PEP COLUMN: Crawford’s 100th gone unnoticed

Fri, September 03, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Sunday, August 29, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great Barbadian statesman – Wynter Algernon Crawford. And to our collective shame as a nation, this historic milestone went totally unheralded and uncelebrated!

Wynter Algernon Crawford was arguably the greatest Barbadian of the 20th century. Yet, if you ask the average Barbadian student who Wynter Crawford was, you would almost invariably elicit a blank response.

The manner in which the great Wynter Crawford has been treated is nothing short of a national scandal! Men whose contributions pale in significance to Crawford’s have been made national heroes, while Crawford has been deliberately and systematically marginalised.

The only reason Wynter Crawford has been treated in this disgraceful manner is because he ran afoul of the two major political parties of Barbados – the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and the Democratic Labour Party (DLP). Because Crawford “crossed swords” with Grantley Adams and Errol Barrow, successive BLP and DLP governmental administrations have determined not to give him his due!

Wynter Crawford’s contribution to the public life of Barbados began in 1934. At a time when Grantley Adams was still a supporter of the “conservatives” and a fierce opponent of Dr Charles Duncan O’Neal, Crawford launched his radical and progressive Barbados Observer newspaper.

It played a crucial role in the fledgling workers’ movement by raising critical issues and giving a voice to the advocates of social and political reform. Of great significance was the role played by Crawford in recording the workers’ rebellion of 1937, and ensuring that the plight of the martyrs of 1937 remained in the public consciousness.

Wynter Crawford was also virtually the founder of the Barbados Labour Party in 1938. It was he who met with the visiting lawyer, Hope Stevens, and proposed the formation of a political organisation to unite the progressive forces of Barbados. Indeed, it was Crawford who set up the meeting in Bay Street at which the BLP was formed.

Having played a fundamental role in setting the BLP in motion, Crawford subsequently broke with Grantley Adams, and in 1944 established an even more radical and progressive political party – the West Indian National Congress Party.

Indeed, throughout the second half of the 1940s, Crawford’s Congress Party was equally as powerful as the BLP and was responsible for developing the core agenda of the progressive movement – compulsory education, universal adult suffrage, free books and hot lunches for schoolchildren, a national health and unemployment scheme, disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the development of manufacturing industries, and labour migration schemes.

Although the Congress Party went into decline in the 1950s, Wynter Crawford occupied such a dominant and respected position on the political landscape that the young Errol Barrow and his infant DLP naturally gravitated to Crawford for his advice and input.

With Crawford in their ranks and in possession of a revolutionary Manifesto written almost exclusively by Wynter Crawford, the DLP swept to power in 1961.