Cabinet has agreed to pardon all those persons whose names and reputations were sullied in the labour disturbances of the 1930s.
The announcement was made yesterday morning by Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who told the Lower House that the decision was made by the Cabinet on Thursday during its weekly meeting.
The Prime Minister said that just as Parliament recently passed the amendment to Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Act to make it “a little more inclusive” and give ex-offenders a second chance to get their lives together through having their criminal records expunged, Cabinet thought it important to clear the names of those who fought for democratic freedoms in this country.
“…Criminal records which they attracted not in any democratic uprising, but in the pursuit of perverse personal objectives. And if we’ve been so sympathetic to them…why shouldn’t we be sympathetic to the people, who in 1937, by their action, ushered in all the institutions upon which we rely today for Barbados’ stability and development – trade unions, mass political parties – the two most prominent institutions,” he stated.
Making his contribution to the debate on money allocated for the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth in the 2018-2019 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, Prime Minister Stuart went on to say that these persons whose characters were besmirched at that time, were really “democratic activists” and it is important that their contribution to modern-day Barbados be recognised.
“We have variously referred to the people involved in that struggle. We’ve called it the riots, we called it the revolt, but the further away we have got from it, the more inclined we have been to describe it as a democratic uprising; and a large, by no means negligible number of people, have had their names and their reputations sullied as a result of what happened here in Barbados in 1937. People were thought of as colliding with the law, and had to go to court and faced magistrates and attracted to themselves criminal convictions,” he said.
He added, “So people like Menzies Chase and Israel Lovell and Ulric Grant and Mortimer Skeete, all of these, who the further we get away from the 1930s, emerged as democrat activists, their names and reputations have been cleared… They are no longer to be seen as criminal elements coming out of the 1930s, but as genuine forerunners, genuine harbingers of the democracy which we enjoy in Barbados today.”
Describing the Cabinet decision as a “great leap forward” for Barbados and the families of those persons, PM Stuart gave the assurance that Cabinet will be moving to take the necessary follow-up action to make the pardon complete and “draw a curtain across that past”. (JRT)