A Footnote in the History of Bahamian Political Journalism

by Sir Arthur Foulkes

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers …

It was not as grand as the enterprise upon which the king was embarking in Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, but it was of some significance for the history of politics and journalism in The Bahamas as a happy few, a band of brothers, gathered in a small house on Wulff Road in 1963.

Dudley Nathaniel Gilbert was one of them. Mr. Gilbert’s recent passing was hardly noticed except for the grateful congregation of Our Lady of All Souls Catholic Church on Deveaux Street where he was for many years acolyte, and a few in the newspaper fraternity who remembered him from past years.

The story started in 1960 when a group of activists in the PLP decided to add a new dimension to the political debate raging in the country at the time. Warren Levarity, a young, newly-elected Member of Parliament (MHA in those days), went to S. J. Amoury’s store on Bay Street and negotiated the purchase on credit of an electric Gestetner copying machine.

So a 12-page typewritten and stapled political journal called Bahamian Times started to publish once or twice a month and immediately attracted a small but devoted readership. The new publication found its way onto the shelves of Moseley’s Bookstore on Bank Lane, which in those days was notable.

Bahamian Times was produced first in the Bay Street real estate office of Bazel Nichols and Jeffrey Thompson and later at Empire Battery on St. Alban’s Drive where Mr. Levarity was manager.

When the PLP lost the November 1962 general election, which it fully expected to win, the National Committee for Positive Action, decided the time had come for Bahamian Times to take its message to a broader audience.

Up to that time, the PLP’s message was carried mainly by The Herald, edited by Cyril St. John Stevenson. The Herald was a flamboyant tabloid which had previously been edited by J. Stanley Lowe and which Mr. Stevenson used to castigate the Bay Street Boys every week, much to the delight of his avid readers.

But the NCPA decided that the time had come for the message to be refined, more depth to be added to the debate and for some deep-seated psychological hindrances to be addressed. So Bahamian Times opened office on Wulff Road in a house owned by Percy Munnings.

A world-wide transition from hot type printing to cold type (offset) was taking place at the time but some big international publishing houses were still using the linotype to set type for newspapers, magazines and books.

Bahamian Times decided to go with the new technology and Loftus Roker spearheaded the acquisition of equipment. The offset press turned out to be quite temperamental in accommodating newsprint in a room without air conditioning. That was a challenge for George Sands, dark room specialist and pressman.

The new typesetting equipment was utterly useless and so the team had to fall back on the old linotype. The linotype was a complex mechanical marvel, unquestionably the best typesetting machine ever invented.

Dudley Gilbert was an accomplished linotype operator who had worked both for The Nassau Guardian and The Tribune. He joined the band of brothers on Wulff Road to get Bahamian Times on the road.

The four permanent staff members of the journal were Warren Levarity, manager; George Sands, darkroom technician and pressman; Dudley Gilbert, linotype operator, and yours truly, editor.

The weekly paper was tabloid in format but not in content. It was partisan and hard-hitting but it adhered to basic journalistic principles such as truth and decent language, and it steered clear of scandal-mongering.

There are some political propagandists today who have not learned a simple lesson that the Bahamian Times team was aware of back then. Slogans and catch phrases -- and today’s sound bites – can be very effective tools in politics, but there is no substitute for a well-presented argument that appeals to intelligence and reason.

The most effective slogan, if it is not based on correct premises, can be rendered useless, even counter-productive. The informed people who read beyond slogans are the ones who wield powerful influence and carry the debates in the clubs, barber shops, beauty salons, markets and under the silk cotton trees.

Bahamian Times became an immediate success in terms of readership. People lined up on Saturday mornings to get their copies, and the band of brothers and their volunteer helpers could not produce enough to satisfy the demand, even after working all through the night.

Copies of the paper were passed from hand to hand and some people kept them as collectors’ items. The Nassau Public Library on Shirley Street did not bother to keep copies but Bahamian librarian Lillian Coakley secured them at the library on the Southern Recreation Grounds.

Incredibly, they were all thrown out in later years by an expatriate librarian without a sense of Bahamian history and obviously without sufficient sense to offer them to Archives.

Among the regular contributors to Bahamian Times was Eugene Newry, then a medical student in Europe, who wrote mainly about African culture, and American Paul Drake who wrote from Haifa in Israel. Mr. Drake had been a columnist with The Tribune before he became intimately involved in Bahamian politics.

Among those who contributed or came by regularly to help or encourage were Simeon Bowe, George Smith, Oswald Brown, William “Roosy” Godet, Clement Maynard and Arthur Hanna. The little house on Wulff Road became a venue for intense political discussions that proceeded late into the night, sometimes assisted by suitable spirits.

While the paper was a great success in terms of appeal, it was never expected to be a financial success. In fact, it was worse than the band of brothers expected.

Only a few small businesses Over the Hill dared to advertise and the paper was supported mainly by financial contributions from Sir Lynden Pindling and Sir Milo Butler, and by supporters who bought shares.

So the happy few were not so happy on those weekends when there was no money and they could not buy groceries for their families. All of them had given up well-paying jobs to do this work and they remained committed until the PLP’s victory at the polls in 1967.

They all had the profound satisfaction of knowing that they had advanced the national debate and contributed significantly to historic change in the political and social order in The Bahamas.

Mr. Gilbert nursed a desire to become a farmer and he used to say that when the victory came he did not want any position or reward other than a piece of land so he could grow things.

The PLP Government refused to give him a crown land grant, but Mr. Gilbert got his few acres anyway and was able “to grow things”. He was a deeply religious man with a strong sense of social responsibility. He lived a simple life centred on his church and his family and he never sought recognition.

George Sands, who became a vice chairman of the PLP, died suddenly in April, 1973, just months before independence. Dudley Gilbert took leave of this world on Saturday, May 26, 2007.

The surviving happy few, and those who from 1963 to 1967 had the privilege of witnessing the work and sacrifice of these unsung heroes, still remember them with fondness and gratitude.

Comments

[Rick]

Nice story Sir Arthur.

[Diane Phillips]

Informative and well-written as always, Sir Arthur, and yet tragically reminiscent of another great travesty when the photographs of perhaps the greatest living Bahamian photographer were thrown out and burned in a fire that destroyed print and video of so much of the history of The Bahamas, including irreplaceable footage of the Independence celebration.