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.

THE WHITE FILE How will the PLP treat its illustrious founding father?

“Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word,
\for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”

LUKE 2:29

A few weeks back in this space we wrote of William W. Cartwright as the only surviving member of a trio of gallant Bahamians who, back in 1953, founded the Progressive Liberal Party as a political organisation purposed and propelled by what at the time seemed an impossible dream.

That purpose was to leave no stone unturned in an arduous and ambitious mission to lead the struggle for social and economic justice and equality for all Bahamians.

For the past few years Mr. Cartwright had been residing and cared for at Good Samaritan Home in Yellow Elder Gardens, where, less than a month ago he had been paid a visit by Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes, a journalist who was employed at the Nassau Daily Tribune at the time of the establishment of the PLP.

An astute Sir Arthur, who eventually became news editor at the Tribune. would have been thoroughly familiar with the revolutionary feat carried out by Bill Cartwright and the other two co-founders, the late Sir Henry Taylor and Cyril St. John Stevenson.

In fact before long Sir Arthur went on to become a member of the PLP.

At the time he co-founded the PLP, Bill Cartwright was an independent Member of the House of Assembly for Cat Island, having been elected in 1949, and served for a single term. In the 1956 elections, the PLP nominated Arthur Hanna and Samuel White, father of The White Boy.

Cartwright, Taylor and Stevenson, all mulattos, suffered greatly at the hand of Bay Street for having dared to spearhead an organisation of largely black Bahamians whose common and greatest enemy was Bay Street, but Cartwright, an enterprising realtor, probably fared better than the rest through his sheer tenacity for survival.

In fact in 1952, even before the birth of the PLP, he had founder the Bahamian Review, the Bahamas’ first monthly new magazine which flourished, again despite the deliberate efforts of Bay Street to withhold vital advertising.

In the meantime in 1954, recognising the party’s need for an effective communications medium, and no doubt pressed by Cyril Stevenson in that regard, Bill Cartwright furnished the funds for the purchase on The Herald, a weekly tabloid that had been established in 1937 by Jack Stanley Lowe.

The paper, edited by Cyril Stevenson who had resigned as a senior reporter for Bay Street’s Nassau Guardian, became the major mouthpiece for the Progressive Liberal Party, and was to remain that important communications medium for the party almost up to the critical 1967 general elections, by which time both Stevenson and Taylor had been edged out of the party.

Throughout the years, however, Bay Street in its determination to hold on to political supremacy in The Bahamas, was relentless in its machinations to maintain that control in the face of the swelling popularity of the PLP.

Eventually as the economic screws were tightened and for other pressing reasons, Bill Cartwright stepped back from the front line of PLP politics, and was for years to remain but an avid and fully understanding observer of the passing political scene he had been fundamental in changing.

In fact for a long time following the advent of majority rule when the PLP was the government of The Bahamas, Bill Cartwright, for his own very good reasons, preferred that he not be publicly identified as one of the founders of the PLP, and in that regard personally sought the cooperation of some local publishers.

For years Bill Cartwright sought in one way or another to continue in the publishing field, and as late as 2001 had grandiose plans to publish a comprehensive book, Builders of The Bahamas, in which he intended to capture vignettes of the lives of dozens of Bahamians who had figured with some prominence in the process of making The Bahamas what it is today.

On that ambitious project he had solicited the partnership and assistance of The White Boy, who marvelled, quietly, that Bill Cartwright had not included himself in that list of builders, despite the fact that he had been one of three architects of the modern Bahamas.

On that publishing mission just over a decade ago, Bill Cartwright could be observed walking about town, primarily in the Palmdale, Village Road, and Shirley Street areas, with a knapsack containing the elements of his dreams, offering a cherry “morning” or “afternoon” to friend and stranger alike.

In his time Bill Cartwright when he operated his real estate business on Bay Street downstairs the Psilinakis Building, was a fairly short, freckled-faced natty dresser with an infectious smile who in fact had his way with the ladies, having stepped down the aisle more than once.

He had fearlessly played his historic revolutionary role as a political reformer, setting the stage for others to grasp the baton and run with equal fearlessness to the finish line. Then he stepped back from that front line leaving it to successive generations to continue on that mission.

He did not stick around like a political anachronism, standing selfishly in the way of other, young Bahamians like Lynden Pindling and Cecil Wallace Whitfield and Orville Turnquest, overlapping their moments in time, and in stepping back as he did he was providing an example for others who stubbornly hang on when time is clearly up.

Bill Cartwright passed away last week at the age of 89, three and a half weeks after the Progressive Liberal Party had gained its eighth general election victory in The Bahamas. In all the years since he had dropped out of the political limelight, this is what he said with regard to the PLP’s May 7^th win:

“Now I can go. I can leave now. I wanted to make sure the PLP won the election.”

It was, in modern political poetry, a sentiment taken almost straight out of St. Luke’s biblical account of the occasion upon when the young Jesus was brought to the aging Simeon for a blessing. The old man held up the child and uttered, “Lord, now lettest Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou has set before all people; a light to lighten the gentiles . . . ”

Opposition deputy leader Loretta Butler-Turner noted in Parliament last week that “We are where we are today as a nation in terms of our democratic heritage in no small measure because of William Cartwright. . . He is in his own right a founder of the modern Bahamas. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude.”

Also in Parliament prime minister Perry Christie, describing Bill Cartwright, said: “He was always at pains to play down the historical role he had played in laying the foundations for party politics in The Bahamas. Although he personally suffered a great deal for that, and for his courageous battle against the racial and economic injustices of his day . . . he was a man of enormous goodwill, and a spirit of reconciliation was deeply embedded in his character.”

Mr. Christie announced that the government will accord Bill Cartwright a state-recognised funeral, which means essentially that the government will through the cabinet office provide the printed funeral programmes and the necessary protocol arrangements at the church, perhaps with such other assistance as police escorts.

Yet a state recognised funeral means also that the family of the deceased must bear the essential costs of the funeral. It is widely believed that Bill Cartwright was far from a wealthy man.

The nation will wait to see whether in the circumstances the Progressive Liberal Party steps up to the plate and bear the expenses of the burial of the party’s final illustrious founding father.

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.

WHITE FILE . . . 2

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.

WHITE FILE . . . 3

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.

WHITE FILE . . . 4

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.

THE WHITE FILE: Life is cheap? Our common welfare is of no real value?

(For The Punch – Issue 3 January 2012)

“Days and moments quickly flying

blend the living with the dead;

Soon will you and I be lying

each within our narrow bed.”

Edward Caswall

The year 2011 was without doubt the most challenging for The Bahamas in modern times.

The global economic downturn has reverberated locally without mercy, with thousands of Bahamians finding themselves unemployed. The latest chapter pm that score came last week when 71 persons were terminated from their jobs at the various port operations of Hutchinson-Whampoa in Grand Bahama.

SMALL BUSINESS AND THE ROADWORKS

      Others Bahamians in business were fighting an uphill battle to survive in a severely depressed market in which patrons were simply not in a position to patronise in their usual manner..

      On that score, business persons operating along Blue Hill Road, Market Street, Robinson Road, Wulff Road and elsewhere complained bitterly that the government’s massive roadworks had severe negative effects on their income, as customers found it difficult to get to them.

      That was probably true to a very small extent. The truth was that there was simply not that much money in circulation, and no matter how much politicians and others attempted to stir up trouble in that connection, the truth was the truth.

      Ironically, a number of those complaining about the roadworks and the negative effects were the same persons who were long complaining about the poor  condition of the roads. When the work began on the roads, they began complaining out of the other side of their mouths, wanting, as the old folks used to say, to eat their cake and have it too.

      Anyway, all New Providence roads were made usable for the Christmas and New Year holidays, even though, as the government announced in December, the total work on the roads will not be completed until July of this year.

THE AGENDA OF THE UNIONS

      It was a year in which trade unions appeared to conspire against national progress on a number of important national fronts, practically tempting the government to take extreme action which could have rendered the present administration as being anti-labour.

      There was the contentious matter of the sale of 51 percent of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company to Cable and Wireless. The disposal of part of the corporation had for a long time been on the agenda of governments of both the Free National Movement and the Progressive Liberal Party.

      The Bahamas Telecommunications and Public Officers Union and the Bahamas Communications and Public Managers Union  ganged up on the government, organising protests, rallies, walk-outs, and demonstrations, one of which brought on an ugly clash with police.

      Nevertheless the government concluded the deal, which was later ratified by the House of  Assembly.

      Later in the year – on the breast of Christmas, in fact – customs and immigration offices threatened industrial action which would have slowed down operations at ports all over the country. Compounding that situation was a threatened work-to-rule by the Bahamas Air Traffic Controllers Union.

POLITICAL PURSUITS

      On the political scene it was a year of much change and rearrangement, perhaps the most dramatic being the establishment of the Democratic National Alliance by independent Bamboo Town Member of Parliament Branville McCartney, who had once served as a junior cabinet minister in the FNM government.

      In mid December in the governing Free National Movement, the minister of Housing, Kenneth Russell, who serves as the MP for High Rock in Grand Bahama, was advised not only that he was being relieved if his cabinet post, but that in the new constituency configuration, he would not be nominated for re-election

      Last year the Progressive Liberal Party had its full to bursting share of political incidents and intrigues which must certainly have thrust the organisation’s leadership into drafts of new strategies.

      Among other issues, in December came the news that the PLP’s MP for North Andros and the Berry Islands, Vincent Peet, would not be offering for e-nomination because of some personal issues. Subsequent reports were that the PLP will nominate Dr. Perry Gomez to replace Mr. Peet.

      Today all three political organisations are in the process of completing slates of candidates for the next general elections, which are scheduled to take place within months, well before the May deadline.

THE CURSE OF CRIME

      Yet what dominated the headlines for the entire year was the extent of crime and criminality in The Bahamas – particularly murder – which had the Royal Bahamas Police Force pretty much on continuous red alert, and grieving families making endless treks to cemeteries.

      By year’s end there had been a total number of 127 murders, the last having been committed last Friday, with barely 35 hours left in the old year. In 2010 the total murder count was 94.

      The police said that a majority of the murders were committed by prolific offenders, and instituted a “Rapid Strike” force which has nevertheless gone a long way in detection and apprehension of criminals.

      The minister of National Security, Tommy Turnquest, on the other hand, publicly criticised the judiciary for being too lax in the granting of bail to known repeat offenders.

      In the third quarter of the year Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham addressed the nation, when he announced a package of legislation which included the restriction of the granting of bail under a number of circumstances.

      Throughout the year the tremendous crimes against the persons have included murder, attempted murder, rape, attempted rape, armed robbery, robbery, and attempted armed robbery. All that is not to mention of minimise the many cases of sexual and other assaults against children.

      In the words of Prime Minister Ingraham, “for some life is cheap; our common welfare is is of no value . . . this vicious assault of crime affects all of us, it destroys lives and damages livelihoods.”

      Yet all that pertains to what the government is doing, to the effectiveness of new legislation, to the work and the successes of members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Nothing can have real effect without the will of the people.

DAYS AND MOMENTS QUICKLY FLYING

      In far too many instances of serious crimes in The Bahamas last year, there could have been prevention by family and friends, who looked the other way and chose not to cooperate with police, reporting suspicions or even pointing the finger directly at persons they knew was committing crimes.

      The point is, will that attitude continue into this new year? Will the citizenry continue to look the other way when young boys and girls are viciously assaulted by sexual beasts roaming the neighbourhoods? Will there continue to be this obscene silence as the murdered bodies pile up around the communities?

      It is all a matter of choice when people consider that one day in this new year it could be possible that theirs would be one of the bodies piled up, ready to lie in long, narriw graves.

      Some years ago a German pastor, Martin Niermoller, commenting on the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power, purging their hosen targets, group by group, wrote the following:

    First they came for the communists,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

    Then they came for the trade unionists,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews,

    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

    Then they came for me

    and there was no one left to speak out for me.

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.

Those Diastrous, Unforgettable Elections of 1977

THE WHITE FILE For The Punch – 28 February 2011

We often speak of how more than half a century ago, when we were a budding teenager, we used to sit almost at the feet of our mentor the late Cyril St. John Stevenson, and listen to his myriad tales of political revolution and evolution in The Bahamas.

Today we often reflect on how much of what he recited had gone before had a definitive bearing on the existing state of political affairs in the colony.

Back then we were not sitting physically at Stevenson’s feet, but moving about in the print shop of the Nassau Herald on Lewis Street as he banged away on his portable typewriter with its lost “e” key, as he typed scathing editorials condemning the Bay Street demagogues.

He spoke of how sitting House of Assembly politicians like Dr. C. R. Walker and Bert Cambridge could have brought about radical political change had they adopted different political tactics.

Walker and Cambridge were the two members of the House of Assembly for the Southern District of New Providence back in the late 1940s, and were prominent parts of the Citizens Committee, which was organised in 1950 to protest Bay Street’s banning of the movie, No Way Out, which featured Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier for racial reasons.

That grouping had attracted the support of quite a number of the black Bahamian middle class, like the late Justice Maxwell Thompson and could perhaps have made a significant difference in the political outlook of the masses, except that the middle class was prepared to go only so far.

Successive elections, Stevenson used to say, such as the polls of 1949, could have gone dramatically in a different direction, if the will of the masses had been marshalled and directed differently. Stevenson ran for reelection as an independent. The PLP shifted Pindling from New Providence to Andros, where he defeated Stevenson.

Years later, long after he had quite the front line political scene, and when he was getting on in years, we sat quietly with Stevenson as he recounted election after election, attaching special significant to each.

We agreed that perhaps the most celebrated – and most wrenching for many – of all general elections held in the modern Bahamas were the historic polls of 1977, when the electorate was stretched in three political directions. But let us historically backtrack for a spell.

Following the 1967 general elections which ushered in majority rule, the Progressive Liberal Party went on to a landslide victory on 10 April 1968 in an election occasioned by the death of Shirlea Member of Parliament Uriah McPhee.

Not long after that, however, things in the PLP began to sour politically, in fact as early as the PLP’s 1969 convention. Even from then careful observers could detect that St. Agnes MP and cabinet minister Cecil Wallace-Whitfield had his eye on the political crown in the party.

By 1970 premier Lynden Pindling had already fired two cabinet ministers, Warren Levarity and Arthur Foulkes, and at that year’s convention Wallace Whitfield announced that he had resigned from the cabinet. He went on to lead seven other MPs and a number of PLP dissidents in what was known as the Free PLP.

By 1972 there came into being the Free National Movement, which comprised the PLP dissidents, former members of the dismantled United Bahamian Party, and former members of Paul Adderley’s National Democratic Party. Later that year the FNM went into campaign battle against the ruling PLP under the theme, “All Together”.

Fevers ran high in that 1972 campaign, and the FNM contracted public relations experts from Jamaica who had successfully delivered the election in that country for Michael Manley. However, the main issue during the campaign was that of independence the following year, and the PLP, understandably, pushed that emotional issue to the hilt.

That was in September of 1972, and when the votes were counted, the FNM had been defeated dismally. Most dismal of the whole defeat was the fact that every single one of the original eight dissidents – Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, Dr. Curtis McMillan, Dr, Elwood Donaldson, Arthur Foulkes, Warren Levarity, George Thompson, Maurice Moore, and James Shepherd – had lost his seat.

The blow was severe, but a new FNM candidate, Kendal G. L. Isaacs, had won the House of Assembly seat for Fort Montagu. He subsequently became Leader of the Official Opposition. At least for a time, there was peace in the Opposition.

Inevitably, however, by about 1975, there came the famous split in the Opposition, and Cecil Wallace-Whitfield was once more at the centre of it all, surrounded by many who had been with him from the days of the Free PLP.

The other side was formed into the Bahamian Democratic Party. When the 1977 elections were called, both sides offered complements of candidates, some very familiar political faces.

Contesting the election with Whitfield on the FNM side were Bazel Nichols, Frank Watson, Charles Hunt, Clayton Taylor, James Wood, Granville Bain, Audley Kemp, Sterling Quant, Bernard Mortimer, Rudolph Knowles, James Shepherd, and Emerick Knowles.

Additional FNM candidates were James Thompson, Chester Thompson, Peter Galanos, Lucius Moree, Basil Neymour, Oswald Munnings, Warren Levarity, Garnet Levarity, Maurice Moore, Giles Newbold, Edwin Brown, Bill Facquharson and Wideon Pyfrom.

Meanwhile on the BDP side the slate included Geoffrey Johnstone, Roland Symonette, Basil Kelly, Tommy Robinson, Orville Turnquest, Arthur Foulkes, Henry Bostwick, Janet Bostwick, Fred Ramsey, Edmund Moxey, Godfrey Pinder, Clifford Cooper, Edward Barrett, Peter Christie, Erwin Knowles, Norman Solomon, Geoffrey Brown, George Baker, Cyril Tynes and Michael Lightbourn.

In the lead-up to nominations, Whitfield’s political right-hand man, Bazel Nichols, ran shuffle diplomacy between the two sides, resulting in tacit agreement that in places such as North End Long Island the FNM would not mount an opposition candidate. The same was to happen in Governor’s Harbour, Eleuthera, where the BDP did not send a candidate. The FNM also nominated no candidates in Shirlea and Crooked Island.

Additionally, the BDP sent no candidates in Pine Ridge and High Rock, Grand Bahama; in Inagua; in Kemp’s Bay and Mangrove Cay, Andros; and in South Beach and Grant’s Town in New Providence.

During the campaign, from the political platforms, both the FNM and the BDP carefully aimed their cannons at the PLP, carefully and sensible avoiding any criticism of each other.

In the meantime from his own political platform, the wily PLP leader, Lynden Pindling, poked fun at the severed opposition, noting laughingly that, “they were all together, now they are all apart”.

Otherwise in the opposition camps, some races were extremely painful, because they saw close personal friends opposing each other, because they were running as part of opposing political slates.

Such was the case, for example, of the Delaporte constituency, where close friends Arthur Foulkes and Bazel Nichols were representing the BDP and the FNM respectively. Both were defeated by the PLP’s Philip Pinder. In another such case the FNM’s Frank Watson found himself facing the BDP’s Clifford Cooper, with Paul Adderley as the PLP’s candidate.

Mr. Adderley, who as a PLP was first elected to the House of Assembly in 1961, triumphed in the 1977 polls.

Those 1977 elections had proven not only that at the time the PLP under Lynden Pindling was practically an invincible political fighting machine, but that a fragmented opposition, no matter how astute the leadership, would forever fail in The Bahamas.

For a few years following those elections, there were a few other political spin-offs from the mainstream opposition, but by the 1982 elections, the opposition was once again all together. Seat-wise, there were some gains in 1982, but, most importantly, Janet Bostwick, as an FNM candidate, became the first female ever elected to the Bahamian Parliament.

There were even greater gains in 1987, and eventually, in 1992, the Free National Movement triumphed at the polls, with Hubert Ingraham as the party’s leader.

Interestingly, during those historic 1977 elections, Hubert Ingraham was chairman of the governing Progressive Liberal Party.

Meet Dr. Elwood, the First of the Red-Hot Mavericks

(For The Punch – Issue 6 January 2011)

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” ~ OSCAR WILDE

As the old folks used to say at critical junctures, when there was a need to stern decisions that would bring about necessary change, “It’s separation time,” and in this new year, just begun, the Bahamian nation, and especially the youth, must be constantly schooled on the route the nation took to arrive at this stage.

Almost every day there are attempts – both clumsy attempts by the stupid and benighted or disingenuous attempts by the supercilious and self-serving – to twist history in this direction or the next. Yet the devil must be forced to remain forever a liar, and there are still those in the community who can remember, and who can from time to time ensure that he remains a liar.

And so, let another history lesson begin.

Of the original eight Progressive Liberal Party Parliamentarians who, in 1970, supported a vote of no-confidence in former prime minister the late Sir Lynden Pindling, four have passed into glory. These were Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield, Dr. Curtis McMillan, and James Shepherd.

Those yet alive include the present governor-general Sir Arthur Foulkes, former West End and Bimini MP Warren Levarity, former Freeport MP Maurice Moore, and Dr. Elwood Donaldson, who was first elected to the House of Assembly for the Killarney constituency of New Providence.

Each of the eight “Dissidents” in addition to forming the nucleus of what was to become the Free National Movement, had his own private and political row to hoe, as it were, his own life’s story to tell, and most of those stories – such as Sir Arthur Foulkes’s to-hell-and-back tale – have brimmed with fascination.

Every now and then we encounter Dr. Edwood Donaldson, now in his seventies, who has long been off the political front line, but who today, four decades after his front line tour of duty which saw experiences of resignations, firings, protests, and caucuses, enjoys his own curious brand of exile.

Few astute observers of the Bahamian political scene over the decades will deny that Dr. Donaldson was the very first of the established mavericks in The Bahamas, and although he may from time have been accused of being guilty of ill-timing, impetuosity, or even over-estimation, the record that he always spoke out first still remains unchallenged.

Elwood Donaldson, who was born and bred in Bain Town, returned to The Bahamas in the 1960s after completing medical studies at the University of Hawaii. He became formally aligned with the then opposition PLP, receiving that party’s nomination for Killarney in the 1967 polls, winning that election.

The story is well-known about how, when the votes were counted following those January 10th elections, the PLP had won 18 seats, and the governing United Bahamian Party also 18. There was work to be done.

It is little known that in addition to Randol Fawkes and three others who won their seats in that election, Elwood Donaldson was one of those approached by the UBP to throw his support their way, to help form another Bay Street government. The fact that he resisted the lucrative offers is not especially dramatic – so did all the others who were approached.

Even before the PLP won the landslide in 1968, Donaldson was already speaking out against certain of those elements in the party which, he thought, needed correction and renovation. For example, he insisted, publicly, that the law which prevented Bahamians from gambling in the casinos was discriminatory.

After the PLP took office as the government, it was not clear what was offered Dr. Donaldson in the way of cabinet portfolios, chairmanships, or parliamentary secretaryships, but he served, for a time, as Sports Commissioner. Many thought he accepted that position more out of an attitude of team cooperation than out of any real sense of love for the job.

In late 1968, when the late Cecil Wallace-Whitfield made his initial move against the Premier at the famous but little-remembered PLP Balmoral convention, Elwood Donaldson was in the thick of it.

Some say that Dr. Donaldson was there, later that night, to help prepare Sir Lynden Pindling’s short address, which said that there had been a “genuine misunderstanding” between himself and the Minister of Education (Wallace-Whitfield).

Two years later, in 1970, when the dissident eight joined in the move against the prime minister on the floor of the House of Assembly, Donaldson was one of those who spoke most strongly – yet with proper respect – against the PLP leader. Only a few months before that he had led the way, during the PLP convention for the dissidents to voice their complaints against the leadership,

Taking issue with the PLP leader’s suggestion that those who could not fish should cut bait or get the hell out of the boat, Elwood Donaldson no doubt set the tone of the attack, which subsequently saw Whitfield and D. Curtis McMillan resign as ministers, and James Shepherd resign as chairman of Bahamas Electricity Corporation.

When the new Free National Movement was formed, following the Booby Rock-like shivering existence of the Free PLP, Elwood Donaldson emerged as the party’s first chairman, even though, from the break, he had publicly denounced the idea of any kind of joining up with the United Bahamian Party.

The FNM lost the 1972 general elections, badly, with every single one of the original Dissident Eight incumbents, including Dr. Elwood Donaldson, being vanquished. Donaldson was appointed an FNM senator. However, within a few weeks’ time he resigned from both the Senate and the FNM, apparently still uncomfortable with what he termed the “coupling” with Bay Street.

For years Dr. Donaldson existed, politically, unconnected, and he remained in that state of political limbo, although he admitted back than that he “will move when the time is right,” whatever that indicated.

As time passed, it seemed Elwood Donaldson held the view that he could not support Lynden Pindling and the PLP, but neither was he prepared to follow Cecil Wallace Whitfield, entertaining an attitude that he could never be content in saying, as some back then did, that “anything is better than the PLP.”

Expanding, he was reported at the time as saying that “if you replace one leaky pipe with another leaky pipe, what, really, have you done?”

It used to be an utter and joyous education sitting and listening to Elwood Donaldson, a young but renaissance man, as he held forth eloquently on this subject and the next, his head forever tilted to one side, and you came away with the impression that he was once an even younger man filled with passion and anger, and, drawing near his furtive forties, that passion and anger had coalesced into a burning philosophy.

Ten years after Elwood Donaldson’s first fierce foray onto the rigid range of Bahamian front line politics – back in the mid to late seventies – some who may have been viewed him as once who had gained great experience during that devilish decade. Yet Oscar Wilde once noted near the turn of the 20th century that “experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”.

If Donaldson, a brilliant if somewhat eccentric Bahamian professional, was indeed thought to have been guilty of mistakes during those first critical years beginning with his election in 1967, then without doubt the biggest of those would have been to drop, suddenly and unceremoniously from the Bahamian front line political scene.

Of course his reasoning might understandably have been that that scene – as in some many ways it remains all round today – was too profusely peopled with the traditional fickle, fanatical, and fortune-hunting four-flushers who own, if nothing else, a say in the supreme political board rooms, and, alas, a vote.

Dr. Elwood Donaldson, who is, in his way, still a very voluble and vibrant part of the present passing scene, has always been socialist by nature, and his other mistake may have been attempting the application of that theory to a Bahamian situation where there were others, with more money and more power who did not want to be so, at least not at that time.

Today Elwood Donaldson, although still far from the madding crowd of front line politics, is far from any kine of relic. Today he is an even more seasoned renaissance man. If one observes carefully, that old fire in his belly which on so many occasions in the past caused him to stroke out, is now re-directed, but hardly simmered.

He was the very first of the political mavericks of the land, who didn’t give a damn if he way damned for saying his piece against friend and foe alike, and whose whole frank and fearless contribution to the advancement of democracy, made a whole and mighty difference to what is today the new Bahamas.

History is all, and the people, especially the young, should know . . . for what it’s worth.

Finding Peace Against the Raging Tide of Politics

P. Anthony

THE WHITE FILE For The Punch – 20 December 2010

by P. Anthony White

General elections, in The Bahamas tend to bring out the “ugly” in Bahamians who take the issue perhaps far too seriously, forgetting that there will come tomorrow when, like it or not, they will have no choice but to live with one another.

We remember a situation back in 2007 just after that year’s general elections, in which the Free National Movement had emerged victorious. There was bitter resentment on the part of some supporters of the losing Progressive Liberal Party, especially the young.

One evening in the upstairs bistro in Coconut Grove, the old fellow who was always hanging loose there chalked up his cue stick as he prepared to break the balls for a game of pool with his young police friend from Hospital Lane.

Nearby his nubile young lady, resplendent in a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans and a blouse the colour of brilliant morning sunshine sat sipping a tall glass of Mother Pratt and cranberry juice, watching the man with a deep love and adoration which seemed to bloom with intensity each passing day.

It was twenty-seven days after the general elections, and yet among a group of young fellows playing dominoes in the northeast corner of the establishment there was raging an argument over the outcome of those tempestuous polls.

The old fellow shook his head from side to side with a mixture of disgust and sadness across his brow as he broke the balls, sending the yellow six into a corner pocket as his young opponent chalked up.

On the television monitor above the bar where the buxom barmaid stood with her hands under her chin there was projected the PPV movie, The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith.

The other set in the room was tuned to ZNS TV-13, which was carrying a live broadcast of the 72^nd annual session of the Bahamas Baptist National Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention from St. John’s Cathedral of Native Baptists on Meeting Street.

In the corner as a young man dressed in a flaming red T-shirt with the message “It’s A Matter of Trust” slammed a domino tile on the table, he blurted out, “Take that. You’all PLPs ain’t never going to accept that cut hip we done give you’ll.”

“Accept? Accept that you’all done tief some seats and now you’all won’t give the PLP all our Senate seats?” That was one of the other young men at the domino table, as none of them, amazingly, missed a beat in the game.

“Hey, you fellows don’t start that s— in here again,” the barmaid shouted. “The election finish so just go back to what was happening before May 2^nd. Play nice now.”

It was as if she were scolding a couple of youngsters running around the schoolyard, but then that was pretty much reflective of the general attitude in far too many parts of the community these days.

The old fellow listened to the exchange in seething silence as his young pool partner shot fruitlessly.

Then the two of them paused and, along with his amused young lover, set their gaze on the television and the Baptist convention broadcast where, ironically, the subject was peace and national unity following the recent elections.

There bringing greetings to the assembled delegates and guests in the ancient and historic church was the new Minister of National Security and Immigration Tommy Turnquest.

Said the Minister: “This 72^nd Convention comes at a very propitious time in the life of our country, because it is a time when, more that ever in recent times, The Commonwealth of The Bahamas stands urgently in need of healing and of the divine intervention of Almighty God.”

Understandably, that passage completely passed the young fellows playing dominoes and continuing their ferocious political argument centred on the results of the election.

The only difference was that they were now talking in softer tones following the chastisement of the barmaid, who was by this time herself glued to the convention on television.

“Yinna tief Blue Hills,” one said.

Another retorted, “Yeah? Well everybody know you’re tief MICAL.”

“Well, everybody know . . . ”

The old fellow could take it no longer. Slamming the cue ball hard on the table, he bellowed.

“Everybody shut your goddam traps and come over here and listen to what they’re saying to you.”

None of the young fellows moved, but halted their domino game and turned to watch the convention from their corner of the room.

They continued to exchange angry whispers through the remarks by the president of the Bahamas Methodist Conference, and then through a concert piece by a young Baptist band. The old man had sat next to his lady, holding her slim wrist as together they watched.

The preacher was the immediate past president of the Bahamas Christian Council, and in addition to calling for political reform and public disclosure of campaign donations, he too voiced the need for healing and unity.

Neglecting such healing at this time, Rev. William Thompson said, would remain at the nation’s peril.

Only two days earlier when he addressed the Bahamas Christian Council’s National Service of Repentance, Healing and Unity, the Anglican Archbishop of the West Indies had implored Bahamians to stop fighting over the May 2^nd elections.

On that occasion the Most Reverend Drexel Gomez noted:

“Although (the) election is resolved, people are still fighting the election, and we have to leave the election behind us.”

Archbishop Gomez warned that The Bahamas has allowed politics to “get out of hand.”

They were all preaching abiding truths – the highly-placed politicians, the church leaders, the editorial writers, even common folk like the sage old man hanging loose in Mother Pratt’s constituency – and there was no doubt whatsoever that they were perhaps practicing that peace and unity at their respective levels.

Indeed the wonderful spectre of the assemblage in the front row at St. John’s Church last that night – the Governor-General, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister of National Security and Immigration, and alongside and behind them Government and Opposition parliamentarians – bespoke utter peace and unity.

But how far and how swiftly and how effectively was that message traveling? Who was then and is today taking a firm stand among the corridors of the simple and the unlettered, as in that corner of the upstairs bistro and saying with some authority and finality, enough is enough, and then taking the time to explain exactly why?

Rev. William Thompson was still preaching when the old fellow donned his hat and took his young lady to the front door. He had voted proudly for the FNM on May 2^nd, and she, well, she was a proud member of the Progressive Young Liberals.

“You fellows finish listening to what the man telling you on TV,” he said, then put his arm around the slim waist as he and his young love walked down the stairs, together into the night.

Those two, at least, were enjoying sweet peace, perfect peace.