#BTColumn – What makes Barbados work?

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

by Dr. Peter Laurie

What makes Barbados, against all the odds, work?

This is a question I’ve struggled with almost all my adult life.

By ‘work’, I mean what makes us a relatively successful society in view of our tiny size, our lack of natural resources, and our too often brutal colonial history. We are, like it or not, an improbable society.

That Barbados is a relatively ‘successful’ nation is not just my prejudiced view. It’s also the opinion of many respected international observers, not to mention the more objective international indices that measure such features as quality of life, standard of living, institutional development, human rights and freedoms, rule of law, democratic governance, and so on.

Don’t get me wrong; in Barbados we face some serious challenges that the current pandemic has exposed and exacerbated: financial, economic and social inequality, lingering poverty, a skewered economy and so on.

Yet, why do we survive in perilous times, and thrive in more favourable circumstances?

Every answer I have come up with raises another question. So I seem stuck in an infinite regress.

Let me give you an example.

I have come to the conclusion that the secret to our success is the high level of social trust.

Social trust is an elusive concept, but it means generally that people in a given society have faith in the reliability, honesty and integrity of others. So, in the event of a crisis, few people start heading for the exits. Trust is the glue that holds a society together.

The reason our society weathered the 1992-94 economic and political crisis is trust. The reason 75 per cent of public servants voluntarily accepted an 8 per cent pay cut in 1992 was trust. The reason we’ve managed to keep our currency pegged to the US dollar from 1973 to the present is trust. The reason we survived the 2008 global financial crisis is trust. The reason we’re surviving in the current pandemic is trust. I could go on and on, but you get the point.

But what explains this high level of social trust?

One might cite several factors: an educated populace, a deep love of country, widespread acceptance of the rule of law, and prudent and stable political leadership since the 1950s.

But all of these, and similar elements, in turn require explanation.

The tentative conclusion I’ve come to is that the best explanation lies in our unique history, especially the continuity of that history.

Since 1639, twelve years after its settlement, Barbados has had a parliament that has met without interruption and whose rights were reasserted in the Charter of Oistins in 1652.

Admittedly, that parliament for most of its existence, served the interests of the few at the expense of the many (including British indentured servants and political prisoners from Cromwell’s pillaging of Ireland in the 1640s); and, yes, it was an instrument for the brutal repression of our enslaved ancestors, both before and after Emancipation.

Yet, it was that same parliament that was the instrument for bringing justice and freedom to the masses of Barbadians, especially in the 1940s and 50s, culminating in Independence in 1966.

And, of course, independence is not a singular event but a process that continues to this day, hence the timeliness of moving beyond the compromise shrewdly reached at Independence of keeping the British head of state as our ceremonial head of state, to now appoint a Barbadian to that position.

It is this sense of a continuous tradition coupled with a fervent belief in the inevitability of progress that have enabled Barbadians to adopt an attitude of gradual change rather than radical disruption. We are instinctively ‘evolutionaries’ rather than revolutionaries. It is only when all paths to progress are blocked and all hope is seemingly lost, as in the rebellion of the enslaved in 1816, or the uprising of the masses in 1937, that Barbadians will throw caution to the winds and ‘get on bad’.

This sense of cautious but inevitable progress was encouraged in the 1940s by the then Trini-born governor of Barbados, Grattan Bushe (isn’t it fascinating that two persons who significantly affected the modern political evolution of Barbados in starkly contrasting ways were Trinis: Clement Payne and Grattan Bushe?).

Bushe, after the 1946 election in which the BLP won the largest number of seats, adopted the procedure of inviting the leader of the majority party to choose the four members of parliament to sit on the Governor’s Executive Committee, thus allowing Grantley Adams to become the de facto prime minister-in-waiting of a semi-ministerial government. From there it was a gradual but inevitable progress to ministerial government in 1954, internal self-government in 1958, and independence in 1966.

At this stage in our political development, we had a bit of luck (I know, theologically,  that God can’t be a Bajan, but sometimes I confess it seems so): our two-party system, a crucial element of our political stability, was created when Errol Barrow and his colleagues broke away from the BLP in 1955 and formed the DLP.

Those two parties have alternated in office ever since. Perhaps equally important, there is no ideological difference between them, both being social democratic parties, so that when one replaces the other in office there are no wrenching dislocations of policy.

The two parties are usually judged by the voters — who have not descended into the rabid political tribalism we now witness in the US — on how competently they manage the economy and maintain social equity and harmony.

Moreover, despite all unsuccessful efforts over the decades there has been no proliferation of third parties, which tends to create political instability (apologies to all existing third parties).

Of course, both our electoral system along with our parliamentary form of government will have to be reformed respectively, to adhere more closely to the best practices of electoral democracy as well as to incorporate more continuous citizen participation in governance. But gradually.

Perhaps the best example of our tradition of moderation and consensus-seeking is our Social Partnership, which, in typical Bajan fashion, was the haphazard and ingenious product of the 1991-94 economic crisis. Now, who believes that chance doesn’t play a large role in human affairs? Incidentally, the Barbados Workers’ Union has been the bedrock of our stability, but that is another story.

However, there is another historical continuity, perhaps even more significant: the traditions passed on by our enslaved ancestors, who from the beginning of the 18th century were locally born rather than seized and shipped from Africa, thus acquiring a strong Barbadian identity.

Apart from the heritage of extraordinary cultural creativity they bequeathed us (alas, they have too often been portrayed as simply passive victims), they also left us an enduring legacy: one of character and courage; caring and sharing; resilience and strength; determination and thrift; accompanied always by an unflinching belief in a brighter tomorrow rooted in the spirituality of their African ancestors.

Without that legacy we would not today have, for example, credit unions, cooperatives, ‘meeting turns’, and Friendly Societies (including, of course, our famous Landship).

Perhaps the most significant part of this legacy — and this is where the two traditions merge — is our insistence on fair play. One thing every Bajan agrees on: we hate to be ‘unfaired’. Every wildcat strike in Barbados has always been about some employee or employees being ‘unfaired’.

Another unique feature to emerge from our history is the strong emphasis that Barbadians have always placed on education, largely because this was the best and, if you were black or poor, often the only way to rise out of poverty and discrimination. In other words, Bajans instinctively recognised education as a vital form of social capital and still do to this day. In a digital economy the best capital is knowledge.

And then there is cricket, but that is another long, long story.

So, that is the tentative conclusion I have come to.

No doubt it is mistaken, and I fear I am cursed to pursue the elusive answer to why Barbados works until my last days. But I enjoy it.

Dr. Peter Laurie is a retired permanent secretary and head of the Foreign Service who once served as Barbados’ Ambassador to the United States.