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.