Friday, March 29, 2024

Political biography

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Following the passing of Baroness Thatcher, I recalled how as a student of the academic discipline called history, I have always been intrigued by political biography, memoirs of people who over the centuries have shaped our world.
Three aspects of their lives invariably come to the fore.
The first is the so-called “vision-thing”, ideology, if you will, their particular and sometimes peculiar perception of the world. The second is performance. How did they actually function while in office? The third, and arguably the most important, is legacy. What for better or for worst did they bequeath to us? Were their political careers, in the word of Rudi Giuliani in a discussion on Thatcher, “consequential”?
Compared to the United States, the Caribbean is not rich in political biography. Obama is still in office and not only has he written about his own life, but there are several studies, with more in the offing.
Barbados has not produced much by way of biography and we are the poorer for it. Woodville Marshall’s text on Wynter Algernon Crawford is a notable exception. The relative paucity of historical biography could reflect a certain intellectual aridity or some diffidence in tackling political issues and personages in a society that is small and mentally confining. One recalls a TV discussion during the last elections, a leading Cave Hill academic admitting to the notion that the Barbadian intelligentsia sometimes felt, in his term, “cowed”.
For all his significance, no one has attempted a comprehensive memoir of Errol Barrow’s politics. F.A. Hoyos has chronicled the political careers of Grantley and Tom Adams, but Hoyos is considered something of a court historian . . . . Bernard (later Sir Harold) St John’s career as Prime Minister was perhaps too brief.
Sir Lloyd Erskine Sandiford’s political travails in the crisis that led to the fall of the Democratic Labour Party between 1992 and 1994 is worthy of critical and exhaustive study.  
Political biography makes for interesting anecdotes. For example, a Newsweek correspondent on two-time premier of Quebec Province, Robert Bourassa, known for his indecisiveness, stated: “If you wanted to see Bourassa die of thirst, put two glasses of cold water before him; he couldn’t to save his life decide which glass to drink from.”
In a eulogy on the Caribbean’s own “Iron Lady”, Dame Eugenia Charles, standing beside Ronald Reagan at the White House in October 1983, the time of the Grenada intervention, the Economist newspaper reflected: “They (the photographs) showed a rather grim and melancholy woman in a white cravat and executive striped suit. Only a vestigial twinkle in Reagan’s eye suggested the truth that Miss Charles was having the time of her life. ‘Mr President,’ she told him afterwards, in her lilting basso profundo, ‘you have big balls’.”
One of the most unflattering biographies is of British Prime Minister Edward Heath. In one writer’s estimate, Heath was “obstinate and often rude”.
The article reflected on “his general grumpiness, his undisguised bitterness, and in particular his loathing for ‘that woman’, the person who replaced him as party leader, Margaret Thatcher”. Even his personal characteristics did not escape perhaps too harsh comment. “Awkward in public and ill at ease before the cameras, he had an off-putting voice and an off-putting appearance – all jowls and teeth and heaving shoulders.” The correspondent did, however, concede that Heath was “always honourable”, a better than average musician and a fine sailor who won the Sydney to Hobart yacht race in 1969.     
On the two occasions on which I have had the pleasure of speaking with Mr Owen Arthur, at the launch of Dame Patricia Symmonds’ biography, he spoke of his methodical collection of his official papers. He seemed a very affable person with more than a little of a political leader’s concern with legacy.
More recently, following his resignation as Leader of the Opposition, Mr Arthur has reasserted his intention to pen his memoirs. Merely by being Prime Minister of Barbados, Mr Arthur has secured a place in our history. But as a significant figure in our post-colonial politics, his memoirs would be important and they would be the first by a political leader in Barbados.
It seems that he is likely to pen a political memoir, rather than a broad autobiography.
He might well want to follow the kind of content material delineated in Thatcher matchless text, Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years. The book is an incomparable guide not only to Thatcher, the politician but Thatcher, the individual. Following her passing, she was described by Lord Lamont as “a conviction politician”.
Mr Arthur too, must have had his convictions. His ideas on the economy may be fairly well known. Less so are the social and philosophical underpinnings of his politics. Apart from his rise to, exercise of and descent from power, these aspects of Mr Arthur, the man and politician would make for very exciting reading, and critical and expanding historical discourse in the years to come.
? Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and social commentator. Email rajemmott@caribsurf.com
EDITOR’S?NOTE: Peter Simmons has decided to call it a day with his column Just Like It Is.

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