Two or three days following the public announcement of Sir Allan Louisy’s passing Kenny Anthony observed during a live interview with Newsspin’s Timothy Poleon that I had chronicled the political life of the recently deceased—hard to believe, a period spanning barely seven tortuous, if not torturous, years. In his own turn, Tom Walcott acknowledged what Anthony had said with reference to It’ll Be Alright in the Morning and Lapses and Infelicities, but predictably went on further to inform Tim’s lunchtime audience that I had elided from my chronicles the most important part of the deceased former Labour Party leader and prime minister’s history.
Throughout their political lives, Tom told Tim, he and Sir Allan had been especially close, and not for one moment do I doubt that. After all, Tom would never speak ill of the dead, would he? Certainly, by late 1973, shortly after a widely respected Louisy abruptly quit his relatively cushy job as an Associated States judge to swim with voracious political piranhas in the then particularly muddy, murky waters of Labour Party politics, Tom had metamorphosed from bare-back-in-William-Peter-Boulevard Odlum-led radical into a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth behind-the-scenes supporter of Allan Louisy, conceivably the day’s epitome of conservatism—precisely the kind of leader Tom, Kenneth Foster, Hunter Francois, Evans Calderon and several other important if impotent SLP stalwarts of the remarkably tumultuous period imagined was the panacea for their party’s image problems.
As close to Louisy as Tom may well have been, he was, like so many other Saint Lucians at the time, taken off guard shortly after Labour took office in 1979, when Odlum publicly declared their leader unfit to lead, whether party or country. Moreover, that prior to the SLP’s predictable election victory Louisy had promised after six months to resign in favor of Odlum as prime minister, at which point Louisy would relocate to Government House. Of course, Louisy never kept that admitted promise. Instead, he permitted the country to bleed near to death from wounds consequently inflicted by a selfishly tunnel-visioned George Odlum and Peter Josie—wounds never completely healed, reminders of which are in the burglar bars that today disfigure commerce in William Peter Boulevard, to say nothing about the fallout now evident in current youth-behavior patterns!
Oh, but all of that I’ve indisputably chronicled in my earlier-mentioned books. With good reason, I have never bought Tom’s tale that Louisy consciously permitted in our country’s best interests all of the above hinted at disasters—a tale that alas cannot now be validated. So, when Tom implies the then prime minister’s failure to act decisively spared Saint Lucia further catastrophes, I know not what the hell he might be hinting at. Besides, Sir Allen had himself chosen the moment to reveal the identity of his secret advisor during the worst of times for the country and its prime minister: none other than then leader of the opposition Sir John Compton. As for the occasion of Sir Allen’s somewhat shocking revelation, it was during an appearance on HTS’ Perspectives with Teddy Francis shortly after Sir John’s passing.
According to the former Associated States judge, who on the recalled occasion was doubtless as sober as always, when he most needed support and direction it was Sir John who provided both in daily letters. So, now, what to make of Tom’s alleged umbilical connection with Louisy? Who to believe, the now deceased Sir Allen himself or Tom the
perpetual promoter of all things SLP? (It occurs to me, improbable though it sounds, that Tom may well have contributed to Compton’s instructional letters to Louisy . . . but hey, I am obviously speculating!)
Then there were Kenny’s public remembrances of Sir Allan for the presumed benefit of Newsspin fans. The current opposition leader sounded most sincere as he recalled episodes in the life of the dearly departed. Good for him that he avoided the fact that despite George Odlum’s insistence that the law governing the age of senators be appropriately modified to accommodate a then too young Kenny Anthony’s senatorial ambitions, a most reluctant Prime Minister Louisy had dragged his feet to the extent that by the time the new law was in place Kenny Anthony had turned 30. Others would later benefit but not the man in whose name the law was changed. But better to hear from George Odlum himself about the Louisy-Kenny political relationship, if only in the beginning. He is revisiting 1979, when he argued that the Labour Party party should have Anthony run for the Vieux Fort North seat:
“Allan Louisy wouldn’t hear of it,” Odlum recalled. “The executive voted against Anthony because they felt he belonged to the so-called progressive wing of our party. The truth is that they saw him as an intellectual. Louisy and his gargoyle executive worried that Anthony would strengthen my hand in the party and the 1979 SLP wasn’t ready to deal with that possibility, however remote.”
In fairness to all parties, dead or alive, I should also say that at an unforgettable monster gathering in Vieux Fort on the eve of the 1997 elections that delivered to the relative political neophyte Kenny Anthony 16 of the 17 seats in contention, the emcee read out an endorsement of the SLP’s latest leader, allegedly written by an absent but evidently tuned-in Allan Louisy. By all the letter disclosed, Louisy had gone into hibernation after their party’s 1982 demise in honor of a pledge to his late wife. Now he wanted it known, in light of widespread suggestions to the contrary, that he had been among the persons “who strongly supported the decision to invite Kenny Anthony to take Labour into the 1997 elections, because I was certain Julian Hunte could not lead our party to victory!”
If for nothing else, Kenny Anthony owes Allan Louisy a debt of gratitude far greater than that owed his other acknowledged dead hero George F L Charles. At a later date, more on Sir Allen from the perspective of a young boy growing up in Laborie a few yards from the Louisy family’s home.
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