By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 27, 2022 — Several months before the November 1962 general election in The Bahamas, Arthur A. Foulkes, who was making a very good salary as News Editor of the Tribune, made a decision that few persons with seven children would have made. Mr. Foulkes, who was one of the very active young members of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), accepted the PLP’s offer to be one of its candidates in the Far East Constituency, along with Arthur D. Hanna.
Clearly, the potential political ramifications must not have been factored into Mr. Foulkes’ decision to accept his party’s nomination, given the fact that one of the candidates in the Far East was Pierre Dupuch, son of Sir Etienne Dupuch, the then Publisher and Editor of The Tribune. Pierre, who ran as an independent, was not opposed by the UBP, whose lone candidate was Geoffrey Johnstone.
Obviously, Mr. Foulkes had made up his mind that, win or lose, he would no longer be employed by The Tribune. Nonetheless, he had a very good reason to be optimistic that he would win. Under the country’ first universal suffrage, with women voting for the first time, it was widely anticipated that the PLP would win the November 26, 1962 general election, in which 33 seats were contested.
Under the “voting system” at the time, the two top finishers were elected to the House. Mr. Hanna got the most votes and was elected as the Senior Representative for the Far East and Mr. Johnstone finished second and declared the Junior Representative.
Although the Progressive Liberal Party won the most votes nationally, however, because of skillful gerrymandering the United Bahamian Party (UBP) won the most seats. With a total of 26,500 votes, the UBP won 18 seats, while the PLP won only 8, with a total of 32,261 votes. The other seats in the 33-member House were won by Independents, 6 seats, and the Labour Party 1 seat.
The eight elected PLP members were: Lynden O. Pindling, New Providence South Central; Paul Adderley, New Providence West; Milo B. Butler, New Providence West; Arthur D. Hanna, New Providence East; Orville A. Turnquest, New Providence South Central; Spugeon S. Bethel, New Providence South; Clarence A. Bain, Andros & Berry Islands; and Cyril St. John Stevenson, Andros & Berry Islands.
Having lost his bid for a seat in the House of Assembly, Mr. Foulkes and several members of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA) — an activist group in the PLP that included Warren Levarity, Jeffrey Thompson, Loftus Roker and Bazel Nicolls — started Bahamian Times shortly after he resigned from The Tribune. They were provided with office space rent-free in a building on Wulff Road owned by Percy Munnings, long-time treasurer of the PLP.
Mr. Munnings, who operated a highly successful “numbers house” at the time, was also one of the major “financial backers” of Bahamian Times, along with PLP leader Lynden O. Pindling, Milo B. Butler, and Jimmy Shepherd. Additionally, some die-hard supporters of the PLP – like Roosevelt Godet, who owned a successful jewelry store business — also made regular contributions.
Of course, the stalwart contributions and sacrifices made by Dudley Gilbert — who left a good-paying job as a linotype operator with one of the daily newspapers, I can’t recall which one — and George Sands, an expert darkroom technician and press operator, cannot be evaluated in dollars and cents.
The fact that noted lawyer Sean McWeeney was once a PLP Member of Parliament and remains actively involved in the party is not by accident. Sean’s father, who I think came to The Bahamas to become a teacher at St. Augustine’s College, regularly contributed a cartoon to The Bahamin Times, using the pseudonym “Sandfly.”
When I joined the staff of Bahamian Times in 1965, George A. Smith was serving as its general manager, and he and I established a very strong and enduring friendship. Indeed, on Saturday mornings after Bahamian Times had been printed and the news boys – including Dion and Brendan Foulkes, sons of Arthur A. Foulkes – were busy selling Bahamian Times on the streets of New Providence, George and I would head to Exuma to campaign. George successful in his bid for a seat in the House of Assembly in Exuma Rolleville Constituency in the 1968 general election.
On Friday nights after copies of Bahamian Times had rolled of the press, it was “all hands” on deck as staff members prepared that week’s publication for distribution on Saturday. PLP leader Pindling often stopped by to assist, as did several die-hard supporters of the PLP.
Using as its motto a quote from Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” there is unanimous consensus among supporters of the PLP – and I suspect among many supporters of the UBP at the time – that the PLP would not have won the historic January 10 general election without the relentless support of The Bahamian Times in effectively “spreading” its message among the Bahamian electorate.
An undeniably added plus was the fact that Arthur A. Foulkes is a spell-binding orator and was very much in demand to speak at campaign rallies in New Providence and throughout the Family Islands.
Born in Inagua in 1928, the son of the late Dr. William A. Foulkes and Mrs. Julie Foulkes nee Maisonneuve, Arthur A. Foulkes has unquestionably earned the right to be venerated as one of The Bahamas’ stalwart nation-builders.
I am immensely proud that he is not only my journalistic mentor, but also someone who during my employment with Bahamian Times redirected my personal life in a “law-abiding direction” during my years as Black Power advocate at the forefront of the struggle for majority rule.
However, as a result of the political machinations that incubated an environment of political cannibalism within the PLP, Mr. Foulkes’ monumental contributions to the PLP and Bahamian Times were, for the most part, relegated to the dustbin of Bahamian political history when he was fired as Minister of Tourism in the PLP government in 1969 and subsequently joined seven other disgruntled PLP House of Assembly members who had lost confidence in the leadership of the then Premier Lynden O. Pindling and became founding members of the Free National Movement (FNM) in 1972.
Nonetheless, with the passage of time, Arthur A. Foukes’ legacy as a journalist and a politician who made considerable contributions to The Bahamas has survived untarnished.
Indeed, his legacy is now enshrined in history as a former Governor-General of The Bahamas from 2010 to 2014.
He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth in the 2001 New Year’s honours list.
Prior to this, in 1992 Sir Arthur entered the diplomatic service of The Bahamas as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (residing in London), Ambassador to France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the European Union. In 1999 he was appointed the first Bahamas Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China and Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba. Both these posts were non-resident.
