To understand what happened in UBAD in late 1972 and early 1973, you would have to go back to the early 1960s, and you would have to know that Norman Fairweather had an unwritten and important story before his UBAD years began in early 1971.
In the 1950s and for much of the 1960s, the Fairweather family, particularly that section led by Lt. Col. D.N.A. Fairweather, was probably the highest ranking in British Honduras. This was because, apart from this family’s natural attributes, Col. Fairweather’s son, Richard “Dickie” Fairweather, was the colony’s most famous war hero, having been shot down and killed over Germany in World War II.
I believe the Col.’s youngest son, Norman, spent a couple of his high school years in Jamaica, and he had to have learned things there, it being the case that Jamaica has always been a much larger and more confident population than ours. In any case, Norman was a born leader, and, I would say, the Belize teenager most admired by our generation in those days of the early and middle 1960s. Norman had a large following, one of the reasons being that, despite his family’s exalted status, he himself always mingled freely and easily with roots people. He was loved for that.
I have said to you that the Roman Catholic Church was becoming the most powerful church in British Honduras in the days of my childhood, but the Anglican Church was massive in influence. The Anglican Church in the colony didn’t have to make any noise: this was the official religion of the United Kingdom, which ruled British Honduras. The anti-colonial politician who emerged as the colony’s dominant force in 1956, George Cadle Price, had been a Roman Catholic seminarian. The Fairweathers were Anglicans. (Col. Fairweather’s cousin, Gerald, was an Anglican priest who migrated to Brooklyn, New York, in the middle 1950s. Compton Fairweather, who became the leader of New York’s large British Honduras Freedom Committee in the middle 1960s, is Rev. Gerald’s son.)
Now on the night before I left Brooklyn in June of 1968 to return to Belize, one of the young men I talked serious matters with was Norman Fairweather. He was living in Brooklyn at the time.
Telecommunications were hardly then what they are today, so the contact between him and myself was limited after that, except that when Ismail Shabazz and I were charged with sedition in February of 1970, Norman sent to tell me that he would come home to show his solidarity. His mother, Ethel, however, having lost her eldest son in the war, was, understandably, very worried about her youngest becoming involved with UBAD. In any case, Norman eventually returned to Belize in early 1971, and almost immediately became UBAD Secretary-General.
I am writing this column because Norman and I have been corresponding the last few weeks by electronic mail. We are talking about some matters from 37, 38 years ago, when there was a bitter split between our two UBAD factions. I gave you something of Norman’s pre-UBAD history to explain that the possibility of stress between us always existed because of how charismatic and popular he was, and had always been. There grew a kind of dual leadership in the organization. My feeling was that the UBADers who went with his faction were not so much going against me and my section, as more expressing their preference for Imamu (Norman). Norman has always had that kind of loyalty from his friends.
We got to talking recently about one of the brothers who put in real work with UBAD – Eddie “Mandingo” Gabourel. We became concerned that neither of us knew where he was and how he was doing. Dingo had gone along with Norman’s group in 1973, so it was more news that Norman, as opposed to myself, didn’t know where he was. Norman and I felt that putting something in the newspaper may get someone to give us a lead. (It’s possible that Mandingo may have taken a Muslim name.)
Eddie Gabourel is the son of a man named Hezekiah Gabourel, whom I met through my paternal aunt, Chrystel Hyde Straughan, for whom Mr. ‘Kiah worked from time to time. Mr. Gabourel was a tall man who was all lean muscle, not an ounce of fat on him. He was quiet and humble. Mandingo Gabourel is a chip off the block.
The power struggle which divided UBAD in 1973 was a function of the dominance of the two major political parties in Belize’s political system. There were UBAD people who felt that it made good sense to go along with the new UDP in 1973. What you must remember is that the mood in UBAD was very much anti-PUP at the time. Again, there was no money in UBAD, and there didn’t seem to be an economic future in the organization. The UDP offered political and economic opportunities.
The UBAD member who became the greatest success in the UDP was Hon. Michael Finnegan, who rose from obscurity in 1973 to become the four-time area representative for Mesopotamia, the area where the UBAD office was located (46 Euphrates Avenue) between 1971 and 1973. Finnegan is now a UDP Cabinet Minister, and we can use this medium to say that he recently underwent successful surgery in Detroit. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.
In conclusion, we would like for Eddie Mandingo Gabourel to get in contact with Norman Fairweather in New York. If anybody in Belize knows where he is, you can leave a message for me at this newspaper.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.