Congratulations and best wishes Barbados on 53 years of Independence!

By Stanley Collymore

Happy Independence Day Barbados! And warm exultations

from every Bajan, who is quite jubilantly, justifiably

and sincerely immensely proud of what you’ve

assiduously and magnificently done for all

of us – your loyal citizens – in the past, as you are still

now doing and will go on as before, I’m absolutely

sure, to capably, impressively, beneficially and

determinedly continue achieving in respect

of the untrammelled good, individually

and communally, of all Barbadians;

as well as our most praiseworthy,

adored, Caribbean and tropical

paradisiacal island home we

passionately love, hold in

immense affection, and

is duly referred to as

Beautiful Barbados

by everyone of us.

Actions so inherently routine and uncompromising

with you Barbados that with unequivocal surety

I’m totally convinced you will unwaveringly,

as ever, continue unabated with them well

into the distant future! And accounts for why as an

appreciative and loyal Bajan who indisputably

is indebted so much to you I intensely, in

conjuction with my earnest salutations,

wish you a perfectly cultural Bajan

anniversary day, a superb, and a

truly unforgettable fifty third

Independence celebrations

in every conceivable way!

© Stanley V. Collymore

18 November 2019.

Author’s Remarks:

Unforgettable Recollections: As the thundering chimes signalling midnight rang out and reverberated across the entire landscape of Barbados on Tuesday 29^th November 1966 and in so doing heralded in the start of November 30, 1966 the Broken Trident: the new, national flag of Barbados and the inestimable symbol of Barbadian Pride and Industry, rose majestically to the pinnacle of flag staffs across our sacred land in boisterous conjunction with the tumultuous acclaim of Barbados’ first minutes of national independence on Wednesday the 30^th November 1966.

Fifty three years on from that glorious day and coupled with the genuine and inspiration genius of the Father of the Barbados Nation, our first Prime Minister and himself an acclaimed and statutory National Hero of our Nation, the late and great iconic figure Errol Walton “Dipper” Barrow, Barbados and its people commendably to him have much to be grateful for.

Although visited several times previously by the Portuguese after Christopher Columbus’ landfall in the region, it wasn’t until the 14^th May 1625 that the first English ship sailed into and moored in the territorial waters of a distinctly Arawak and Carib indigenously populated Barbados.

However in 1627 the English were back again and thus became the first and only Europeans, on behalf of their country England, to establish a lasting and continuous settlement in Barbados which, thereafter, remained English, and unchanged so, for the next 339 consecutive years until Barbados’ independence on the 30th November 1966. In the process of this according Barbados the purportedly legendary distinction of being the only English and much later after the creation of the United Kingdom, British colony never to have ever changed colonialists’ hands.

And with exceptionally good reasons too on the part of the English regime and its people back in Europe and the rest of the British after the creation of the UK. Since, among other crucial things, it was Barbados’ money and labour as England’s wealthiest colony that fully financed the English Industrial Revolution and both literally and virtually overnight transformed a wholly nondescript and unimportant offshore European entity called England into the spearhead of the global British Empire that it subsequently became.

So feel immensely proud of who and what you are my fellow Bajans as you joyously celebrate our Independence Anniversary Day in true Barbadian style and with the utmost self-assurance, dignity and gratitude that we’re all present and correct to do so.