St. Kitts and Nevis first national hero
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Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw
(Sept. 16, 1916 –May 23, 1978),
St. Kitts and Nevis’ first national
hero, was also the first premier
of the twin-island federation,
who previously served as chief
minister, legislator and labor
activist.
Bradshaw was born in the
St. Paul Capisterre village in St.
Kitts to Mary Jane Francis, a
domestic servant, and William
Bradshaw, a blacksmith.
According to SKNVibes, Bradshaw
was raised by his grandmother
after his father migrated
to the United States when Bradshaw
was nine months old.
The young Bradshaw attended
St. Paul’s Primary School
and completed seventh grade,
the highest level of primary
education available in St. Kitts
at the time, the Virgin Island
News said.
At 16, Bradshaw became a
machine apprentice at the St.
Kitts Sugar Factory, where he
began to take interest in the
labor movement.
In 1940, he left the sugar
factory following a strike for
higher wages and joined the
St. Kitts and Nevis Trades and
Labor Union as a clerk. Bradshaw
succeeded Joseph Matthew
Sebastian as president of
the union in 1944, according to
SKNVibes.
In 1963, Bradshaw married,
Millicent Sahaley, a Kittitian-
Lebanese. They had one daughter,
Isis Carla Bradshaw, together.
His first daughter, Etsu, is
from an earlier relationship.
Bradshaw supported the
cause of the sugar workers, and
was one of the political stalwarts
of the country, SKNVibes
said.
Kwame Anthony Appiah and
Henry Louis Gates wrote in the
Encyclopedia of the African and
African American Experience
that, in 1945, Bradshaw became
president of the recently-created
St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla
Labor Party.
They said that Bradshaw
entered politics in 1946 and won
a seat in the Legislative Council
in the elections that year,
later becoming a member of the
Executive Council.
In 1956, Bradshaw was Minister
of Trade and Production
for St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla.
During the short-lived West
Indies Federation, from 1958
to 1962, Appiah and Gates said
Bradshaw was elected to the
Federal House of Representatives
and held the post of minister
of finance for the federation.
After the break-up of the
federation, Bradshaw returned
to St. Kitts from Trinidad and
Tobago.
In 1966, he became chief
minister, and, a year later, the
first premier of St. Kitts-Nevis-
Anguilla, then an associated
state of the United Kingdom.
Under Bradshaw’s leadership,
all sugar lands as well as
the central sugar factory were
bought by the government,
according to Donald Westlake
in “Under an English Heaven.”
But he said opposition to
Bradshaw’s rule began to build.
Westlake said opposition was
especially great in Nevis, where
it was felt that the island was
being neglected and unfairly
deprived of revenue, investment
and services by its larger neighbor.
Bradshaw mainly ignored
Nevis’ complaints, but Nevisian
disenchantment with the Labor
Party proved a key factor in the
party’s eventual fall from power,
Westlake said.
He said opposition in Anguilla
was even stronger, with the
Anguillans evicting St. Kitts
police from their island and
holding referendums in 1967
and 1969, both times voting
overwhelmingly to secede from
St. Kitts-Nevis and remain a
separate British territory.
In 1977, Bradshaw travelled
to London for independence
talks with the United Kingdom
government.
“By the time independence
talks commenced in earnest in
1977, the foundation of the new
state had been placed on sound
footings,” SKNVibes said. “But
the premier was then a very
sick man.
“He underwent major surgery
in St. Kitts in 1976 and
had to undergo another major
operation in London in January
1978,” it added. “He died on the
23rd May of that year surrounded
by family and friends at his
home in Fortlands, Basseterre
to which he had expressed a
desire to return.”
Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw.
https://en.wikipedia.org
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