressive Liberal Party. That was the case when Malcolm Adderley resigned his Elizabeth House of Assembly seat, prompting an early 2010 bye-election which was won by the PLP’s Ryan Pinder.

It happened again last year when the PLP MP for Kennedy, Kenyatta Gibson, left the PLP and walked across the floor of the House, allying himself politically with the governing FNM.

That is the way things are done by honourable men and women, especially in critical times when political leaders need to be able to rely on their loyal members and supporters, and most especially when leaders need to count committed Parliamentary heads in matters such as the BTC debate now taking place in the House of Assembly.

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham has already announced his principle that should the House of Assembly vote go against his government’s decision to sell 51 percent of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company to Cable and Wireless, he would consider that a vote of no confidence in his government, and will call early general elections.

We have been around, politically, and we are not certain, from where we sit, that all FNM MPs are acutely aware of the significance of what will take place as a result of the extent of their support of the BTC resolution and how they vote, or of the significance of what the prime minister said with regard to that vote.

Hubert Ingraham, none can afford to forget, especially not at this juncture, long ago proclaimed that he is a man who says what he means and means what he says, and has not yet to date gone back on that proclamation.

Back in 2001, when Mr. Ingraham took the decision that he was ready to step down from the FNM leadership, he caused the party to hold a special convention for the election of a leader-designate. Of the three principal candidates vying for that post – Tennyson Wells, Tommy Turnquest and Algernon Allen – Mr. Turnquest emerged as the winner.

There was a great deal of bitterness in parts of the political camp of the FNM, which was at the time still the government of The Bahamas. That bitterness, and sometimes outward criticism of the party’s leadership, coupled with the issue of the February 2002 Referendum, conspired wickedly to energise the opposition PLP to mount its biggest and most expensive and flambouyant election campaign ever.

The FNM government lost the February 2002 Referendum, and on the heels of that defeat, in the May 2002 general elections, to a great extent because of division and disgruntlement in the party, and not necessarily at the rank and file level, the FNM went into a lost the 2 May 2002 general elections.

Up through the years from time to time, both the Free National Movement and the Progressive Liberal Party have suffered the political pain of fracture in the ranks, fracture sometimes so severe that it erodes party strength and public support, none of which is politically healthy near election time.

We write often of the disastrous 1977 general elections, when the opposition was split completely in half. Many argue that a huge contributing feature in that split came about because in the Free National Movement a dispute arose about the party’s candidate for the South Long Island seat.

On the Cecil Wallace Whitfield side the preference of a candidate was Tennyson Wells, a Long Islander, whilst the Bay Street faction favoured another Long Islander from Mangrove Bush, James Knowles.

There was to be no compromise, yet the impending fracture in the party had to do with infinitely more than the candidacy for Long Island, nor, as others contended, did it involve any sinister attempt of the old Bay Street diehards to regain control of the opposition in the hopes of returning Bay Street to the government.

It had more to do with a clash of strong political personalities in the opposition. Although a forceful, fearless and charismatic individual, Cecil Vincent Wallace Whitfield was also doctrinaire and dogmatic. He believed – and perhaps he had every right to harbour such a belief – that the Free National Movement was his political baby and that was that.

Others in the party, some of them veteran and seasoned politicians, no doubt respected and admired him, but were not prepared to follow blindly. There were yet others who had in another place gone through that “One Man’s Dream” syndrome, and would not endure another running of the episode.

The upshot of it all was a split, with the FNM led by Wallace Whitfield and the new Bahamian Democratic Party headed by Kendal Isaacs. Yes, when came elections, in South Long Island James Knowles was the BDP’s candidate and Tennyson Wells carried the banner for the FNM.

The PLP was able to chalk up a massive win at the polls in that election, a victory rendered even more massive because of the political disarray in the opposition. Yet through wise and tolerant dialogue, the fracture could have been avoided.

If personalities had been prepared to come to the discussion table, checking their egos at the door, that 1977 elections need not have been so disastrous. There was no way even a combined opposition could have triumphed, but at least the fundamental political chord would have remained intact for the next confrontation.

There was the case in the Progressive Liberal Party leading up to the 1997 elections when the party altered the constitution to call a leadership convention to allow for the election of two co deputy leaders to serve under party leader the late Sir Lynden Pindling. The outcome was that Perry Christie and Dr. Bernard Nottage, both former ministers in the PLP government, were elected to those offices.

Following the 1997 election, however, Sir Lynden resigned both as party leader and as a Member of Parliament. There was the need for a new party leader. The candidates were Christie, Nottage, and Philip Galanis. Actually, after the first ballot Bernard Nottage polled more than Christie, but not the required 50 percent.

There had to be another ballot. Philip Galanis pulled out of the race, and Perry Christie sailed to victory. At the next PLP convention Nottage again ran for the leadership, This time Christie stumped him.

That did not go well with Bernard Nottage, who apparently felt that something had gone awry. He soon resigned from the PLP, and went on to establish the Coalition for Democratic Reform, where, in fact, he was joined by such as Phenton Neymour and Charles Maynard, both of whom are now FNM cabinet ministers.

No doubt again much pain and political fracture could have been avoided through consultation and open argument around the table, with egos checked at the door, and party generals and political middlemen kept at bay.

For years in The Bahamas far too often around the political executive table and in the trenches there is mindless warring which dilutes the organisation’s forward battle thrust, and especially at times when there is a desperate need for all hand on deck, and fully accountable.

The ancient writer Thucydides presented an account of a battle during the Peloponnesian War which occurred on a beach during the invasion of Sicily by the Athenians. That confrontation took place at night, and the attacking army became so disoriented that in the darkness some of the soldiers were actually killing each other.

There is a lesson there for politicians and political organisations who cannibalise inside their groups because they often confuse friend with foe, lashing out left and right, sometimes ignorantly, often with sinister deliberation, seldom pausing to ponder the possible effect on the cause at hand.

That has, over the many years, been the sad case in both the PLP and the FNM, both as government and as opposition.

Back in the 19th century, the English poet Matthew Arnold commented on such a situation, no doubt drawing on the battle account rendered by Thucydides centuries before, whilst honeymooning with his bride near Dover Beach, Kent in England, penned the classic poem, DOVER BEACH, some of the last lines of the final stanza which reads:

“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another . . . we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Far too often in The Bahamas have political battles been lost because supposed allied soldiers war on darkling plains like ignorant armies clashing by night . . . for what it’s worth.

Happy Birth to former parliamentarians Frank Howard Watson and Kendal Wellington Nottage, both born on this date in 1940, a very good year.

Please Get It Right: Today’s FNM Grew from a Pained PLP

For The Punch – Issue 3 March 2011
by P. Anthony White

In this or another space from time to time we recount the birth and development of the Progressive Liberal Party, starting in late 1953, as the beginning of the thrust of the Bahamian masses to that historic first general elections in 1956, majority rule in 1967, and eventually to full statehood in 1973.

At each stage there was a vibrant presence of democracy, and particularly following the birth and development of the Free National Movement, and organisation which, it could be said, sprang from the bowels of the PLP, the result of the ambitions of some further to test the buoyancy of that democracy.

And so that birth, development of the FNM, a party which this year marks its 40th anniversary has evolved as an integral part of the modern history of The Bahamas, and Bahamians, especially the young, no matter what their political inclinations, have a right and a need to know.

What should be of interest to historians is that the Free National Movement did not come about as the result of the gentle or simmering yearning huddled masses yearning to breathe free, but rather like the restless awakening of a passionate woman who refuses to remain blind when light is shimmering all around. Those would-be historians need to get the story right.

The fact of the matter is that the events of 19 August 1992 – when the PLP government was toppled after nearly 26 years in office – became a powerful climax to a national political odyssey which began technically in the House of Assembly on 13 May 1970.

That was when the maverick Member of Parliament for the St. Barnabas constituency of New Providence, Randol Francis Fawkes, who has served as Minister of Labour and Commerce in the first PLP government, moved the following Resolution:

“Whereas Government, by its failure to consult with investors prior to the passing of Legislation nullifying the effects of certain provisions of Government’s agreements with local and foreign businessmen has caused the economic dislocation of the resources of the Commonwealth.
“AND WHEREAS moneys are being paid out to the Hon. Clifford Darling, the Minister of State, when unlike other Ministers no specific office of duties assigned to him are shown in the Bahamas Official Gazette.
“BE IT RESOLVED, that this House has no confidence in the Government.”

It was at that point that the MP for Freetown, the late Simeon Bowe. Who was then a Parliamentary Secretary in the PLP government, moved that Mr. Fawkes’ Resolution be amended by deleting all the words of the Resolution and substituting, instead, the following:

“Whereas this Government has a responsibility to the people of this Country to discharge its duty in their best interest and,
“Whereas this Government is discharging such duties (and) has done so to the satisfaction of the people:
“BE IT RESOLVED, that this House has confidence in the Government.”

The question was put and passed, and the record shows that the House resolved that the Resolution be amended as agreed..

It was a pivotal point in Bahamian political history, for it was then technically that black Bahamians were challenged publicly to support or vote against the black Bahamian government.

Some Members were absent from the chamber when the matter was put. Of those present, staunch supporters of the government and the prime minister, Lynden Pindling, remained seated during the vote, suggesting their were voting their confidence.

Of those who stood, indicating a lack of confidence, a majority were members of the then opposition United Bahamian Party. There were other members standing against the government, however, who were PLPs. Among them were the eight, including two cabinet ministers – Cecil Wallace-Whitfield and Dr. Curtis McMillan – who became known afterwards as the Dissident Eight.

At that time, the PLP government was barely three-and-a-half years old, but problems with the leadership had existed since the party’s convention of 1968, and indeed when Cecil Wallace Whitfield stood as one of those lacking confidence in the government and in the prime minister it was the second occasion upon which he had been openly and publicly defiant.

Yet Wallace Whitfield and Dr. Curtis McMillan remained in the PLP cabinet following that May 13 vote. Instead of any flickers of conciliation or mending of broken fences, the political chasm inside the PLP had widened.

By the PLP convention in October 1970 – five months after the no-confidence attempt – there were clear indications of a breaking point. Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, them the Member of Parliament for St. Agnes, was Minister of Education and Culture, and had performed admirably in that capacity, including new teaching concepts and learning, introducing revolutionary learning aids.

PLP leader Lynden Pindling delivered the convention’s keynote address on the first day, and a volatile keynote it was indeed. Lashing out at his critics and obviously confident about the measure of his support in the party, he warned those who disagreed with him: “if you can’t fish, cut bait; if you can’t cut bail, get the hell out of the boat”.

Yes, as The Tribune’s Nicki Kelly wrote back then, it was a masterful speech by a master politician, and it contained just the ingredients, the challenge, the temptation for revolution inside the party. Cecil Wallace-Whitfield had been born a revolutionary.

The crowds cheered wildly, others quietly drank in the great challenge, and yet others sucked their teeth and strode from the convention hall at the Sheraton British Colonial Hotel.

As each convention night progressed, cabinet ministers, one after the other, reported on the activities of the relevant portfolios, setting out also what future plans there were. It was not until Thursday evening that the Minister of Education and Culture was scheduled to report to the convention.

Cecil Wallace Whitfield was already not a totally liked figure in the PLP by those who misunderstood or misread his thinking in standing up and daring the brilliant black prime minister, and especially in standing shoulder to shoulder with the white Bay Street MPs when they voted against the PLP government five months earlier.

But Cecil Wallace Whitfield had never planned to participate in any popularity contest at the time, or at any other time. He strode up the centre aisle of the convention toward the platform, whilst Coconut Grove MP Edmund Moxey played rousing music on the organ.

The minister presented an expansive and detailed report on his portfolio, reading in measured tones from neatly typed five-by-seven index cards. He finished his official report and shoved the pile of cards into his coat pocket. At the same time he extracted a second set of a few cards from another pocket. He looked around the hushed hall and the organ started to play. He turned deliberately to Edmund Moxey and said that he wanted no music.

A few minutes before that the guards at Government House had opened the gates to admit a car in which rode Edwin “Vikey” Brown, and Ms. Beryl Pierce. One was a St. Agnes constituency general and the other the private secretary to Cecil Wallace Whitfield at the Ministry of Education.

Reading from his second set of cards, the Minister of Education told the convention that he had listened to all that had occurred during the week. He spoke of agreed principles which had sustained the PLP through the years, and about a philosophy and commonality of purpose which had brought the PLP to the seat of government, but which, he felt, had been violated.

All that he could not repudiate, he said, “no matter how grave my disillusionments”. Then, Cecil Wallace-Whitfield said, at 8 p.m. that evening he had had delivered to His Excellency the Governor his resignation from the Government of The Bahamas.

He then uttered what became his immortal epigram: “Free at last. Free at last. My soul is dancing!”.

From the West End and Bimini delegation table near the front, MP Warren Levarity leapt to his feet shouting an anguished, “No, no. Not yet, Man!”

Others were screaming in disbelief whilst the greater numbers were shrieking in something akin to merriment. At his Kemp’s Bay constituency table, PLP leader Lynden Pindling sat quietly, unsmiling amidst the pandemonium swirling about the room.

In the days and weeks that followed Dr. McMillan resigned as Minister of Health, and Dr. Elwood Donaldson gave up his post as Sports Commissioner. The troops, led by the gallant eight who had stood in Parliament on 13 May that year, rallied, and before the end of 1970, a curious creature known as the Free PLP was on the scene.

It was the first necessary step from the PLP to the Free National Movement, and the historical revisionists, no matter where they stand politically, need to get it right.

Get it right . . . for what it’s worth.

The Fascinating Story of a Man Called Henry

THE WHITE FILE For The Punch – 7 March 2011

“What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now forever taken from my sight;
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.”
~ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ~

There are thousands of young Bahamians, many of whom have somehow gone through the school system in The Bahamas, who will, unfortunately, never figure prominently in the future scheme of meaningful things in this country, and for a variety of equally sad reasons.

A vast majority of them are males. Some are unemployed because they are unemployable, or else because they simply have no desire to work. Others are consumed by alcohol or drugs, and yet others who evolved into offenders against society, are languishing in Her Majesty’s Prison.

Of course there are thousands of other young Bahamians who are the pride of their families and their communities, who are shaping their lives in positive directions, who appreciate the need for diligence and hard work, who have set career goals for themselves, and who appreciate that they will be expected to participate and to perform when comes the time for their generation to take over.

They are the hope and waiting glory of the next chapter in the life of The Bahamas. Some of them, an anticipation of that challenge, have involved themselves in causes such as Toastmasters International, and, on a younger stage, The Gentlemen’s Club. Youth groups in the various churches are designed to promote thought and eventually to shape leadership skills.

In that same manner, years ago, intellectually industrious groups of young people found themselves engaged in debate on large and profound issues on the community and international levels.

We remember one such group, styled the Young People’s Organisation, which back in the 1950s assembled upstairs at St. Agnes Schoolroom at Cockburn and Market Streets to debate issues such as Capitalism versus Communism.

Members of that group were such as Joseph Hollingsworth, Wilshire Bethel, Veronica Turnquest, Vernita Johnson, and Kendal Nottage, the latter of whom was the president. The White Boy hovered on the perimeter.

The outspoken Nottage, who hailed from East Street and attended Government High School, went on to be called to the Bahamas Bar after studying as an articled law student in the chambers of Paul L. Adderley, was later to be elected to Parliament, and to serve as a senator and Cabinet minister.

Kendal Nottage – whose younger brother is Dr. Bernard Nottage, MP for Farm Road and Grant’s Town, and former cabinet minister in two PLP governments – was one of those eager and capable young Bahamians who aspired to office early, and who was identified by the late PLP leader Sir Lynden Pindling as a positive political prospect in the country.

In the meantime elsewhere back in the 1950s. Over-the-Hill, in places like Kemp Road, Fox Hill, on Wulff Road, and in Chippingham there were other small groups of bright young Bahamians who understood and appreciated the political state of the colony – Bay Street versus the masses – and who would meet casually and discuss the pros and cons.

Following the collapse of the short-lived Citizen’s Committee, the Progressive Liberal Party was established in the fall on 1953, and that establishment and the ingredients included in the party’s Platform, widely publicised in the Nassau Herald, provided provocative fodder for those young groups debating around the town.

One such small, loose, but energetic group used to gather evenings at Butler’s food store, a modest grocery business on Blue Hill Road in facilities now occupied by the Urban Renewal and Bain and Grant’s Town Centre. The store, the precursor to the present Butler’s Bargain Mart farther down Blue Hill Road, was managed by the late Asa Butler, fourth son of Sir Milo and Lady Butler.

Asa, who was a former student at Government High School, was himself quite a debater and had a keen interest in politics no doubt because his illustrious father had been a political mover and shaker since the 1930s – and so the shop was a perfect venue for those lively sessions, which sometimes stretched past ten o’clock in the evening, long after the shop was supposed to have been closed for the night.

That group of itinerant debaters included such as Joseph Hollingsworth, Franklyn Butler, Rawson McDonald, Frank Watson (a first cousin of Asa), and The White Boy.

Yet it always seemed as if the debating circle was not satisfied or compete until the arrival of a fellow who somehow became the unofficial dean of the corps, who was slightly older than the rest, and to whom so many looked for the final wise word on a particularly argumentative point.

That was John Henry Bostwick, a fellow who, even before he turned 20, seemed to know a healthy little of almost everything, and a great deal about a lot of other things, especially those things which provoked the most heated arguments among the group, and which, almost with something like a wave of the hand, he instantly resolved.

Like Kendal Wellington Nottage, the young and effervescent John Henry Bostwick seemed destined for meaningful future public and political life and office, despite what some considered a stubborn nature, then reconsidered a nature, back in the 1950s, which was not so much stubborn but defiantly insistent that common sense should figure in any argument one hoped to pursue to fruitful conclusion.

Like Kendal Nottage – Henry Bostwick, who attended Government High School and later Calabar High School in Kingston, Jamaica – went on to become an attorney-at law, and in fact developed, like the late Eugene Dupuch, as one of the country’s most accomplished and outstanding criminal attorneys.

Yet in so many of those youthful gatherings of budding intellectuals, although far too many of them turned out to be charlatans, pseudo intellectuals, and fatuous four-flushers, Bostwick, from as far back as the late 1950s, displayed all the signs of a political mover and shaker in the future Bahamas.

This year John Henry Bostwick, Queen’s Counsel, with God’s help will achieve his 72nd year to heaven. Over those years, in addition to his courtroom stardom, he has attained and accomplished much in the political arena, and in fact his contributions to the enhancement of democracy deserve note and commendation.

We remembered this particularly last week when in this space we recounted the fascinating political story of the 1977 general elections which saw the ruling Progressive Liberal Party chalk up a massive victory, primarily because the Opposition was split into two camps.

On the one side the Free National Movement was led by Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, and on the other, yes, the leader of the Bahamian Democratic Party was John Henry Bostwick, at the time barely 38 years old.

All round, that was a fiery campaign, even though the odds were slim that the opposition, especially sawn asunder as it was, could bring down Lynden Pindling and his PLP government. Yet John Henry Bostwick was determined to give the battle his best shot.

In fact, considering the make-up of the BDP with his heavy Bay Street complement, Henry Bostwick was perhaps the most acceptable national face the party could offer the masses. When during the campaign he complained to the PLP government that because of the tough economic times some Bahamians were scavenging at the Blue Hill Road dump for food, he also issued an ominous warning:

“When sufficient people in this country feel their bellies aching, they will lose all sense of reason. I urge the government to wake up, and take heed.”

When the votes were counted following that gruelling campaign, the BDP had won only six seats, with Henry Bostwick capturing the seat for the Montagu constituency, and becoming the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Parliament.

By the 1982 elections, the opposition was once again a single fighting force, and Henry Bostwick was to remain a prominent part of that force. Later, on the governmental watch of the Free National Movement, he became president of the Bahamas Senate.

And so, it might be said, John Henry Bostwick, who had become one of The Bahamas’ most outstanding courtroom orators, an effective and powerful political preacher, a sobering Leader of the Opposition, and a stern but fair president of the Senate had his practise range in a modest grocery shop on Blue Hill Road back in the 1950s.

Today in the late afternoon of his full and bountiful life, he richly deserves to be resting on his laurels. However, the nature of the man, John Henry Bostwick, says he is not at all ready for resting.

No, Sir, not John Henry Bostwick.