This is the 100th piece by BU after two months of blogging, how time flies!
We have tried hard as we have stated in our tag line to “bring the news to the people”. Some of our pieces so far have been controversial and we have had some emails where some people have strongly expressed negative feedback, but we have also had many notes of encouragement. The BU household discussed what we should record for our first significant milestone and at the end of it all it was left to me to decide.
Visitors to BU can decide very quickly that there is a fondness which we have for what is happening in the political arena. From my early school hood I have had a great affinity for the civics.
Enough of the preamble!
Our late hero The Right Excellent Errol Walton Barrow is to be admired for what he has done to transition Barbados from the colonial period to independence and onwards. Despite his achievements~free education and all, I have to admit that the politician who fanned my interest in political matters was the late Tom Adams. He has been described as many things but the apt description which I have heard that best described him was that of a political animal. If the standard of debate was high in our parliaments before Tom Adams, it rose by many notches when he was elected in 1976. People nowadays talk of Mia’s oratory skills but when I recall Tom Adams and his marathon and classic engagements with Taitt, Haynes, Barrow and others I have to say that there is no comparison in my book. The one memory which stands out is the ease with which he battered the loquacious and braggadocios Don Blackman into submission after he crossed the floor. Back in those days I know of people who recorded his public utterances to mail to relatives overseas, such was the colossal political stature of the man.
No discussion can be made about Tom Adams and not discuss some of his exploits outside of the lower house, some of which have become folklore around Barbados, no doubt embellished over the years.
Here are some stories posted on Barbados Forum, to say that some are hilarious would be understating it:
Once a policeman told me while on a mobile patrol in the St.George area, they came across a lady who was in a right state; torn clothes, disheveled and crying. She told the cops that she was beaten up by a man. She was put in the patrol car and asked to point out the house where the alleged offense took place. On identifying the house, the lady was dropped off like a hot potato and the cops beat a hasty retreat.
Tom was a brilliant, leader no getting away from it. But you have to admire/pity/ envy the nocturnal side of the man. A certain secretary very often had to come to work wearing dark glasses, to hide the black eyes compliments of Tom.
I knew a salesman, a big tall “red man” with a similar personality as Tom, only crazier. Always ready to bust somebody’s head. One night he was going through old St.Lawrence road, a taxi was park badly on one side, and this guy pulled up abreast of it knowing that he could not get past, easily. Switched off his engine, took his paper out and began to read, oblivious of the traffic building up behind him. One of the cars held up happened to be MP 1. When Tom knocked on the roof of his car and he looked up and saw Tom, in a split second the car was started and sped through the space that was too tight before.
You remembered Carifesta 1981, when the Government was a bit tardy in paying the privately owned Public Service Vehicles it had contracted to transport guest and participants between various venues? Remember how the owners kicked up a fuss, claiming that the government owed them a huge sum as their daily earnings were very high. Tom paid them shortly after, without much hesitation. Next year he leveled a tax on the PSV owners commensurate with the inflated earnings that they claimed from Government. To this day they are still complaining about the high taxes and levies they are required to pay.
You remembered the Mercedes Staff car MP2, which was assigned to Tom Adams, which apparently disappeared off the face of the earth? This was the one Tom took away from Don Blackman the then Minister of Transport, who apparently had done a Rommel Marshall with the Brazilian bus suppliers. It is said that the Brigadier had used MP2, whilst was parked out for target practice.
The circumstance of his sudden departure and the many stories which we have heard over the years can fill a book. The last story was that he was poisoned by an Asian lady who entered Barbados for one day and when she left so did Tom.
So there you are BU readers, I have given you an insight to who I think is responsible for massaging my interest in politics while at the same time providing a little humor…I hope. Although others have come close, Arthur included, in my opinion Tom Adams remains the political Goliath who is responsible for charting the transition to this modern economy.
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