Sir Grantley Herbert Adams was a Barbadian politician who served as the country’s inaugural premier from 1953 to 1958 and then became the first and only prime minister of the now-defunct West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962.
National Heroes Day in Barbados is also his birthday. He was born on April 28, 1898, the third child of seven born to Fitzherbert Adams and the former Rosa Frances Turney. Adams was educated at St. Giles and Harrison College in Barbados. In 1918, he won a scholarship and departed the following year for his undergraduate studies at Oxford University. Adams played a single match of first-class cricket for Barbados during the 1925–26 season, as a wicketkeeper against British Guiana in the Inter-Colonial Tournament.
As his vehicle for persuading the elitist power structure to accept the poor as humans, Adams, a highly respected lawyer, used his election to the House of Assembly as member for St. Joseph in 1934 at the age of 36. His mastery of debate on the floor of the House gave him the ideal launching pad for his fight with the wealthy and privileged class, and earned him the respect and admiration of Barbadians in all strata. He was returned to office in the 1935 and 1936 general elections.
There can be no doubt that this was his self-appointed program for leading and lighting the way to a better life for the under-privileged masses and establishing social justice across all ethnic and economic classes; nor can there be the slightest doubt that it required the utmost tact and careful timing if his efforts were to bring success.
In 1940, under his leadership, the party (then known as the Barbados Progressive League) won five seats in the House of Assembly. In 1941, the Barbados Workers’ Union was formed, and Adams was president until 1954.
In advancing the island’s Constitution, Sir Grantley led the new movement in achieving social and industrial reform. Some of these measures were:
- improved health facilities,
- housing schemes,
- minimum wage legislation,
- benefits for plantation and industrial workers,
- social welfare.
In 1942, he was appointed a member of the executive committee.
Sir Grantley was married to Grace Thorne, the daughter of an elite planter family, in 1929 at St. John’s Church. Their only child, J.M.G.M ‘Tom’ Adams, himself won the Barbados Scholarship, attended Oxford and became a lawyer. Tom Adams later became the second prime minister of Barbados.
He died at the age of 73 on November 28, 1971, and was buried at the Cathedral of St. Michael and the All Angels, Barbados.
Sir Grantley Adams’ likeness is engraved on the island’s largest currency denomination – the $100 note, which many feel, though it has never been officially conceded, as a memento of his immense stature on Barbados’ social and political landscape.
