THE ANNIVERSARY OF BLACK TUESDAY

The following statement was read a communication to the House of Assembly by Fred Mitchell, Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Public Service on the 57^th anniversary of the Black Tuesday demonstration in the public square in Nassau to protest the drawing of the boundaries in the year 1965:

House of Assembly

Nassau

27 April 2022

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY



Today marks the 57th anniversary in what is known in our history books as Black Tuesday. It was on this day that the late Sir Lynden O Pindling, the father and founding Prime Minister of our country threw the Speaker’s mace out of the window of the House of Assembly and he was followed by Sir Milo Butler who threw the Speaker’s hour glass out of the window.

It was not a spontaneous event. It was a planned event. The late Effie Walkes recalled that she was the only woman in the room and it was she who mooted the idea that there was a need to do something more radical to demonstrate that the then minority rule government had to go.

The demonstration was called to protest the drawings of the boundary commission which delineated the boundaries in 1965 under the new internal self-government constitution. Ministerial government had come to The Bahamas one year earlier on the 7 January 1964. The Constituencies Commission had a remit to draw the boundaries.

The new Commission was to draw the boundaries on the basis of constituencies being more or less equal and then taking into account the remoteness and geographical features of the country. That is still the formulation today.

The new formulation came following the defeat of the PLP in 1962 when they received the lion’s share of the votes but lost the majority of the seats. The seat count was in favour of the Out Islands but the majority of the population lived in New Providence.

Dame Doris Johnson has to be credited with the creation of a construct in her book The Quiet Revolution which traces the start of the modern political era in The Bahamas to the Burma Road Riots of 1942 on the 1st and 2nd of June 1942. Sir Randal Fawkes agreed and so have most of the Bahamian historians of the left.

There are several markers from 1942 to the coming of majority rule on 10 January 1967 and independence on 10 July 1973.

They are:

The Citizens Committee fight in 1950 to reverse the ban on the showing of Sidney Poitier’s first film: No Way Out

The founding of the PLP in 1953



The election of the first political party in the House in 1956



The General Strike of 1958



Women get the vote in 1962



Black Tuesday 27 April 1965



Majority Rule 10 January 1967



Following that came the sweeping election of 10 April 1968 when the PLP’s popularity was at its highest.

With that majority the Constitution was amended to allow for the voting age to be lowered to 18 from 21

And ultimately on 10 July 1973 national independence.



It is important to remember and recall. The square outside was crowded on that day.

Sir Lynden Pindling told me that they did not expect the crowd that came. They made a general announcement and in fact most people in the square were spectators who had come to see what was going on.



He said he and his followers recalled that the 1942 riots had started in Nassau because there was a coca cola truck park in the street with bottles and the bottles were used as missiles to start the riot. He said they were determined that there would be no riot. So after sitting down on Bay Street following the defenestration of the Mace, he led his followers to a rally at the Southern Recreation Grounds.



John Bailey, an Irishman was the Magistrate that day. He told me that he was called to read the riot act and there is a picture of him standing on a police van doing so. He said that he was the only one still in office, the black magistrates had left for the day, presumably because they knew of the event, in the face of the crowds.



I asked the late Eugene Dupuch, a minister in the UBP Government, why the UBP did not prosecute the PLPs for the act. He said that the government saw it as a political act and not an act of sedition.

Following the events of Black Tuesday, there was an ideological split in the PLP: Sir Orville Turnquest, Paul Adderley and Spurgeon Bethel did not agree to the boycott of the House which the PLP had called for. They had not been told of the demonstration in advance because it was believed by the planners that they would seek to dissuade them from acting.

The three MHAs went back to the House and ended being suspended by the PLP and they formed their own party called the National Democratic Party or NDP. The PLP’s numbers in the House were reduced then to Lynden Pindling, Milo Butler, Arthur Hanna, Clarence Bain. Cyril Stevenson had resigned and the other three had been suspended. Randal Fawkes had left and was a Labour Party rep. Yet within two years, the tables turned and the PLP was in the seat of government.

History is important. And on two occasions in 2017 and in 1997, when all appeared lost for the PLP, I pointed out, and I repeat today: elections are only a snap shot of what people feel on the day they go to the polls. Michael Manley told me in the midst of his defeat: we routed them before we can route them again.

Black Tuesday 27 April 1965, a step on the way to majority rule.

Today we remember the heroes of that day Lynden Pindling, Milo Butler, Cecil Wallace Whitfield, Arthur Foulkes, Arthur Hanna and the countless unnamed souls who joined the fight. I remember in particular the late Ena Hepburn who Sir Lynden said sat down next to him in her brand new white suit on Bay Street.



We remember them all.

God bless them and God bless the Commonwealth of The Bahamas

Thank you