HARRISON COLLEGE: THE CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP

HARRISON COLLEGE: THE CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP
Lecture Delivered on the 275 th Anniversary of the
Founding of Harrison College
by
Sir Courtney N. Blackman Ph.D.
April 30 th , 2008
I entered Harrison College for the first time in
September, 1944 on the bar of my father’s bicycle. Head
Teacher of St. David’s Boys’ Elementary School at the time,
my father was a great lover of history, a gene that I
apparently inherited from him. As we passed through the
Crumpton Street gates, he said to me, “I say to you what Sir
Francis Drake said to his troops as he prepared to attack
the Spanish town of Porto Bello: ‘I have brought you to the
treasure house of the world, the rest is up to you.’ ” (Porto
Bello was the port on the Isthmus of Panama where gold
and silver was stored for transshipment to Spain.) I would
spend eight happy years as a student at Harrison College,
and would return to teach here from 1961-1963. My three
sons, Keith, Christopher and Martin, would also attend this
splendid institution.

I recall the school as being extraordinarily well-
administered and a place where discipline was effortlessly
maintained and civility was the norm, especially at the
senior levels. The adage, “Manners cost nothing but are
worth a lot,” was repeated ad nauseam by my first
Headmaster, Mr. Haskell. The masters who taught me the
Classics – Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Literature -
were mostly Englishmen or white Barbadians who had
attended Oxford or Cambridge University. They were
erudite, passionately devoted to their specific subject and to
the pursuit of learning for its own sake. Above all, they
insisted on gentlemanly deportment. The measure of their
own performance was the examination results of their
students, about whose colour they seemed to care nothing.
Harrison College was, as I look back, an oasis in the desert
of racial discrimination that characterized Barbados in that
era. It was a meritocracy par excellence, in which
accomplishment in academics or sport determined one’s
status.
2

Cricket was, and remains, my passion, though
somewhat diminished by the recent decline of West Indian
cricket. Indeed, I went to school to play cricket, and
acquired my education as a by-product. I did not doubt
that I would one day play for the West Indies. The closest I
approached that goal was when I represented Ghana
against Nigeria in Lagos – an international but hardly a Test
Match! I was caught behind the wicket two runs short of a
century.
Not surprisingly then, Joe Frank, the Head grounds
man, was the character I admired most of all. Highly
competent, totally self-assured and unfailingly polite, he
seemed to have absorbed the best of Harrison College over
his four decades working here. Within his area of
responsibility his word was final: if Joe Frank said there was
no cricket one afternoon, there was no higher authority to
which one might appeal.
He was also a rich repository of cricket folklore, and I
would sometimes skip class to listen to his tales of George
Challenor, George Headley and other great West Indian
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cricketers, as well as of visiting English cricketers like
Walter Hammond and Patsy Hendren. I have known Joe
Frank to make only one misjudgment on the subject of
cricket: for a short while he thought me a more promising
batsman than the future test player, Cammie Smith. I
never thought so for a moment!
Twenty-five years ago I had the honour to raise a toast
to Harrison College on the 250 th anniversary of its founding.
I did not imagine then that a quarter of a century later I
would be delivering one of the lectures marking the
College’s 275 th anniversary. Tonight is for me not only an
honour but also a blessing from the Almighty, who has so
mercifully made it possible for me to be here tonight.
I compliment the Old Harrisonian Society, especially its
energetic officers, for organizing this series of lectures, and
I wholeheartedly approve of the theme they chose; “Two
Hundred and Seventy-five Years of Excellence”. For
proof of that excellence you need only look around the walls
of this Hall and read off the names of the many illustrious
past Harrisonians. Let me acknowledge my debt, in
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preparing these remarks, to Ralph Jemmott’s masterly,
erudite and penetrating work, A History of Harrison
College. A study of an elite educational institution in a
colonial polity. (1)
I have chosen as my topic tonight, “Harrison College:
The Cradle of National Leadership”. I will argue that it
was the commitment to excellence and the ethos nurtured
and sustained at Harrison College for over two centuries
which under-pinned the intellectual and moral leadership of
the revolutionary political movement in the critical decades
following the riots of 1937, and which provided the core of
the national bureaucratic and technocratic cadres in the
early years of self-government and independence.
First of all, I will examine the revolutionary
developments on the island following those riots within the
framework of Professor Rostow’s classic work, The Stages
of Economic Growth. (2) Secondly, I will elaborate on
Rostow’s imperative of the emergence of a “new leadership”
and a “new elite” for escape from the traditional
dispensation. Thirdly, I will explain the conjuncture of
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historical forces that led this “elite educational institution”
to play such a pivotal role in our emergence from the
“colonial polity”. In conclusion, I draw lessons from the last
275 years for the future of secondary education in
Barbados.
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Historical, Economic and Managerial Perspectives
In The Stages of Economic Growth Professor Rostow
posits that establishment of preconditions for an economic
“take-off” requires “that a new elite – a new leadership -
must emerge and be given the scope to begin the
building of a modern industrial society… it is essential
that the members of this new elite regard
modernization as a possible task, serving some end
they judge to be ethically good or otherwise
advantageous.”(3)
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The Barbadian experience fits snugly into the
framework of Rostow’s “stages of economic growth”. A
new Black political elite seized the opportunity presented by
the riots of 1937 to launch a revolution that would, within
two generations, wrest political and economic control from
the traditional White elite and create the preconditions for
economic “take-off”. In the process Barbados would be
transformed from an impoverished colonial backwater,
ridden with race and class discrimination, into one of the
most prosperous, progressive and egalitarian societies in
the developing world.
8

The revolutionary movement was led by three
charismatic figures following each other in virtual
succession: Grantley Adams would lead the political phase
of the revolution from the late 1930s to the middle 1950s,
becoming the first Premier of self-governing Barbados.
Errol Barrow, in the 1960s, launched an economic
development programme of massive government
expenditures on education – free secondary education, the
Polytechnic Institute, the Community College, and the Cave
Hill University Campus. In my book, T he Practice of
Economic Management, I have described that
undertaking as “a strategic initiative second only to the
introduction of sugar cultivation on the island in the
late 1630s”. (4) Barrow would lead us triumphantly into
Independence in 1966. As Prime Minister from 1976 –
1985, the brilliant Tom Adams, son of Grantley, consolidated
the achievements of his predecessors and ensured the
irreversibility of the revolution.
Leadership and Elites
9

The two key words in the above quotation from Rostow
are “leadership” and “elite”. Reflection on the difference
in the performance of a West Indian cricket team under the
captaincy of a Frank Worrell or Clive Lloyd should convince
us of the importance of leadership. Think of the angst
throughout the region whenever a new West Indian Cricket
captain is to be appointed! The best definition of
leadership I have come across is that of F.G. Bailey in his
iconoclastic work on the art of leadership: “The mark of a
leader is that through his image – by virtue neither of
the rewards and penalties he disposes nor of the
legitimacy bestowed on his office by a society or an
organization – he commands the willing service of his
followers.”(5) Some element of leadership is involved in
the direction of any group of human beings. In the case of
small-scale and relatively simple operations, technical
competence trumps leadership. However, as the scale and
complexity of operations increase, the ratio of required
leadership to technical skill rises so that, in the case of
major corporations and institutions, leadership far outstrips
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technical competence as a requirement for success. In the
case of ministers of government, technical competence is
almost irrelevant; leadership is everything! Sadly, few
Caribbean ministers of government understand that the
more they participate in the day-to-day operations of
departments under their responsibility, the worse ministers
they become.
The highest and rarest manifestation of leadership is
the charismatic leader. Attractive politicians are loosely
described nowadays as possessing charisma. However,
Max Weber, the great German sociologist, defines charisma
as “a certain quality of an individual personality by
virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and
treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman,
or at least specifically exceptional powers or
qualities.”(6) Charismatic leaders are especially needed
in revolutionary times when mass support is required. This
is because, as Eugene E. Jennings puts it in his book, An
Anatomy of Leadership, “They are viewed as essential
in that they formulate theories, policies and ideals
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that give direction and character to an age, and their
presence and character help define the character of
society. The quality of their contribution is such that
history is substantially changed.”(7)
A real danger is that charismatic leaders may overstay
their usefulness, as they often do, in which case they pass
the time defending their legacy, and stand in the way of
progress. The greatest piece of good fortune to befall
Barbados must be the succession of three outstanding
charismatic leaders like Grantley Adams, Errol Barrow and
Tom Adams, neither of whom could have accomplished what
the other did. Fortunately for us, none of them dangerously
outlived his usefulness.
But even the most gifted of charismatic leaders cannot
do the job alone. They need the support of bureaucrats to
administer the public service, and technocrats to manage
specialized institutions, such as the army, the Central Bank,
development banks and corporations, hospitals, public
utilities, etc. The leadership of government departments
and corporations must be drawn from highly educated and
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specially trained personnel, whom the late Professor John
Kenneth Galbraith famously termed the
“technostructure”, (8) and from whose ranks Rostow’s
“new elite” might be drawn.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether leaders are
born or bred. If they are born, then the Almighty must find
their creation either difficult or distasteful, for he makes so
few of them! Because of the scarcity of “born leaders”,
and since the breeding of leaders is so prolonged and
uncertain a process, the world’s greatest nations have
established elite educational institutions to prepare youth
for leadership positions in critical societal functions. They
do not trust them to be developed by some random process,
and certainly not through the “free market”.
To ensure an adequate quantity of leaders of the
highest quality in the key fields of Law, Politics, the Civil
service, Medicine and Business, the British have elite high
schools like Harrow and Eton, whose graduates go on to
elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge. The Americans
have elite preparatory high schools, like Exeter and the
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Bronx High School of Science, whose graduates go on to
elite universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and
Princeton, while France has its Siences Po and Sorbonne.
All three countries have elite military schools where future
generals are nurtured: Sandhurst in England, West Point in
the USA and the Military Academy of St. Cyr in France.
Such elite institutions seek not only to impart academic and
technical skills but also to nurture an ethos consistent with
national values and interests.
Most Barbadians would agree that Harrison
College is a fine school but many are uncomfortable with its
elite status, which they see as inconsistent with the
principle of egalitarianism. The term “elite” is very hard to
nail down. Sometimes it is used in a complimentary
fashion, as when we say that George Challenor, Gary Sobers
and the “Three Ws” constituted the elite of Barbadian
batsmen. Indeed, we wish that there were many more
cricketers whom we could include in that elite class. Or it
may be used in a pejorative sense to connote exclusivity, as
when we speak of the White elite of pre-revolutionary
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Barbados, since the elite status of Whites derived from the
systematic exclusion of Blacks. In this presentation, I use
the term elite in a generic sense, and regard any institution
as elite in which excellence and integrity are relentlessly
pursued.
As far as exclusiveness is concerned, the
Harrison College authorities progressively opened up the
institution to poor white boys during its first century of
existence and increasingly to gifted poor black male
students following Emancipation, until its doors were
opened in 1961 to all eleven year old males on the basis of
academic merit and without payment of fees. Thirty odd
years ago the school became coeducational, so that the
charge of exclusivity, except on the basis of academic merit,
has certainly lost any validity it previously had.
As founding governor of the Central Bank of
Barbados I certainly set out to build an elite institution –
why would I set out to build a mediocre one? I was
therefore comforted to hear former Prime Minister Arthur
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describe the Central Bank on two different occasions as the
Barbadian institution of the 20 th Century.
The Historic Role of Harrison College
The 1937 riots was not the first attempt by Barbadian
Blacks to overthrow the plantocracy in Barbados. Inspired
by the success of their Haitian counterparts in achieving
their independence in 1801, a band of slaves under the
leadership of Washington Franklin, a freedman, Bussa and
others, plotted to massacre the “bad masters” and gain
their freedom. As might be expected of uneducated and
unsophisticated men, the revolt was naively planned, poorly
executed and swiftly suppressed. Dr Karl Watson, one of
my Sixth Form History students at Harrison College,
estimates that 186 of the insurgents died in fighting and
214 were executed. However, in his judgment ”the 1816
slave revolt provided the impetus for reform” and
hastened the end of slavery. (9) The slaves who died are
rightly hailed as heroes. For some reason Bussa, and not
Washington Franklin, has been declared a “National Hero”.
16

In the aftermath of the riots of 1937, sparked by
another “National Hero”, Clement Payne, Grantley Adams
was quick to grasp that violence against the established
order would be counter-productive. He understood that the
struggle for racial justice and democracy would have to be
waged with intellect and sophistication in the constitutional
and political arenas, with support from the Colonial office in
London and from the few educated middle class blacks at
home.
Of the four institutions in that era offering
higher education, i.e. Sixth Form level or beyond, three
were ruled out: Lodge School was still an enclave of the
Plantocracy; Codrington College was primarily a theological
seminary, and gender discrimination excluded Queens
College. Harrison College was the only game in town! It is
not therefore surprising that the key political leaders in the
early years, and so many of the top bureaucrats and
technocrats in the years to come, would be drawn from this
elite institution.
17

The two vanguard organizations in the revolutionary
struggle were the Barbados Labour Party and the Barbados
Workers Union, with Grantley Adams and Hugh Springer as
President and General Secretary, respectively, of each. In
her fine upcoming biography of Hugh Springer, Always a
Gentleman, Mrs Keane Springer has stressed how
complementary were the skills of those two great men.
Adams, who cared little for routine organizational matters,
concentrated on strategic political issues while the highly
organized Springer took care of administrative affairs. Both
were equally committed to the advancement of the working
classes, with Springer focusing especially on the expansion
of educational opportunities for the masses. Both Adams
and Springer were alumni of Harrison College, winning
Barbados Scholarships in 1918 and 1931, respectively, and
proceeding to Oxford University. Both would in time be
knighted and declared “National Heroes” for their historic
contributions.
18

The Barbados Workers’ Union must be the only trade
union to be founded by two graduates of Harrison College
and Oxford University – both elite institutions. This could
explain why corruption and skullduggery have never been
associated with its operations – unlike the case of most
trade unions in both the developed and developing world.
19

Errol Barrow, a cousin of Sir Hugh Springer, and also
an old Harrisonian and future “National Hero”, parted
company with Grantley in the 1950s and founded the
Democratic Labour Party, which was returned to office in
January this year. He, in turn, was defeated by Grantley’s
son, Tom, who, like his father, was an Old Harrisonian, a
Barbados Scholar and an Oxford graduate. It is significant
that all three of them, as well as Hugh Springer, were
lawyers, since Law was the only profession at the time that
rendered them financially independent of the Plantocracy.
Until the accession to power of Prime Minister David
Thompson in January this year, all Prime Ministers of
Barbados have been Old Harrisonians. Moreover, except for
Dame Nita Barrow, all our Governor Generals were
graduates of Harrison College.
20

Old Harrisonians were for many years
disproportionately represented in the top levels of the Civil
Service and served with distinction: Sir Carlisle Burton, Sir
Neville Osbourne, Sir Steven Emtage, Sir Frank Blackman,
and three outstanding Ambassadors – C. (Boogles) Williams
and Val McComie and Oliver Jackman. Sir William Douglas
and Sir Denys Williams were the first two Chief Justices of
independent Barbados, and Brigadier Rudyard Lewis was
Chief of Staff of the Defence Force. Several went into
Health Care: Sir Kenneth Stuart, Sir Richard Haynes, Profs.
Michael Walrond and Trevor Hassell, James Williams,
Director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in its halcyon
years, and Dr. Harold Forde – the outstanding Harrisonian
all-rounder – Captain of Cricket and Football, Victor
Ludorum, Chief Cadet and Barbados Scholar.
21

Several Harrison College alumni would also serve
within CARICOM, the Commonwealth and beyond: Sir
George Alleyne as Secretary General of the Pan American
Health Organization, the first non-white, non-hispanic to do
so, and later as Chancellor of UWI; Sir Roy Marshall as Vice
Chancellor of UWI and later of Hull University, UK; Sir
Neville Nicholls as President of the Caribbean Development
Bank, Dr. Kurleigh King as Secretary General of CARICOM,
Jean Holder as Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism
Authority, and Winston Cox as Assistant Secretary General
of the Commonwealth. Three of the first five governors of
the Central Bank of Barbados were also old Harrisonians.
The Barbadian revolution has been remarkable, above
all, for its humanity. On the single occasion that I met the
late Walter Rodney, the famous Guyanese martyr, he said to
me, “One thing I must say about Barbados is that it is a
humane society.” First of all, the leaders of successive
administrations – of both our two great political parties –
have eschewed recrimination against the White minority –
or any minority, for that matter. Their developmental
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policies have been designed to ensure that the lion’s share
of our national economic gains accrues to the neediest
among us, and have been marked by compassion for the
disadvantaged. They have meticulously upheld the rule of
law, and have evinced a deep respect for civil rights, placing
our small nation among the most civilized in the World. And
their massive investment in education has created
numerous opportunities for the economic advancement of
all Barbadians, making us one of the most egalitarian
societies on earth. I would like to think that a sense of
“noblesse oblige” inculcated at Harrison College had
some something to do with this fortunate outcome. I have
no doubt that this order will endure.
Conclusion
Dr. Trevor Farrell, of the UWI St. Augustine
faculty and a leading West Indian thinker in the field of
Economics and Management, was recently bemoaning with
me the parlous state of affairs in the region. “We are
lacking in elites,” he said to me. I would say that we are
lacking in elite institutions. How can we, in the Age of
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Globalization, compete with nations that diligently cultivate
and preserve their elite institutions while we seek to
downgrade one that has taken centuries to build. Rather,
we should be seeking to build as many elite secondary
schools as we can.
The other secondary schools should not seek to
become clones of Harrison College, which has already
begun to change in response to the changing times - most
fundamentally by becoming coeducational. Rather they
should seek out new areas in which to become elite. Some
might excel in music, others in the arts and crafts, others in
foreign languages, e.g. Mandarin Chinese, etc, and so
enrich our culture and increase our capacity to compete
abroad.
What does it take to create elite secondary schools?
The first requirement is a leadership comprised of
Principals of demonstrated leadership capacity, committed
to excellence and civility and indifferent to party political
considerations in the execution of their duties. The second
requirement is that managerial responsibility of secondary
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schools be vested in the Principal, and not in the Ministry of
Education. Principals should be responsible to their School
Boards for the day-to-day operations of the school within, of
course, the framework of government policy. Board
members, in turn, should be appointed on the basis of
experience and training for a fixed term, and should not be
subject to removal with a change of Government. Third,
the Ministry of Education should involve the teaching
profession from the very beginning in the planning and
implementation of new policies and programmes. Fourth,
the parents of school children must come to regard teachers
as allies, not enemies, in the task of rearing the next
generation. Finally, parents and old scholars must be
prepared to assist secondary schools through both financial
and non-financial contributions, since it highly doubtful that
Government will be able to fund the full requirements of a
universally elite secondary school system.
I expect that Harrison College will be just one of
numerous elite secondary schools, so that Barbadian Youth
of tomorrow will have many more “treasure houses” to
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plunder than the single one available to me - if I may parody
the metaphor my father used to motivate me on my arrival
at this magnificent institution over sixty years ago.
NOTES
1. Jemmott, Ralph A., A History of Harrison College: A
Study of an
26

Elite Educational Institution in a Colonial Polity,
published
by Ralph Jemmott, #2 Glebe Gardens, St. George,
Barbados.
W.I.
2. Rostow, Walt W., The Stages of Economic Growth: A
Non-
Communist Manifesto (Third Edition), Cambridge
University
Press, UK, 1990.
3. Ibid, p. 26
4. Blackman, Courtney N., The Practice of Economic
Management:
A Caribbean Perspective, Kingston, Jamaica, Ian
Randle
Publishers, 2006, pp. 375-6.
5. Bailey, F.G., Humbuggery and Manipulation: the Art of
Leadership,
Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press,
1988, p.8.
6. Ibid, p. 91
7. Jennings, Eugene E., An Anatomy of Leadership:
Princes, Heroes and
Supermen, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1972, p.8.
8. Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State,
Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1967.
9. Watson, Karl, The Civilized Island Barbados: A Social
History, 1750-
1816, St. George, Barbados, Caribbean Graphic
Production
27

Limited, p.133.
28

a
29