House of Assembly
27th March 2008

When I met Jeffrey Thompson for the first time in 1979 or 1980, he was like a man out of myth and legend. He had been a part of the first majority rule Cabinet of the late Sir Lynden Pindling.  I was a high school student at the time the PLP came to office. The men who formed the first government were icons. Unlike their predecessors, we were able to touch and feel them, the new giants in the land. Somehow, I had never met Mr. Thompson who served as a Cabinet minister from 1967 to 1972, establishing what was then the Ministry of Development.

My first meeting came in one of what I call those Dickensian moments. I knew for example that he had left his post as a Minister and gone to the Harvard Business School for six months on one of its executive level courses. I knew also that he ultimately gave up his post altogether as a Minister in 1972, took his three girls and his wife and left for the United Kingdom to study law.  He said that Lord Thurlow, the Royal Governor in Nassau at the time had helped to arrange it.  Of his leaving his job, I thought at the time how unusual.  Remarkable I later thought.  Courageous, I now think. He had a certain stoicism about life that no doubt carried him through that I saw again after he lost his beloved wife Merlene.

We met in Boston or more particularly Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of Harvard.  I was at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard from 1979 to 1980.  His daughter was then a student at Boston University. I had run into her at a party at the Harvard Law School and then searched her up for fellowship as Bahamians abroad.  So when she told me that Jeff was coming to Boston, this seemed to me the opportunity of a lifetime.

I had a friend who was then an officer of the U.S. State Department A. Lucille Thomas and she was impressed to hear that then Senator Jeffrey Thompson of The Bahamas was coming to town. As much as students can do, we led by Lucille laid out the red carpet, and organized a dinner at Legal Seafood. He was a gold mine of knowledge about the early PLP; answered lots of questions about the past.

He told me what the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA) was and how they first took over the PLP and then the PLP took over the country.  They supported Sir Lynden as leader in his ascendancy over the old guard of the party headed by then Chairman Sir Henry Taylor, later Governor General.

Jeff said that in 1967 the PLP was really scrapping to find men and women to run for office.  Few people thought the PLP could win.  He was an articled clerk in Sir Lynden’s office and there they literally parcelled out seats.  I remember the story like this.  Sir Lynden said to him “Well Jeff I guess you’d better take Ft. Fincastle.”  Politics is really a fortuitous business.

He remembered the early schism in the party that led to the formation of the Free PLP and then the FNM.  He said amongst the first signs was the so called "Bend or Break" speech at the opening of Borco in Freeport in 1969 when the later FNM Member of Parliament Garnet Levarity as Government Administrator was greeted on the podium as a conquering hero, and the reception of Sir Lynden was less than enthusiastic. Of course, history shows us that everyone’s loyalty to the cause and the great man was out to the test when there was a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister that ultimately led to the formation of the FNM.  Many expected him to vote with the dissident eight but in the end, he supported the PLP to the delight of many and to the chagrin of others. Politics often demands hard choices between friends and principles.

But most importantly, he put the success of the early PLP into government down to cohesion from 1962 to 1965.  He said that in those days the men and women who led the PLP spoke to each other each day, were in each other's offices and homes each day and never stopped talking politics and strategy, planning and taking political action.  The result was the victory of 1967 against insuperable odds.

The contributions in the early days of Majority Rule pale in comparison to anything that he did since: his unsuccessful run again in Grand Bahama for the House, his service in the Senate, his work as a Magistrate, then on the Industrial Tribunal and later as a Judge of the Supreme Court.

I served as the Minister for the Public Service from 2002 to 2007 and it was my honour and privilege to pilot through Parliament a successful Act to provide a pension for Mr. Thompson with the complete support of my colleagues. He had been left short of the legal qualification period by an oversight that meant that he could not qualify for the judge’s pension. There was not a dissenting voice in the government.  The Act was passed without debate and with the unanimous consent of the House.

He had enormous goodwill. Here was a man who was with us and for us the Bahamian people. When it was time to be counted, he did what he was called to do as a man of honour and a true Bahamian.  In office, I believed I had to do what was right when it came time to be counted. It was a rare favour for me to be able to honour him with the passage of that Act.

He once boasted that his father who had come from Barbados lived to be 84 years old and smoked a pack of Pall Malls a day up to the time he died.  Jeff used to be a smoker himself.  I’m just sorry that he didn’t make it to 84 and did not get a chance to write about his life.  But he lived three score and sixteen.  He did well for himself, for his family and for this country. What more could you ask for.  At the end, he died in peace, surrounded by the love of his grateful, beautiful daughters. What more could a man ask for?  We owe him a debt of gratitude.

Thank you Jeff and Godspeed!