#BTColumn – A most honourable Patrick Frost

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Ralph Jemmott

Let me first extend my sincerest congratulations to Mr Patrick Frost on his receipt of the Order of Freedom of Barbados national award. It is well deserved.

Some time ago I wrote a two-part article on the trade union movement, which did not go down well with some of the top brass in the BWU. I was accused of being anti–union because I made two assertions.

The first was that the work ethic in Barbados was not as high as it needed to be. The second was that in the context of the time, if Barbados was to progress, there needed to be a more collaborative and less antagonistic relationship between Capital and Labour.

I lived long enough to hear the then BWU boss admit that the Barbadian work ethic was in need of improvement. Similarly, my second assertion became the basis on which the tripartite agreement, the Social Partnership between Capital, Labour and Government was established. It was predicated on the acceptance of a commonality of interest. For some time, that agreement worked so well it was the envy of others in the region who were desirous of its emulation.

Time flies, and over the years I have questioned the rightness of my two-part article in the contemporary context where Capital has become in many ways increasingly and manifestly exploitive of Labour.

As a black West Indian and a student of history, I am very conscious of how historically white planter-mercantile Capital has exploited black Labour.

As a child, I would hear my father complain about some of the unfairness he endured as a clerk in the Haberdashery department at William Fogarty Ltd on Broad Street. As a teacher at Parkinson, I was a member of the Barbados Union of teachers (BUT) and later at Harrison College, I joined the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU). Given my social origins, I am instinctively pro-union and pro-labour. The decline of the labour movement in Barbados, in terms of its membership and power, is not in the interests of black working-class people.

It was as a member of the BSTU that I came into contact with Mr Patrick Frost, who those friends who attended The Lodge School remembered as Jack Frost.  I served in the Union in three capacities.

The first was as shop steward for Harrison College, along with Anthony Tony Walrond. For three years I served as Public Relations Officer for the Union when Ronnie Hughes was President and after, as Second Vice President when Ernest Roachford became the President.

I found it ironic that a white Barbadian was the cornerstone of a predominantly black teachers’ union at a time when local whites were rapidly leaving the profession. That he did it with such zeal was equally astonishing. I have always wondered about the psychic source of Patrick Frost’s labour advocacy of a constituency so conspicuously non-white.

It was at the quarterly meetings between BSTU and the Ministry of Education that I got to see Frost at his trade union best. He would take on Ministry policy and the errant misdemeanours of school principals who transgressed labour agreements with a vigour that even I sometimes thought too aggressive.

In one conversation at the Union Headquarters in Belleville, I warned him about appearing to defend the indefensible in a particular case involving a teacher. It is to the lasting shame of the educational system in Barbados that those quarterly meetings between the BSTU and the Ministry were discontinued. They were a critical medium for resolving many of the personal and policy issues affecting Barbadian schooling across the board.

Ironically, I once dropped out of the BSTU when I thought it was not fighting hard enough. After six months, I quickly re-joined, realising that given my tendency to disagree with successive Principals on one thing or the other, I might one day need the protection of the Union in general and of its General Secretary more specifically.

Patrick Frost’s trade union activity was not confined to the BSTU and its representation of teachers. He would go on to play a visible role in the wider trade union movement as a member of CTUSAB.

Frost was an extremely articulate man with a command of the English language that was amazing. One remembers his opening address at the BSTU’s first annual lecture at the Frank Collymore Hall when Ambassador Val Mc Comie was the guest speaker. Patrick spoke for some time without a note, articulate and sequential in his discourse.

Patrick, of course, had the support of others who in my time have served the BSTU and the teaching profession. These include the late Ronnie Hughes, Ernest Roachford and Phil Perry and leading lights such as the indefatigable Marguerite Cummins-Williams, Ms Mildeane Massiah and others.

One could not help but notice that Mr Frost chose the Freedom of Barbados Award rather than the more recognised Knight of St. Andrew. Just when his fellow members of the BSTU were looking forward to addressing him as Sir Patrick, he side-stepped the Imperial in preference for the Barbadian designation. Most Honourable Sir.

Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.