2nd January 2005

It seems to me that the year 1975 is very much like yesterday when at the age of 22  I was elected the Chairman of the Centreville Branch of the PLP. Only the year before I had come home from University with the single-minded view that I was to become a politician. I began my political career at the local Centreville Branch of the PLP.  Anthony Roberts was then the Member of Parliament.  Brenville Hanna had earlier identified me as someone that he could support and within a year of my meeting him, I thought I had reached the apex of my political career when I was elected unanimously the Branch Chairman.

I later learned that one of my predecessors was Athama Bowe, who is the son of our sister and stalwart councilor Ena Hebpurn whom we bury today.

Centreville was an odd mix of people from different socio economic backgrounds.  The constituency then stretched from East Street on the west across to Mackey Street on the East.  It took in Centreville proper within the Collins Wall, the traditional Valley  including those areas within the sound of the bells of St. Georges where Prime Minister Perry Christie was born and grew up.  It encompassed Rolle Avenue and Culmerville.  But it also took in Sunlight Cottage, Plantol Street and Windsor Lane.  The area that separated them was the Collins Wall built around 1934 and breached in 1959 to allow the flow of people from one side to the other.

Charles Rolle Jr., the brother of the more famous Donald “Nine” Rolle was the Vice Chairman of the branch.  He and Ena Hepburn were an item.  They became my most fervent supporters in an ultimately fruitless campaign to get the nomination for the Centreville seat in 1977.  It is a friendship that has stood the test of time, and that is why I am here today.

When I hear the bellowing voices of politics that threaten and try to cajole, that seek to intimidate and frighten, one of the reasons that I have no fear of them is because of Ena Hepburn. I was running for re-election  as Chairman in 1976, and in trying to keep two disparate groups together, it was perceived that I had become too close to those over the wall. Some were whispering that perhaps I had forgotten from whence I had come.  The election night meeting was very tense, and Ena Hebpurn, Charles Rolle and Gwen Moncur had rallied the troops but the meeting never came off because suddenly the lights were doused, the desks were overthrown and the meeting disintegrated in bedlam.  Charles Rolle rushed me down to my house on Collins Avenue and told me stay there.  Order was restored but I was frightened out of my wits.

The next day I went to see Ena in her shop up above Mama Dos where she sewed in the day and operated the club at night. There was no harm done and it was only psychological warfare.  “Don’t worry about that she said.  They were only trying to frighten you and it doesn’t mean anything.  You just keep going”. So today, when they bellow at me, I have learned to use all my voices and bellow back.

I knew, however, that she was someone really special and dare I say famous after the late Sir Lynden Pindling spoke one day from parliament.  Edmund Moxey was leading a vote of no confidence in the Government.  Sir Lynden in his summing up address that defeated the vote told about his struggles to get to where he was. He told the country words like: “ Now when we went into Bay Street and sat down on Black Tuesday we knew we were going to be arrested.  And sitting down in the road with me dressed in a white pants suit was Ena Hepburn.” I  drove as fast I could to East Street to let her know that she was famous because the Prime Minister had just spoken her name on the radio.  To her it was no big thing. One thing I knew from then was that special bond; that direct line that she had to the late Sir Lynden O. Pindling.

My brothers and sisters that was a very long time ago, almost a generation ago.  But the past is very much prologue.  Today, it is my turn on the stage. I have the great satisfaction, enormous pleasure, privilege and honour to serve this country as a Minister of the government. There is in my view no finer job to have in this country, nothing is more intellectually compelling. But I thought I should tell you today that if you think I am a success in any small way, I certainly did not get here by myself.  Pay due respect to my family, to my education but I  also got here very much due to this woman whom we will lay to rest today Ena Hepburn. I thank her from the bottom of my heart.