By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 10, 2019 — I received a call this morning from my Facebook friend Adrian Ramsey in Nassau that really made my day. Adrian and I are both prolific contributors to the Facebook group BAHAMA VOICE and we actually met him for the first time during my visit to Nassau over the Christmas holidays in 2014 at a “Meet and Greet” reception sponsored by BAHAMA VOICE at Outback Steakhouse.
However, Adrian and I are almost like family because is a nephew of Warren J. Levarity, one of the giants in the struggle for Majority Rule. In the 1960s “Uncle Warren,” as I used to call him, was one of three stalwarts in the PLP that I sort of “adopted” as uncles; the other two were Arthur A. Foulkes, who was also my journalistic mentor, and Jeffrey M. Thompson.
Uncle Warren, Uncle Arthur and Uncle Jeff were members of an activist group in the PLP known as the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA), whose members also included Bazel Nichols, Clement Maynard, Eugene Newry, Roosevelt Godet, Friday Butler, and George Smith, among others. Collectively, the NCPA strongly supported party leader Lynden O. Pindling and exercised a great deal of influence on decisions made within the party. It was a well established fact that Warren Levarity was an outstanding political strategists and Arthur Foulkes was one of the party’s most dynamic speakers over the years.
Warren Levarity was also one of the principal individuals involved in the establishment of the Bahamian Times, the PLP’s newspaper that was very instrumental during the struggle for majority in getting the PLP’s message across to the electorate and was widely credited as being a major factor in the PLP’s January 10, 1967 election victory. Mr. Foulkes was News Editor at The Tribune when he ran unsuccessfully as a PLP candidate in November 26, 1962 general election, and subsequently resigned from The Tribune to establish Bahamian Times.
Memories of those years invaded my thoughts when I received that call this morning from Adrian Ramsey, who is the son of Uncle Warren’s sister Lillis Ramsey.
Clearly, since Uncle Warren’s death at the age of 82 in November 2014, his legacy as one of the truly outstanding contributors to the struggle for majority rule that culminated in the historic victory by the PLP at the polls on January 10, 1967, which we are celebrating today, seemed to have been interred with his body.
The Levarity Family has strong roots in Grand Bahama. Uncle Warren’s father, the late Garnet Levarity, was a public official in Grand Bahama for many years, and the judicial complex that houses the Supreme Court and Magistrate’s Courts in Freeport is named in his honour.
As a PLP candidate for West End (Grand Bahama) and Bimini, Warren Levarity was one the 18 PLP members who were victorious in the January 10, 1967 election that resulted in an 18-18 tie with the governing United Bahamian Party (UBP). The other two seats in the 38-member House of Assembly were won by the Labour Party’s Randol Fawkes and Independent candidate Alvin Braynen, both of whom accepted the PLP’s invitation to be a part of the new government. Fawkes was named Minister of Labour and Braynen became Speaker of the House. In that first cabinet, Levarity was appointed Minister of Out Island Affairs.
However, Levarity was among the group of elected PLP members who subsequently became disillusioned with the leadership of Sir Lynden Pindling and he eventually left the party in 1970 along with Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, Arthur Foulkes, Jimmy Shepherd, Maurice Moore, Elwood Donaldson, Curtis McMillan, and George Thompson. Collectively, they were known as the “Dissident Eight.”
For about a year after they left the PLP, the Dissident Eight referred to themselves as Free PLPs before forming an alliance with moderate members of the defeated UBP to form the Free National Movement during meetings held at Spring Hill Farms, an estate in Fox Hill owned by Jimmy Shepherd.
