Vere Bird

Sir Vere Cornwall Bird, KNH (9 December 1909 – 28 June 1999) was the first Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda.

His son, Lester Bryant Bird, succeeded him as Prime Minister.

Bird was among the early organizers of labour in colonial Antigua and Barbuda of the 1930s and 1940s.

His biggest battles were fought in the sugar industry, where he achieved better wages for workers and recognition of the right of workers to have annual holidays with pay.

Bird, an imposing figure (standing at 7 feet tall) even in his last years, was astute enough to recognise that those benefits would be limited as long as the big landowners held control of the government.

Therefore, he actively encouraged the top executive of his union – the Antigua Trades and Labour Union – to run for legislative office.

He agitated for a change in the qualification of candidates for the parliamentary elections since up to that time, only property owners could run for election.

When the Antigua Trades and Labour Union (ATLU) was formed in 1939, Bird was an executive member.

Bird won a seat to parliament in the late 1940s and his party went on to dominate electoral politics in Antigua and Barbuda for several years.

He was eventually to lead the islands into political independence from Britain.

Bird left his mark on the labour movement, education and the Caribbean integration movement.

In 1943, he became the president of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union.

By 1943 he had become president of the union and was leading a battle for better working conditions and increased pay against the white sugar barons.

He achieved national acclaim politically for the first time when he was elected to the colonial legislature in 1945.

The union entered electoral politics for the first time in 1946 and Bird won, in a by-election, a seat in the legislature and was appointed a member of the Executive Council.

When universal adult suffrage was introduced here in 1951, the ATLU, under the banner of the Antigua Labour Party, won all seats in the legislature, a feat it repeated until 1967, making Antigua a country with a multi-party system but with freely voted one-party control.

The ministerial system was introduced in 1956 and the Governor gave Bird the trade and production portfolio, and when further constitutional advancement came in 1960, he was named Chief Minister.

In 1967, Antigua became the first Eastern Caribbean island to receive the associated statehood constitution from Britain that gave internal self-government but with London remaining responsible for foreign policy and defence.

Bird, radical in his younger days, had been shifting to the right, and in the face of severe social unrest that forced a split in the ATLU in 1967 and rioting in 1968, the ATLU lost its tight hold of Antigua and Barbuda politics.

Out of the split, the Antigua Workers Union was formed and later the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM), and Bird decided to resign because he felt it was not right to hold both positions.

In 1968 the PLM won four seats in a by-election and by 1971 Bird was out of power, having not only lost the government to the PLM but also the parliamentary seat he had held for 25 years.

A former Lieutenant, the PLM's George Walter, became the island's new premier.

Bird's political exile was to last for only five years and by 1976, he regained the government, having campaigned against independence on the grounds that Antigua was not yet psychologically ready.

He won the election again in 1980, this time with independence being a major campaign plank.

He formed the Antigua Labour Party and became the first and only chief minister, first and last premier, and first prime minister from 1981 to 1994.

His resignation was due to failing health and internal issues within the government.

In 1985 Antigua's international airport, which was first named Coolidge International Airport, was renamed V.C. Bird International Airport in his honour.

Bird was born in a poor area of St John's, the capital.

Unlike most of his political contemporaries – such as Norman Manley of Jamaica and Sir Grantley Herbert Adams of Barbados, who were distinguished lawyers, and Trinidadian Eric Williams, a scholar – Bird had little formal education except primary schooling.

He attended St John's Boys School, now known as the T.N. Kirnon Primary School.

Bird was an officer in the Salvation Army for two years interspersing his interests in trade unionism and politics.

He gave up the Salvation Army because he saw the way the landowners were treating the local black Antiguans and Barbudans, so he decided to leave his post to fight for the freedom of his people.

In 1994, he was declared a "National Hero".

He was an officer in the Salvation Army for 2 years.

With his powerful family, he ruled Antigua and Barbuda up to 1994, when he quit politics, having paved the way for one of his sons, Lester, to take over as Prime Minister.

A common criticism from the Antiguan public is the corruption and cronyism within the Labour Party, with many claiming the government is essentially a "family business" with the continuance of the Bird dynasty in control of political power as unquestioned.

Bird's supporters reject these accusations and say that his actions were justified to throw off the institution of colonial sugar planters and the British colonial overlords.

The Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid compared the Bird government to the François Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti in her politically charged narrative A Small Place.

Bird was a member of an elite group of militant trade unionists who blazed a trail through colonial times up to or near the political independence of the Caribbean countries.

The group included Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley of Jamaica, Robert Bradshaw of St Kitts and Nevis, Grantley Adams of Barbados, Cheddi Jagan of Guyana, Ebenezer Joshua of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Eric Gairy of Grenada.