Elder politicians

Post date: Nov 7, 2008 12:20:46 AM

Let us examine the newly elected representatives and determine the extent that our people can be considered a nation as opposed to an alliance of opportunists invested with lies and obsessed with vanity, where the higher up, from prime minister to chief justice, the more lies, to the point, where lies and politics cannot be divorce, where politicians are allowed to use the power that the people have given them for themselves.

When everyone is flawed anybody with straightforward politics is kicked out.

Up front in both parties, there are elders, who are opportunists interested in money and positions, so they will not upset the apple cart but, very soon, when the money and position will not come the will will be weak, the limits of their vision will be seen and any other ideas will be beyond. Anybody can see that, and nobody has convinced them that it is time to give up.

They are harming the parties. In the latter days of his life Barrow said loud and clear to all of them that he wanted to get half of them out of the way of the DLP. He did not have enough time to carry out his wishes and they are still there.

“They find a horse to ride, so they ride it.” Said the father, whose offspring he has refuses to aid since entering the DLP. “… no right in the DLP it is the root of corruption. Barrow was a wicked man, there were three together - my father was with him and Sleepy. My father worked through the Dorcas League and used to help lots of people. I know the kind of people that that party attracts and I know them well and I am not going to let the DLP use me.”

A person sets a Herculean task for themselves, overburdens themselves and cannot do it in one generation and in spite of and regardless of the handicaps, gets a lot of achievement, makes bad judgements because of the people around him, and in the twilight discovers that he should have gone in a certain direction and the decision cannot be undone. This is knowledge and of interest and should be written.

Excerpt from Reflections by Angela and Gary Cole, 1200 pages – to be released December 2008-11-02

“I read your books and you do not like Errol Barrow, but he is my hero. Mr. Barrow gave me free education; if it were not for Errol Barrow I would not have had an education. My mother used to sell peanuts at Queen’s Park gate and she loved Mr. Barrow, she used to carry a bag of peanuts for him every time she saw him.” Said a girlfriend of the principle the now appointed deputy principle of the university, when she was only head of gender relations at that university. And: “If it was not for Mr. St. John [Eric] I would not have gone to school he used to give my mother bus fare to send me to school.”

“Eric was in charge of construction at St. Leonard’s school and her mother lived in the district. It is the same as poor women that raised fowls and carried a basket of eggs to the priest, lawyer etc. and felt happy and often they felt insulted if something was offered in return.

“Like so many they have a misguided sense of gratitude for the wrong reason. Barrow would never claim responsibility for certain people getting a decent education. He would have seen it as inevitable and bound to happen. One does not praise people for doing the right thing.

“Theirs is reverse snobbery, they got what they did not expect, and they feel themselves better than others because they had opportunities and got degrees. It is a pity for education is not supposed to breed snobbery.

“Israel, I do not want to hear about what they are doing I have a son to support.” She continued.

“Condemn the system? They are not going to rattle any cages. It is a matter of identity they do not know who they are and it is easy to wear a uniform and do not have to be anybody just a man in a uniform.

My parents paid for my education and so did Eric’s [St. John] and Rocky’s [Walcott son of the Attorney General in the 30’a E.K. Walcott] not only that but Joan and Dolly’s [my first cousins] grandparents paid for, Barrow’s uncle, Charles Duncan O’Neale to go to the university and Eric’s uncle got him a job. Barrow was close to Eric and me and also a friend, Rocky knew his intrigues better than most and we all admired certain aspects of him but he did wrong things yet the inevitability of many of the things he did, someone had to do them, is not a matter to pull down his work.”

End of excerpt

Over in the BLP, compared to the DLP they are in a hopeless mess: so unpopular is Mia Mottley, the new leader, who fought her way to that position she did not run for chairperson.

Their ex-Prime Minister Owen Arthur, went abroad instead of attending the Annual General conference and he and his merry band of men are on the list – the list of those being sued and before the end of next year all shall be revealed. What is mysterious and baffling in this case is that the days when court procedure had guide lines and judges kept notes are done. Monday last week what is being called “cross examination” was held at the Hilton. This “cross examination” is so secret that it was not in the newspapers and no information is allowed to interested parties but as Shakespeare wrote: “murder will out.”

There is no harm. Let it not take one hundred years to accept that our heroes were flawed. This is not a one-minute analysis, but a concentrate, which should be expanded into a whole book about persons with many positives but nobody is 100% perfect.

CABINET LEAKS

When kick-back is a way of life, it is not possible to convince anybody that there is anything wrong and to sanction illegal acts is a stupid joke. Bright and intelligent persons, no matter how bright, when what is done is not right, it is still wrong.

No one remembers a publicly revealed leak in Errol Barrow’s cabinet.

Many people did not know that cabinet members are sworn to secrecy about what happens in the cabinet but after the cabinet was sworn in front of the whole of Barbados at Kensington Oval, everyone now knows.

In the face of accusation of a leak in cabinet, as a Labour article claimed (shame on them) the safest thing would have been to deny. But too many of DLP members chose the opportunist argument: “Labour cabinet leaked all the time.”

For a start, that argument, for whatever Labour did, is not binding on anyone, it has no legal jurisdiction and it is not a custom. Our laws work in two ways ones enacted by parliament and ones by ancient custom and they are just as binding as parliament’s.

The other thing about swearing to secrecy by virtue of a job alone is that it is known that certain acts contrary to normal loyalty to sovereign are treasonable and can be tried by the higher court, which is parliament or the high courts of the land.

Example: The law of precedent - Governor Bing, a reformist, was executed by the plantocracy and by the time letters came from England he had been tried by his peers and already executed, which shows that although parliament did something wrong it proved that he had done a treasonable act and he was shot. The silk cotton under which he was shot was in Queen’s Park, what used to be the Governor’s House, has been cut down.

It is important to know the history of people this country has put on a pedestal. This is not to un-feather or put a disclaimed on their achievements. Hundreds of people, who know of hundreds of skeletons do not pull them out of certain people’s closets and paraded them because of who the people are and their own need to climb, to get somewhere.

Q.E.D.

The Goddards are using a money-hungry, wanton, hussy of a university that prostitutes education at its highest, to clean up their wretched past and to slander well-brought-up people.

Exert form Reflections by Gary and Angela Cole 1200 pages available December 2008

GEORGE FERGUSON

A young married couple, Lena and George Fergusson, lived to the south on the opposite side [Lands End] by a few houses. Their backyard was the sea. Lena was a Forde and a master dressmaker her family and ours are lifelong friend.

Her husband, George Fergusson, was a sea Captain, who ran contraband for the Goddards [see No: 24 Last of the Bajan Pirates]. The Democratic Party was formed out of Cammie and George’s house. The sea was George’s great love and he never drank water. He fathered two boys, Ian and Clement, with Aunt Phonkie. In later he fathered another child in our close family, Eve’s young niece. He, like Cammie, became a minister of government.

George claims that he was the third person to hold me and luckily for he always treated me as a favourite niece. There was a party at the house on Christmas Eve where I was born at 10:30 p.m. and delivery by my grandmother and great grandmother. My mother’s eldest brother, Jack, brought me out and George says he took me.

As he grew older he liked younger women and became preoccupied with them. It was only with the murder of his son, Clement Fergusson, my first cousin, that I began to know and understand the real George.

GEORGE FERGUSSON and THE GODDARDS – Conversations with Seamen Under the Evergreen Tree Behind Yard Shop

      • PETERS: I lived by the police station and the prison, Station Hill. Fergusson and I never had a quarrel. George at that time, during the 40s and 50s ran a boat called the Deliverance for a millionaire man in the Bahamas. Prince Edwards was there and he and the millionaire used to come aboard dressed in shirts. We used to take up stone and white lime and carry it to Demerara and we used to take fish and sell and that stinking bitch would take rice and coals and wood on deck and he used to take all that money and never give the owner. The owner used to ask what he did with the money and George lied. He used to take rum from here and take it to the Bahamas and when we get that that is the only freight the owners get. From Bahamas we used to bring ballast, past through the island and buy contraband, whiskey and cigarettes and get all that money. He would buy things for his wife. He was always out to sea and never used to be home. Lena used to call George ‘the worthless, fucking scamp.’
      • KELLMAN Lena’s father used to build boats and he liked George. Fergusson liked his contraband that was his name. He was just like a man who would thief from the rich and give to the poor and that is why people liked him. Mottley was a different thing. He robbed the poor. I know him when he was running the town, when he get money to give to the poor; every time he get money he bought property for himself and give the poor next to nothing that is why Barrow took it away. He bought yards of cloth and called a few people and give them.
      • PETERS: I was born in Bequia. My father had a vessel called the Annabelle. He went to Trinidad. We had a lot of family there. We were black Caribs even now in Bequia there are all sorts of Peters – black, brown, clear and white. We are family to the Tannises, Wallace and Bonadies. Dr. Cato all of us were one family – Caribs mix.
      • ME: We are family to the Bonadies too. Dr. Cato was very friendly with my family I do not know if he was family. We were also Husskinssons.
      • PETERS: The Husskinsson is your family? Well they are brown skin people that have a lot of land, shops and businesses.
      • ME: George used to contraband for the Goddards.
      • PETERS: The Goddards used to come themselves. They know that they are crooks all the time. Goddards never deal with the police to lock you up if you thief from the supermarket, they used to carry you in the back, the big one, and beat you up. Richard was the big body one, he know Bashee good, good. Bashee was more acquainted with them he know them from small. I was not so close to them. George had two small boats and we would off load the cargo from the William Johnson, when we see the lights from the land to call us. I was the first person going ashore to check out that everything is all right and the Goddards would be waiting for us in trucks to pick up the contraband.
      • Bashee come from Bathsheba. Bashee dead more than ten years. He kill himself walking, the ropes from the boat trip him and he butt his head, he went to hospital and died. Bashee brother was older than him and was the engineer. At that time Bashee was an AB [Able Bodied Seaman] under him. Bashee was a hasty fellow but he did not kill any body. I never see anybody kill anybody. Bashee worked with George before me. We made friends at a bar, the old Union Bar near the Olympic Theatre. We had a big fight with drinking and arguing. We could not beat each other and we shake hands and became friends.
      • “You want to work?” He asked. “Do they pay well?” I asked. “Yes.” He said and he brought Fergusson and Fergusson knew that people from the islands worked well and when he saw what I could do he hired me at a good pay. This was the late 40s. I left George in 1961 because I got a big ship.
      • I was with Tannis in Bequia. He did so much crooking business, and crookery from poor people. You see how his children gone. Tannis was in the House of Assembly and ten or fifteen years now he and his wife and children disappear and his brother leave and gone to Guyana and disappear too.
      • I have Carib in me from St. Vincent. The Carib was here, the Red Indian and the Venezuelan Caribs all three tribes were here. People found them when they came but after they start to kill them out they had to go to St. Vincent. The Peters come from Scotland. They used to go to whale in Barbados and go to St. Vincent and whale from there. My great, great grandfather was whaling in Barbados. My mother’s mother was a Carib but her father was a Farrell, an African.
      • SPRATT: I fished all down there; dive all down there near where the new hospital is now built. It built on a spring, I used to call it Pa Howell Spring, from the bus stand going up is river water. Salt and fresh water mix over the other side of the bridge there was where the lighters used to be. They cannot block that water otherwise Barbados done.
      • We used to bring girls from Santo Domingo to Mia Grand and St. Jude,
      • when the girls came aboard if they take to you, you could have them. The watchman had about fifteen girls no more than thirteen or fifteen years old. We had to hide them under a canvas. When you reach in Santo Domingo you would not eat. The culture was so bad it turn your stomach. They take the meat and put it in the road. The meat would be blue, you will eat if you from there but it too nasty. When the flies fly in food they dip them out. I like Santo Domingo, the girls look like you. Most of them like you. When I land in Venezuela I go and spent time with my sister. I used to run between Haiti, Rohina, the capital of Santo Domingo, it is one country just a bridge and a river and Fort Lauderdale.
      • TRINI: Peters is better known as Hitler. He is an old criminal. Ask them why they call him that. I work with Captain Selby for fifteen years. We carry people from St. Lucia to Surinam and rice and contraband milk from Trinidad.

PETERS: And they call him ‘Street Fighter’

      • TRINI: I was born in Petit Valley, Diego Martin. Captain Selby was a gentleman he helped everyone. You could ask him a favour and he would give you provisions to cook.
      • PETERS: Fergusson would give people but you have to give him something. People would be roasting fish and he would take it up because he had a gun.
      • TRINI: I came to Barbados with C. J. in 1967. I was the Captain of one of his boats. I used to be by him in Trinidad when his wife was there. She like man. Every time she see an iron she get vex. I was too small in that field. I was too low so I was not in the runnings. I was Captain of one of his boats. C.J’s first one he had come from England. He had 18 boats. We used to transport fish and rum from St. Maarten. He never run contraband but when he finished his business he gave us the boat and we did what we felt liked. When we ran contraband: whiskey, cigarettes, brandy, drinks and guns, anything any body wanted, we went to St. Barts. People here bought the guns. We went to Dominica for fruits: oranges, grapefruits, plantains, bananas, when you turn your hand we buy what you want.
      • I got hold one time in Barbados but when you living in a big organization you do not get penalise that bad. I would not say lodge, between a type of people if you give a man a little sex it dead there; found him a woman to give them sex. They help because I use to bring things for them like a box of oranges and a box of fish and they say I will help you. There were two others with boats that were gentlemen Dennis and Richard Atkinson. They even used to give us money for girls.
      • Sex! There were clubs called Japanese clubs. The girls held your penis and squeeze it to see if you had sickness before you touch the goodness.
      • In Dominica with the Caribs nobody scorn you. I spent time with them and nobody scorn me. I met some girls and we went in a river, the water was cold, when I see the girls take off their clothes, I took off mine and we bathe naked in a river. They know what I had and I know what they had and they were not looking to screw and I was not looking to screw. The girls were about your complexion. Their mother send them with me and she did not feel I would interfere with them and I could not.
      • PAUL: Everything was illegal in those days. There was no passport. I live just up the road from Fergusson in Lakes Folly. Fergusson and Peters were in it. If he said he did not know, ask him if there was truth in the girls and why I jump ship?

TRINI: The two of you quarrelling, one red and one black.

      • PAUL: And why Peters say that I come shore and lick my mouth and talk about Fergusson?
      • PETERS: I do not know nothing about that.

PAUL: If there was no truth in the girls why I jump ship?

      • PETERS: I do not say that Fergusson was not wicked. The closest you could get to George was ashore with women because he liked women. What Paul speaking of is 10th March 1961. We left Trinidad between five and six in the evening. There were usually four running watches. When we arrive in the Careenage in Barbados I know Paul packed his clothes and left and he never returned to the William Johnson.
      • He was a young man of twenty-three, a deck hand and George and him were friends. There were twelve men that worked on the William Johnson but when I boarded at Trinidad I did not see any women. I do not know about the women. Paul left and went to England for twelve years. You do not keep those things on your brain. You do not remember. Only when he come back and we met up again he started about the women but I was not suspicious. We never register to carry that many passengers, we register to carry three or four. If they were passengers they would be registered in Trinidad. I cannot argue. If a man was to kill and I was there I would try to stop him and I would walk away but with Fergusson I never had no quarrel.
      • PAUL: You always know when Peters getting hot when he not in control his eyebrows move up and down. You figure I would be talking to you if I had gone back. Everything was lax in those days. People could come and go in and come out of port as they liked, and for men like Fergusson, who was captain and owned his own boat, nobody cared. Somebody kicked George’s dog and he shot off the man’s penis. Sydney Colvin Peters you claim that you know nothing but I was on deck and half and hour out of Trinidad and Fergusson sent me to my room. There were thirty women on board. I saw the thirty women board at Trinidad. I do not know if they were Trinidadians but when the boat landed at the Careenage only two women got off. I remember you, Peters, and two others of the crew begging the women for crotch before George sent me to my cabin. On arrival I remember I stood on the dockside talking to a friend and my instinct was to look to check on the women and I saw only two come off and the rest were not on board. I did not see anyone kill anyone or throw them overboard but something happened to the women and I know you, Peters, know what happen.
      • PETERS: The William Johnson was thirty to forty tons. The only thing is contraband we used to run. George had two small boats that used to come alongside and off load the cargo. We used to carry legal liquor from here to the Bahamas and then we bought goods like whiskey, cigarettes and different things and when we bring them in at Speighstown business people and all types of people came for them.
      • SPRATT: How many children you got Peters - and where?
      • PETERS: Sixty- five.
        • SPRATT: Thirty in Venezuela, some in South Africa, some in … He got them worldwide.
      • TRINI: George ran for a seat in 1961. There was much wrong that Fergusson did. He was like Boysie Singh. I was in Trinidad with Boysie Singh. He had a hotel with a gambling den and people that came from Venezuela to stay, who won plenty money, he offered them passage on his fishing boats to Venezuela and he killed them and took their things. Hey! Look, who here Nuckka!
      • NUCKKA: George was the captain of the Ecstasy that belong to the Goddards and Prime Minister Barrow used to also captain and co-pilot it down to the Grenadines over the Old Years and Easter week end for years. There was a connection with Pirate, a Barbadian, hanged for killing Idiot. Idiot was in the wrong place at the wrong time; never mind he was an idiot. Pirate and his crew went to sea and picked up contraband, things like corn beef. The times he wanted to bring in contraband Pirate paid hawkers to clear off from the streets, and one day Idiot catch them on the beach and they said: “Every idiot got his own sense.” They killed him and police held Pirate and two of his crew but they wanted Pirate so they turn the others states evidence and although Pirate did not pull the trigger he hung. Barrow was the other men’s lawyer.
      • KELLMAN: There is something in it for if there was nothing why did Paul not go back to the ship and left and went to England? Peters, you old bandit said of the young bandit Paul that he went into the red light district and talk out his mouth.
      • TRINI: In his days if Peters begged a woman and he did not get through he became cruel. He was a fella like that. Ten crew were on board and thirty women paid to come from Trinidad and in my opinion the crew begged and some refused and some did not but the crew had to kill some to get rid of the evidence. They would have got rid of Paul but Paul ran to England. Now that Paul is back Peters is too old and broken and he cannot do a thing. For instance if you are on board a ship – me, you and Paul and then all of a sudden you only seeing Paul you have to say something is wrong.
      • ME: What was special about the two women that remained?
      • TRINI: They must have been party of the crime. They may have been the ones to lure women on board; some people are kinky. It was like Boysie Singh. There was no country in between that the women could have been sold.

ME: George’s son say that that was not so.

PETERS: He is a liar. How old is he?

      • ME: Sixty-six. George is his father but he is a Forde. He takes after the Forde side.
      • PETERS: What about the Amanda T. Tannis from Bequia named after Tannis’ wife? George took Albert Tannis boat, the Amanda T. Tannis, and Tannis son was Captain and was running between Bequia carrying sand, white lime and things like that and Tannis could not get any money. Tannis had to come to Barbados to get his boat. George wanted to steal the boat from the son and he encouraged the boy to lease the boat out and the two thief the money. Tannis had had planned to shoot him after he could not get his son to bring the boat back and he saw no money coming he got a lawyer and the Harbour Master Easy took the boat from George and delivered it to Tannis.
      • ME: He said that he skippered the William Johnson from 1961. He would have been nineteen.
      • PETERS: Ask him about the time, when he was a young boy and he went out in a boat from across there by Mustor shop and he could not get back and George say do not go for him let him find his own way and I went and save him.

Peters’ eyebrows danced under pressure of cross-examination. His eyes are dead. Shakespeare wrote that the eyes are the mirrors of the soul. The eyes, not what man says, are where a man’s character is read. The look in the eyes of the man, who has killed is dead.

One morning, a few weeks later, on board the boat where he slept he was found dead. Colvin Peters born 10thMarch 1927 died 2007. He fathered sixty-seven children that he knew of from Brazil to Australia to South Africa.

In later life George was accused of transporting the murdered, dead body of a homosexual socialite out to sea in the belly of a horse [See The Boys in the Band by Tatanka Yotanka published by Caribbean OPC] and when his son was shot to death by a nephew of a Democratic beneficiary, I believe he was blackmailed into silence.

“Those who can’t perpetuate themselves through blood-lines do it through monuments mainly at Canada’s ninety-one universities. The process is complicated, but the price is always right. Having a whole faculty named after you runs from $10 million to $16 million; academic departments cost $5 million; lecture rooms, $500,000; science labs, $250,000; administrative areas, $100,000; offices, $10,000; student carrels, $5,000. [Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University is even selling the space above the urinals in its men’s washrooms to local advertisers. Presumably these messages are read in short, concentrated spurts.]” … Titans – How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power by Peter C. Newman.

Goddards Enterprises have supported the university financially, they have given $500.000.00 BDS/$US250,000.00 and the university has announced through Errol Barrow’s niece, who is head of a business administration resource there, that they are writing the history of Goddards’ Enterprises.

Times makes things understandably, when a family has a wretched pass a later generation may come to crave respectability, to go along with their wealth and would want to clean up their past even at the expensive of truth.

“The lecturer at the university, who is writing the history of Goddard’s Enterprises say that your story about the Goddard’s pirating and contraband is a lie.” Said a head of political science and sociology at the university.

I telephoned Richard Goddard to protest that if the university wanted to clean up the Goddard’s name, they were welcome to do so but not at the expenses of mine. We spoke and I told him where George’s mates hung out.

“Bashee there?” He asked. “No Bashee is dead but his brother is alive and lives in New York.”

“You are on good ground.” He said.

There is a new book just out called Business in BIM – A Business History in Barbados 1900-2000 byHenderson Carter, a part-time lecturer in History at the University. To begin Carter claims that the Goddards were indentured servants. That is incorrect [See No: Last of the Bajan Pirates].

“…With this beginning, and the intricate knowledge in the purchase and sale of animals he would have gleaned from his father, Goddard also ventured into speculating and was well know for leading his one cow into Bridgetown, which he sold for a profit. … It is little wonder that when he opened his shop in 1921 in Bridgetown; he would specialize in meat, groceries and ice. .. That Joe Goddard was able to purchase he Ice House after only three years in business is a remarkable feat.” … Business in Bim

“This story is called the Cow Chest Story: these blacks and mulattoes and whites intermarried, found chests full of gold coins floating in the sea, walked cows and pumped the tail, said abracadabra and gold coins come out.” God Have Mercy by Angela Cole

“I never heard about the Goddard’s contraband. Show me somewhere where it is written.” Mr. Carter said when I telephoned him to query his fiction.

He proceeded with intellectual acrobatics - not gymnastics that requires a certain amount of skill, acrobatics are performed in a circus - to insult, laugh, mock and scorn someone he does not know.

He has accepted the general, popularly accepted theme because he needed a public piece of paper to get a job so he regurgitate what is written and a 57 mark becomes 90. There are very few honest local historians; the ones that are talking can afford to be ignored for they are nothing to be proud of. What about the society he creates for his grandchildren? Grandmother would have said respect Mr. Goddard, just walk the path and do not challenge a white person.

Question white people even if they were criminals? I have colour so I must be a common woman with nothing and there is nothing I can do to hurt but the white man can hurt and ostracised them. Slavery took away people’s identify, this happens in most institutions and prisons: give them a number and that is all they have. Like the ones that lived in the house, the housekeepers, the van drivers, where instead of sleeping in a sheep pen they slept in the big house, even if it is on the floor. After all life is eat, drink and then die and what is the point to live in the yard, where there are no privileges, when, if the status quos is maintained, they could be in the house with finer things.

It is a syndrome brought on by the terribleness of slavery. It is called ‘I have to get somewhere” about achievement; to crawl up in status, gain a little more force a little more prestige even when comfortable and it is not necessary - make the maximum and take advantage in every situation. The role model is the thieving white man, be just like him, only now the colour is different.

“The morning of the riot in 1937 young fellows from the village went to Kent plantation where white Mrs. Richardson was at her breakfast. They want to kiss a white woman. About four of them got time in jail for that.” Arthur Gay, the journalist, said.

A cartoon character, Red Baron, and his dog, Muttley, found gold and were transporting it back in a plane. Muttley was flying the plane and they were attacked by Incas throwing spears and the plane begins to drop so Muttley throws the gold out of the plane and the Red Baron jumps out of the plane to grab the gold for greed blinds him and he is unaware that he is mid air.

End of excerpt from Reflections

Angela Cole

THE END