Fifty-five years ago this month, the fi­nal deals were made in re­spect of in­de­pen­dence for Bar­ba­dos be­tween British Prime Min­is­ter Harold Wil­son and Bar­ba­di­an Pre­mier Er­rol Bar­row.

The Bar­ba­di­an Pre­mier in­tro­duced a res­o­lu­tion on Jan­u­ary 4, 1966, in the Bar­ba­dos House of As­sem­bly that re­quest­ed the British Gov­ern­ment to con­vene the Bar­ba­dos In­de­pen­dence Con­fer­ence. He said, in part: “We fal­tered by the way­side to see if we could col­lect some of our less­er brethren in the sense of more un­for­tu­nate brethren–to­geth­er along the road to in­de­pen­dence with us; that is where we wast­ed three and one-half years in this ex­er­cise. Hav­ing been di­vert­ed from our main ob­jec­tive, we have mere­ly re­turned to the man­date of the peo­ple and the ex­pres­sion of our in­ten­tions as demon­strat­ed in the Man­i­festo of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty.” Cit­ed in Yusuff Han­iff, Speech­es by Er­rol Bar­row, (Lon­don: Han­sib Pub­lish­ing Ltd, 1987) 69-70.

Bar­ba­dos spent three-and-a-half years in po­lit­i­cal ne­go­ti­a­tions for an East Caribbean Fed­er­a­tion that were based on a con­fer­ence that was held in Lon­don be­tween May 9 and 24, 1962. Lit­tle came out of that con­fer­ence.

The British Gov­ern­ment ac­ced­ed to Bar­row’s Jan­u­ary 1966 re­quest and the Bar­ba­dos Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­fer­ence was sub­se­quent­ly held in Lon­don dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 20-Ju­ly 4, 1966.

While the con­fer­ence was in progress, one of the key is­sues that arose was whether there should be a gen­er­al elec­tion in Bar­ba­dos be­fore it be­came in­de­pen­dent. That top­ic be­came a mat­ter of great po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance and led to a se­cret deal be­ing made be­tween Wil­son and Bar­row.

This first arose in a con­fi­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum from the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies, Fred­er­ick Lee, to Wil­son and the Sec­re­tary of State for Com­mon­wealth Re­la­tions, Arthur Bot­tom­ley dat­ed June 29, 1966.

The key is­sue ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Lee to Wil­son and Bot­tom­ley read as fol­lows:

“I, there­fore, sug­gest that I should be au­tho­rised to tell the pre­mier pri­vate­ly and in con­fi­dence that we are un­able to agree to his go­ing to in­de­pen­dence un­til fresh elec­tions have been held. I should then bring this con­fer­ence to an end on the ba­sis that there are a num­ber of points which re­quire fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion and on which it is not pos­si­ble to reach a de­ci­sion with­in the time avail­able. The con­fer­ence would be re­sumed at a lat­er date on the un­der­stand­ing be­tween the pre­mier (not re­vealed to the Op­po­si­tion par­ties) and my­self that, be­fore this re­sump­tion, fresh elec­tions will have been held in Bar­ba­dos...”

In a con­fi­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum from A M Pal­lis­er, Pri­vate Sec­re­tary to the Prime Min­is­ter, to A P H T Cum­ming-Bruce at the Colo­nial Of­fice dat­ed Ju­ly 1, 1966, the fol­low­ing was said:

“I should per­haps just con­firm for the record that the Prime Min­is­ter re­ceived the Colo­nial Sec­re­tary and the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary in his room at the House of Com­mons yes­ter­day at 6 pm. The Gov­er­nor of Bar­ba­dos was al­so present. They dis­cussed cer­tain prob­lems aris­ing out of the Bar­ba­dos Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­fer­ence, about which Williams sent Reid with his let­ter of June 29 a mem­o­ran­dum by the Colo­nial Sec­re­tary. This was seen by the Prime Min­is­ter.

I need not record the dis­cus­sion in any de­tail. The con­clu­sion reached, as summed up at the end of the meet­ing by the Prime Min­is­ter was that Mr Lee could agree to in­de­pen­dence for Bar­ba­dos at the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber. Be­fore this, fresh elec­tions would have to be held in the Colony. But in or­der to save Mr Bar­row’s face, this need not be said pub­licly.”

The deal was made. Arrange­ments with Buck­ing­ham Palace had to be made.

Michael Adeane, Pri­vate Sec­re­tary to Queen Eliz­a­beth II, re­spond­ed to Sir Hyl­ton Poyn­ton at the Colo­nial Of­fice on Ju­ly 27 as fol­lows:

“…I am to say that Her Majesty is very glad to nom­i­nate The Duke of Kent to be her Rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the Bar­ba­dos In­de­pen­dence Cel­e­bra­tions on 30th No­vem­ber. Her Majesty ful­ly un­der­stands the pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions which may arise dur­ing the pe­ri­od be­tween now and In­de­pen­dence. There­fore, while she ap­proves the terms of the pro­posed press an­nounce­ment as set out in your let­ter, she agrees that this an­nounce­ment should not be made pub­lic un­til such time as the Sec­re­tary of State rec­om­mends that this should be done. No doubt you will let me know when this mo­ment aris­es…”

Bar­ba­dos be­came in­de­pen­dent on 30th No­vem­ber 30, 1966, af­ter a gen­er­al elec­tion on No­vem­ber 3, 1966.