Background
Vere Cornwall Bird was born on 10 December 1909 in St. John's in poverty.
Vere Cornwall Bird was born on 10 December 1909 in St. John's in poverty.
He completed primary school in the colony.
He joined the Salvation Amiy while a teenager and had the opportunity to travel to other West Indian territories. He soon left the organizaton over what he saw as its policies of racial segregation, returning to Antigua where he became a clerk.
Bird joined the Antigua Workingman’s Association, and when the Antigua Trade and Labour Union (ATLU) was formed on January 16, 1939, Bird waselected to its Executive Council. In 1943 he won the presidency of the union by an overwhelming majority.
In 1945, backed by the union, Bird was elected to the Legislative Council in a by-election. He again won a seat in general elections the next year and proceeded to attack the merchant plantocracy and their political representative who, through appointed positions, comprised a majority on the Council. Between 1944 and 1951, under Vere Bird’s leadership, workers in several key sectors gained the right to bargain and considerably improved wages and conditions of work.
A changed constitution providing the vote to all literate adults was enacted in 1950. Bird decided to establish a political committee within the ATLU to fight the 1951 elections. He called this the Antigua Labor Party (ALP), even though it remained part of the ATLU. The ALP won all eight elective seats in the 1951 elections; Bird was then appointed to the Executive Council, the island’s main policy-making body. A further change of constitution in 1956 introduced a ministerial system. Again, the ALP won all eight seats, and Bird became minister for trade and production.
On January 1, 1960, Bird was named chief minister and minister of planning. In 1961 elections for a Legislative Council that was expanded to 10 members, the ALP again won all the seats. In 1966 Bird led a delegation to London to press for Associated Statehood for Antigua. This was granted in February 1967, when he became the colony’s first premier leading a government with full internal self-rule. Britain retained responsibility only for foreign affairs and defense.
Some members of the union, led by its general secretary, George Herbert Walter, began to express dissatisfaction that most top union officials were also members of government. Demands that Vere Bird relinquish either his pre¬miership or his presidency of the union led to a split in union ranks. The dissident group, under Walter’s leadership, formed the Antigua Workers Union. Out of this emerged a party, the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM), headed by Walter. As a result Vere Bird was forced to give the ALP a separate organizational structure, even though it remained closely identified with the ATLU. Bird re¬signed as president of the union to become leader of the newly reorganized party. In the 1971 election, the ALP lost badly, with Bird losing his seat in the Legislative Council.
Between 1951 and 1970 Vere Bird had been responsible for considerable change in the lot of the Antiguan population. He instituted a Peasant Development Scheme, fought to maintain the sugar industry, and instituted a self-help housing scheme. Bird led a successful effort to diversify the Antiguan economy by attracting light industries owned by foreign investors and by developing a flourishing tourist industry. Bird also worked assiduously to form a West Indian Federation. When the federation finally collapsed in 1962, he helped organize the Caribbean Common Market among the countries in Anglophone Caribbean.
Elections in 1976 gave Bird and his ALP a victory over the PLM. Again, he focused his efforts on expanding tourism and foreign-led industrial development. After another electoral victory in 1980, Bird began negotiating with Britain for the colony’s full independence, which was granted by Britain on November 1,1981. Vere C. Bird became the first prime minister of the newly independent nation of Antigua and Barbuda.