At a more fundamental level, however, the legacy of Lynden Pindling will perhaps be viewed by future generations in simpler terms.  Far removed as they will be from “the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”, they will see with a  clarity denied to us that here was a man who moved huge stones; a man who defied the forces of oppression to lead his people out of material and psychological degradation into a brave new world where freedom, dignity, upward mobility and limitless opportunity for self-advancement braced the Bahamian spirit for the first time in its march through history.
 

Truly, then, when all shall have been said and done, Bahamians will look back on the era of Sir Lynden Pindling as the most defining chapter in our nation’s history.  In so doing, they will appreciate - far more fully than we ourselves are able to - that of all our national heroes there is none whose achievements can light a candle to the enormous good which Lynden Pindling wrought for his people over so long a span of time.

The story of Lynden Pindling begins on the 22nd of March, 1930.  It was on that day that he was born, the first and only child of Arnold Pindling and his wife,Viola Pindling nee Bain. 
 

Arnold - better known as “A.F” - had emigrated to the Bahamas from Jamaica in the 1920’s, bringing with him a deep sense of ethnic pride inspired by the teachings of Marcus Garvey and a profound conviction that education, discipline, hard work and self-reliance were the keys to the future success of the black race.
 

A.F, who had trained as a Teacher in Jamaica, had an insatiable thirst for knowledge.  Immersing himself in the political and social literature of his day he became convinced that from Africa to the Caribbean, the black man was stirring from his slumber, shaking off his lethargy and rousing himself to become a new man, proud and free.
 

Once in the Bahamas, A.F was quick to see that the colony was lagging far behind in this new awakening.  Still, there were encouraging signs that the time could not be far off when black Bahamians would awaken to their destiny and organize their own upliftment.
 

Although A.F. Pindling, like scores of other West Indians at the time, had come to the Bahamas as a recruit for the Bahamas Police Force, his enterprising zeal soon took him in new directions aimed at giving himself and his family a greater measure of self-reliance and better prospects for the future.  He became a shopkeeper and a successful racehorse breeder while keeping a sharp eye out for sound investments in real estate.  The result of these endeavours was that he was able to provide a modest but stable standard of life for his wife and son while putting money aside to ensure that when the time came his son would be able to have the best education and professional training available.
 

Having a father of A.F’s fibre, it is not at all surprising that young Lynden,  from an early age, exhibited the rigourous self-discipline that would prove so important to his future success in public life.  Indeed with A.F’s  loving but toughening approach to parenting and Viola’s gentle and affectionate nurturing, young Lynden had the best of both worlds within the tightly-knit Pindling household.  He developed into a happy, well-balanced child who enjoyed his play-periods to the fullest, whether at school or within the environs of his Mason’s Addition home, while knuckling down for serious study whenever the call for homework was sounded.
 

This early emphasis on the balanced development of mind and body and the importance of family life would guide Lynden throughout his formative years and adult life.
 

On the physical side, Lynden Pindling would develop into an outstanding track sprinter in his teens, earning the title of Junior Sprint Champion.  He would excel at body-building as well.  Indeed, throughout his life, down to the present day, Sir Lynden  has subjected himself to a daily regimen of vigourous exercise including swimming, jogging and pace-walking, usually in the pre-dawn hours of the morning.  His legendary stamina on the campaign trail and in his work as Prime Minister was the direct result of this superb physical conditioning.
 

On the intellectual side, young  Lynden was soon revealed as a child of considerable promise.  Stimulated by his parents and teachers, he took readily to his studies and developed a keen interest in the world of ideas as well as extracurricular activities such as dance and drama which complemented his burgeoning athletic talent.    
 

There was one other set of experiences during Lynden’s years as a youngster which would prove to be of enduring value to his political career later on : his maritime travels throughout the Bahamian archipelago in the company of his maternal grandfather, Captain Frederick Bain.   This gave young Lynden an opportunity denied to most other of his contemporaries : the chance to see and experience first hand the varied shades and nuances of life in the Family Islands - or “Out Islands” as they were then called - and to form friendships that would last a lifetime.  Through these voyages aboard his grandfather’s mailboat, young Lynden developed an appreciation of his country’s diversity and wholeness in ways that would guide his later efforts to forge a common national identity out of our many splintered parts.
 

When he was twelve, Lynden passed the entrance exam for the Government High School, at that time the only secondary school in the colony available to black Bahamians.  Its reputation for academic excellence was already well established although its annual tuition fees of “ten pounds and ten shillings” did place it beyond the financial reach of most.   It was a therefore a mark of high pride for Lynden and his parents that he would be among the elite few to enter the hallowed halls of GHS in 1942.
 

His schoolmates at Government High would include many of the future leaders of Bahamian political society, including Arthur Hanna, Cecil Wallace-Whitfield, Paul Adderley, and Orville Turnquest, all of whom, like Lynden, were destined for careers at the bar and mutual collaboration in the struggle for majority rule.
 

Lynden’s years at Government High would coincide with dramatically unfolding events in the Bahamas and abroad.  The world was at war.  The mother-country, in particular, was battling the colossus of Nazism and the outcome of the conflict was still far from certain.  Here at home, war-time rationing meant a much leaner life for just about everybody.  In 1942, moreover, the long-held view that black Bahamians would simply suffer in silence whatever injustices were inflicted upon them was shattered forever. Angered by unequal treatment, labourers massed together in the hundreds and marched from Over The Hill onto Bay Street and its environs, wreaking destruction as they made their way into town.  In the ensuing mayhem and devastation to property, two rioters lost their lives while a dozen others sustained lesser injuries.  This uprising - the first of its kind since the days of Slavery - would come to be known as “the ’42 Riot.  No other event in the 1940’s would more powerfully impact the growth of trade unionism in the Bahamas and set the stage for the emergence of the black political protest movement in the early 1950’s.    
 

As yet unaffected by any of these winds of change, however, Lynden Pindling concentrated on his academic and athletic development while making time for the social distractions common to teenagers of any generation. Preparation for adult life was serious business, requiring a sober head, discipline and focused ambition.  Still, there was a need for balance and in this regard, young Lynden always found time for fellowship with friends in wholesome social activities.

​

By the time of his graduation from high school, Lynden’s career-choice had  become set.  He would become a lawyer.  Although a common enough ambition nowadays, it was a towering goal for a black teenager of humble birth in the 1940’s.  Indeed, with the exception of A. F. Adderley, T. A. Toote, Gerald Cash and young Randol Fawkes, the legal profession, much like the merchant class, was the exclusive preserve of the local white elite and a few colonial expatriates.  Given the social orthodoxy of the times, the prevailing view was that talented black youngsters would be much better off if they took up trade as carpenters, masons and the like rather than setting their sights on the professions.  A. F. Pindling, however, subscribed to no such view.  Instead, he was determined that his son should have every opportunity to ascend to the first rank, and the first rank in those days was the legal profession.  Besides, A.F had prepared well, scrimping and saving to make sure that when the time came, there would be enough set aside to send his son to London to train for a career at the bar.
 

And so it was that on a late Summer’s day in 1949, Lynden Pindling bade his parents goodbye as he boarded the plane that would carry him across the Atlantic to the axis of the British Empire, the great and exciting metropolis that was London.   There he would enroll in the University of London to pursue a degree in law and attach himself to the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court, to prepare himself as a barrister.
 

Like most other future leaders of British colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, Pindling would be deeply influenced by his London experiences.  In the aftermath of World War II, British influence around the world had gone into decline.  The days of empire seemed numbered.  Already Britain’s  largest and most prized possession, India, had secured its Independence while nearly all of British Africa was beginning to march to the beat of the Nationalist drum under a cadre of charismatic leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya.   As London itself was still the intellectual capital of this emergent “Third World”, students like young Lynden Pindling could not have but followed with keen interest the radical, new directions in which the greater part of the colonized world seemed headed.  Indeed, it could not have failed to occur to him that these same “Winds of Change” would one day inevitably blow into his own tiny country, as indeed they were already beginning to do in the larger territories further south, like British Guiana under Cheddi Jagan, Trinidad under Eric Williams and Jamaica under Norman Manley.  At the start of the 1950’s, however, it was Africa that was leading the way in the cause of Nationalism. 
 

English politics would also capture Lynden’s attention during his student days in London.  Like most other of his African and West Indian contemporaries, he would be greatly influenced by the democratic socialism of the Labour Party, particularly as it related to the idea of a mixed economy in which free market forces would be held in check by direct state-sponsored investment in the economy.  He would also be deeply impressed with the British Labour Party’s social welfare programmes aimed, as they were, at providing a national safety net for the poor, the sick and the elderly.
 

Pindling’s time in London, then, would prove invaluable not only in terms of equipping him for the legal career that awaited him upon his return to Nassau but also, more importantly, in terms of shaping the basic core-concepts of his political ideology.
As much as he had enjoyed his four years in London, Pindling was thrilled that he would be returning home for good in 1953.  He had now attained his law degree from the University of London and had been called to the English bar.  As such, he would be automatically entitled for admission to the Bahamas bar once back in Nassau.  He decided, however, to stay on in London for just a short while longer so as not to miss the grand spectacle and pageantry of Elizabeth the Second’s coronation as the new Sovereign.
 

The Bahamas to which Pindling returned in 1953 seemed little changed from the place he had left four years before.  He viewed it now, however, through a different and more penetrating lens.
 

The colony was an unbelievably backward place.  Racial segregation and discrimination were deeply interwoven into the social and economic fabric while the political setup seemed little more than a fiefdom of the Bay Street merchant class.  Within the City of Nassau, nearly all hotels, restaurants, movie-theatres and other places of social resort were strictly off-limits to blacks, irrespective of their station in life.  Private schools like Queen’s College and, later, St. Andrews were also, with few exceptions, exclusively for whites as were clubs as varied as the Royal Nassau Sailing Club and The Gym Tennis Club.  Nearly all of the new housing subdivisions like Westward Villas expressly barred non-caucasians from owning lots.  As far as the economy was concerned, most banks, shops and offices in the city hired only local or expatriate whites while strict licensing policies and political directions to local banks ensured that only the “Bay Street Boys” or those few specifically blessed by them would have any entree into the mercantile economy.  Apart from petty shops, the economy was pretty much reserved for the barons of Bay Street, each of them holding sway over some particular monopoly.
 

To make matters worse, these same barons were in full control of House of Assembly, then as now, the hub of the political system.  Although posturing themselves as having been democratically elected by popular vote, it was all a fraud.  In truth, white political supremacy was propped up not so much by the will of the people as by a combination of devices of scandalous conception.
 

To begin with, shameless gerrymandering was a key tool in the maintenance of white political power.  The predominantly white islands of Harbour Island and Abaco, for example, had three seats apiece in the House of Assembly while the whole of the virtually all-black Southern District of New Providence which, in terms of population, was ten times larger, returned only two members.
 

Secondly, there was no secret ballot at elections. Balloting instead was conducted in the open so that how one voted was instantly made known to all the world with all the attendant risk of victimization if one should happen to vote the “wrong” way.
Secondly, bribery was an endemic part of the electioneering process. Given their immense wealth, the Bay Street combine would simply “buy out” whole settlements in the Out Islands to secure an election victory over a less financially equipped opposing candidate.
 

Thirdly, elections were not all held on the same day but staggered instead over a period of weeks, thereby enabling the ruling elite to concentrate their power on a single prey before moving on to pick off the next.
Fourthly, there was something called the “property vote” which enabled one to vote in as many different places as one happened to own property.
 

Fifthly, there was something even more repugnant to democratic notions called “the company vote”.  This device enabled one to vote not only for one’s self but to vote as many times over as one had registered companies.
Sixthly, women could not vote at all.
 

Seventhly, most British expatriates could obtain the right to vote at Bahamian elections after only a short period of residence and since most persons in this class were closely associated with one element or another of the ruling clique, they represented yet another support-base for the white power structure.
 

Not surprisingly, then, the bright, energetic young lawyer, Lynden Pindling, fresh from London and its world of progressive ideas, would not take long to rise up in protest against the injustices and inequities so prevalent in the homeland to which he had now returned.
 

By intriguing coincidence, the year of Lynden’s return to the Bahamas as a new lawyer would be the very year in which the era of party politics would be inaugurated in the colony.
 

In September of 1953, the Progressive Liberal Party was launched by its founding fathers H.M (later Sir Henry) Taylor, Cyril St. John Stevenson and William (“Bill”) Cartwright.   Modelled closely after the British Labour Party and The PNP in Jamaica, the PLP would be the first political party in the history of the Bahamas to agitate for a system of democratic government founded on the principle of universal adult suffrage and dedicated to the emancipation of the masses from the chains of ignorance, racial discrimination and economic marginalization.   Its mission was to wrest the colony from the iron grip of an oligarchy which treated the political system as little more than the guarantor of its economic interests so that a reign of social and economic justice for all might be instituted in its stead.
 

Before the year was out, Lynden had joined the fledgling PLP.  His father, skeptical like many others at the time of the true intentions of the “brown” men who were leading the party, had counselled Lynden to wait a few years to see how it would develop.  Inspired, however, by a gut feeling that the new party was what was needed to press the fight for justice in his country, Lynden decided to take the plunge.  It would prove to be the decision of a lifetime.
 

The early years of the PLP were excruciatingly difficult.  Victimization of its members by the ruling clique sent out a signal to all and sundry that to join the party was risky business.  Despite these early reverses, however, the membership of the PLP steadily grew, particularly in the poor “Over-the-Hill” sections of New Providence and in certain of the Out Islands like Long Island where H.M Taylor was already established as one of the Representatives and Andros where Cyril Stevenson had developed a base and where the immensely charismatic and politically savvy Clarence Bain was emerging as the single most influential figure.
 

By 1956, having attracted the likes of such champions of liberty as the great Milo (later Sir Milo) Butler, the party had become sufficiently well established to field a team of candidates for the General Elections scheduled for June 6th.   Pindling would be among them, standing as a candidate for the Southern District of New Providence along with Randol Fawkes, then the single most influential black leader in the country through his leadership of the burgeoning trade union movement.  In all, the party would field candidates to go up against the candidates of the Bay Street Boys who by this time had organized themselves into a formal political party as well.  It was called “The United Bahamian Party” (“UBP”).(formed 1958) 
 

But there was more important business of a personal nature for Lynden to attend to first.  A young lady of quite exceptional beauty, poise, native intelligence and charm had caught his eye.  She was a product of Andros - “the great continent to the West” as Clarence Bain preferred to describe it - but had moved with her family to Nassau some years before.  Her name was Marguerite McKenzie.  Feeling assured that the income from his law practice would enable him to support a wife and their future family, Lynden, after a period of courtship, proposed to Marguerite and she accepted.  On May 5th, with not quite a month remaining before Lynden’s first electoral contest, they were married.  From this union would come four children : Lynden Obafemi, Leslie Oscar, Michelle Marguerite, Monique Marguerite.   Although initially indifferent to politics, Marguerite would later immerse herself in it but never at the expense of nurturing her children in a warm and loving family environment.  Throughout her husband’s long and turbulent political career, Marguerite would be at his side, standing tall in every storm and taking on his detractors and foes with a ferocity and directness which perhaps instilled fear in some but earned for her the respect of all.
 

Lynden and his young bride had planned to take up residence in a house at the corner of East Bay St. and Ernest Street which he had taken out a lease on shortly before the wedding.  Upon returning from their honeymoom in Grand Bahama, however, they were informed that the lease had been cancelled.  The owners of the property had made it known that they did not wish to rent to a PLP.  In the result, Lynden and Marguerite were obliged to take up residence at his parents’ home on East Street until they could afford to build a house of their own.
 

Lynden’s entry into electoral politics, however, was more straightforward. Both he and Fawkes were easily elected, besting their opponents by a wide margin.  Overall, however, the PLP had won only six seats, Milo Butler, Cyril Stevenson, Clarence Bain and young Sammy Isaacs being the other successful candidates.  By contrast, the UBP and independent candidates had together won the remaining twenty-three seats.  Moreover, the PLP had sustained a major blow when its leader, H.M.Taylor, failed in his bid for re-election.
 

The first order of business for the party’s National General Council in the aftermath of the 1956 election was therefore the election of a new leader.  Lynden had given the matter virtually no thought at all, considering his youth and  parliamentary inexperience to be insuperable handicaps in the face of a such seasoned political veterans as Milo Butler, Randol Fawkes and Cyril Stevenson.   Entirely unbeknownst to Pindling, however, Taylor, Stevenson and others in the party hierarchy had already decided that he would be the best person to lead the party in the difficult days that lay ahead.  Thus, when at the Council meeting, Taylor moved for Pindling’s nomination as parliamentary leader and Stevenson rose to second it, Pindling was profoundly surprised.  Before he could even ponder the matter, the nomination was approved.



The nine year period from 1956 to 1967 would prove a time of arduous struggle for Pindling and the popular protest movement.



Following the 1956 elections, The Bay St. Boys, spearheaded by the brilliant but ruthless Sir Stafford Sands and Sir Roland (“Pop”) Symonette, seemed even less interested than before in the democratization of the colony.  The status quo, with all its warts and wrinkles, worked perfectly well for them and they seemed more determined than ever to preserve it just the way it was - more so now that it was under assault from an organized opposition.  Reactionary and intransigent to the core, they greeted with indifference the PLP’s demands for universal adult suffrage and other reforms to the electoral system aimed at empowering the black majority and creating an authentic democracy.  Rather than embrace the cause of reform, they tightened their grip on the levers of political power while consolidating their economic monopolies.

​

The PLP meanwhile pressed its campaign for reform on two broad fronts, one international, and the other domestic. 
On the international front, Pindling and his colleagues busied themselves with representations to the Colonial Office in London, exhorting the metropolitan government to use its influence to initiate electoral reforms. Indeed, within months of his election as Leader, Pindling along with H.M. Taylor and Milo Butler Sr. were off to London to press the PLP’s case, meeting with officials from the Colonial Office and drumming up support among sympathetic members of the British Labour Party.   In due course, Pindling and his colleagues would go even farther afield to enlist the sympathies of world opinion, even making representations to the United Nations. 
 

On the domestic front, Pindling and his colleagues set about the systematic canvassing of the entire archipelago, forming Party branches from Inagua in the far south to Bimini and Grand Bahama in the north, preaching the gospel of racial pride, majority rule and economic justice for the toiling masses wherever they went.  Parallel with these organizing initiatives, Pindling and his parliamentary colleagues raised the party’s profile in the House of Assembly with their aggressive and resourceful opposition to the ruling clique. 
 

Although advances would steadily be made over time, it was tough going in these early days of the political struggle.  The centuries of discrimination, degradation and the denial of educational opportunity had taken a heavy toll on the psyche of the black majority.  The idea that black people could govern a country as well as whites was still, for many black Bahamians, thoroughly incomprehensible.  Conditioned, as they had been, into believing that “white was right” and that all power belonged to the white man as much from might as from divine right, the very idea of Black empowerment was for many black Bahamians a ridiculous hallucination.  Thus, when the PLP sought to posture itself as the alternative government and to sound the call for black majority rule, they were scoffed at and shunned by many of their own race.  Indeed, for a long time “PLP” was treated as a synonym for upstart blacks who did not know their place and who could only come to ruin if they persisted in their attacks upon the bastions of white supremacy. 
 

Although this psychological enslavement was evident throughout the Bahamas, it was a particularly intractable problem in the Out Islands where, with few exceptions, the Bay Street Boys held unchallenged sway over the minds and economic livelihood of the populace.  Indeed, in some settlements, visiting delegations from the PLP were treated with all the hospitality reserved for lepers.  Lodging was frequently difficult to come by and transportation of times a logistical nightmare, necessitating lengthy travels on foot and perilous trips on rickety scull-boats to move about settlements separated by water.  Doors were sometimes shut in their faces amidst a hail of epithets while requests for shelter, and sometimes even food, would be denied for fear that such hospitality might be mistaken for political sympathy. 
 

Exacerbating the difficulties of the PLP in these early days was its own threadbare finances.  Without financial resources to draw on,  headway in the Out Islands was next to impossible.  The PLP was the poor man’s party while the Bay St. Boys with all their financial muscle could make all the difference between whether one lived or starved.  Faced with such a choice, the great majority of Out Islanders wanted nothing to do with the PLP in the early days.
 

In the main population centre of New Providence, however, the PLP’s message was catching on with considerably less resistance.   It was still an uphill battle with treacherous terrain every step of the way but there could be no denying that the masses in the run-down, horribly depressed “Over-the-hill” were inexorably drawing together in common struggle against a common foe and that it was the PLP to whom they were increasingly turning to lead the way and to articulate their economic grievances in concert with the trade union movement. 
 

Indeed, the PLP was making a name for itself in New Providence not only for its political work Over-the-Hill and in the country at large but for its increasingly radical temper in the House of Assembly where the PLP’s “Magnificent Six”, as they were called, were proving themselves the debating match of the Bay St. Boys. 
 

Young “ lawyer Pindling”, in particular, was proving himself an eloquent and skillful legislator.  Always thoroughly prepared for debate, he spoke with authority and clarity in a vibrant voice, radiating enormous self-confidence and intellectual power.  Already, his charismatic appeal was strikingly evident.  Cool, calm and collected, he was also emerging as a political strategist of unique gifts.  Indeed, with his leadership abilities now so evident, he was clearly the man to watch.  His star was in the ascendancy.   With his more disciplined and methodical approach to party politics, it seemed only a matter of time before Pindling would eclipse Randol Fawkes as the pre-eminent leader of the grass-roots struggle.   
 

Pindling’s talents would be put to a crucial test in 1958 in what is still remembered as both the most historic strike in the history of labour relations in the Bahamas and the defining moment in the collaboration of organized labour with the PLP. 
Angered by the ruling clique’s decision to franchise a large, white-owned bus company to transport tourists en masse from the airport, close to 200 taxi-drivers, realizing that their livelihood was at stake, had blockaded all roads to and from the airport in November of 1957.  Led by the Taxi Union President, Clifford (later Sir Clifford) Darling, Nick Musgrove, Lochinvar Lockhart and Wilbert Moss, it was declared by Mr. Darling to be a protest by “the small man against the big monopolies”. 
 

By January 8th, however, what had begun as a taxi-union protest had cascaded into what remains to this day the first and only General Strike in the history of the Bahamas.  For more than two weeks, the colony was in a state of paralysis.  Banding together in an unprecedented display of solidarity over the plight of their brothers in the taxi-cab union, workers at hotels, construction-sites, bakeries, garbage collection depots, the airport, BEC, the Public Works Department and at scores of other establishments went on strike, shutting the country down tight.
 

Pindling, already closely associated with the taxicab union as its legal adviser and intimately involved in the planning strategy, along with Jimmy Shepherd and the Bahamas Federation of Labour President, Randol Fawkes were assigned the task of initiating the General Strike.   
 

Entering the Emerald Beach Hotel (at the present site of the Nassau Marriott) at breakfast time on the morning of January 12th, Pindling clapped his hand on the shoulder of a waiter by the name of Solomon Campbell and uttered aloud the previously agreed-upon password that would signal to workers that the strike had begun.  It was the single word “Now!” 
From hotel to hotel, from job-site to job-site, the same scene was repeated with workers walking off their jobs - and staying away until their union leaders told them that that it was okay to go back to work.
 

The General Strike would have important and far-reaching consequences.  Not only did it result in a more satisfactory arrangement for taxi-drivers in the transportation of tourists to and from the airport but, more importantly, it prompted the Colonial Office in London to at long last take up the cause of social and political reform in the Bahamas. 
 

As a direct result of the personal visit of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Lennox-Boyd, the Bay St. Boys - constituted now as the United Bahamian Party - were given little choice but to implement precisely the electoral reforms for which Pindling and his colleagues in the protest movement had been agitating.
 

In 1959, a new Elections law was passed giving all males over the age of 21 the right to vote while abolishing the Company vote and curtailing plural voting.  Moreover, at the PLP’s urging, four additional seats were created in New Providence to offset the disproportionate number of seats in the Out Islands and to provide the heavily concentrated black electorate in New Providence with more equitable representation in the House of Assembly.  Bye-elections for these new seats were to held as soon as practicable.  On the labour front, a Department of Labour was established for the first time as a new organ of government and a new reform-minded Act was passed giving workers greater freedom to form trade unions while creating a machinery for the settlement of industrial disputes.
 

The PLP’s standing among virtually all sectors of the black community in New Providence would grow considerably in the aftermath of the 1958 strike and the introduction of the electoral reforms for which the party under Pindling’s leadership had fought so hard.  
 

Convincing proof of the PLP’s skyrocketing popularity would soon be had when it captured all four of the newly created seats in New Providence - 2 in the South, the other two in the East - in special bye-elections held in 1960. 
 

Included amongst the four new PLP members-elect was the man destined to become Pindling’s closest ally in the years ahead, Arthur Dion Hanna, himself an English trained lawyer and a passionate nationalist of socialist tendency.   The other three newly elected PLP members were Spurgeon Bethel, C.A. Dorsett and Party Chairman, H.M. Taylor, now returned to the House after his defeat in 1956.
 

By the time of the General Election of 1962, the momentum of popular support for the PLP had reached such a pitch that hopes ran high that the day of majority rule had finally arrived. 
 

For the first time, Bahamian women would be voting, thanks, in part, to the persistent agitation of the PLP.  Moreover, young Bahamians and nearly all of the black intelligentsia had by this time rallied enthusiastically behind the PLP and its energetic youth arm, The National Committee for Positive Action.  Even in many of the traditional UBP strongholds in the Out Islands, the PLP had made substantial inroads. 
 

In sum, the conditions for a change of government seemed ripe.
 

However, it was not to be.  Underfinanced and severely handicapped by the Up’s gerrymandering, the PLP went down in defeat once again, garnering a large share of the popular vote but losing badly when it came to the all-important share of seats in the House of Assembly.
 

It was a bitter disappointment for Pindling and the thousands of ardent PLP supporters across the country.
 

For Pindling and his colleagues, however, there could be no turning back.  Instead, it was time for a re-doubling of effort so that next time - five years thence - the party would be ready to lead the Bahamian people into the promised land of majority rule and equal opportunity.
 

To be the Leader of the PLP in this critical period, however, was no easy task.  The black populace of the country, particularly in the urban centers of New Providence and Grand Bahama, were at the end of their tether, frustrated and angry that the country remained in the grip of a small and arrogant minority.  The body politic was at a slow boil; its temperature was rising.  Tempers were flaring all around and increasingly there was talk of mass insurrection.  Indeed, elements inside the PLP even were advocating the embrace of more extremist measures to force the minority from power. 
 

It was Pindling’s task then to moderate these escalating passions by instilling hope for the future while admonishing his followers that the struggle for change derived its moral strength and legitimacy from the PLP’s commitment to non-violence and democratic values.  Yes, the intransigence of the UBP demanded that the struggle be intensified but not at the cost of surrendering the moral high ground.  In this regard, Pindling had been deeply influenced by the example of his friend, Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. just as Dr. King, in his own turn, had been profoundly influenced by the teachings and example of Mahatma Gandhi in his campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to the British in India two decades before.  It was within this tradition, then, that Pindling was determined to contain the struggle for majority rule.
 

But the embrace of non-violence as the guiding ethos of the PLP’s struggle did not mean that Pindling and his colleagues had to rest content with anemic, mild-mannered forms of protest.  Indeed, the conditions of the times demanded a radicalization of the PLP’s struggle if the Bay Street oligarchy was to be dislodged from the seat of power.  

Dramatic evidence of this new, more radical thrust to the PLP’s political game plan would be provided on “Black Tuesday” - April 20th, 1965 -  when, in an unprecedented act of defiance, Pindling calmly but deliberately threw the Speaker’s Mace out of the upstairs window of the House of Assembly onto Bay Street where thousands of Bahamians had assembled in solidarity with the PLP’s protest against the UBP’s latest gerrymandering of the electoral boundaries. 
 

As he threw the Mace out the window, Pindling proclaimed that the Speaker’s Mace was the symbol of authority and that he was therefore returning it to the people with whom all political authority ultimately rested.  No sooner had Pindling hurled the Mace outside when Milo Butler snatched the hour-glass off the Clerk’s table and tossed it out the window as well - this in specific protest of the “15 minutes rule” which had for so long been invoked by the Speaker, R.H. (Bobby) Symonette, to limit the speeches of members in the House. 
 

With that, Pindling along with Milo Butler, Arthur Hanna and Arthur Hanna walked out of the House into the Public Square to address the massive throng and ensure that peace would continue to prevail.
 

Though angry and vociferous in its protests, however, the crowd had remained largely peaceful throughout, thanks in large measure to the superb marshalling and organizing abilities of Party Chairman, Cecil (later Sir Cecil) Wallace-Whitfield and his able seconds-in-command, Jeffrey Thompson, Cadwell Armbrister, Clifford Darling and Oscar Johnson.
 

Climbing atop a Post Office van parked in the Public Square, Pindling urged the protesters to remain peaceable and non-violent and to refrain from any physical confrontation with the police.  After explaining the events that had led to the protest, he invited the crowd to join him in one more act of civil disobedience: to shut down Bay Street by engaging in a peaceful “sit-down” right in the middle of the street; it would be the culmination of two weeks of demonstrations and protests against the “gross inequities” and “blatant gerrymandering” which the UBP seemed determined to carry out to in order to defer indefinitely the advent of Majority Rule.

​

In calling for the protesters to join him in the sit-down, however, Pindling exhorted them all to remember that the PLP’s commitment to non-violent civil disobedience necessitated the utmost restraint in the face of provocation.  “Do not fight with the police”, he said. “ Should the Police try to lift you away”, he continued, “ do not resist; let them, and if they want to drag you, let them drag you”.
 

With that call, Pindling led the protestors in a massive sit-down on Bay Street, bringing all traffic to a halt.
In anticipation that the protest might soon erupt into deadly violence, the Riot Act was read by Magistrate John Bailey, calling for all persons to disperse immediately or face the consequences.  Meanwhile, the Riot Squad of the Royal Bahamas Force had taken up strategic positions in full battle dress outside the doors of the House and in the Public Square.  A British warship, moreover, lay at the ready should further help be needed.
 

Though 13 people would be arrested as a result of the sit-down, the surging crowd heeded the command to remain non-violent.  Soon, at the directive of Pindling and Wallace-Whitfield, the demonstrators left Bay Street in a massive parade “over the hill” to the Southern Recreation Grounds.
 

In all, the events of Black Tuesday proved a rude awakening for the UBP. Although still stubbornly sticking with the electoral boundaries, which so blatantly favored them, the handwriting was now clearly on the wall for all to see:  the PLP- spearhead of the popular struggle - would not to be denied.   Indeed, with the PLP now openly supported by the vast majority of the black population, it seemed only a matter of time before the Old Guard would be swept from power and Majority Rule instituted.
 

The crucial test would be the General Election of January 10th, 1967.
 

With Pindling as Party Leader and Wallace-Whitfield as Party Chairman, the PLP was whipped into fighting shape as the elections neared.  Although still terribly mismatched against the UBP in terms of funding, the PLP was nonetheless placed on a solid war footing through the leadership’s insistence on cohesive teamwork and strict adherence to tactical game plans involving a cast of thousands.
 

In order to maximize the Party’s chances of winning the Government, Pindling, in a bold but daring move, had opted to give up his “ultra-safe” seat in the South and stand instead as the PLP candidate for the marginal seat in South Andros.  In so doing, Pindling realized, of course, that his defeat would spell certain political death for him but the times demanded that sacrifices and risks of this kind be taken.
 

The 1967 General Election would prove to be a cliffhanger. 
 

By the time most of the polling division results had been reported over ZNS, it was plain that the General Election had resolved itself into a dead heat between the PLP and the UBP, with each Party claiming 18 seats while the remaining two seats in the 38 member House would go to Independent candidate, Alvin (later Sir Alvin) Braynen and Labour Party leader, Randol Fawkes.
 

The tie notwithstanding, Over-the-Hill erupted in celebration to the beat of junkanoo drums and the sounds of trumpets, car horns and jubilant voices, which continued throughout the night into the early morning.
 

Pindling, having emerged triumphant in his own keenly contested race in South Andros immediately entered into dialogue with Braynen and Fawkes with a view to securing the necessary majority for the formation of the first black government in the history of the Bahamas.  The UBP, meanwhile, sought to entice Braynen and Fawkes to their side in a last-ditch effort to perpetuate minority rule.
 

It would be Pindling’s diplomacy, however, that would win out when Fawkes agreed to throw his support behind the PLP and Braynen agreed to accept the neutral position of Speaker of the House.
 

With the successful brokerage of those arrangements, the stage was now set for the historic transition.
Soon, the inevitable call came from the Royal Governor, Sir Ralph Grey, inviting the 36-year-old lawyer from East Street, Lynden Oscar Pindling, to form a new Government.
 

It was the culmination of a struggle, which for Pindling had begun 14 years before.   For the black majority whose cause he had championed, however, it was an event of transcendental importance; a vindication not only of their own struggles but the struggles of their forefathers who eons ago had come to an alien land as slaves but who through their own struggles to be free had impregnated all the struggles for freedom and justice that had ensued down to the magical moment of January 10th, 1967 when for the first time the sons of slaves stepped forward from the mists of history to assume the reins of power over their own destiny.
 

The realization that this was the true import of the attainment of Majority Rule in 1967 was for Lynden Pindling the most profoundly moving thing of all.
 

He had led the conquest of the Old Guard and in so doing had achieved what few had thought possible in their lifetime: the peaceful transfer of power from a white oligarchy to the black majority.

​

But as Pindling stood before the Governor and took the oath of office as Premier of the Bahama Islands, he knew only too well that his work had really only just begun for there now lay before him the awesome task of transforming the Bahamas into a land of opportunity and progress - not for the few but for all.