Its been a while since I have heard anyone fuss over the late Tom Adams. The current series of Labour Party activities is refreshing, even if not genuine in seeking to perpetuate his memory.
For the last 14 years, teenagers and persons in their mid-20s could be forgiven for believing that Tom was a Dem . More positive things were said of Errol Barrow by the leadership of the Labour Party than of Tom Adams, who can be said to be the father of the modern day party.
During the reign of Owen Arthur, it was as though the works and memory of Tom Adams were to be interred with his bones. Indeed, there appeared a systematic campaign to portray the Barbados Labour Party as having started in 1994 with the ascension of Owen Arthur to the leadership of that party.
My partisan political leanings have always been known, even though I have always silently regretted that Tom Adams and Henry Forde, now Sir Henry, were not on my side. I admired their politics and would love for their individual contributions to be chronicled and preserved for posterity. Strange how no one of influence in the Labour Party has to date initiated this venture.
I never understood the seeming love-hate relationship that the latter day leadership of the BLP has for these two gentlemen. Their hearts were in the right places. They understood politics and they loved people. Yet, since their exits from the leadership of that party, it would appear that everything has been down to remove their legacies from the pages of the history of that party in particular and Barbados in general.
Tom Adams was about 20 years ahead of his time. He had a clear vision of Barbados in the 21st century. He was a leader of men. I recall several conversations in which he would share thoughts on a wide range of issues impacting the quality of life of Barbadians. He had a particular admiration for Errol Barrow and Richie Haynes, now Sir Richard, even though the record of their parliamentary encounters would suggest otherwise. Interestingly also, he conducted a continuous appraisal of his Cabinet and Parliamentary colleagues, and even though knowing me to be a Barrow man , he would speak frankly about his comfort and lack thereof with individuals.
It is interesting that today, for example, several of those who I recall him speaking highly of, are on the fringes of the party, cast aside by a latter day leadership that does not appear willing to embrace anything or anyone identifiable with Tom Adams. The late Prime Minister spoke fondly of Lionel Craig, Aaron Truss, Clyde Griffith, Vic Johnson and Louis Tull, to mention but a few, but strange enough, most, if not all of these, were put into political purgatory, soon after his eyes were shut and definitely following the demise of Henry Forde as leader of that party.
When in the last general election campaign, persons spoke of an emerging dictatorship and the attempt by some to alter the history of Barbados by suggesting there were only two post-Independence leaders of Barbados, namely Errol Barrow and Owen Arthur, they are those who thought that the warnings were alarmist or extreme. But when today the memory of Tom Adams is resurrected with a former Governor of the Central Bank flown home to deliver a high powered lecture in, of all places, the Errol Barrow Centre at Cave Hill, it becomes worthy of study, the strategy that unfolded before our very eyes over the past 14 years.
I cringe of late when I hear the current leadership of the Labour Party speaking on topical issues. The Tom Adams that I knew would have adopted a totally different strategy to that which is being pursued by the current leadership of that organisation. He would not have been confrontational and acrimonious and he would have used the opportunity of a 20-10 drubbing, to refocus and reformat the party.
Tom Adams would not be prancing around in the media with all sorts of abstract issues. He would not be calling for a decrease in energy prices at home, with the price of crude so volatile on the world market. He would have seen the wisdom of a leader of Barbados drawing close to Barack Obama and the black congressional caucus in the United States.
Tom Adams, if it were he who had opened the floodgates for Bajan lands to be sold at astronomical prices, would not now be complaining of the high appraisal values of land and property. He would instead be telling Barbadians that it was he who made them millionaires overnight.
In other words, Tom had a philosophy. A philosophy that was consistent and perhaps even predictable. You knew where he stood on issues. There is no way that Tom Adams, having run the Urban Development Commission into the ground, would eight months later be lamenting its impotence and inability to deliver. He would perhaps have been in the forefront of initiating a revamping.
Tom Adams was too crafty a politician to be caught fishing outside the off stump. There is much that latter day politicians can learn from the politics of the late Tom Adams. But, if, for whatever reason, they thought it necessary to bury his memory with his body, that is their mistake. My plea is that if they are now resurrecting that memory and invoking his spirit, then they should do this for genuine, laudable reasons and not for short-term political gain. Tom deserves better!
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