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By David Comissiong
The 30th of November is a very special day in the history of Barbados.
Long before the 30th of November was the birthday of our nation’s Independence or the birthday of our Republic, it was the birthday of two of the greatest human beings that Barbados has ever produced: namely, the Right Excellent Dr. Charles Duncan O’Neal and the Hon. Shirley Chisholm.
Charles Duncan O’Neal was born at Friendship in the parish of St. Lucy on Sunday, the 30th November 1879, and grew up to become the great people-centred medical doctor who introduced the ideas of Democratic Socialism to Barbados and launched the modern organized working-class Movement of Barbados with his “Democratic League” political party, his “Barbados Workingmen’s Association” proto-trade union, and his workers’ cooperative enterprise known as the “Barbados Co-operative Company Limited”. All subsequent Barbadian political parties, trade unions and cooperatives owe a profound debt to Dr. O’Neal.
Shirley Chisholm (nee St. Hill) was born on Sunday the 30th of November 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City to her Barbadian mother, Ruby Seale, and her Guyanese-Barbadian father, Charles St. Hill. At the age of three years her parents sent her home to Barbados to be socialised in a Barbadian village environment and to be educated in the primary schools of Barbados. And Mrs. Chisholm acknowledged that it was that early Barbadian socialization and education that was key to her later pioneering accomplishments as the first black female member of the United States Congress and the first black Presidential candidate of a major US political party in the form of the Democratic Party.
But we also – and much more famously – hail the 30th of November as that historic and unforgettable day in 1966 when, with the “Union Jack” flag being lowered and the “Broken Trident” being hoisted aloft for the very first time, the new nation of Barbados heralded its independence from Britain.
Yes indeed, that 30th of November 1966 was a day of great achievement, but as the years went by it began to dawn on us that while we had achieved a “substantive” Independence in 1966, we had not achieved a “full and complete” national Independence.
You see, “Independence” is bound up with the concept of “Sovereignty”, which is “the power to do everything necessary to govern oneself”. And we began to realize that since we had retained the British Privy Council as our highest national Court and the British Monarch as our Head of State it meant that we had not really taken full control of “the power to do everything necessary to govern ourselves” – we had not assumed full sovereignty or full national Independence.
We therefore commenced upon the correcting of that deficiency in our constitutional structure in the year 2005 when we abolished appeals to the British Privy Council and established our very own Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as our highest national Court.
And we completed the job on that glorious day of 30th November 2021 when we removed the British Monarch from the position of Head of State of our proud nation and substituted our very own native Barbadian President, Her Excellency Sandra Prunella Mason. After a period of some fifty-five years, we had finally achieved our full and complete national sovereignty and independence .
However, truth be told, we had actually achieved that and a little more on the 30th of November 2021. You see, by abolishing the Monarch as our Head of State and instituting the republican practice of having our Members of Parliament elect the President of Barbados, we had turned our collective face against the backward concepts of monarchy, aristocracy or so-called special families, and had recommitted ourselves to the ideal of Democracy – the notion that legitimate national power and sovereignty resides in the people and in their democratically elected representatives.
No longer would we be handing positions of national authority and power to anyone simply on the basis of their birth or their family. Rather, we were rooting ourselves in the deep, fertile soil of “people power” and democracy.
So, whether we refer to the 30th of November as “Independence Day” or “Republic Day” or “National Day”, let us be very clear in our minds about the importance of that day, and the importance of all the imperishable principles and historical milestones that we will be commemorating and celebrating on that day. And those principles and milestones are our sovereignty as a people, our Independence as a nation, and our commitment to the interlinked notions of democracy and people power.
Long live the 30th of November and all that it represents!
David Comissiong is Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM.
