Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw was considered one of the Caribbean's most skillful and forceful leaders. For about 40 years Bradshaw was a dominant political figure in St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla. He found the British political control over the islands objectionable and the plantation system that promoted racism inhumane and unjust.
Background
Bradshaw was born in St. Paul's Village, St. Kitts, on September 16, 1916, to Mary Jane Francis and William Bradshaw. His parents were among the few in the community w'ho did not work in the sugar industry. Mary Jane was a skilled cook who was much in demand and his father was a blacksmith who abandoned his family nine months after his son's birth. Bradshaw grew up within a close-knit family that included his grandmother, aunts, and uncles, who had high expectations for him and provided support. While still in St. Paul's Anglican primary school, he distinguished himself for his academic and leadership skills.
Education
Even though he was mostly self-taught after completing his primary education at 16, he served as a pupil teacher in St. Paul's Village before moving to the capital city of Basseterre.
After his work on factory he began college correspondence courses from England, where his performance was described as outstanding. An admirer of black nationalist Marcus Garvey, Bradshaw learned to value his Africanness and was guided by the fundamental principle that blacks should be equal participants in society.
Career
Very early in his life, through his travels around St. Kitts, Bradshaw became aware of the unequal conditions in his society: every aspect of the plantation economy was controlled by whites; young black children and old people worked the sugarcane fields regardless of the conditions. These were the scenes that provided the drive Bradshaw needed for his political work. His religious principles also contradicted the social order. He understood that to change the social order, he had to understand and work with the establishment. In dress, speech, and behavior he was able to navigate between both societies. He was as a factory worker and union organizer and served as vice president of the St. Kitts Workers League from 1932 to 1940.
When Bradshaw was 18, one of the most important uprisings since the 1838 abolition of slavery occurred. In January 1935, a revolt by sugar estate workers over conditions turned violent at Buckley's Estate and three workers were killed. The Buckley's Revolt, and the massacre of workers that ensued, reinforced Bradshaw's commitment to lead the struggle for the black working class. By the time he was 24 years old he had become an authority on workers' issues and through his skilled oratory was beginning to establish himself as a political leader in St. Kitts.
In 1940, after leading a week-long sugar worker strike, Bradshaw lost his position at the factory and was elected to the executive committee of the newly formed St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union. In this role, he exhorted the masses through Labor Day marches and praised the values of education and social mobility. He was elected president of the union in 1944, continuing as vice president of the St. Kitts Workers League, which in 1945 became the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Labour Party.
That same year, Bradshaw became assistant secretary of the Caribbean Labour Congress, whose purpose was to support labor activities and trade unionism in the Caribbean. At the 1949 inaugural conference of the International Confedera-tion of Free Trade Unions, Bradshaw became the first West Indian to serve on the confederation's executive board. By the late 1940s Bradshaw had strengthened the union movement in St. Kitts.
His greatest difficulty was trying to export union activism to the islands of Nevis and Anguilla, where most people were self-employed. Throughout political career Bradshaw encountered great resistance from these islands, who thought he focused almost exclusively on the needs of his native St. Kitts, and not enough on the other two islands.
With the advent of universal suffrage in the islands in 1951 and 1952, the working class increasingly rejected the politics of the plantation economy. The victory at the polls of the Labour Party under Bradshaw led to his appointment as minister of trade and production in 1956, and the establishment of St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla into one federated colony, the West Indies Federation. At the inauguration of the newly federated colony in 1958, Bradshaw was appointed minister of finance in the government of Grantley Herbert Adams. He held this post until 1962, when the federation collapsed and he was elected to the local legislative council.
In 1966 the Labour Party won the general election and Bradshaw became chief minister of the three-island colony. In the 1967 the cabinet system of government was established in the colony, and its political system was now known as State-hood in Association with Britain. Bradshaw became the first premier of St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla. Except for defense and external relations, there was some degree of political autonomy for the islands. Bradshaw's ultimate goal was total independence from Britain. As premier he focused on reshaping the economy for the long-term needs that an independent country would need. To him that meant ensuring control over the sugar industry, the mainstay of the St. Kitts Nevis economy. However, the political stability of the three islands was always uncertain, and two months after the establishment of the Associated Statehood there was a revolt in Anguilla. In 1969 Anguilla seceded from the union and achieved a higher degree of autonomy but did not totally sever its ties with Britain. A new activism and militarism emerged in the years between 1967 and 1978.
Politics
Bradshaw's leadership encouraged and facilitated the movement of blacks from work on the plantations to positions of responsibility and power in the police force, schools, banks, and government. He laid the foundation for independence by actions such as the nationalization of the sugar industry, and by improving the islands' infrastructure that resulted in progressions in the quality of life for their citizens. He created the Sugar Industry Rescue Operation in 1973 and the National Agricultural Corporation in 1975, acts that took control over the sugarcane industry. Bradshaw did not live to see the independence of St. Kitts and Nevis. The British granted the two islands independence in 1983, five years after Bradshaw's death.
Connections
In 1963 he married, Millicent Sahaley, a Kittitian-Lebanese. They had one daughter, Isis Carla Bradshaw, together. His first daughter, Etsu, is from an earlier relationship.
