Grantley Herbert Adams

Grantley Herbert Adams, (1898-1971), premier of Barbados, West Indies, and prime minister of the Federation of the West Indies. Adams's work in the political life of Barbados helped lead to social reform and to significant change in the government of one of the most conservative of all the British colonies.

At the age of 20, Adams won a scholarship that enabled him to attend the University of Oxford in England, where he studied classics and law. He then passed the bar finals at Gray's Inn, in London, and returned to Barbados. Adams found himself concerned with the plight of the island’s majority population, who had no representation in the government and who served largely as cheap labor for the sugar estates. Entering politics, he won a seat in the House of Assembly in 1934 and joined the small group of liberals.

The turning point in Adams's career came in 1937 when poverty and an increasing demand on the part of the masses for better conditions of work and life culminated in riots in Barbados and several other West Indian islands. Adams then identified himself with the people's movement. He was elected leader of the Barbados Progressive League in 1938 and subsequently founded the Barbados Labor Party (BLP), which gained the support of the workers’ union in Barbados. Adams first worked to extend voting rights, and then self-government. Qualifications for voting were lowered in 1944, and universal adult suffrage (the right to vote) was introduced in 1951. The cabinet system of government, composed of the prime minister and other ministers responsible to the parliament, was instituted in 1954. Social reforms, such as minimum wage legislation, workers’ compensation and benefits, wider educational opportunities, and laws against racial discrimination were also introduced. Adams became leader of the House of Assembly in 1946, then served as premier from 1954 to 1958. At the same time, Adams helped create the Caribbean Labour Congress in the eastern Caribbean and was elected its president in 1947. He worked to create the Federation of the West Indies in 1958, and he became its prime minister. When the Federation collapsed in 1962 Adams rebuilt the BLP, which had lost the 1961 election. He resigned from political life in 1970.