The Tribune

“‘YOU SETTLE it…’ and they picked up their geordie bundles and came home for Christmas!”

This is how Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell described the Opposition members’ hurried departure from London on the completion of the 1972 Independence conference at Marlborough House. However, the inference in this remark is that the FNM did not wait for the end of the talks, but rushed to the airport, leaving the government to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” on the Bahamas’ most important document.

Mr Mitchell didn’t say whether Tourism Minister Clement Maynard, on the same return flight with the four-member FNM delegation, had also snatched his “geordie bundle”, and left the people’s business behind to get home in time for the Christmas pudding. Obviously, Mr Maynard, a part of the government delegation, was also so anxious to get back — that is, if you follow Mr Mitchell’s skewered logic — he couldn’t even wait for the next day’s plane to travel back with his own group.

Mr Mitchell had no excuse to mislead the House last week during the amendment of four constitutional Bills with what he probably thought was a clever throwaway line, obviously not caring whether it was true or false. It happened to be completely false.

The two-week London conference, which looked as though it might go beyond its December 19 deadline, came to a swift end on the morning of December 20 when, according to then Prime Minister Pindling, the “entire Bahamas delegation made the British government an offer it could not afford to refuse”.

As soon as the ink was blotted, the FNM collected their “geordie bundles” and left for the airport, followed the next day by the government delegation. Both delegations arrived in Nassau within a day of each other.

And if Mr Mitchell still has doubts, the front page arrival photographs of The Tribune of December 20 and 21, 1972 should convince him.

Just in case there is any further doubt in his mind about the movements of the FNM delegation, he should consult the Cabinet Office files, where he will find a November 30, 1972 letter informing Opposition Leader Kendal Isaacs, QC, of his party’s travel dates, hotel accommodations, the B$553 per diem allowance for each member of the delegation, which represented “10 days allowance”.

In the same letter, the Secretary to the Cabinet instructed them that government had booked Opposition delegates at the Carlton Towers Hotel from December 8-19, 1972. The Opposition party had no say in the time that they either arrived or left London. Apparently, it created quite some anxiety for government handlers when the conference continued into December 20th, and airline tickets had to be changed for scarce airline seats. So one can expect that there must have been a hurried dash for the airport, but not so hurried that they left any decisions for government to make for them.

However, on January 4, 1973, Mr Isaacs in a short note to Prime Minister Pindling wrote:

“You will recall that the Opposition delegation to the recent Constitutional Conference in London departed only a matter of hours after the conclusion of the Conference. As a result we did not collect those papers which were presumably prepared as a result of the final session. I would be most grateful if you would therefore use your good offices to secure the delivery of these papers to us from the Commonwealth Office.”

Could this note be interpreted as a dereliction of duty on the part of the Opposition as a result their hurried departure, scheduled for them by the Cabinet Office?

In his opening address, Mr Isaacs said that 40 per cent of his party’s supporters who voted in the recent elections felt that independence at “this time is both unnecessary and unwise. Nevertheless, we recognise the necessity for a responsible opposition realistically to accept the declaration of a majority of the Bahamian electorate, albeit only a marginal, not an overwhelming majority”.

Although in the Bahamas, the Governor had made it clear that if the PLP were voted in as the government in the 1972 election, the British government would consider it a vote for independence, his advice was ignored. However, Mr Pindling, knowing the strong feeling among many Bahamians against independence at that time assured voters that once the election was over, he would then consider the question of independence.

However, the result of the election was that of the 38 House seats, the PLP had won 30. The die was cast. An Independence Conference in London was on.

At that conference, the FNM championed the cause for equal rights for Bahamian women. The FNM’s position was that a Bahamian woman married to a foreign man should be able to pass her nationality on to both her husband and her children, just as a Bahamian man could confer his nationality on his foreign wife and their children. This position was objected to by the PLP with the support of the British government, which held fast to the Common Law that the law of the family followed the nationality of the father. At that time, the FNM were “ahead of the times” as one of the surviving delegates of that conference recently commented.

However, times have changed and the issue is now before the Bahamian people in a referendum that is scheduled for November 6.