by Simon
The progressive tradition in modern Bahamian politics includes giants like the polymath Dr. C. R. Walker and the great Sir Milo Butler. During the struggle for majority rule the tradition was embodied and expanded by leaders such as the Hon. Arthur D. Hanna and Sir Arthur Foulkes.
Others in the tradition number some not traditionally considered, like Sir Kendal Isaacs, one of the founders of the cooperative movement. Today’s progressives include Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, who has significantly advanced the progressive agenda during three terms in government.
Other contemporary progressives are to be found in the ranks of the major parties. Among them are Glennys Hanna Martin and Dion Foulkes, scions of well-known political families who followed their fathers into politics in the progressive tradition.
Their political contemporaries include Dr. B. J. Nottage, Alfred Sears and Philip Galanis as well as Desmond Bannister, Vincent Vanderpool Wallace, Charles Maynard and others.
Progressives have experienced highs and lows, bitter disappointment and great triumphs. Progressive politics has been suffused with and defined by the politics of race, class and gender, in addition to issues related to the expansion and protection of individual freedom as a part of a broader agenda of progressive liberalism.
INDIFFERENCE
The progressive and liberal tradition has been confronted and shaped by reactionary politics and fundamentalist religious mindsets on various questions of equality such as enhanced rights for and the greater protection of women. As deadly to the progressive cause was the indifference of political leaders who used progressive rhetoric to attain power but failed as committed progressives once in office.
The relative distance between what Prime Ministers Sir Lynden Pindling, Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie promised and delivered in terms of progressive economic and social policy tells a story of their own records and the broader history of the modern Bahamas.
Sir Lynden left a mixed record with regards to progressivism with clear accomplishments and extraordinarily lost opportunities. Hubert Ingraham will leave an ambitious and extensive progressive record.
For what he has so far failed to achieve, Perry Christie is a paper progressive, whose rhetoric dramatically outweighs his dismal record. His failure to achieve National Health Insurance was monumental.
The story of genuine progressive liberalism cannot be singularly told in the record of the party that bears the moniker Progressive Liberal Party. The split that created the Free National Movement saw a splintering of the progressives who helped to usher in majority rule into two camps. After the split, a core of the progressive movement migrated away from the PLP to the FNM convinced that under Sir Lynden’s prime ministership that much of the progressive agenda was at risk.
Today, both major political parties are shaped not only by that past history. They are also shaped by their actions or inaction on a range of progressive and liberal policy matters. The history of the progressive tradition has many dramatic twists -- and surprises. One example of this is the fateful outcome of an electoral contest a little over 50 years ago.
The elevation of United Bahamian Party (UBP) House of Assembly member C. W. F. Bethell to the Legislative Council, the forerunner of the Senate, triggered a 1959 by-election in Grand Bahama.
The outcome of the electoral contest was a bellwether for progressivism and the movement for and towards majority rule. It was also a triumph for a more aggressive and progressive politics to dislodge the white oligarchy’s near absolute domination of the colony’s political and economic life.
Initially, UBP candidate Harold DeGregory was declared the winner. But the results were contested. Eventually, Warren J. Levarity, who waged a tenacious, daring campaign and almost one-man battle, won the seat. He stunned the UBP and his more timid and conservative colleagues in the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).
UPENDED
Mr. Levarity upended the game plans and limited political reach of others who, up to that point, refused to join the PLP uncertain it could win and uncomfortable with the supposed radicals like Mr. Levarity himself, Sir Arthur Foulkes and Jeffrey Thompson. The victory also jolted the politics of race and class.
This racial and class politics included not only the mindsets of the UBP, but also the elitist and narrow views on colour held by many in the black middle and professional class and lighter-skinned and brown-skinned elite. Among them were the earlier founders of the PLP and some returned home with what were referred to as their BTEs or Been to England professional degrees.
Many of the aforementioned were uncomfortable with the black majority and unconvinced of the native political genius of others like Messrs. Foulkes, Levarity and Thompson who were the inspiration and nexus of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA).
Formalized in 1959, the NCPA was founded as an advocacy or pressure group within the PLP to bolster the party’s progressive credentials and the country’s struggle for majority rule. The group’s ambitions were not only the stratagems and tactics needed to win a parliamentary majority.
With the majority secured they intended to revolutionize and transform life for the mass of Bahamians and create in both senses a new country.
Much of their ambition was fulfilled though significant parts of their agenda remained unfulfilled for decades, and some of that ambition and agenda still requires action.
The historical ironies include the betrayal of the tradition by those who used the rhetoric in pursuit of power then abandoned its core goals to hold on to power at almost any cost. One other great irony is that the political party sometimes branded as the more reactionary now has a more progressive record than the party that boasts of its progressive origins.
This is partly the story of the triumphs and defeats of the progressive and liberal traditions in modern Bahamian politics more of which in the weeks and months ahead.
Progressives have experienced highs and lows, bitter disappointment and great triumphs. Progressive politics has been suffused with and defined by the politics of race, class and gender, in addition to issues related to the expansion and protection of individual freedom as a part of a broader agenda of progressive liberalism.
INDIFFERENCE
The progressive and liberal tradition has been confronted and shaped by reactionary politics and fundamentalist religious mindsets on various questions of equality such as enhanced rights for and the greater protection of women. As deadly to the progressive cause was the indifference of political leaders who used progressive rhetoric to attain power but failed as committed progressives once in office.
The relative distance between what Prime Ministers Sir Lynden Pindling, Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie promised and delivered in terms of progressive economic and social policy tells a story of their own records and the broader history of the modern Bahamas.
Sir Lynden left a mixed record with regards to progressivism with clear accomplishments and extraordinarily lost opportunities. Hubert Ingraham will leave an ambitious and extensive progressive record.
For what he has so far failed to achieve, Perry Christie is a paper progressive, whose rhetoric dramatically outweighs his dismal record. His failure to achieve National Health Insurance was monumental.
The story of genuine progressive liberalism cannot be singularly told in the record of the party that bears the moniker Progressive Liberal Party. The split that created the Free National Movement saw a splintering of the progressives who helped to usher in majority rule into two camps. After the split, a core of the progressive movement migrated away from the PLP to the FNM convinced that under Sir Lynden’s prime ministership that much of the progressive agenda was at risk.
Today, both major political parties are shaped not only by that past history. They are also shaped by their actions or inaction on a range of progressive and liberal policy matters. The history of the progressive tradition has many dramatic twists -- and surprises. One example of this is the fateful outcome of an electoral contest a little over 50 years ago.
The elevation of United Bahamian Party (UBP) House of Assembly member C. W. F. Bethell to the Legislative Council, the forerunner of the Senate, triggered a 1959 by-election in Grand Bahama.
The outcome of the electoral contest was a bellwether for progressivism and the movement for and towards majority rule. It was also a triumph for a more aggressive and progressive politics to dislodge the white oligarchy’s near absolute domination of the colony’s political and economic life.
Initially, UBP candidate Harold DeGregory was declared the winner. But the results were contested. Eventually, Warren J. Levarity, who waged a tenacious, daring campaign and almost one-man battle, won the seat. He stunned the UBP and his more timid and conservative colleagues in the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP).
UPENDED
Mr. Levarity upended the game plans and limited political reach of others who, up to that point, refused to join the PLP uncertain it could win and uncomfortable with the supposed radicals like Mr. Levarity himself, Sir Arthur Foulkes and Jeffrey Thompson. The victory also jolted the politics of race and class.
This racial and class politics included not only the mindsets of the UBP, but also the elitist and narrow views on colour held by many in the black middle and professional class and lighter-skinned and brown-skinned elite. Among them were the earlier founders of the PLP and some returned home with what were referred to as their BTEs or Been to England professional degrees.
Many of the aforementioned were uncomfortable with the black majority and unconvinced of the native political genius of others like Messrs. Foulkes, Levarity and Thompson who were the inspiration and nexus of the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA).
Formalized in 1959, the NCPA was founded as an advocacy or pressure group within the PLP to bolster the party’s progressive credentials and the country’s struggle for majority rule. The group’s ambitions were not only the stratagems and tactics needed to win a parliamentary majority.
With the majority secured they intended to revolutionize and transform life for the mass of Bahamians and create in both senses a new country.
Much of their ambition was fulfilled though significant parts of their agenda remained unfulfilled for decades, and some of that ambition and agenda still requires action.
The historical ironies include the betrayal of the tradition by those who used the rhetoric in pursuit of power then abandoned its core goals to hold on to power at almost any cost. One other great irony is that the political party sometimes branded as the more reactionary now has a more progressive record than the party that boasts of its progressive origins.
This is partly the story of the triumphs and defeats of the progressive and liberal traditions in modern Bahamian politics more of which in the weeks and months ahead.
I really wonder by what definition are you using the word 'progressive'? In the US today, it's mostly used as a more polite version of 'liberal' (another problematic word as it's migrated far from it's original definition.
I am quite looking forward to your series, but I don't see that Hubert Ingraham leads a 'progressive' government is we are using the current US definition. I believe that the vast majority of Bahamians are centrists and that as a result, the political parties are all clustered around the center in terms of ideology. The PLP might be a bit left of center and the FNM a bit right of center, but none of them are too far out there and the DNA (to the extent that it even has an ideology) seems to be going for the center as well. The Vangard proved that there is no interest in a leftist party in the Bahamas. There has never been a fascist party in the Bahamas, nor a libertarian one.
Posted by: Victor | September 22, 2011 at 12:48 PM