The following is a snippet from a book published by the late Gordon Matthews “Death of Barbados”. Thanks to BAFBFP.
Death of Barbados … Gordon Matthews
The following is a snippet from a book published by the late Gordon Matthews “Death of Barbados”. Thanks to BAFBFP.
127 responses to “Death of Barbados … Gordon Matthews”
-
@David,
your post February 1, 2020 10:47 AM is spot on.
whilst acknowledging the past we must not forget today. that is the biggest issue i have with the DLP and with Bim as a whole. that is why i say we must give due reverence to the past and manage the present to make the future better for all bajans.
no one can now compare the issues of today against what Barrow faced in his time and say that the day we call his day should have been named PMs’ day. nonsense i say. Barrow during his period, like or hate him, impacted the lives of many bajans and beyond any other PM should be so recognised.
that notwithstanding we have pressing problems facing us, for which we must adjust attitudes and find solutions. and so i agree with you. so whilst commemorating Barrow and those who have had an important influence on the management of BIM, we must solve today’s problem for future generation
-
Wuh Loss!!
The Demolition continues.@ Robert Lucas
“alleged navigator”? And “not a pilot”?There is enough evidence to suggest EWB was designated as both before his return to Barbados in the 1950’s.. I think these claims can be verified by research. But as usual ,I may be wrong.
-
@ Robert
Barrow is Father of Independence. Hail the father. Friends of all, satellites of none. He is a national hero. Hail Barrow, the great World War two pilot, the great LSE economist, the great politician, the great philosopher, the great leader.(Quote)
The above was not meant literally. It was meant to be a play on the myth-making surrounding Barrow. Sometimes I have to remind myself I am writing for a different audience.
-
@ Hal
we must recognise our past man. we must understand the period under which Barrow operated.
take a listen to Sleepy Smith here man.
-
@ Greene
I am not disrespectful to Barrow. As I have said on a number of occasions, I thought as a young man that the 1961 government was radical; in fact, we had never seen anything like it before.
With the clarity of historical 20/20, a lot of his policies were not that good. But he was no messiah and the nonsense of the Father of Independence is but one example of this. Another is the so-called free secondary education. The way some people talk it is as if he invented secondary education in Barbados.
Barrow was no revolutionary, he was a royalist, something which our Republicans should remember. He is a central part of our political history, but we should not try to make him out to be more than he really was. -
@Hal
agreed but i have real issues with those who seek to bash him. no man is all things to all people and no man is a saint politically or otherwise but we have to understand the issues of those times and remember those men were children of their period as we are today. we simply cannot view them thru our present lens.
-
@Greene
What an emotionally intelligent comment.
-
@Vincent, absolutely right. Can be verified by basic checking and I assumes some common awareness of war time life. The use of ‘alleged’ there is a petty contrivance… There is NO dispute of the man’s ‘reserve’ and active wartime service.
A navigator is not a pilot one can easily define. Maybe a navigator could fly those bombers if push came to the proverbial shove but being certified as a navigator didn’t mean u could fly…. But what’s the point of all this really?
Was the man not one of a group of West Indians (who should be loudly heralded for that service) that fought the war effort; was the man not good enough at his assignments that he was the navigator for one of the top commanders.
Was he not a Black man doing service in a broadly racist environment? How many Black airforce Brit pilots of WWII were they?
I know of the Tuskegee air unit in US but have no familiarity with the Brit status of Black airmen.
But the point is that Barrow was that type of ‘man’s Man’ : sharp as a tack, good at what he did and boldly confident of himself in doing it!
One assumes that he could just as easily have remained in the UK and be wildly successful … but he returned and became a political Colossus … and is vilified and praised as a result of that for simply breathing really, it seems.
These debates are self serving.
The man did what ‘destiny’ called on him to do as many before and after him also did.
We need to get over OURSELVES !
-
I have been saying that for quite some time, everyone in the Caribbean should have their DNA tested.
“A DNA test for Barbadians or other Caribbean people who are descendants of enslaved persons could change their point of view and re-align their focus to developments in countries of the Motherland from where they discovered their ancestors originated.
The quest for exact ancestral origins by Barbadians is not to be restricted to DNA testing alone but coupled with researching easily available online data that provide information on slave names to be found in early 19th Century records in the ‘slave register’ and produced by Moravians and Methodists.”
-
Won’t it be a thing if half the bloodlines of Caribbean people of African descent came straight out of buckingham palace, what a day that would be…lol
-
-
My understanding (I could be wrong) is that the most consequential decision Barrow made as the Father of Independence was to reject the option of seizing the land and commercial enterprises of the white elite for re-distribution, and to choose the alternative of investing heavily in education as the pathway to upward social mobility for the masses.
If this is correct, we should discuss the merits of this pivotal decision, instead of getting distracted by superficial crap about place names.
-
another useful link
-
@ Greene
Again. I am not bashing Barrow. I am talking about historical accuracy. He was not Father of Independence. It was the US who forced the Brits to free their colonies after WW2 as part of the Bretton Woods/Marshall Plan talks. The details are there in the Library of Congress.
As to free secondary education, what did we do before the introduction of Barrow’s free secondary education. We have discussed this topic before. We had the state secondary schools and a bevy of private secondary schools – Modern High, Federal, Barbados Academy, Lynch’s Secondary, MacDonnald’s, etc. and poor parents managed to pay fees for their kids. ‘Free’ secondary education is also a myth (it was/is paid for by taxpayers).
In terms of social transformation, I have said before, Grantley Adams did far more than Barrow. In terms of independence, he marshalled internal self-government and when the British tried to force a Federation on us as an alternative to individual independence, he it was chosen to lead the regional body.
As for education, it was Adams who build Parkinson, Princess Margaret, St Joseph and on another I cannot recall. He expanded the range.
In fact, in terms of the City/St Michael, I know it is not popular to say, but Ernest Deighton Mottley did more for the poor people of the City than anything Barrow did. That was on of the reason why Barrow got rid of local government.
Barrow did us proud, but let us put it in its proper perspective. -
Most here have lost focus on what many see as an intent driven by Mia to build a legacy for herself while blantantly destroying some of his memories attached to helping the working person
No one cares what she chooses to do or implement in making decisions to help Barbados economy
However the avenue which Mia has pursued sends messages of political mischief when one look at whose Name( Hon.Errol Barrow) attached to those buildings in revitalizing with an interest to build a better barbados
Mia could only be politically blind not to realize that the avenue she chose to build her own legacy would be paved with outrage and disgust
Reason being she has shown total disrespect in the minds of many for Errol Barrow legacy -
If there ever was a demonstration of the art of misdirection and spin bowling, this blog is it. Here we have a blog titled “Death of Barbados … Gordon Matthews” and few people picked the cleverly disguised yorker. How you mean yorker? A spin bowler doesn’t blow yorkers you say.
That may be so, but there it is nevertheless. Right there for all to see, big as a breadfruit and small as a pea. How could he have known then what we now not know? Still, others have intimated that non-nationals were in the know long before we Bajans were left in the dark by the grand announcements. While some see Barrow in everything, others see Grantleys in all things.
Death of Barbados … Gordon Matthews.
I say no, Death to Barbados…they kind of Barbados. If I am dead to Barbados, then Barbados is dead to me. -
Seeing we are talking I suggested to the last government that they rename Harrison’s College to Errol Barrow College and was met with lots of nasty terms and foolish arguments.
-
Truth is Barrow never wanted to be a hero nor an idol. Looks like some want to make him either a hero or an idol. What Barrow wanted is for Barbadians to be the best humans we can possibly be and sadly that is not happening. We as Barbadians are becoming the worst human beings possible. We are morally corrupt and have no idea what his mirror image speech was about. Our true hero should be GOD and sadly we are far away from GOD and his ways. The DLP went full throttle in their 30 – 0 defeat to use the Barrow legacy with the “TRIDENT” plan with every thing being about the TRIDENT as a means of pointing to Barrow. It failed miserably and not learning any thing from that cruel defeat they are back to the same thing of relying on a BARROW legacy instead of being a party of the future.
-
@Roverp
maybe JMG Tom Adams College would have been more appropriate- lol. i have a number of issues with renaming schools. i would hate to wake up one day and hear Cawmere is renamed to Frank Worrell School or David Thompson or Tom Clarke or Wes Hall or George Lamming or some other name
-
Here’s what actually happened in the world after WWII and how it impacted Barbados.
Before WWII, world supply and demand of sugar was 30 million tons.
Our output was insignificant, well under 100,000 tons.
When the Japanese attacked, they destroyed most of the sugar output from the Pacific.
In Europe, sugar beet production had ceased.
Russia was isolated
When WWII ended, world supply was half pre war levels.
Clearly the price of sugar increased during the war and after as did the demand..
Clearly Barbados benefitted!!
Barbados sugar production peaked at 200,000 tons in 1957 and again in 1967.
Labour was in demand.
The economy thus boomed and from the boom, the Deep Water Harbour and QEH were built.
Here is a clip worth watching which deals in reality.
-
Barrow stumbled on to the stage when the economy was in a boom.
-
It wasn’t until 1953/4 that sugar rationing ceased in England.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/4/newsid_3818000/3818563.stm
America had sugar rationing till 1947.
Cuba was its largest source of sugar outside of the USA.
But the sugar industries in the Philippines, Java and other parts of had to be rebuilt from scratch.
-
@ Hal February 1, 2020 12:47 PM
And Boris is the father of Brexit.
-
@ Hal
Why is no kudos given to Wynter Crawford? A lot of the ideas of that period were his. There seems to be conspiracy to write him out of the history of Barbados Every one is shouting for Barrow: I am shouting for Crawford. There is a book written by him in the library. Should be made a text book. -
In the midst of all this talk I am here asking myself why would Mia want to destroy the legacy of her “ grandfather “. Why would she want to destroy anything about the great grand dad who “greeted” her every evening on her return from school.
To even suggest such intentions on the part of our honorable Prime Minister is grossly disrespectful. -
Correction. Why are no kudos instead of is.
-
@ Dr.Lucas
Well if Barrow is not relevant to young people and he only departed in the 80s what is the relevance of the man you and others worship who left a few thousand years ago?
You need to explain your very narrow definition of relevance. I guess if you were to do outstanding work in your field and you magically become old or depart the scene those who come after would say what Dr Lucas did is of no relevance to the young people.
I am no Barrow fan but good grief let simple common sense prevail.
But then again some scientists have little respect for other disciplines because at a very young age they could understand physics chemistry and mathematics and were told that the arts were soft subjects. Most of them ended up in a permanent state of esoterica. -
@ Robert
Crawford is a proper working class hero, so was TT Lewis, a white man, but Bajans are very socially conservative and like the massa’s history. In Barbados fiction is more powerful than fact.
-
@ William Skinner February 1, 2020 5:00 PM
Do I detect a tinge of envy?
-
@ William Skinner February 1, 2020 4:48 PM
You might have forgotten the political adoption of MAM’s own daddy from a sitting BLP MP into Barrow’s DLP family of ambassadors.
Despite the make-believe political war in the mayoral City between her granddad and the skipper MAM practically hero-worshipped the Skipper as a child to the extent she wanted to join the DLP on her return from studying Law in England as her first option to the path of becoming a ‘first-of-a-kind of primus inter pares; just like her childhood idol Uncle Errol.
Wasn’t her political Uncle primarily instrumental in ensuring the political child prodigy was able to be called to the Bar without going the LEC route?
Only reinforces what you have been saying over the years. The duopoly rules; whether in royal blue or regal red.
Just to reinforce -
EWB, Wynter Crawford, TT Lewis, Frank Walcott etc etc etc are all just creatures of the sugar boom in the post WWII era.
Barbados was and is over populated and cannot provide employment for all.
It was only in and after the WWII era that Barbados needed large numbers of people to cut cane and could pay them a decent wage with high sugar prices.
Until then there was always an over supply so labour was cheap.
The BWU worked for a time because there was a source of income in the post WWII era to meet wage demands after the 1930’s.
Health care became important because high infant mortality was inimical to high demand for labour.
After a while, the whole thing dried up because the supply of sugar worldwide increased and pushed down prices, income fell but wage demands never decreased.
The goose that laid the golden egg existed but for a few decades.
We just weren’t smart enough to figure out how to adapt!!
If we keep thinking it was a few individuals who made the progress possible we are badly mistaken.
Market forces shaped the Barbadian economy.
For me it was the technical capability to increase milling capacity to process the output of the labour from the fields that was critical.
But even that only came into existence because of the insatiable demand for sugar by the world economy.
Last time I checked world supply was about 150 millions tonnes per year, 3 times what it was pre WWII.
-
I would say EWB et al left one legacy.
They blew the best economic position Barbados ever found itself in.
-
So, Gordon Matthews I reckon was out in his estimation.
He was blinded by hero worship of EWB.
It isn’t the memory of EWB that will be destroyed by destroying the Treasury Building and the NIS Building.
It is the evidence of what a booming economy looked like and could produce.
Whatever building ends up as the Hyatt Hotel will not be the result of a surplus in the Barbados economy.
The building and the financial success it will manifest will belong to someone else, made somewhere else.
-
@ John February 1, 2020 7:36 PM
If sugar was so unprofitable in Barbados up to WW11, where did the money come from to build those lavish plantation and great houses with the armies of house slaves to look after every indulgent want of the white occupants?
Weren’t the white elites in Bim able to afford sending their children to finishing schools and universities overseas?
How was Barbados able to survive from being a grant-in-aid colony with some of its fiscal surplus sent to HQ as management fees for Whitehall and Crown?
-
Miller
February 1, 2020 10:43 PM@ John February 1, 2020 7:36 PM
If sugar was so unprofitable in Barbados up to WW11, where did the money come from to build those lavish plantation and great houses with the armies of house slaves to look after every indulgent want of the white occupants?
Weren’t the white elites in Bim able to afford sending their children to finishing schools and universities overseas?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What lavish plantation and great houses?
From the 1600’s two significant houses remain, Drax Hall and Nicholas Abbey.
And they are not lavish.
The 26 years of war, 1789 to 1815 was I reckon the only other period (and I have written about it before) when sugar was profitable.
But the size of Barbados was always a limit to those profits.
Most of the plantation/great houses are from that period.
Name me 10 “white elites” who were able to send their children to finishing schools and universities overseas.
In the 17th and 18th century they usually farmed out some to lawyers, doctors, merchants, artisans etc etc as apprentices to learn a trade.
-
Miller
February 1, 2020 10:43 PM@ John February 1, 2020 7:36 PM
How was Barbados able to survive from being a grant-in-aid colony with some of its fiscal surplus sent to HQ as management fees for Whitehall and Crown?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Trade.
Fiscal surplus you speak of were then known as duties and taxes.
7/8ths of the economy was all about trade.
1/8th was sugar.
In 1848 the tonnages in Carlisle Bay quoted in Schomburgk provide a basis for this proportioning.
Provisioning ships I reckon was a more profitable agricultural enterprise than sugar.
From the beginning, many planters, small and large also had ships and their agricultural endeavours were targeted at keeping them supplied.
Haven’t you been paying attentions to my teaching?
You do realise that if Barbados was a grant in aid colony as you claim it can’t have been very profitable and you are agreeing with my thesis … I am suitable impressed!!
All that was necessary was to break even and live to fight another year because every now and again the ability to make profits from a war would arise!!
And that’s the difference between today and yesterday, NATIONAL DEBT.
There are thousands of LAVISH houses today which are not plantation/great houses way more lavish than Drax HAll or Nicholas Abbey.
The difference, and this is a legacy of EWB et al, they are owned by the Bank, not Bajans.
-
Here is a clue …. largest Barbados Company …. BARBADOS SHIPPING AND TRADING!!!
To even the most simple minded that must mean something!!
-
@ John February 2, 2020 7:25 AM
And what does that tell you? And who owns it today after its severe cannibalization?
What about Plantations Ltd?
Weren’t both involved in the importation of goods to service the plantation system primarily based on the annual sugar crop?
What you are saying here, in no uncertain terms, is that Prof. Hilary Beckles is nothing but a liar and intellectual fraud for pursuing reparations because no one benefited from the slave trade other than the blacks themselves for being brought to the West Indies to find Jesus.
Barbados, in your view, was never a ‘special’ economic jewel in the British Crown but simply a refuge for blacks being looked after by their white masters of Benedictine Quakers.
Prof. Beckles, (and David Comissiong) you need to hang up your ‘fake’ reparations boots and books and accept the John-established fact that reparations have already been received by the ancestors of those African souls saved from eternal damnation by their Quaker owners.
Just look around at the many Anglican churches and glebe lands (former illegal tenantries and black cemeteries) around the country!
-
@ John February 2, 2020 7:02 AM
Who ever argued that Barbadoes was a grant-in-aid colony?
On the contrary it was a rather profitably bright jewel in the ‘English’ Crown.
Stop the lies John!
Barbados was built on sugrar. Not on trans-Atlantic trading like Bermuda.That is why Barbadoes was such a strategic location for the African slave trade in supplying the sugar plantations in the English speaking New World including its own market for cheap black labour which could survive the hot sun.
Why would you want to enslave so many blacks if the main economic activity of the country was that of arranging trans-Atlantic shipping transactions?
Out of a moral concern for their safety back on the West African ‘black-gold’ coast?
What’s was wrong with ‘hiring’ the many unemployed ‘white’ hands back in cold ole Blighty to have an extended holiday and a complete sun tan in Little England?
-
Barbados is tiny, the profits are to be made elsewhere.
In sugar, after the destruction of the Haitian economy, it was Trinidad and Guyana.
Water, rivers, climate all suited but most of all, land.
You will find the families associated with BS&T were also associated with Guyana … Austin etc.
Barbados was always subsidized by family businesses with external interests.
Here is an example of the simple realization that Barbados is too small to base most business ventures.
Guyana, loads of land, water and now oil!!!
https://www.goddardenterprisesltd.com/mergers_acquisitions
This is not rocket science.
-
Miller
February 2, 2020 8:17 AM@ John February 2, 2020 7:25 AM
And what does that tell you? And who owns it today after its severe cannibalization?
What about Plantations Ltd?
Weren’t both involved in the importation of goods to service the plantation system primarily based on the annual sugar crop?++++++++++++++++++++++
Sure, but a small part.
Plantations Shipping and Trading was also a business activity.
-
Miller
February 2, 2020 8:17 AM@ John February 2, 2020 7:25 AM
Barbados, in your view, was never a ‘special’ economic jewel in the British Crown but simply a refuge for blacks being looked after by their white masters of Benedictine Quakers.
+++++++++++++++++++++
It was a refuge/retreat for Quakers from religious persecution.
Slavery was quite legal and practiced but had it not been practiced and had the Quakers not been brought face to face with it, it would never have been abolished!!.
-
Miller
February 2, 2020 8:17 AM@ John February 2, 2020 7:25 AM
What you are saying here, in no uncertain terms, is that Prof. Hilary Beckles is nothing but a liar and intellectual fraud
++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the shoe fits!!
-
@ Robert
And Boris is the father of Brexit.(Quote)
No. Nigel Farage, the descendant of Huguenots.
-
@ John February 2, 2020 9:19 AM
What a lying load of BS not even fit to be dumped in a Bajan cane field!
If they were Roman Catholic that stretch of the imagination could be tolerated.
Why not convert to Anglicanism like many Roman Catholics and Jews did to own businesses and make money?Why not settle in America which had been settled before tiny Barbadoes?
How about migrating to West Africa the source of that ‘evil’ business called slavery and do the work of God?Didn’t the same Quakers engage in similar convenient conversion in Barbados and in the Americas to exploit the beneficence of the State and to own businesses based on slavery?
The Quakers came to Barbados to make money and earn a ‘decent’ living (compared to what was available in places like Leicestershire) from the emerging sugarcane industry.
Stop with the holier-than-thou description of a group of people who were even taken to task by one of their very own George Fox who had to escape with his life from vicious Quaker Barbadoes bent on keeping slavery a morally worthy and profitable business enterprise.
Those ‘converted’ Quakers were some of the most effective architects in establishing mercantilism and early capitalism in the English-speaking New World; just like many ‘converted’ Jews in Portugal and RC Western Europe and deeply involved in the West African slave trade and.
-
Gordon Matthews, like many other Barbadians, suffered from the islanders’ disease: tunnel vision and arrogance.
Barrow was not a great statesman, but a demagogue. He promised prosperity through independence. All he brought was death and destruction. Compare the Dutch and French Antilles with our huge plantation called Barbados. Compared to Curaçao, Barbados is a run-down Third World country that was exploited by stupid klepocrats for ten years and is no different from any other country in South America or Africa thanks to ten years of DLP terror.
Those who praise Barrow praise 10 years of economic rape, corruption, murders, state failure and bankruptcy.
The government should erase the figure called Barrow from the national memory.
-
This “top-ranking BLP civil servant” should be locked up in the drunk tank so that he can sleep it off. The man praises Barrow and obviously suffers from severe hallucinations. Whether this is due to drug abuse, illness or simply bad genetic disposition is a matter of debate.
Barbados has had no real economic growth since 2008, i.e. for 12 years (!!!), and here they still worship their demigod Barrow. The only way I can explain this is their brains have been replaced with concrete or straw.
-
Seems that our beloved PM had very bad “grandfather”. One is left to wonder what conversations they had when she came home from school.
-
Miller
February 2, 2020 10:00 AM@ John February 2, 2020 9:19 AM
What a lying load of BS not even fit to be dumped in a Bajan cane field!
If they were Roman Catholic that stretch of the imagination could be tolerated.
Why not convert to Anglicanism like many Roman Catholics and Jews did to own businesses and make money?
Why not settle in America which had been settled before tiny Barbadoes?+++++++++++++++++
I am quoting historical facts regarding the Quakers.
C of E broke from the Roman Catholics …. 1500’s.
Reformation threw up many non conformists who then broke from the C of E.
One set of Puritans felt the C of E could be purified from with in, the separatist faction felt it was too far gone to save.
The Puritans were persecuted by the C of E.
The Puritans won the Civil War.
Cromwell became head of Church and State.
The Puritans then controlled the C of E.
The Quakers were another set of non conformists that arose c. 1648 at the end of the Reformation.
They were persecuted by the C of E, Puritans.
The Puritans controlled the New England colonies and Quakers were viewed as heretics.
A Barbadian Quaker was hanged in Boston .. William Leddra, but also check Ann Dyer.
Man, you are totally ignorant of history!!
If you would read the two books suggested by GP you would not make such ignorant statements.
If you ever do read the books, you will find out there is a completely different denomination and it is not Quaker which claims a link right back to the early church through its beliefs.
Go around Barbados and you will find numerous places called Retreat.
You will find atleast one in many parishes.
Even HC had what we knew as “The Retreat” and that was because HC was made up of two small plantations, one of which was called Retreat.
I guess “The Retreat” at HC may have been the plantation house.
-
Here is what I learnt when I was 11 undergoing Confirmation classes.
What is the Holy Catholic Church?
The Holy Catholic Church is the union of all faithful Christians under one Head.
She is the Mystical body of Christ
She is the bride of Christ
She is Christ’s Kingdom on earth
She is the household of God
She is a divine institution not a human invention.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
What I learnt at 11 years old ties right in to the history of Barbados.
Leave a Reply to WURA-WAR-on-UCancel reply