Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 15/Sep 05:59

Please, let Sir Grantley rest in peace

Whoever coined the phrase “two countries divided by a common language” (probably George Bernard Shaw; possibly Oscar Wilde) was referring to the UK and USA, but only because they were unfamiliar with the relationship between TT and Barbados. When I moved from London to New York, I had to add a “z” or two to a few words and dispense with the occasional superfluous "u.” But I didn’t have to learn an entirely new vocabulary for fruit, as required for entry to TT. You say this avocado is called what? Zah-boh-car? Isn’t that the sound you make when you sneeze? Growing up in Barbados, I was told that TT had nothing but disdain for flying fish and Banks beer. As an impressionable young boy, I was once trapped in an hour-long diatribe from some friend of my parents who detailed an exhaustive list of the psychological flaws that caused Trinis to hate Bajan soca. The Bajan Invasion took over TT a couple of years later. I hope that guy is doing OK. He lost his life’s work. I feel like I’ve heard pretty much every myth and misconception that Barbados has about TT. And vice versa. And yet none of that prepared me for the day TT decided to come for Sir Grantley Adams. To be fair, I don’t think TT was prepared for that day either. When I heard Dr Kirk Meighoo was proposing Sir Grantley Herbert Adams, CMG, QC, be anointed the first prime minister of TT, I assumed he was transitioning from political communications to satire. These are, after all, troubling times in our region. With battleships prowling our waters seeking to execute smugglers and vagabonds on the high seas, backed by a TT PM snarling “Kill ‘em all violently” while enraged Venezuelan government ministers throw increasingly colourful insults from Caracas across the Gulf of Paria, it feels like we’re living in a terrible Pirates of the Caribbean reboot. If Dr Meighoo believed we all needed a little cheering up with an absurdist reading of history, I can find no fault with that. Or perhaps he’d decided to turn himself into the embodiment of contorted political communications. Consider “Grantley Adams was TT’s first PM” as the title of a challenging piece of performance art, in which the artist is an actual spokesperson for a political party, deliberately spouting demonstrably ahistorical nonsense to illustrate the lack of substance in modern political debate. It’s subversive genius. Or not. In a flurry of follow-up Facebook posts and the occasional media interview, Dr Meighoo appears genuinely invested in defending the scorched remains of his argument. Grantley Adams is a Bajan national hero. He was a founding leader of the Barbados Labour Party and Barbados Workers’ Union, a resolute campaigner for a more democratic system of (pre-independence) government, the country’s first Premier, and – when his party lost the 1966 election to Errol Barrow’s DLP – the first Leader of the Opposition in an independent Barbados parliament. You’ll find his face on the Bajan $100 bill, his name on that country's airport and his former home is now a heritage site. Along the way, he also found time to be the first PM of the West Indies Federation. For this distinction, Meighoo believes Adams ought to be recognised as TT’s first PM. Grantley Adams is not even considered the first PM of Barbados, and we put him on our Bajan money. No surprise that TT seems largely unmoved by Dr Meighoo’s effort to reshape history. As PM of the West Indies Federation, Grantley Adams was the first human to wield some sort of legislative authority over TT while bearing the title of prime minister. Sure, that’s a quirky historical fact. But it’s quixotically pedantic essay-bait for undergraduates, at best, not scholarly insight from a man with (at least) three degrees, including a Politics PhD. If he has a serious point at all, maybe it is that Meighoo regards Grantley Adams as a sort of forgotten George Washington of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the West Indies Federation did not blossom into a dominant sovereign nation. Instead, it imploded in about four years. In that regard, Grantley Adams’ tenure as leader of the federation has more in common with Jefferson Davis – president of the Confederate States during the American Civil War – than George Washington. If your jaunty historical revisionism points to a conclusion that puts an august Caribbean statesman like Grantley Adams alongside a treacherous American racist like Jefferson Davis, you’ve taken a wrong turn. Please Dr Meighoo, let Sir Grantley Adams rest in peace. The post Please, let Sir Grantley rest in peace appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.