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SELECT DOCUMENTS
UWI in Barbados, 1963-1968
Compiled, edited and with a foreword by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles

H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone
Chancellor of the University of the West Indies

CONTENTS
2 FOREWORD
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles
Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Principal, Cave Hill Campus
5 VICE CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS
Harbour Site, Bridgetown
12th October, 1963
Dr. Philip M. Sherlock
Vice-Chancellor of the University
15 INAUGURAL ADDRESS
12th October, 1963
Honourable J. Cameron Tudor
Minister of Education, Barbados
30 CAVE HILL CAMPUS Selected Images
35 CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS
Harbour Site, Bridgetown
13th March, 1964
H.R.H. Princess Alice
Countess of Athlone
39 MINISTER’S ADDRESS
Laying of Foundation Stone, Cave Hill Campus
26th January, 1966
Honourable J. Cameron Tudor
Minister of Education, Barbados
47 GRADUATION ADDRESS
Cave Hill Campus
6th February, 1968
Rt. Hon. Errol Walton Barrow
Prime Minister of Barbados

FOREWORD
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles,
Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Principal, Cave Hill Campus
Moving beyond its network of extra-mural centres, the
University of the West Indies extended its reach into the community
of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean with the establishment of
a College of Arts and Science. Opened on Saturday, October 12,
1963, at the Deep Water Harbour, Bridgetown, the latest enterprise
of the UWI took on board a mere 118 students. The project was
placed in the care, for the first year, of Acting Principal Mr. Leslie
R.B. Robinson, MA, the talented young Jamaican mathematician
who had established a reputation for sound management at the
Mona campus.
Some of the finest minds in the region were mobilized to
give shape and form to this eruption in capacity building. Vice-
Chancellor Sir Arthur Lewis had bequeathed to his successor Sir
Philip Sherlock, a strategic plan for university expansion in the
Eastern Caribbean. Lewis was committed to Barbados as a prime
and proper location following the development of the St. Augustine
Campus in Trinidad in 1962. Premier Errol Barrow of Barbados, an
admirer of both Lewis and Sherlock, was keen to fashion with the
help of UWI a critical component of the education revolution he
prepared to unleash, and took personal responsibility for advancing
the Lewis initiative.
Barrow placed in charge his loyal and dependable Deputy
Premier and Minister of Education, the intellectually astute
Cameron Tudor. The project team, now led by Vice-Chancellor
Sherlock, could only but succeed. Brilliant, passionate, and focused,
these architects of Caribbean educational transformation went about
their task like missionaries impatient of the future imagined. The

egional university was at its best with this test of its commitment to
community development. It did not disappoint.
The Chancellor of the University, Her Royal Highness, Princess
Alice, Countess of Athlone, made an inspection visit to the college
in its temporary buildings at the Harbour on Friday March 13, 1964,
following a meeting at Mona of the University Council. Her blessed
journey to the dusty site of an academy in the making was more than
an act of validation. It constituted a seminal moment in the history
of the regional university, and in particular a transformational
development in higher education in Barbados, and the Windward
and Leeward Islands.
The persistent oversight and presence of Dr. Eric Williams, Pro-
Chancellor of the University, provided intellectual validation of the
project. His conceptualization of the course of the college spoke to
the energy within UWI as the development engine of the region.
The laying of the corner stone for the college at its permanent
residence at Cave Hill took place on January 26, 1966. In 1970
when the regional Faculty of Law was placed on these premises
the college evolved into its present form – The Cave Hill Campus
of the University of the West Indies. Its journey represented a
spectacular process in regional institution building and national
resource mobilization. Starting with an Extra-Mural Studies Unit,
and moving on to a Liberal Arts College, the UWI finally birthed a
fine progeny, a fully fledged campus in Barbados.
It is fitting, therefore, fifty years later, that the university present
for purposes of reflection a selection of key addresses delivered at
the college in its first five years. They capture so precisely the spirit
of enterprise and sacrifice that informed the effort to drive our
societies away from their colonial scaffold through an investment
in higher education. Critically, they capture the concept of publicly
funded university education as a reparatory ‘politic’, a discourse
that problematized legacies of imperial exploitation and imagined
in their place states of intellectual freedom and citizenship.

The founding architects of education did not retreat from the
magnificent moment so pregnant with movements of liberation.
They harnessed the energy of the tide, and crafted a campus which
they invested with a remit to be the soul and salvation of the people
of the Eastern Caribbean.
Vice-Chancellor Sherlock spoke in the soulful tone of unrestricted
truth, while Chancellor Princess Alice laid bare the expectation that
Caribbean people would seize their destiny and push forward an
“enlightened development’. Minister Tudor, unmatched in oratorical
skill, set forth the case for a university campus distinguished for its
intellectual maturity, research relevance, and moral commitment to
community. These articulations have stood the test of time; they
belong to discourses still pressing upon the present. Taken from
our archives, these documents return to us like commandments
for academic crafting in a turbulent, disturbing, distorting present.
They are as relevant today as they were then.
The truth of this relevance is found in its clearest form in the
graduation address delivered by Prime Minister Errol Barrow at the
College of Arts and Science at Cave Hill on February 6, 1968. It
was the first occasion on which the Prime Minister addressed a full
gathering of university stakeholders at Cave Hill. His message was
clear: the University, he urged, must stand with the people, and for
the people. It should use its resources with the greatest prudence, and
be an example of commitment and concern in difficult and generous
times. In this way, he said, the host community would develop a
“settled conviction” that the “efficient growth” of the campus was
critical to its well being. In fact, he said, the community would come
to realize that the campus was their “PATH TO PROSPERITY”.
These historic documents, then, belong to the present and to
the future. They ought to be read and digested by all invested with
care for the regional university, and by all within the academy whose
responsibility it is to protect and nurture this grand enterprise of
the Indies.

UNIVERSITY
OF THE WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL, BARBADOS, W.I.
ON OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE
College Of Arts & Science
The Vice-Chancellor’s Address
Dr. Philip M. Sherlock
Vice-Chancellor of the University
Twelfth of October One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-three
(1963)

THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS
Speech by Dr. Philip M. Sherlock, Vice-Chancellor of the
University, on the occasion of the opening of the College of
Arts and Science, Barbados, on 12th October, 1963;
Your Excellency, Hon. Premier, Hon. Chief Minister, My Lord Bishop,
Hon. Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen.
On Thursday evening I left a meeting of the Senate at Mona
to come to Barbados for this ceremony. And just before taking
off as it were from one stratosphere to another, I was asked
by the Senate to convey their greetings and best wishes to this
gathering, to you, Mr. Premier; to you Mr. Principal; and to the
new College. This is a part and a most valued-part of a great
enterprise.
I would like to begin by saying that I join with the principal,
Mr. Robinson, in recording our sincere thanks to all those who
have made this gathering possible and who, in fact, have made it
possible for us to begin this programme. It was only in February
that the University Council decided that teaching should begin
in Barbados this year, and so we were working against time. But
you, Mr. Premier, and your Government have been most generous
in your support, and we thank you. We thank also all those who
have contributed in every way to the start of this programme.
We owe so much to so many. And I think not only of the present
and not only of those here, but of the foundations which are
of such assistance to us, great philanthropic foundations like
the Nuffield, the Ford, which have been abundantly generous,
the Carnegie Foundation (one of our earliest friends) and
the Rockefeller Foundation. And it is a particular pleasure to
me tonight to express our thanks also, not only to these great
foundations, but to the foundation which, in a peculiar way, is a
part of us — the American Foundation of the University of the

West Indies, the Chairman of which is Mr. Ronald Tree who is
happily with us this evening.
I think also of the past, of the services rendered to us by
two Council members in particular who came from this region.
I refer to Sir Grantley Adams, and also to Sir Garnet Gordon.
And I think that at this time they must, both of them, rejoice
at the developments which have taken place. As the Principal
pointed out tonight, and as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor emphasized
at the great gathering which was recently held in Trinidad at
St. Augustine, the University of the West Indies has embarked
on a programme of expansion, bringing the courses for the
new General Degree into the Eastern Caribbean — into this
community, into the community in Trinidad, and, we hope, in
increasing measure, into the other island communities. At the
conference which was recently held in Antigua, for instance,
plans were made for strengthening the extension work of the
University, increasing the number of Resident Tutors available
in the eight territories, and beginning a new programme of
teaching in Public Administration, in the hope that this will be
of special assistance to these governments.
There is, also, the work which is in the capable hands of Dr.
O’Loughlin, the beginning of a programme of economic studies,
and an expert service in the field of economic development
which already has won the appreciation of the governments of
this part of the Caribbean.
And the University itself has, indeed, made radical changes
in its policies. In 1948, how well I remember it, thirty-two
students in their scarlet gowns for the first time entered upon the
study of medicine. That was in October 1948. And now, this
October, there are two thousand students in the University of
the West Indies, just over a hundred here enrolled in Barbados,
some five hundred at St. Augustine, and another fourteen or
fifteen hundred at Mona. And the growth has not been only in

numbers, but in something that is, to the minds of the Council
of the Senate, supremely important, in the actual content and
organization of the University; for, once a strong centre had
been established — a centre which, through the assistance of
universities overseas and particularly the University of London,
had won respect in all academic quarters everywhere — once
this strong centre had been established under the leadership of
my predecessor, Sir Arthur Lewis, and our Pro-Chancellor Dr.
Eric Williams, changes were made which brought the facilities
of the University here to Barbados and to Trinidad and, in
increasing measure, to the island communities. It is not only
a change in organization, something that goes deeper, I think,
a change in the content of the General Degree. And it was
this that our Pro-Chancellor was particularly concerned with,
and about which he spoke, when he came to Barbados earlier
this year. The fact that we now require, and I think rightly and
wisely, that we now require that all undergraduates entering for
the General Degrees should take courses in Caribbean studies.
This is more than training. Education is a much bigger thing
than training. And education begins on one’s doorstep. And for
too long education at university level in the West Indies has been
centred elsewhere and has, indeed, proved sometimes to be a
divisive force in the community. I think every teacher will know
what I mean, that sometimes the man who gets the opportunity
for university education does well in the academic sense, but
in strange and subtle ways grows away from his community
and ceases really to belong to it as a citizen of the Caribbean.
And at this time, particularly, in the history of this region it is
supremely important that the young student, the young West
Indian student should not only study his biology in the tropical
environment which is his, should not only study his medicine in
the environment which enables him to see the effects and causes
of diseases in this region, but should also take his general studies
learning something of the history and the nature of this West

Indian society and also of the Caribbean region of which we
form a part.
Today, in some places, local insularities and local nationalisms
are quite understandably on the increase, and the University,
therefore, becomes one of the most important unifying forces
in a region that, throughout its history has been bedeviled
by divisions and fragmentation and by the frustrations that
flow from them. And this community of three million people,
scattered in this fantastic way over great distances, has common
traditions and a common history. We all began in the same way,
whether we be of European or African or East Indian stock,
we began in the same way, as uprooted people brought across
the ocean and making a home for themselves. But for so long
our education never enabled us to see that this was our home,
and the true purpose of our insistence on Caribbean studies
is to make certain that our university education itself shall be
something indigenous, something that at the same time belongs
in a particular way to this community and yet is never parochial,
but is conscious of the universality of scholarship and knowledge.
This is our purpose. This is our task. So that the West Indian may
be at home in the West Indies.
This really is the purpose for which we exist. And at this
particular time in our history it is going to be difficult for all of
us. Jamaica is now an independent nation facing many serious,
difficult problems. Some of them economic, some of them social,
and discovering with every day that political independence is
not an escape from difficulty, is not an escape from reality, is no
miracle that suddenly transforms the world; that independence
confronts the Jamaican today with the gravest and most serious
problem in his country’s history. That people of Trinidad and
Tobago are finding that this is true. For this is the meaning of
independence — LEARNING TO STAND ON ONE’S FEET,
LEARNING TO DRAW ON LEADERSHIP FROM WITHIN

ONE’S COMMUN1TY, learning to use resources, however
limited, for the development of all, seeking help, seeking
fellowship elsewhere but carrying always this terrible and urgent
responsibility of tomorrow. And you in the Eastern Caribbean
are on the threshold of independence and face the same tasks.
And tonight, if you will allow me to do so, because this is
something that concerns me most deeply, and this is why I put
such faith in the University of the West Indies: at this particular
time, it is well for us to understand that we have in fact no escape
from the responsibilities of nationhood and independence, and
that the remedies and our own security lie in the training and
the discipline and the devotion of the West Indian people…..
not in grants-in-aid from elsewhere, not in foreign aid however
generous, but WITHIN the West Indian community. So that this
University, in a special way, has a task additional to the traditional
tasks of research and teaching, the inescapable and the urgent
task of helping, or performing its own special duty, not only of
training young men and women through the discipline of the
mind, and discipline is today unfortunately an unpopular word,
but believe me our future depends on the extent to which we
are prepared to impose a discipline upon ourselves; and these
students who tonight enter upon this course, for the first time,
become a part of a growing student community which will find
in study, and in the training of the mind, some of the instruments
that the West Indies needs, that the West Indies must have, if it
is to survive.
Barbados, in fact, has one of the most remarkable arguments
for education. I am convinced that it is because of your long
tradition of education, because of the value that you put upon
it, because of the money that you are prepared to spend upon it,
because you have the most comprehensive system of education
in the West Indies and hardly any illiteracy — because of these
things you can support a population of thirteen hundred to the
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square mile and maintain a standard of living which many a
larger and more powerful nation would wish to have.
What we are concerned with is no charity. It is no form of
welfare. It is something — an integral and essential part of our
society and the only guarantee of its security and stability.
I looked at the map, the map of the Caribbean, the other
day. I got no comfort from it when I looked at the independent
islands. Cuba which won its independence with great heroism
and through the struggle and devotion of that great man Marti,
throwing off one dictatorship to pass under another. Haiti, the
first country in the New World in which the coloured man, the
African, won his liberty by his own effort, with its splendid history
and its memorable Toussaint, today groaning under the shabby
dictatorship of Duvalier. The Dominican Republic which seemed
only a few months ago to have moved from a dictatorship and
ruthless tyranny to stability, still uncertain, still trying to find its
way. This region, this great arc that stretches from Venezuela to
Florida, like so many parts of the world today, is passing through
a period of profound change. Believe me, the values that belong
to us, the freedoms that we cherish could be in danger. Why
should we be spared the travail of other lands? These things
will be preserved only insofar as you and I now set ourselves and
dedicate ourselves to the task of ensuring West Indian stability
and the way of life which is ours, the way of life which we wish
for our children. So, in the University we are not only grappling
with the fundamental tasks of research but are, like you and
your government, Mr. Premier, engaged upon the most urgent
task that has ever faced the West Indian people in its history;
and it is indeed a task that faces, not only us, but Mankind. For
what is happening? We have passed into a new age. The Space
Age is not to come, it is here. And we have at one and the same
time, in this middle of the Twentieth Century, Mankind with its
incredible mastery over technical knowledge and science, and
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at the same time the uncertainty in its heart about the equality
of men and women…the two crucial, central problems of the
Twentieth Century here in Barbados, and in our beloved islands,
and on the mainland, and throughout the world, the problem of
human relationships, the problem of the heart and man’s mastery
over technical knowledge. And in closing let me try to put what
I am trying to say into a parable. Because this is the choice that
confronts us and it is, to my mind, the inescapable role of the
University of the West Indies to contribute to the West Indies, not
only men and women who are trained according to the highest
standards, but men and women who dedicate themselves to the
building of West Indian society. This is the challenge which the
University offers to you who enter its gates this evening, a solemn
and a difficult and a hard challenge, but the kind of challenge
that makes men and women, and makes societies….Let me tell
you, let me try to illustrate what I mean:
Some two years ago the United States put its first man into
space. It was one autumn, and we read the story of how the
scientists had imprisoned a man in a tiny capsule and shot him
out into space and kept him there. And I marvel at the courage
of that man. I wouldn’t have remained alive if anybody had tried
to do that to me. I would have dissolved into a jelly with fright.
A tremendous act of courage and faith…..he was there alone
circling the world at this incredible speed. Alone, alone in space.
One of the first men in space. Alone? No not alone. Because
he was upheld by the labours and the scientific endeavours of
hundreds and thousands of men, men and women and the long
experience and the search of countless scientists. They put
him there. They kept him there. They brought him back. They
spoke to him and he spoke to them. Alone and yet supported by
this great army, a demonstration of man’s growing mastery over
material things, man’s growing mastery over material things.
At that very same time that autumn, a young man, he had been
12

in the American army, sought admission to the University of
Mississippi, James Meredith, a coloured man. He was alone. He
could read on the faces of those who barred his way contempt,
in their eyes disgust, on their lips curses. He had taken this upon
himself. In that moment he became, not only the American Negro
seeking the rights of citizenship that were his, he symbolized
the aspirations and the desires of every minority group in the
world, Jew or Gentile, Black or White. This is the splendour of
what he did. It was the individual incarnating in himself in that
moment man’s insistence upon equality, freedom and the right
to knowledge. Did I say alone? Not alone. For it was the glory of
the United States that the Federal Government, itself, founded
on the principles of equality, stood by him and said to the State:
“These things shall not be.” Alone in one sense, yes! And yet in
another, upheld not only by the power of the Federal Government,
but by the thoughts and prayers of men and women who seek
brotherhood throughout the world. Here is the demonstration,
the dilemma of the Twentieth Century which exists here in the
West Indies, the urgent task of increasing our knowledge and
mastery over material things, and at the same time of carrying
further that destruction of prejudice which once marked our
society. And, if this West Indies has anything to contribute to the
world of today, surely it is in the field of human fellowship and
equality at this particular time.
And this doesn’t mean the removal of one barrier in order
to set up another. Turn to that most moving book by James
Baldwin — The Fire Next Time — in which he pleads with such
power and force and eloquence for an understanding that the
problem of the American coloured people is a problem not of
the Negro, but of humanity, and that it would be a betrayal of
that to remove, shall we say, one prejudice of white against black
for another prejudice of black against white. We are engaged
with something much larger, something that is a challenge to
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the manhood and courage of all West Indians: to make safe
the values in which we believe, to protect the liberties won with
blood in the past. And this can be done. Other people have
done it, but they have first recognized the task and the demand
upon them. And this is the task which the University after much
questioning within itself, has set itself to perform, the pursuit of
knowledge, carrying out faithfully the works of scholarship, but
all of it within the social setting of the needs, the urgent needs of
the West Indies. And I am confident that the students will help
us to build this new society.
“Methinks I see in my mind a mighty and puissant nation
rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her
invincible locks. Methinks I see her mewling her mighty youth
like the eagle and gazing with undazzled eyes at the full noonday
beam.”
This is the prophetic quality of the vision, the confidence in
humanity, the confidence in his fellow men which moved Milton,
which moved Lincoln even in times of the darkest doubt, which
carried Washington and his scarecrow army through the travail
of Valley Forge and winter. These are our heritage, the heritage
of all free men. And so it is a great honour and pleasure and
privilege to welcome you, and to try to explain the task of the
University in these critical days, to ask for your prayers, to ask for
your confidence and, let us, above all, go forward in confidence
and in strength to the task which awaits us.
It is my honour to ask the Premier of Barbados to declare
the College open, and after that the Hon. J. C. Tudor, Minister
of Education, Member of the Council of the University of the
West Indies, will address us.
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UNIVERSITY
OF THE WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL, BARBADOS, W.I.
ON OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE
College of Arts & Science
Inaugural Address
Honourable J. Cameron Tudor
Minister of Education
Twelfth of October One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-three
(1963)
15

THE MINISTER’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Inaugural dissertation by the Honourable J. Cameron
Tudor, Minister of Education, on the occasion of the
Opening of the College of Arts and Science, Barbados, on
12th October, 1963.
A LIBERAL EDUCATION IN A
TECHNOCRATIC AGE
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Principal, Your
Excellency, Mr. Premier, Members of Council and Senate, Undergraduates,
Mr. President, Mr. Dean, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am deeply honoured to have been asked by the University to
deliver the Inaugural dissertation on this outstanding occasion.
Yet, I fear that I cannot do full justice — or, indeed, justice at
all — to the importance which this occasion truly merits. I had
keenly looked forward, as I am sure we all did, to the pleasure and
privilege of hearing our very distinguished Pro-Chancellor this
evening. Many months ago, I had extended a warm invitation to
him to be present on this occasion, and to address the company.
He readily accepted, and had himself expected to be here.
The irruption of nature which has left much personal and
material tragedy in Tobago as elsewhere — has alone inhibited
his freedom of choice, since the discharge of his public duty to
the people of Trinidad and Tobago must, naturally, be his first
concern. And I am sure that this company well understands the
reason for his unavoidable absence, and would wish to regret,
not merely his absence, but the unfortunate occurrence which
had produced it. And I am also sure that we all wish the people
of Tobago a speedy recovery from this crippling blow.
Had he been here, he would have delighted and enriched
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us all by his massive scholarship, his incisive eloquence, and his
clear shining discernment. He would have communicated to us
not a little of that vision of West Indian greatness which he sees
so steadily and so well, and for which he labours so untiringly. I
would not hope to lose the gap created by his absence.
Yet I well understand that this sort of occasion calls for some
exercise in original thinking and, indeed, some appropriate
expenditure of erudition, extravagant or even lavish, as the case
may be. Only a week ago, a very distinguished audience in British
Guiana had the rare privilege, on an occasion similar in form,
though perhaps not in content, to this one, of hearing Professor
Lancelot Hogben, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of
Guyana on the important theme of “A University in a changing
society”.
Dr. Hogben brought to bear that enormous scholarship, for
which he is rightly famous, on his theme and expounded to his
hearers a four-dimensional Marxist view of Higher Education
in a multi-racial society, Starting at the Great Athenian schools
associated with Plato and Aristotle, he skirted past the Christian
Fathers, browsed happily at the Islamic cultures, dug Ptolemy in the
ribs, picked a fierce quarrel with St. Thomas Aquinas, overturned
the Middle Ages, patronized the Protestant Reformation, paid his
respects to Marx and returned to Georgetown via the University
of Cambridge. I enjoyed it immensely and would certainly have
enjoyed it more, had I been able to understand it. I fear that I
can promise this company no such treat. Not being a genius, I
must content myself with being intelligible.
I propose to speak to the undergraduates tonight on the theme
“A Liberal Education for a Technocratic Age”. I have chosen
this subject because it seems to me that the provision of higher
education for a community emerging from colonialism is at once
a logical necessity and a calculated risk. That it is a necessity is
obvious, since an emergent society must soon acquire a national
17

identity. This, I must warn you, has nothing to do with patriotism.
The Athenians of Pericles’ day yielded to none in their love of
country. But there was nothing sordid or chauvinistic about this
love of country. They loved Athens for what she was, and not
because she was Athens, a mere geographical expression. Their
national identity expressed itself in their intellectual curiosity,
their fair-mindedness, their taste for experiment and, above
all, their freedom of thought. Let us hear how Pericles himself
described this national identity.
“And not only in Politics” he says, “are we open minded.”
“Without a trace of jealously we tolerate eccentricities of every
kind in each other’s daily lives. We have no objection to our
neighbor following the bent of his humour, nor do we scowl at
him however harmless that maybe…and this is why I declare
that Athens is the School mistress of Greece”.
So it would seem, to me at any rate, that a national identity
is that set of values appropriated by a people as a means of its
own self-expression, and further it seems that this self-expression
is best nourished and buttressed by the increasing provision of
Higher Education. I do not argue that a people cannot possess
a national identity without the facilities of Higher Education.
Contemporary History is for too replete with examples to the
contrary. I do insist, however, that Education, and Education of
a certain range and quality, can alone nourish and sustain those
values which make for a worthwhile national identity.
I said that the provision of Higher Education was also a
calculated risk. This is not so obvious. Education – at any level
– is so valuable a thing that the provision of it – in a quantity
– receives universal acclaim. What is seldom noticed, however, is
that those who are most enthusiastic about providing it, damage
its scope, sometimes irreparably, because they choose to ignore
what I consider is the most fundamental and abiding truth about
Education. This truth is really in two parts. The first part is that
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you will study a subject with more awareness of its value if you
know a little of its subject matter than if you don’t. This much
should be obvious.
But the second part of the truth is much more serious, and
it is the ignoring of this part which involves the risk of which
I speak. The principle to be enunciated is, quite simply, this:
That is not advantageous to study theory without the practical
experience of the fact to which it relates. Now you will have no
trouble applying this principle to the training of doctors, lawyers,
or of engineers or of theologians. With them theory and practice
commingle. But you will experience some difficulty in applying
it to the training of musicians and mathematicians. And for this
reason. There are some intellectual disciplines which cannot be
mastered without direct experience, and there are others which
require only inner apprehension.
Now none of these disciplines or branches of study is more
important than the other. But some of them may be studies with a
total unawareness of practical issues. And, therefore, when I said
that in an emergent society the provision of Higher Education is
sometimes a calculated risk, I merely meant that a thing, good in
itself, can become useless if there is a divorce between learning
and living.
This is now the point at which I can usefully define the terms
I used in the subject matter of my address. First, as to a Liberal
Education. The term “liberal” had, in this sense, a sociological
distinction called from the political arrangements of Ancient
Greek Society. I shall, in the course of the discussion, give it a
much wider content but, for the moment, it will suffice to accept
the concept with Aristotle imparted.
Ancient Greek Society was somewhat like the Southern
United States of the period before the Civil War. Slavery was an
established socioeconomic pattern and, as in Alabama or Georgia
of the 1850’s so in Athens of the 5th Century B.C. The economy
19

of Athens was parasitic in that it was nearly entirely dependent
upon tribute from other states, tribute levied in the interest of
Athenian supremacy. Internally, the Athenians depended on a
vast army of slaves to till the soil, run their households and,
generally, to spare them the necessity of having to work.
Relieved of this necessity, Athenians were therefore able, that
is, “free”, to enjoy to the full all those cultural and intellectual
pursuits associated with their fame. They wrote, produced and
enjoyed excellent dramas, they had exquisite sculpture and
architecture, and they had all the time in the world for political
discussion and artistic appreciation. By contrast, since as Aristotle
contended, a slave was not a person, it followed that no such
consideration could be given to the education of slaves. And
just as the great plantation houses of the South were centres of
graceful and dignified living, supported by slavery, so too was the
Athenian Household released for culture by the institution of
slavery. And when they spoke of Liberal Education, they meant
the education of a free man as distinct from the training of a
slave.
This kind of education was, of course, humanistic. It was
based, at least in the school which Plato managed, on literature,
music, mathematics, rhetoric – by this they meant not oratory
by composition – mathematics, philosophy by which they meant
logic – and athletics. This was, for their purposes, an extremely
wide curriculum, and it produced some of the most incisive
minds of that or any age. However, it is interesting to note
that while this sort of education held sway in Greece for some
centuries, in Rome there was radically different development.
Roman education was largely what we now call vocational since
the exigencies of conquering and holding a large empire forced
them to train an enormous number of lawyers, administrators,
agriculturalist, mechanics, caterers, engineers and economists.
In short, while Greek education was liberal, Roman Education
was technocratic.
20

This brings me to my second definition. You will see that I
am examining a certain kind of education in the context of a
society at a certain stage of its development. You will also note
that I speak of a technocratic society and not of a technological
one. I have done this deliberately, because I sincerely doubt that
the present age in which we live is a technological one. I hold
that it is technocratic.
Now it is quite easy in a dissertation of this sort to yield
to the temptation of splitting hairs. But I hope, confidently, to
escape that change which, if true, would render me censurable
for intellectual dishonesty. As I understand it, and I concede that
I may well be wrong, technology is a theoretical knowledge of
Industry and the Industrial Arts. I am willing to grant that the best
dictionaries may turn out to be “contradictionaries”. But I have
never been able to understand technology except as a theoretical
application of science to the Arts. It has always seemed to me
that it is a minor branch of the sciences of ethnology and that
it treats only with the development of the arts from the point of
view of theory alone.
Technocracy is, undoubtedly, a different matter. As I
understand it – and again the dictionaries may outflank me – a
technocracy would be, or perhaps is, any society motivated – in
varying degrees by the practical application of science to the
problems of contemporary life. I would go further, I would say
that any community, whether it be a great industrial entity, or
a merely pastoral community, like Outer Mongolia, is entitled
to be called a technocracy if its life is motivated – no matter to
what extent – by experts, however few or however inadequately
trained, whose business it is to evaluate or increase industrial and
agricultural output in terms of energy factors, whether these be
capital or labour.
Now if this, or indeed any part of it is true, it is clear that the
greater portion of this globe is inhabited by technocrats, since in
21

nearly every country there is some level of development going
on through the practical application of skills and techniques in
every field. In other words, to speak nowadays of technology is
to talk as if men were still dreaming of what might be and not at
all re-fashioning what was. And although there is, here and there,
still some theorizing, as there must always be, the startling fact
remains that from China to Peru communities are reaping the
benefits, in greater or lesser degrees, of organized experiments;
and, I submit, it is an organized experiment which separates fact
from fancy. It follows, therefore, that the age in which we live is
a technocratic one, that it has ceased being purely technological,
and that all our concepts of Higher Education will have to be
re-examined in the light of this fact.
For if the application of Science to life, especially economic
life, were only theoretical in its range, then there would be a
need for greater and more intensive specialisation. Naturally so,
since the search for this kind of truth requires a larger number of
theorists using several approaches. But when once we grasp the
essentials of applied science and the range of its application to
human well being we need, not indeed to train fewer specialists,
but to turn our budding specialists into generalist, if I may so
use the term as well. And for this very important reason; when
scientific motivation was only in the theoretical stage, when,
that is, we were only, all of us, technologists, groping for the
method of pressing science into the service of skills, there was
no danger, or at any rate no serious danger of blowing the world
up. But now that we are technocrats, or now that a few of us
are exceptional technocrats, that possibility is ever present. Now
the real danger of living in a technocratic age is this – Unless
the kind of specialist education which produces the technocrat
is amplified by other things, he is bound, by the very nature
of things, to develop an excessive admiration for, and an
immoderate worship of, techniques, gadgets and machinery. But
22

this is only to say that technocracy divorced from Humanism
soon becomes technolatry – worship of skills and machines for
their own sakes.
Fanciful, you say? Well then, what is the Test Ban Treaty but
the recognition of this truth – After all, when two great Powers
challenge each other, implicitly by the size of the military
budgets, and explicitly by global confrontation, to see who
can produce more annihilation, what will one call that if not
inordinate gadgetry? Happily there seems to be some awareness
of the unruly nature of technocracy.
Of course, underdeveloped countries and regions have some
distance to travel before they reach the stage where the world
will ‘trace the days’ disaster in the morning face’, for neither by
the scale of their resources, nor by the development of their skills
can they enter that particular race. But they are yet technocrats
in their own sphere since they accept and, where they can, apply,
the scientific method to their problems.
For example, I would call a society technocratic long before
it could split an atom, if it used a scientific method of evaluating
its own problems. If, for instance, it could arrive at an appraisal
of its rate of population growth, the productivity of its land, the
per capita income of its population and so on, with a tolerable
degree of accuracy. And I would be so justified because the
very minimum a technocratic society must have is the scientific
method of finding the truth by observation and analysis.
So I would be inclined to place West Indian Society within
the technocratic ring, although it does not yet possess those
massive signs of industrial achievement to be found in other
places. For it does, justifiably, boast of rather more than the
bare minimum which I thought would establish its claim to be
a technocracy. And we can now proceed to discover the kind of
Liberal Education, required by our technocracy at this stage of
its maturing.
23

Now we must not be led away here by mere hot house visions
of creating an exclusive oligarchy of talent. Nor need we be taken
in by all the enticements of Mr. Harold Wilson’s meritocracy. All
we ask for is that West Indian Society should produce as large
a number as it can of vigorous, creative and dedicated minds,
capable of envisaging the pattern of a new order and in all sorts
of spheres working for it and influencing its growth. This, as
I see it, is one of the chief tasks of the University of the West
Indies and, more still, of these colleges.
The problems of social organisation, of economic viability,
of preserving free institutions, have now become so technical
that there will be in the future, little place for the untrained and
the ill-equipped. It is clear that the employment, on a massive
scale, of the technician, the scientist, the sociologist, is clearly
called for. It is also clear that, at least in a democratic society,
that these must come down all grades of society. But it must
be remembered that the untrained and the ill-equipped are still
persons, and are not to be pushed around merely because they
cannot extract the square root of three without misgiving.
H. G. Wells in one of his brilliant diagnoses of the twentieth
century, put it rather this way. “For any revolutionary movement to
succeed”, he says, “there must be this care of special intelligence
of enlightened fanatics, so to speak, whose minds are liberated
enough to imagine a new social order. And it is no good their
pretending to be anything but what they are”. Now this is heady
wine, and should be taken only on prescription. What Wells
may not have grasped is that this elite can, nowadays, be nearly
everybody, or at least more than a few, thanks to all those media
of sound and vision without which the education of the masses
cannot proceed. Still there will be the hard core of specialists,
which every society needs, and which undeveloped societies need
more than most.
To devise a liberal education for societies of this complexity
24

is no easy task: It is far from easy because undeveloped societies
are, in part, the consequence of a lack of education facilities.
It follows that emergent societies are forced to move, in all
directions simultaneously, if they are to catch up with, not
to speak of overtaking, their more favoured neighbours. And if
this is true of most emergent societies, it is doubly true of the
West Indies.
West Indian Society starts off with the consideration that
it is a derived society, produced by that historical irruption
which started with the age of Discovery which, in turn, was
followed by that confrontation of rival imperialisms in the l6th
Century. This, in its turn led to the urge to repair the sagging
economies of Western Europe with unlimited quantities of gold
and silver front the New World. Moreover, the breakup of the
mediaeval patterns of international Trade in Northern Europe
and in the Mediterranean drew the coasts of Western Africa
into the fray, and this was to have momentous consequences in
the establishment and maintenance of the Slave Trade. This, in
brief, is the origin of West Indian Society.
But that is not the whole story. For the historical current,
flowing in one direction, produced a set of grave consequences,
and the ebbing tide left some even graver ones. The emergence
of Great Britain in the early nineteenth Century as an Industrial
Power, far ahead of others in productive techniques and
application, coupled with her unchallenged supremacy at sea,
shattered the mercantile system, broke the back of the Slave
Trade and bequeathed to West Indian Society a legacy of poverty,
frustration and ignorance. And it is only now that our society is
beginning to reconstruct itself.
An important point immediately arises. If a Liberal education
is the kind of education most suited to free men, and further, if
we aim at spreading freedom, what is the context which we must
give to the term liberal? I do no pretend to grasp more than
25

the merest fraction of the vast problem, but it may help you to
see what the entire problem is if I remind you of what Aldous
Huxley says in his novel “Ends and Means”.
Huxley is here concerned with trying to retain human values
intact amid the surging pressures and demands of technocracy.
He wants to discover the best way of varying the individual’s
labours so as to eliminate boredom, and he wonders how the
technician or the craftsman will be able to multiply his educative
contacts with other individuals working in responsive selfgoverning
groups.
On a deeper level he sees the issue as an experiment in
finding the best form of community life and the best way of
using leisure. But although he can offer no solution, he brilliantly
sums up the problem in these words. “The problem”, he says, “is
to find the best method of combining in workers the twin ideas
of self-government and technical efficiency, that is, responsible
freedom at the periphery with advanced scientific management
at the centre.”
Now if this is a fair statement of the problem, as I think it is,
then when we dissect it, we shall discover that both elements of my
theme are found therein. For how shall we produce “responsible
freedom at the periphery”, if not by providing a higher
educational structure wide and deep enough to penetrate the
periphery? Again, where is an “advanced scientific management
at the centre” to come from if our universities do not help us to
master the ever widening range of technocracy?
But consider further. Unless we devise an educational system
flexible enough, to accommodate both the centre and the
periphery, we shall fail, since both centre and the circumference
are parts of the same circle. The inference which I draw is clear.
The centrists and the peripherists are the same kind of people
doing equally valuable, though different jobs. To put it in another
way, the technocrat is merely the average man in full intellectual
26

dress. But if this is so, then unless the average man is provided
with the minimum of intellectual clothing, the technocrat is not
likely to emerge or, when he does, the centre will have nothing in
common with the circumference.
At this point you may well ask how an emergent society can
best use its higher education facilities to bring about these desired
ends of responsible self-government and advanced scientific
management. I do not really have to provide an answer because
the problem is really not a new one. You see every society is
equidistant from technocracy. True, the technocracy of the
latter half of the twentieth century is not that of fifth century
Greece. Had, even so, the socio-economic problems of the fifth
century Greece are not those of our day. Their problems called
for solutions appropriate to their needs. But so do ours. And if
we could appreciate how they faced their challenges we might
get hold of the key to the solutions of ours.
I profoundly regret that there are serious gaps in my knowledge
of Hellenic Civilization in the centuries immediately preceding
the birth of Our Lord. But it seems to me that Greek civilization,
having evolved the type of polity known as the city state, found
itself confronted by the challenge of over-population.
This meant, in effect, that its rate of population growth
outstripped its rate of national income growth per head of
population. How very modern this problem seems to be? This is
precisely what I mean when I say that each society is equidistant
from technocracy. However, let us see how ever of two Greek
city states met this challenge.
Sparta re-acted like Nazi Germany. She proceeded to
conquer and enslave her neighbours. But the effort involved in
holding down her neighbours diverted too large a proportion of
her resources to militarism and this, eventually, ossified her into
a police state with an uncertain pattern of International Trade.
27

Not thus with Athens. She developed what we should now
call an infrastructure, and discovered how to nourish her
growing population by a development of her overseas trade.
She geared her own agricultural production to a high level of
efficiently – she started manufacture for export and, meanwhile
developed her political institutions so as to give a fuller share
of political power to the new classes which these far reaching
socio-economic reforms had galvanized into activity. To sum up
Athenian Statesmen faced an almost intractable social challenge,
by piloting their country through an economic and political
revolution and, by so doing, paved the way for the forward
movement of their society. But this sounds exactly like what has
been done in Puerto Rico since 1949.
But the Athenians would scarcely have achieved this level of
wellbeing if their infra-structure had not produced an educational
system capable of imparting momentum to these struggles.
And the case with the West Indies is no different. Throughout
these Islands we have to staff all our schools with graduates in
the next two decades. We have also to provide large numbers
of business executives, administrators, industrial consultant
engineers, accountants, agronomist, architects, doctors, dentists,
lawyers and journalists. How are we to get these if not through
the University of the West Indies.
You who now have the happy privilege being the first
undergraduates on this campus, are the technocrats of our
immediate future. For whether you study Arts or Sciences you will
be taught to apply scientific techniques to the problems of your
community. And because you are to help to build a free society
the peoples of the West Indies are, in this College, providing
you with the sort of Liberal Education which technocrats should
have. And if you doubt the significance of this venture, and if
you have as yet no awareness of what this kind of opportunity
can do for you, let me give you Cardinal Newman’s brilliant
description of a liberally educated person.
28

“It is the kind of training which give a man clear, conscious
view of his own opinions and judgments, an eloquence in
expressing them, and force in urging them. It teaches him to see
things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a vein
of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is
irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to
master any subject with facility”.
“It shows him how to accommodate himself to others,
how to put himself in their state of mind, how to come to an
understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home
in every society; he has common ground with every class. He
knows when to speak and when to be silent. He is able to converse,
he is able to listen. He can ask a question pertinently and gain a
lesson seasonably when he has nothing to impart himself.”
“He is ever ready, yet never in the way. He is a pleasant
companion, and a comrade you can depend upon. He knows
when to be serious and when to trifle. And he has a sure tact
which enables him to trifle with graciousness, and to be serious
with effect”.
“He has the repose of mind which lives in itself, while it lives
in the world, and which has resources for its own happiness when
it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and
supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is vulgar,
and with which failure and disappointment have charm.”
The art which tends to make a person all this is, in the object
which it pursues, as useful a part of wealth or the art of health,
though it is a less susceptible method, less tangible, less certain,
less complete in its results.
Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, Masters, Bachelors, Undergraduates,
Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen, I deeply
apologise for the length of time for which I have detained this
illustrious company.
29

CAVE HILL CAMPUS
SELECTED IMAGES 1963-1968
The Hon. Eric Williams,
first Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago
and Pro-Chancellor
Sir Philip Sherlock,
Vice Chancellor, 1963-1969
Sir Arthur Lewis,
UWI’s first Vice Chancellor, 1960-1963
Rt. Hon. Errol Barrow,
first Prime Minister of Barbados
Professor Leslie Robinson,
acting Principal and Pro-Vice
Chancellor 1963-1964
30
Hon. Cameron Tudor,
first Minister of Education, Barbados

CAVE HILL CAMPUS
SELECTED IMAGES
The site chosen for the permanent home of the Campus was called “The Mount”. It was Captain
“Tommy” Tomlin, the architect who later designed the campus and dubbed it “Cave Hill”.
The construction of University housing in the Wanstead Area.
31

CAVE HILL CAMPUS
SELECTED IMAGES
Distinguished officials leaving Assembly Hall.
Extra Mural Centre: HRH Princess Alice
Chancellor of the University.
HRH Princess Alice after opening of
Extra Mural Arts wing.
Handing over ceremony of site for
Extra Mural Department.
32

CAVE HILL CAMPUS
SELECTED IMAGES
Auditorium renovations being inspected by Hon. Cameron Tudor, Minister of Education (left)
Professor Huggins, Mr. Archer and Mr. Ward, Clerk of Works (right).
The main building of the College of Arts
and Sciences.
The construction of the main building at the
Cave Hill site.
The iconic Cave Hill clock tower.
Procession walking to St. Mary’s church after the
first graduation of the College of Arts and Science,
February 1967.
33

CAVE HILL CAMPUS
SELECTED IMAGES
An aerial view of the Cave Hill Campus showing the surrounding lands.
The Caribbean Trade Fair site (Department of Education, Barbados, Visual Aids Section).
34

UNIVERSITY
OF THE WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL, BARBADOS, W.I.
ON OCCASION OF A SPECIAL VISIT TO THE
College of Arts & Science
The Chancellor’s Address
H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone
Chancellor of the University of the West Indies
Thirteenth of March One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-four
(1964)
35

THE CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS
H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, Chancellor
of the University of the West Indies paid a special visit to the
new College of Arts and Science, in its temporary buildings
at the Harbour Site, Bridgetown, on Friday 13th March,
1964. On that occasion Her Royal Highness delivered the
following address to the assembly which consisted of H.E.
the Governor and Lady Stow, Hon. J. C. Tudor, Minister of
Education, the Finance and Advisory Committees of the
College, staff and students:
Before addressing the students, I must take this opportunity to express
my warmest thanks as Chancellor and on behalf of the University
of the West Indies for the generous support and encouragement
given by the ‘Government of Barbados in bringing this regional
branch of the University into being. We have also been greatly
helped by friends among whom Mr. Ronald Tree has been indefatigable.
I would also like to express my thanks to the members of the Finance and
Advisory Committees of the College for the services they have rendered in
launching this project. You are all busy men and women but without your
co-operation and support it would have been impossible to have opened the
College last October.
Now let me turn to the students, for I am indeed glad to have
this opportunity to say a few words to them. It is a source of
special pride to me to be able to speak to undergraduates on the
Barbados Campus to stress the importance to the University of
the initial success of this promising venture in higher education
at the highest level. The first step was the erection of the
permanent building for Extra-Mural Studies followed quickly by
the promise of a magnificent grant from the Department of
Technical Co-operation to build an Arts College; and the studies,
36

I am glad to know, are proceeding satisfactorily in temporary
accommodation.
Ours is a Federal University and we have all come to accept the
fact that university education should be brought to the people of
the Islands under the aegis of the University of the West Indies.
I have just been visiting some of these Islands and I can assure
you that they are much alive to this necessity. You will recall
that to mark the opening of this College the University granted
a Scholarship to each of the territories of the Windward and the
Leeward Islands, and I am glad to welcome these scholarship
winners to the Barbados College and hope that as time goes on
more students will avail themselves of the opportunities that are
offered here..
In conclusion, I do want you young people just on the verge
of adult life as well as senior students to remember that wealth
of our county in the last resort does not lie in its gold and dollar
reserves as many seem to think. It lies rather in the character of
its people and in their willingness to perform a full part in their
country’s service. What does our country mean? To us it means
learning life, good comradeship, a square deal for everybody,
laws based on a moral code, freedom from oppression and
restrictions, and the absolute right of the individual with- in the
law to live his own way, and the duty to our country which falls
on each one of us, is to believe in that way of life and to live for
it and to work for it and actively to resist any set of men or any
circumstances which threaten it.
The rapid enlightened development of the University was
scarcely visualized when the old University College at Mona
was launched fifteen years ago with just thirty medical students,
the anticipation of its founders that three to four hundred
undergraduates might be expected there. Today we have at
least two thousand between Mona, St. Augustine and Barbados.
I am glad to think that many of you who are attending this
37

College are working people, which is a most commendable
development, and I hope you will encourage your neighbours to
follow your excellent example. I have just arrived from attending
the Council Meetings at which we very heartily welcomed the
regional members who had made the journey to be present and
whose advice and co-operation were especially valuable.
I was present at the presentation of graduates and in a few
days time I shall be attending a similar occasion at St. Augustine,
and no doubt you are looking forward to your first presentation
in about two years time. For you have a great opportunity here
too in Barbados to make a real contribution to the aspirations of
the University for the spread of Higher Education throughout
the whole of the Caribbean Territories - you are particularly well
situated to serve our neighbours as well as developing your own
standards of education. I would stress most earnestly the unity
of our University and the importance of such unity of purpose
and mutual interest in this all-important matter of education
throughout the whole area.
And now I wish the Principal and his Staff and all of you the
best of luck and God’s blessing for the future.
38

UNIVERSITY
OF THE WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL, BARBADOS, W.I.
LAYING OF THE FOUNDATION STONE
College of Arts & Science
BY
The Chancellor
Her Royal Highness Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone,
G.C.V.O., G.B.E., V.A.
Minister’s Address
Honourable J. Cameron Tudor
Minister of Education
Twenty-sixth of January One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-six
(1966)
39

Minister’s Address
Hon. J. Cameron Tudor
Madam Chancellor, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Pro-Vice-Chancellor,
Members of Council, Doctors, Masters, Bachelors and Students; Your
Excellencies, Your Honours, Honourable Chief Ministers, Honourable
Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen;
It is a very great honour and privilege for me, Ma’am, to
welcome, on behalf of the Government and People of Barbados,
this illustrious company which the gracious presence of your
Royal Highness so fittingly adorns. It is an equally great honour
and privilege for me to have placed in your own hands, Ma’am,
this pledge of fealty which the People of Barbados have made to
the University of the West Indies.
One thing, Ma’am, blunts the edge of our pleasure here this
afternoon. It is the unavoidable absence abroad, in the service
of the Crown, of the Honourable Premier. Mr. Barrow has
asked me particularly to convey his respectful greetings to you,
Ma’am, as well as to the distinguished company assembled here
at your bidding, and to say that he hopes he may adequately
atone for his absence by bringing back even more assistance for
your University.
I should like to extend the warmest welcome and greetings
to their Excellencies the High Commissioner of Canada, the
United Kingdom and Jamaica, to the Representative of the
Government of Trinidad and Tobago, to their Honours the
Administrators of St. Lucia, St. Kitts and the Virgin Islands, to
the Honourable Ministers from other territories of the Region,
to the representatives of British, American and Canadian
universities, as well as to all those who are here to seek succour
from the rigours of the Northern Winter.
In this connection, Ma’am, I think I may be pardoned if I
make special mention of the presence here among us of Professor
40

Sir Arthur Lewis, whom we all rejoice to see this afternoon. Dr.
Lewis has given immeasurable service to the cause of West Indian
Emancipation in general, and to the cause of West Indian Higher
Education in particular. Much of the credit in the establishment
of this College must go to him, not only for his grand conception
of spreading the University throughout the Region, but for his
consummate artistry in persuading the United Kingdom to part
with the money to construct the buildings, the corner-stone of
which is laid today. And I am hoping, Ma’am — I dare hardly
suggest it — whenever money is available for the construction
of a Hall of Residence for Students from the Windwards and
Leewards, that Dr. Lewis will give, however reluctantly, his
permission for such Hall of Residence to bear his distinguished
name.
When Ma’am, you lay the stone which gets the College off
the ground, you will have set in motion a tremendous enterprise.
For these forty-six acres of land, on which this College will be
built, are the gift of the people of Barbados to the University of
the West Indies. But your portion is but a fraction of hundreds
of acres from which a new city is destined to spring. In time the
University College will be surrounded by all the artifacts of a
modern community. There will be thousands of homes, primary
and secondary schools, churches, theatres, cinemas, shopping
centres and recreation grounds, highways and shaded walks.
Thus, Ma’am is your College the harbinger of things to come,
the herald of good tidings. And just as the ivy clings to the oak,
in like fashion will this future township lean on the College, to
garner strength and faith for a purposeful community life. When
you come to us next year, Ma’am, to receive our first graduates
as permanent members of your University, we hope to have the
Assembly Hall quite ready for your convenience, and you also
will see the beginnings of the effort which will surround the
College.
41

Already, Ma’am, this College, despite its somewhat limited
existence as a mere corner-stone, has excited the curiosity of
other young Universities. Next month, I am to be visited by
the Vice Chancellor of Sussex University, Dr. Asa Briggs, and
his Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Fernando Henriques. Their
University wishes to establish in Barbados a graduate centre for
the study of Multi-racial Societies, and they wish to associate
this venture in some way with the University College here. I
understand that this project will receive the blessing of the United
Kingdom Government and that the Council of our University
will be asked to approve. The Barbados government will be
invited to donate two acres of land, and the sponsors of the
project will find the money for the construction of the buildings
elsewhere. Provided, Ma’am, they don’t pinch any of your land,
I hope you will let them have their “Sussex-by-the-Sea.”
The welcome presence of so many of our friends from
other territories encourages me once again to declare this
Government’s policy towards the University of the West Indies.
The Government and People of Barbados stand foursquare
on the concept of a regional University. We agreed with that
decision at the common services Conference in 1962, and we see
no reason to alter our stand. We have done nothing to weaken
the force of this decision and we have loyally given financial
support to the University on this basis.
In the coming budget year we shall be giving to the University
$300,000 more than we give at present and this will bring our
annual contribution in the next triennium up to something
like one million one hundred thousand dollars. Moreover, we
have just paid the last annual installment of $80,000 which we
covenanted to the University in the last five years as a special
contribution.
If hard cash means anything at all, no one can doubt the
sincerity of our attachment to this University.
42

Nor should anyone believe that our going into Independence
this year, will in any way modify our policy, or weaken our resolve,
to support this University as a Regional Institution. But we should
be less than frank if we did not express our alarm at the recondite
interpretation which is given in some quarters to the concept of
a Regional University. Some people think that it refers to their
own regions. We in Barbados insist that the region referred to in
the Common Services Agreement is the entire British Caribbean.
The Government of Barbados has considerable difficulty in
understanding why such a clearly expressed agreement should
generate such a variety of interpretation.
Ma’am, I think I ought also to state with emphasis to our
fellow citizens in the Eastern Caribbean that this Government,
in supporting a Regional University, is anxious to facilitate the
largest possible number of students from the Windwards and
Leewards.
Indeed, if it were financially possible for us to do so, we
would have provided a Hall of Residence for such students, and
would have offered some scholarships as well. But we already
provide two hundred free scholarships at the College for our
own students and we cannot at present do anything for overseas
students in these respects.
In saying this, I have no desire to set a limit to the possibilities
of assistance to the College or to Students, wishing to drink at
springs of learning.
A university is at once the expression and the repository of all
that is most significant in the history of a people, and its claims
on the people are so cogent and so universal that they cannot be
met from the resources of the Government alone. Indeed, it is
the duty and the great privilege of private persons in all walks of
life to view the University College as their own possession, their
own heritage and their own hope. It is the duty and the privilege
of all who can manage it, whether singly or in co-operation
43

with their fellows to make their private offerings which may be
used in endowing Scholarships and bursaries for students from
all territories in this region. I can think of no nobler or more
profitable act of sacrifice than this, for it is made on the twin
altars of knowledge and youth, the most precious possessions of
any people.
The invitation to share in this high service is addressed not
only to the people of Barbados but equally to all natives and
residents in the Eastern Caribbean area. As an earnest of its
sincerity in this co-operation in culture the Government of
Barbados wishes it to be known to the University and to the
Governments of the Eastern Caribbean that no hindrance
whatever will be placed in the way of bona fide students from
the Eastern Caribbean; that any University facility established
here in Barbados will automatically be enjoyed by students from
the Eastern Caribbean or by students from any other part of
the region; that in accepting aid for the College from foreign
governments or from any other source, the Government will in
each case inform the University and the Governments of other
territories; that this Government will, if requested, accept any
responsibility, other than financial, for the welfare and comfort
of students from the Eastern Caribbean. Finally that it will
undertake not to offer them employment when they graduate,
so that they may return to their islands to enrich the economies
which made their studies possible.
Such, Ma’am is the declaration of our policy in this regard.
The Independence of Barbados will not only not inhibit the
opportunities increasingly available to the Eastern Caribbean,
but will also actively promote and provide wider areas of growth
for the University of the West Indies. And in thanking you again
for the loving care which you bestow on this University, I venture
to say, Ma’am, that the University’s cornerstone was first laid
when, with that quiet but penetrating insight which marks the
44

wise sovereign, His late Majesty King George the Sixth of
blessed memory planted you in all our hearts, and gave to this
University pride, place and preeminence above all others, with
such an “acceptable Chancellor.”
Sir John Stow:
Madam Chancellor, distinguished visitors, ladies and
gentlemen. With Your Royal Highness’s permission, I shall read
out the text of a message sent by the Right Honourable Anthony
Greenwood, Minister of Overseas Development.
“Your Royal Highness, please accept my very good wishes
on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of
the new College. My Ministry represents a new concept
of service to, and co-operation with, those parts of the
world which are determined to raise educational and
living standards for all their peoples; we want to join you
in this task. The new grants totalling £600,000, nearly
$3. million (West Indian), to the University of the West
Indies, details of which will be announced today, are
given in this spirit, and in the hope that they will play a
part in developing co-operative arrangements of service
to all the islands of the area.”
That is the end of the message.
In order to emphasise the extent of British aid to the
University, I should add, that this $3 million is in addition
to British assistance already given to the University totalling
$45 million (B.W.I.).
45

Rt. Hon. Errol Walton Barrow
Prime Minister of Barbados
46

GRADUATION ADDRESS
1968
Rt. Hon. Errol Walton Barrow
Prime Minister of Barbados
Sixth of February One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-eight
(1968)
UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL – BARBADOS
47

ERROL BARROW
FEBRUARY 6, 1968
First of all I should like to bid you welcome, Madam Chancellor,
and to thank you on behalf of the University for the gracious dedication
which Your Royal Highness has always given to its affairs. Every year
we look forward to your visit, not only for the pleasure it brings, but for the
encouragement which we all derive from your vigour and insight. Herodotus
might well have said of you, Ma’am, as he did of the Persian emissaries
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this courier from
swift accomplishment of her appointed route.”
Three years ago I was pressed into service to deliver the
address on behalf of our distinguished Pro-Chancellor at the
graduation exercises at Saint Augustine. It would have suited
me today if he were standing in my place before so impressive
and so distinguished a gathering to enliven us with his eloquence
and enlighten us with his learning. But for some reason he has
elected to sit like “patience on a monument smiling at my grief.”
The Pro-Chancellor has made an invaluable contribution to
the development of the University as a regional institution.
His presence in our midst must be an inspiration to those who
are leaving, as well as to those who enter as novices into the
mysteries of learning.
We welcome to our University today the Minister of
Overseas Development on two grounds. First, he escaped from
our common bondage at the same institution of learning a
brief twelve months before me, and needs your sympathy in the
exacting servitude in which we have both ended up as Ministers
of Government.
48

But of more importance is that the Right Honourable
Reginald Prentice represents on this occasion the Government of
the United Kingdom without whose generosity the construction
of these buildings may have been postponed for an indefinite
period. The citizens of the United Kingdom deserve our thanks
for this their most significant contribution west of Suez.
The Government and people of Canada have made their own
very substantial contribution to this University. In addition to
funds already provided for expansion at Mona and St. Augustine,
and apart from the numerous scholarships now enjoyed by
students of all the territories, the Government of Canada has
already earmarked a substantial sum for further development at
this site, and this sum will meet the cost of constructing a hall of
residence for the students of the other territories, who we hope
will come here in ever increasing numbers. Both the University
and the Government of Barbados have already dispatched their
thanks to the Government of Canada, but would still wish to
greet our Canadian friends in this public recognition of their
assistance.
Since I am addressing this distinguished company as a
member of the University Council, I may perhaps not without
some diffidence express the University’s appreciation to the
people of Barbados for the gift of land on which the College
stands and for the provision of the ancillary services. In a deeper
sense, however, the citizens of Barbados have merely established
in a positive way their commitment to and faith in this region.
By surrendering so large a portion of their scarcest commodity
to a regional enterprise, they have demonstrated that they yield
to none in their desire to promote the unity of this region.
When in July 1962 the Common Services Conference made
the historic decision to retain and to expand the University as a
regional institution, it was felt by many that this was a pious hope
in view of the political uncertainties then prevailing in the area.
49

At that time none of the subscribing territories was a sovereign
state and the peculiar political contrivance which had held them
together in chafing submission was in ruins.
The breakup of a civilization is often accompanied by a
deceptive amount of social activity. As in a bodily fever, the
pulse becomes more rapid, the rate of oxidation faster, even the
flush on the patient’s cheek may give the deceptive appearance
of health: only the glassy eye will indicate that the patient is
unconscious of what is going on about him: his mind instead is
grappling with phantoms.
Louis Mumford writing on the condition of man retracing
the decline of the classic societies continued –
“In this hellenistic world, so rational in its surface activities,
phantoms and visions appeared in growing numbers precisely at
the moment when the Museum of Alexandria was supporting
a vast corps of savants and professors who were carrying exact
science beyond the realms Aristotle had explored. Theophrastus
developed a systematic botany. Hero of Alexandria invented
the reaction steam turbine, the first groping toward the modern
steam engine. Archimedes founded the science of hydrostatics
and made decisive contributions to mechanics. But these
inventions and discoveries did little to lighten labor: steam or
clockwork was used merely to open temple doors without human
hands - and thus superstitiously heighten the religious awe of the
worshiper. Slave labor, which undermined the ancient polity, also
reduced the province of the machine. And though the scholars
of Alexandria collected, collated, classified, made accessible to
other scholars, a growing body of knowledge, the results did not
flow out into life: after Aristotle’s synthesis, learning tended to fill
books and deflate men. Frustrated, cheated, the ordinary man
descended to new depths of irrational impulse and superstitious
habit. Have we not seen a similar reaction in our own time?
In the context of our rapidly changing times I wish to
50

demonstrate that these reactions are as much in evidence today
as they were two thousand years ago.
I wish to discuss The University and The People.
It is of the utmost importance that our statesmen and
scholars, students and scientists should all realise that a university
institution cannot survive unless it has as its constant goal service
to the communities which support and sustain its activities. At
this college of Liberal Arts and Science we have embarked with
some assistance on a task of bringing people to the University.
It is vital that we should endeavour within the shortest possible
time to bring the University to the people. The contributions
made by the smaller territories represent in most cases a large
proportion of their resources and will be justified only to the
extent that commensurate returns in trained manpower are
increasingly available.
Occasionally there have been signs that the concept of a
regional university is not held with the firmness it deserves. One
hears of peculiar interpretations given to the concept which seem
to suggest that words have lost their meaning. While I should not
wish to see duplication of effort and the resulting financial chaos
which this would bring, I think wholly proper that each new
development should buttress and extend the regional character
of this University. It would be too much to expect the territories
to connive at specious definitions of regionalism which cover the
hand of selfishness with the glove of extravagance.
While it is conceded that each territory must establish its own
priorities for national development, it must never be forgotten
that all the territories are now firmly committed to important
common enterprises for economic development. In all of these
enterprises, whether for the establishment of Free Trade or a
Development Bank or the improvement of communications, it
is on the University that they lean most heavily for the studies
upon which they reach their conclusions. Then the University
51

y its accessibility to all becomes the instrument of general
progress. It would be a senseless reversal of this trend if new
development were to be regarded by anyone as opportunity for
territorial aggrandizement.
University costs are rising steadily. More money has to
be found for maintaining existing services and for financing
properly planned expansion. It now requires nearly $3,500 a
year to keep a student at Mona, nearly $3,300 at St. Augustine
and over $2,500 at this campus. Even with generous assistance
from overseas for capital construction and for scholarships and
Research Fellowships, the territories must still provide several
million dollars each year for the current operations of the
University. The larger territories, apart from their mandatory
payments to the central university budget, maintain hundreds
of students from public funds in furtherance of their policies for
the spread of higher education. This investment on their part
cannot be curtailed until there is evidence that it is no longer
necessary.
Meanwhile the university itself has to teach more students,
do more research, provide even more special services to
Governments. All of this activity will necessarily be reflected
in higher costs though equally in speedier development. The
calculated sacrifice of present comforts to future benefits can
only be justified if the fullest use is made of available resources.
When therefore we speak of bringing the University to the
People, we should not only mean that more and more people
should directly as students enjoy its facilities, we should also
intend that the citizens of the region should be encouraged to
regard the University as their most important asset. We cannot
rightly urge them to sacrifice for it merely by pointing with pride
to its facilities or to its achievements or even to its international
standing. They must feel for the University the same concern
which the fortunes of sugar, tourism, industrial development
52

and national security engender. They must be helped to know, as
a settled conviction, that the efficient growth of this University
is almost their only path to prosperity.
The University for its part must eschew conspicuous
consumption. It is the People’s University. In this most exacting
role it must lead the territories in the difficult art of making
one dollar do the work of two. Governments have to run the
fierce gauntlet of parliamentary approval for public expenditure
and they sometimes have to impose taxation which is never
acceptable. If the University raises its level of expenditure to
a height not easily justifiable by the benefits conferred on the
taxpayer as citizen, the Governments will not have a pleasant time
with their fellow citizens when they ask for increased provision.
The greater awareness there is of the University’s moderation
the more generous will be the region’s response. Dr. Samuel
Johnson once said of Scotsmen that they “sustain their culture
on a little oatmeal”! I should not live to prescribe this somewhat
unpalatable diet for our University, but I think that we can still
sustain our culture by the prudent use of a slender purse.
Madam Chancellor, ahead of all our striving and self
denial lies our goal of a prosperous and civi1ized community
of people in this region. These territories have now awoken
after three centuries of neglect to find that the world has nearly
passed them by. They must now cover in less than a decade the
distances negotiated at leisure by more favoured peoples. To
make one blade of grass grow where two grew before, to train
ten persons in the same time as it would have taken to train one,
to remove ignorance and squalor, to offer gainful employment
to every citizen and to preserve our cultural heritage in all its
richness — is a task which might well discourage even the most
stouthearted.
In addition to these urgent domestic preoccupations, we
are all of us subject to the pressures of the world outside the
53

egion. Other countries more powerful than our own territories
in populations, economic strength and military capacity,
daily make decisions to which we are not a part but from the
consequences of which we cannot renege. Already the cost of
financing numerous vital public services in each territory has
gone up in the wake of sterling devaluation, to mention only
one example of our interdependence. Events like this impress
upon us by direct experience how very urgent it is to hasten our
region’s growth by all available means in the shortest time.
It seems to me that we need to press into service all the
instruments of our progress. Every resource of mind and spirit
must now be fully deployed in all these territories. Not the least
valuable to us of these resources is our University now nearing
the end of its second decade. In its short life it has shared with our
national game the matchless honour of unifying these territories.
But it does not engender that feeling of common identity which
we all experience when in a Test Match the battle sways from side
to side. On such occasions the whole region holds its breath and
offers expert but conflicting advice to our captain from which
he, I must assume, prudently distills the formula for victory.
If we could feel, Madam, a similar sense of identity with the
fortunes of the University we should not only love it more, but
we should also experience our greater need of it. Our support
of this institution ought to be based not only on its capacity to
serve but also on its success in keeping all together. For the work
which the University does is valuable not merely because we get
our money’s worth, but because through it we know each other
better, and, best of all, because it should give the people whom
we serve a cause for rejoicing. The physical plant and amenities
which the University has acquired supply a planned degree of
comfort if not of luxury.
If the graduates whom we turn out upon our societies are not
conscious of those who in the words of the historian Polybius
54

supplied the luxuries and comforts, those from whose harvests or
cargoes the money for taxes came then the University will have
failed the society — it will have failed the people.
Your Royal Highness, Right Honourable Pro Chancellor, Vice
Chancellor, Pro Vice Chancellors, members of staff, graduates,
undergraduates, behind all the rightful glamour and pageantry
of this occasion lie the hopes of nearly four million people.
These hopes must never be frustrated. These human souls must
reap with every passing day the full reward of their patience and
sacrifice. They must never have an opportunity to be impatient
or embittered. We must keep asking ourselves-
“Who has given to me this sweet?
And given my brother dust to eat?
And when will his wage come in?”
I as a proud West Indian steeped in the heady wine
of classical culture need not apologise for bridging the span of
two thousand years by an appeal to the wisdom of our own West
Indian poet Derek Walcott, a distinguished graduate of our
West Indian University —
“But let us hope, or bless.
I bless with a maker’s hands, with ten clasped prayers
All believers in battle, all strollers through fire,
Who feel a heavy future in their eyes,
Limbs, tongue, tired, but not willing to sit still.
I praise those who see a world among these islands
Where we shall try to live in peace and fail,
The failure nothing. I also fold a prayer
For who climbed ladders to see the wide world stretched
Ringed with eternity and its own terrible power,
Nor shouted down false bulletins of hope, not return giddy
From clouds and the rung of their star circled genius
But returned to live near in humility.
And from the chapels of my cupped hands I ring
55

The little men, reciters at parties, quadroon bohemians,
The fisherman. trailing the sun in his darkening net,
And the working man in overalls putting up the ladder of
the sun,
All those who dream against reason, who will make us
More powerful than stones in the Atlantic tributary,
But powerless, permanent, lovely and human,
Proud not of overcoming complexion,
But climbing poet and labourer nearer the tireless sun.”
56

UWI MISSION
To advance education and create
knowledge through excellence in
teaching, research, innovation, public
service, intellectual leadership and
outreach in order to support the
inclusive (social, economic, political,
cultural, environmental) development
of the Caribbean region and beyond.
UWI VISION
By 2017, the University will be
globally recognised as a regionally
integrated, innovative, internationally
competitive university, deeply
rooted in all aspects of Caribbean
development and committed
to serving the diverse people of the
region and beyond.

THE UNIVERSITY
OF THE
WEST INDIES
CAVE HILL CAMPUS
OFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL
2013