Background
Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw was born in Saint Paul Capisterre on 16 September 1916.
government official politician
Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw was born in Saint Paul Capisterre on 16 September 1916.
Attended primary school in St.Kitts.
After the school he went to work in a sugar factory. He entered politics through the trade union movement. The St. Kitts Workers League, formed in 1932 by black field and factory workers in the sugar industry, acted as an incipient political organization and trade union, and gained significant concessions for the colony’s workers. Bradshaw served as its vice president from 1932 to 1940.
In 1940 Bradshaw was a leader of a seven-week walkout from the sugar factory as a result of which he lost his job there. The same year, the government rescinded the law against unions, and the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union was formed. Bradshaw was elected to its Executive Committee. The union and party were two arms of the same movement.
In 1943 Bradshaw was one of the primary organizers of a week-long strike of sugar estate workers. In 1944 he was elected president of the union and vice president of the Workers’ League which in 1945 became the St. Kitts-Nevis- Anguilla Labour Party under Bradshaw’s presidency.
Bradshaw led the Labour Party in the 1946 elections in which a number of Labour Party candidates, including Bradshaw, were elected to the Legislative Council. The system of Crown Colony government provided little power and influence for the elected Council members from the Labour Party, however, Bradshaw continued his agitation, leading a 13-week strike in the sugar industry in 1948 and in 1950 a massive demonstration in support of Labour’s call for more representative government.
In 1945 Bradshaw represented his union at the inaugural meeting of the Caribbean Labour Congress, of which he was elected assistant secretary. In 1949 he was one of the West Indian representatives at the inaugural conference of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in London, and became the first West Indian to serve as a member of its Executive Board.
In 1952, after universal adult suffrage was granted, Bradshaw led the Labour Party to another victory and was appointed minister of trade and production in 1956, when St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla were combined into one federated colony. Bradshaw’s efforts were becoming increasingly focused on the West Indies Federation, however, and he served as second vice president of the West Indies Federal Labour Party between 1956 and 1957. When the federation was inau-gurated in 1958, he became minister of finance in the Grantley Herbert Adams federal government, a post he held until the collapse of the federation in 1962. He returned home to be reelected to a seat on the local Legislative Council.
The Labour Party won the general election of 1966. Bradshaw was sworn in as chief minister of the three-island colony after resuming the position of party leader, which had been handled by his ally Caleb Azariah Paul Southwell during his absence. On February 27, 1967, the colony was granted Associated Statehood, with Bradshaw as premier of a cabinet fully responsible for internal affairs and with Great Britain retaining responsibility for only defense and external relations.
The political union of the three-island colony was always unstable, and Bradshaw may have exacerbated this situation, since his primary support and strength came from the sugar workers of St. Kitts. The other two islands were characterized by a predominance of small independent agricultural producers, in contrast to the proletarian character of the labor force on St. Kitts.
Two months after Associated statehood had been achieved, there was an uprising in Anguilla. Britain rushed troops to this tiny island and resumed control over its government. The final resolution of the issue came only when Anguilla reverted to British colonial status and independence came to St. Kitts and Nevis.
Bradshaw’s tendency to focus almost exclusively on St. Kitts also plagued his relations with Nevis. The Labour Party had very little support there and faced continuous threats of Nevisian secession. After winning the 1975 election on the platform of immediate independence, Bradshaw encountered formidable opposition from the elected politicians of Nevis, who had won their constituencies with support for secession from the union. Independence did not come to St. Kitts-Nevis until 1983, five years after Bradshaw’s death.