Vere Cornwall Bird

Sir Vere Cornwall Bird Sr. (born December 7, 1910 in Saint John's (Antigua and Barbuda) , † June 28, 1999 ibid) was an Antiguan politician and Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda .

Monument in St John's, Antigua

biography

Union official and founder of the Antigua Labor Party

Bird, who came from a poor background and up to the primary school no education possessed and two years employees of the Salvation Army was, was in 1939 one of the founding members of the Federation of Trade Unions ( Antigua Trades and Labor Union ), he was its president 1943-1969.

His actual political career began in 1945 when he successfully ran as a member of the Legislative Council . As such, he gave a historic speech under a tamarind tree near Bethesda in January 1951, threatening a strike in case the sugar cane workers did not receive a wage increase. To the mocking question of the powerful director of the sugar cane plantations ( Antigua Sugar Estates ), Alexander Moody-Stuart, what the striking workers would then eat, he is said to have responded with the saying that has become a popular saying:

“We will eat cockles and the widdy widdy bush. We will drink Pond water. "

"We will eat cockles and from the Widdy-Widdy-Bush - a plant found in Antigua that was part of the diet of the slaves - and drink pond water"

After there was no wage increase, he actually organized a strike, which resulted in a sugar cane harvest not being carried out in 1951. The often-quoted phrase is still valid today as a commitment of the Antiguans to be able to support themselves from their small island state and to prefer a modest but free life.

In the following years, Bird encouraged members of the trade union federation to run for public office and thereby created the basis of the future Antigua Labor Party , which was founded shortly afterwards and of which he was chairman from 1951 to 1971. When universal suffrage for adults was introduced that same year , his Labor Party won all seats on the Legislative Council. The Labor Party was able to repeat this remarkable election success until 1967.

Chief Minister, Prime Minister and Prime Minister

On January 1, 1960, he became Chief Minister of Antigua and Barbuda , which at that time belonged to the West Indies along with Trinidad and Tobago , and initially held this office until February 27, 1967. During this time, he was one of the signatories of the agreement in 1965 to found CARIFTA, the predecessor organization of today's Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

With the attainment of the status of an Associated State he was then again head of government on February 27, 1967 with the title of Premier. A split within the Labor Party, however, led to the fact that he lost his mandate as a member of parliament in the 1971 parliamentary elections and for this reason had to hand over the office of prime minister on February 14, 1971 to George Herbert Walter .

However, he succeeded in the election of February 1976 an electoral victory over Walter's Progressive Workers Movement , so that he was again premier of Antigua and Barbuda in February 1976 . In this function, he conducted the last constitutional negotiations with the colonial power in London in 1980 , which led to the two islands of Antigua and Barbuda gaining independence from Great Britain and Northern Ireland on November 1, 1981 as a sovereign member state ( Commonwealth Realm ) within the Commonwealth of Nations .

From November 1, 1981 to March 9, 1994 he was then the first prime minister after independence. As such, he was re-elected in the 1984 elections. In the parliamentary elections of March 9, 1989, his conservative Antigua Labor Party received 15 out of 17 seats with 63.8 percent of the vote. One seat went to the United National Democratic Party , another seat to a non-party representative from Barbuda. Because of irregularities in the election of some MPs, by-elections were then necessary.

Bird also took over the offices of Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1982. He was also Minister of Finance from 1982 to 1984 and 1991. Finally, in 1991, he again held the office of Foreign Minister for a short time. During this tenure he introduced free education at secondary schools, an island-wide power supply and construction projects, such as the international airport , the deep-water port, but also inner-city streets. He also drove the promotion of tourism , which made Antigua and Barbuda one of the leading travel destinations in the Caribbean .

On March 9, 1994, Bird, who had shaped the history of Antigua and Barbuda for more than fifty years, resigned for health reasons but also because of internal criticism of his governance and handed over the office of Prime Minister to his son Lester Bird .

Honors and criticism

For his services to Antigua and Barbuda and the Commonwealth , he was knighted as Knight Companion of the Order of the National Hero in 1994 . He was also declared a national hero himself in 1994 after his resignation , and Sir Vere Cornwall Bird Day was celebrated on December 9th as an official holiday. In addition, he was awarded the Order Of The Caribbean Community in July 1998 . In 1985 the VC Bird International Airport was named after him.

On the other hand, there has been repeated criticism of his governance and the increasing formation of a family ruling dynasty (his son Lester Bird succeeded him as head of government), which was discussed by the Antiguan writer Jamaica Kincaid in her work A Small Place with the dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier was compared to Haiti . The Bird family gained through their political influence also a leading role in the country's economy, but also in television and radio stations. In addition, accusations of corruption and illegal arms deals were repeatedly raised , which among other things led to another son, Vere Bird Jr., having to resign as minister in 1990. The close contacts with the entrepreneur R. Allen Stanford , who invested heavily in Antigua and was convicted of fraud in the USA in 2009 , were also viewed critically.

Nonetheless, VC Bird is considered the "father" of the independent state of Antigua and Barbuda.

literature

• Lomarsh Roopnarine: A Dual Legacy Of Antigua's First Prime Minister Vere Cornwall Bird (1909-1999)
• Vere Bird, 89, Who Led Antigua To Freedom . Obituary in the New York Times, June 30, 1999

Web links

• Biography
• Biographies of leading Caribbean politicians

Individual evidence

1. ↑ CARICOM homepage ( Memento of the original dated December 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Bye-bye, Bird . Article in TIME magazine on February 22, 1971
3. ↑ Chronicle of Antigua and Barbuda in Areion Online ( Memento of the original dated February 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Knights and Dames at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
5. ↑ Holidays in Antigua and Barbuda ( Memento of the original from May 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Antigua And Barbudas National Hero Dies At The Age 89 ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ^ Robert Coram: Caribbean Time Bomb: The United States Complicity In The Corruption Of Antigua . 1993, ISBN 978-0-688-11543-2
8. ↑ Bird overcame poverty to lead Antigua ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Article in the Express dated June 30, 1999