St. Peter’s Parish Church, Friday, August 14, 2020
There is a refrain from a moving Gladys Knight song that lingers in the back of my mind whenever I think of Owen Arthur:
“If anyone should ever write my life story,
For whatever reason there might be,
You’d be there
Between the lines of pain and glory
Cause you’re the best thing that ever happened to me...”
In retrospect, I know in my heart that, in my political life, Owen Arthur was the best thing that ever happened to me. I believe that there are so many others who feel the same way. There’s no one who ever met Owen Arthur who could ignore his presence. His intellect was large, his personality complex.
He was fiercely competitive, whether in politics or dominoes or cricket or hearts. This should be no surprise to us for his initial defeat in this parish by one vote was quickly transformed into a victory and the start of a distinguished parliamentary sojourn for 34 years in the House for Assembly. Owen was consumed by politics and policy.
His love of politics was anchored by a strong love of country and a keen sense of duty. His list of achievements was vast, but no single one was perhaps as great, in my view domestically, or as consequential to the average Barbadian, as the leadership he displayed in wrestling unemployment from 25% in this land to under 7%. Early on, as he faced down the United States government in defense of our sovereignty on the now infamous Shiprider Agreement, he demonstrated that he understood and embraced fully the Barbadian tradition of courageous leadership in the international arena. He spoke truth to power. He fought for fairness and he fought for fair treatment and he stood firm on principle. Indeed, his advocacy for our rights and interests extended far beyond Barbados to embrace small states everywhere. This was perhaps best exemplified in the way that he responded head on to the unwarranted OECD challenge to our financial services sector and to our parliamentary sovereignty. Instinctively and strategically, he knew when and where and how loud to raise his voice in those arena. And to this day, his peers in the cause still remember him with admiration for leading the charge on their behalf.
Owen also recognized that any victory against powerful interests was never absolute, and that small states like Barbados could not afford to drop their guard. And that is why, even after his retirement from active politics, he never abandoned this advocacy. It is why he so enthusiastically embraced his last assignment as Chairman of the Global Commission on Trade and Development Options 2020, where he sought to reimagine the concepts of inequality and vulnerability in ways that would find common cause among the community of nations.
I often reflect, and particularly in the last few days, that it was our mutual love of policy and passion for the Caribbean civilization, maybe that we were both Libra- born, that led to our working closely together on so many matters over the years, from the strategic building out of the obligations for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy in 2006, for which he would forever be remembered to the Caribbean Court of Justice being established. Few, and I said so deliberately, can fully appreciate the intricacies involved in the revising of the Treaty of Chaguaramas and in the activating of the provisions to bringing the CSME into force. Few can know the joys and frustrations of this incomplete journey to which Owen devoted so much of his time and energy. His genius was always to see the big picture and to distill the issues with clarity, absolute clarity. In essence, he would set a line of march in the CARICOM meetings that most would willingly follow. And not simply because they believed in Barbados, but because his views on policy and strategic development were often rooted in sound principles, but also, also and never forget this, in the interests of ordinary Caribbean people.
Now, more than ever, we, his successors in regional leadership, have a solemn duty to the memory of Owen Arthur to build upon and finish the task that he helped to start. Maybe this passion for the Caribbean was best reflected in his love of Jamaica. One only needs to reflect on the statements of former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson and former Minister of Finance Omar Davies, given on his passing. Former Prime Minister Patterson commented on his love for Jamaica that caused them in Jamaica to feel his loss in a particular way. Omar was more graphic, and I quote him, “Owen was a full Jamaican who happened to have been born in Jamaica.” And perhaps that was the ... Slip for me, because it is for me to say to Omar today, he may have loved Jamaica bad, but he never forgot where his navel string was buried!
I am reassured that it was this commitment to common causes, buttressed by that keen sense of duty, of which I spoke, that allowed us both to place the interests of our country as our guiding principle in coming back together in recent times to work on these matters of great national and regional importance.
This, my friends, was always our glue. This was always our bridge to reconciliation in the shadow of Nelson Mandela and more appropriately in this church in the shadow of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the New Testament.
During the last year Owen willingly, therefore, undertook assignments on matters of international trade policy, as I said, the preparations for UNCTAD; the design of a new industrial policy framework, as requested by Minister Toppin; his hands-on role in the Jobs and Investment Council for all of us who spent the hours in those meetings seeing the passion that he brought in every intervention; bringing his ideas to the fore as we embarked upon the post-COVID rescue and recovery mission; and then of course, ultimately Chet, the Chairmanship of Liat. And who could forget his forthright and feisty, feisty performance as the head of the Commonwealth Electoral Observer Mission to Guyana in March!
Frequently over the last year, Owen and I resumed long conversations on the state of the country, on the region, on global issues facing small states. And we shared a lot recently talking about the challenges and experiences of governance. We acknowledged the reality, truly, that we are in a relay race. And I remember his abiding words to me often, “Mottley - this is a lonely journey.” And he would shake his head.
I recall for you now, examples of that lonely journey for him that displayed utmost courage.
Our success in the HIV programme was a stellar example of Owen Arthur’s courage and his willingness to walk that lonely road. Don’t judge it from 2020. Look back when he made the decisions.
The stigma associated with HIV and AIDS - the exclusion of persons from not just treatment but from their society, is difficult to imagine in today’s world. When others were hiding and when others were failing to take action, Owen Arthur was leading in the full knowledge that it was a lonely road, but a necessary road.
Owen understood that it was only his leadership that would create the platform for national cooperation and success, and to that end, as Jerome would tell you, he brought the Commission into the Prime Minister’s Office from the Ministry of Health, not because he did not have confidence in the Ministry of Health, but he understood that it was a national transformation of values and attitudes and the application of support from the Ministry of Finance that would make the defining difference in that battle.
Rising above the smallness and the pettiness that have claimed so many leaders across the world, Owen was able to reach out to appoint the wife of one of his arch political rivals - that was the nature of the man. And it was that decision that drove the success not just locally, because internationally, when Dr. Jacobs became the chair of the U.N. Global Fund for AIDS, we all recognized that we had an opportunity to influence. All noted that when only large countries were contributing to the Global Fund, Owen Arthur broke new ground and insisted that Barbados must pay and contribute to this global struggle - for it was not only our advocacy that mattered, but it was our commitment. For as he would often tell us it takes cash to care. And he and Liz Thompson will forever be remembered for their early and wise decision of providing all pregnant women in this country with AZT to reduce the mother to child transmission of HIV - a feat well ahead of the majority of the nations of the world.
Interestingly enough, as I reflect on those matters in appreciating the need to build bridges, we, Owen and I, he was political leader, I was general secretary - reached out in 1998 to Sir Richard Haynes and the NDP as we prepared to go to the polls in 1999.
It was not lunch on that fateful Sunday when Beverly, Owen and I joined Ritchie and Carol, that laid one of the key foundations for the overwhelming and then historic victory of 26-2 that the people of Barbados gave him and the Barbados Labour Party. As the person who managed more political campaigns for him than anyone else, I know that Owen understood the power of the strategic alliance that we were creating with Richie Haynes and himself. And it was, as we have come to understand the politics of inclusion at its best. Yes - in those days we were all going with Owen.
Owen Arthur taught - those of us who served with him in his Cabinet and those who served as public officials in this land, so many lessons in public policy and in fiscal discipline. His was a true understanding that you only see real progress when it comes from sound policy. In the Barbados Labour Party, we have all been graduates, therefore, of that Tom Adams/Bernard St. John/Henry Ford School of Governance - the great combination. And Owen fully embraced their love and appreciation for the power of public policy and passed it on to a new generation.
All of his Ministers defended the integrity of Cabinet government and the high office, which he held - not for the sake of himself, but for the preservation of the sanctity of the office, he was very firm on these issues. The unwritten rule that you must protect that office at all costs.
He would readily have admitted, as he did to me two months ago, that he learned so much and ultimately perfected so much about the art of Cabinet government and that much of it he learned from Dame Billie. Billie was his anchor and strength in those early days when it came to government in 1994. She was the only one in his Cabinet who had served throughout the entirety of Tom Adams’ Administration.
And when we met early on, he reflected to me that it was his intention, ten months before we even won the government in 1994, that he would wish to see Billie as his deputy and that he would wish to allow her to anchor this new generation of Barbados Labour Party politicians. And it was Billie, the consummate elder statesman, who then quietly steadied Owen Arthur’s early administration Cabinet governance and who became that vital bridge for enthusiastic but in the words of
George Bell, green Cabinet Ministers. Owen knew her true worth and the support that she provided in her two terms as his deputy few know, and I share this with you, that she willingly stepped aside into a 2003 to allow him to manage the transition of the Party that he believed was absolutely critical as we moved in to the 21st century.
His insistence on the need for clarity of purpose in the settlement of policy spoke to a tidy and logical mind. His eye for detail and the need for the efficient use of resources in the implementation of policy are valuable lessons needed for any person interested in public life, any part of the world.
For him, politics without policy was the cruelest cut of all -for it flattered to deceive in every respect and threatened to destroy people’s faith in public figures and the public space. And how could policy be derived, according to Owen, except through a belief in rigorous research and a keen grasp of history?
For while we knew of his economic prowess and his sharp legal curiosity, I believe Sir David Simmons has referred to him often as “a piece of lawyer” - most do not know about his passion for history. And while Owen opted to go to Jamaica to study and work and not to pursue graduate studies in history for which he had been offered a scholarship in North America, his love of history never left him.
As a young MP and Minister, he introduced me to the importance of political biographies and literature. Yes, “we must never forget the past,” he said. He had a passion for language and the use of precise words to describe both nuance and substance of any situation. Every sentence mattered. The lessons of history for him were never more ably and elegantly articulated than by that great English politician and writer, Roy Jenkins. And it was that love and respect for history, that also allowed him to accept the proposal to introduce legislation for the formal recognition of Emancipation Day and National Heroes Day and for the identification of our 10 National Heroes.
And to this I add, and as we walk through Speightstown, the Community Independence Secretariat, so well anchored by him and Glyne Murray.
My friends, that redefinition of identity was a moment of supreme leadership for him, for me, for this was the country that less than 20 years earlier was debating the worthiness of whether we should have emancipation lectures in this country. This was the country that debated whether Bussa should be even recognized in Barbados, far less a National Hero.
He instinctively understood that this was necessary for moving our people to the next stage of national development - the recognition of the need for sacrifice in pursuit of a greater cause, and the preparation and perfection of excellence and all that we do to attain it - as he and I both felt no better exemplify than by our own living National Hero, the Right Excellent Sir Garfield Sobers..
I will tell you, Sir Gary, he never forgot, however, the 6-0 that he and I gave you in Holder’s Hill.
Who can forget Owen Arthur’s words to thousands of persons and Carlisle Car Park, as he inspired us all by reminding us that Barbados must not settle for the bronze; Barbados must not settle for the silver; Barbados must always, always go for the gold!
As for his own person, Owen eschewed the notion of honours or accolades. It is instructive that the two medals that adorned his body and now it adorn his coffin as he lay here, speak to the liberation struggles of our people and our region. These medals were the Order of Jose Marti (Cuba’s highest award), and the Henry Sylvester Williams Award of Excellence from the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago in 2002. Most do not know that it was Henry Sylvester Williams who staged the very first African Congress in 1900, and hence the worthiness of this award was truly, truly touching.
But ultimately we, we the people of Barbados remember Owen for his ability to communicate. He was a storyteller. A true, true storyteller. He was a teacher. This skill was built on a finely crafted dry wit and a natural ability to impart knowledge, seemingly without effort. Anybody who went to a public meeting would know that. It was very often accompanied by a mischievous smile and a confident tone that underscored a recognition on his part that he had just scored a boundary - whether a four or six, the audience could determine. He made the most complex economic subjects on a political platform seem as simple as ABC. He understood that from shopkeeper to lecturer, the message should be clear. Much of his teaching ultimately, therefore, was done in public through these lectures and through these speeches, which fortunately remain accessible to all and in many instances as irrelevant now, I say regrettably, as the day they were delivered only because of the long arch of development that we of the small states must travel to bring change.
We all know that Owen’s tongue was one of the tools of his trade. It could equally be his weapon of choice - and I dare say for some, a weapon of mass destruction. But let us be clear. This extraordinary capacity and Kerrie would appreciate this, first rested upon an abiding love of language and great literature. He was a firm believer in reading outside of your discipline or training while immersing yourself in great literary works to give you context and appreciation of life.
And as for the man! The man we knew! A man of great complexity. But that was what made him such a forceful personality. He had a strong passion for the public causes that he adopted. But yet he loved simplicity and privacy and I ask the people of Barbados to respect that - especially with his final wishes for a closed casket. He required and defended form, pomp, and ceremony as critical elements of nation-building, even though at that personal level he issued publicity. The dignity of the parade this afternoon and the majesty of your voices of this church would have pleased his heart greatly. He loved the countryside. He loved the word bucolic. And he relished being described as “a country boy”. And we all knew the country boy loved cooking - from pepperpot and wilt’s to sorrel!
But above all else, he believed in his daughter’s, Sabrina and Leah - and he spoke of you with great fondness and tremendous pride, always. Sabrina, you with the numbers and Leah, you with the law. He lived I think Leah, moreso vicariously through you because after so many years of diligent practice, he believed that he could finally be in a position to be called to the Bar. And to Isabella, yes you Isabella, you were the apple of his eye. You are too young to know how your grandfather influenced many and transformed the lives of many. And that is why
I wanted to show you on Wednesday where he sat both in times of victory and in times of defeat, for he was well familiar with that twin companion.
And I said to you, you are the same age I was when my grandfather died. And I sat in the church listening to the tributes. And I remember them as if they were yesterday. And I say to you, I hope that these words and this experience will forever anchor you in your life for I know he will be happy watching over you, knowing that that is the case.
As I close - for many who are still wondering - I say simply, Owen Seymour Arthur was a man of his times, shaped by the Caribbean civilization, of which he was a proud citizen, driven by the adversarial nature of Westminster politics. The adrenaline rush of the cut and thrust constantly energized him. But at the end of it all, that cut and thrust, he believed, was not intended to be personal. And because I knew him well, I can say to you today, that for him, often, often it was not personal.
On my own behalf, I say thank you Owen for allowing me to grow. Thank you for challenging me constantly, for pushing me hard, and for toughening me for this journey in these extremely challenging times.
And yes, you, you had the last laugh with me! For I remember how you would scold me each time: “You must prepare and write it down, Mottley. If you don’t write it down, people will not take it seriously”. And today Owen, you can laugh at the fact that I have finally heeded your advice and on this occasion, I have written it down. I have more or less followed the script. And I can almost hear you laugh or should I say see you smile, since it is that smile that you left with us when you passed on that early Monday morning at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
On behalf of the Government and people of Barbados, we say thank you to Owen Seymour Arthur - for a life of distinction. We say thank you to his family for his service to a grateful nation and to a proud people.
To you, Julie, for your dignity. And to you, Leah, Sabrina, Isabella, Valmay, Richard, all of the family, we extend our deepest condolences on behalf of the people of this nation.
To all who walked on his journey: his former wife, Beverly; his constituents in this Parish of St. Peter; his former colleagues in the Barbados Labour Party; the public servants with whom he worked locally and regionally; to his colleague Heads of Government who have all expressed their desire to be here were it not for COVID; those who are representing us here today; and to those at his Alma mater, The University of the West Indies, which ultimately provided him with that refuge from which he could continue to teach and to advocate his views, we equally know your grief and we equally hold you up in this your time of loss.
My friends, at the appropriate time and after consultation with his family, this government will announce plans to honour Owen Seymour Arthur, posthumously, in a way that he richly deserved but steadfastly refused to accept during his lifetime. We can and we will do so in a manner that respects his wishes, his dignity and his patriotism.
May his soul rest in peace.