By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 5, 2022 – Less than three years after the historic victory by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in the January 10, 1967 general election, establishing for the first time a Black majority-rule government in The Bahamas, a serious rift developed within the leadership echelon of the party, resulting in a vote of confidence on May 13, 1970 against Pindling’s leadership.
I left for London in October of 1968 on a one-year training course in journalism on the staff of the London Evening Standard, which was arranged by then Premier Pindling during one of his official visits to London, and was not actively involved politically in the party when the “internal war” really broke out.
Shortly before I returned to Nassau in November of 1969, Mr. Pindling had fired my mentor Arthur A. Foulkes as Minister of Tourism, and in a one-on-one meeting that I had requested with him to find out why Mr. Foulkes was fired, he gave me a ridiculous reason that prompted me to disrespectfully shout, “You are a goddamn liar.” He quickly ended our meeting and retreated to his office.
I am still baffled as to why Mr. Foulkes was fired. As the founding editor of Bahamian Times, his contributions and unwavering commitment to the struggle for majority rule – of which I had first-hand knowledge from I joined the staff of The Tribune in May of 1960 when he was The Tribune’s news editor – in my view were unmatched by any one other individual, including Pindling.
It subsequently became patently clear to me shortly after I returned from London that the PLP’s “internal war” during its infancy as the governing party in The Bahamas was incubated by a power struggle between Mr. Pindling and Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, his very competent Minister of Education.
Wallace-Whitfield made no attempt to hide his ambition to replace Pindling as leader of the PLP and their personal “squabble” really became one of the major issues at the PLP Convention in December 1968. According to published reports at the time, Wallace-Whitfield supported a “no confidence” motion against Pindling that was rejected by Party Members. After the “no confidence” was defeated, Pindling, in his convention speech, dared Wallace-Whitfield to resign, declaring: “If you can’t fish, cut bait; if you can’t cut bait, get the hell out of the boat.”
Wallace-Whitfield subsequently did resign from the Cabinet in 1970, and in his resignation speech “he delivered a scathing rebuke, chastising Sir Lynden’s leadership and the PLP’s drift away from collegiality,” according to a published report.
Leading up to the May 13, 1970, vote of no confidence against Pindling in the House of Assembly, a series of meetings were held at the apartment of Mr. Foulkes trough a street off West Bay Street (I can’t remember its exact name). I attended several of those meetings, and based on the number of PLP Members of the House who were active and vocal participants in those meetings, I fully expected the “no confidence” motion to succeed and was shocked when several of them did not support it in the House.
It’s quite possible that their decision to not support the “no confidence” motion was influenced by the boisterous crowd of PLP supporters outside while the motion was being debated, a likelihood that I strongly believed at the time.
I can well recall that when the no confidence motion was defeated and members of the Dissident Eight were leaving the House, my very close friend, the late Donald “Nine” Rolle and I got into a physical altercation when he tried to attack Mr. Foulkes.
“Nine” along with myself and several other militants were members of a group that consistently disrupted UBP meetings held Over-the-Hill leading up to the 1967 general election, and he was well aware of my “training” as a no-nonsense Black Power advocate, so he chose to focus his anger on another member of the Dissident Eight.
In retrospect, however, I think that the vast majority of the Black Bahamians who demonstrated outside the House that evening were angry at the Dissident Eight for seemingly “joining forces” with the UBP to try and remove Mr. Pindling as Premier, given the fact that they were still haunted by the racist policies of the UBP that had subjected them to second-class citizenship in The Bahamas.
There is no question that had all those disgruntled PLP members who attended those meetings held at Mr. Foukes’ apartment supported the “no confidence” motion, Pindling would have no longer been Premier.
In addition to Wallace-Whitfield, the other members of the Dissident Eight, who referred to themselves as Free PLPs when they split from the party, were: Arthur A. Foulkes, Warren J. Levarity, Maurice Moore, Dr Curtis McMillan, James (Jimmy) Shepherd, Dr Elwood Donaldson and George Thompson.
When the vote of no confidence was voted upon, the House of Assembly consisted of 21 PLP Members, 8 Free PLP Members, 7 UBP Members and one Labour Member.
The Dissident Eight subsequently joined forces with moderate members of the UBP and established the Free National Movement in October of 1971, with Whitfield as its founding leader.
I left the PLP along with the Dissident Eight and was the founding editor of the FNM’s newspaper, The Torch of Freedom.
