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| Sir Paul and Lady Gladys Southwell |
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS (SEPTEMBER 12TH 2004) – The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis has two more National Heroes.
The St. Kitts and Nevis National Assembly has unanimously approved separate resolutions supporting the recommendation that Dominica-born former Chief Minister and Premier of St. Kitts and Nevis, the Hon. C.A. Paul Southwell and Nevisian-born Trade Unionist and former Social Services Minister, Sir Joseph N. France are “eminently appropriate candidates for the award of National Hero posthumously.”
Former Premier, the Right Excellent Sir Robert L. Bradshaw was given a similar award posthumously in 1996 and declared the Federation’s First National Hero.
Like Bradshaw, the award bestows the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the National Hero on Southwell and France and comes on the eve of celebrations to mark the 21st Anniversary of Independence. Southwell will now be refered to as Sir Paul Southwell. It is the second Knighthood for Sir Joseph, who was awarded the KCMG by the Queen in 1996.
Caleb Azariah Paul Southwell was born in 1913 in Dominica. He became a teacher at the age of thirteen years.
Southwell joined the Leeward Islands Police Force in 1938 and in 1944 found employment at the St. Kitts (Basseterre) Sugar Factory.
He was recruited into the Labour Movement and assisted as part-time organiser of the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union becoming its Vice President in 1947. In 1948, he was in the forefront with other Union leaders organising the Thirteen Week Strike.
Following his dismissal from the factory, Southwell spent a year representing workers free of cost to the Union. Eventually he was appointed the first field organiser with a wage of $15 a week. He also functioned as associate editor of The Union Messenger and was responsible for the publication of two pamphlets – “The truth about Operation Blackburn” and “The Union - What it is, what it does.” the latter co-authored with Robert Bradshaw.
Paul Southwell was elected to the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Legislature in 1952 and appointed to the Executive Council in 1955.
In 1956, when a ministerial system was introduced, Southwell was given the portfolio of Communications and Works. Hoping for even more extensive constitutional changes, Southwell lead a delegation to London in 1959 and this resulted in the introduction of a constitution granting a full ministerial system in 1960. Southwell became the First Chief Minister, a post he held until 1966.
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| Sir Joseph N. France (Photos courtesy of the St. Kitts National Archives) |
St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla assumed the status of Statehood in association with Great Britain in 1967 with Bradshaw as Premier and Southwell, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance, Trade, Development, Industry and Tourism.
Over the years he found himself very much involved in regional organisations. He was Chairman of the Caribbean Tourism Association and Chairman of the West Indies Associated States Council of Ministers.
In 1978, following the death of Bradshaw, Southwell was appointed Premier. Southwell died in 1979.
He hoped that his way of doing business would dispel fears and attract enough investors to broaden the industrial base.
Southwell was interested in the arts and in sports. He was President of the Mutual Improvement Society, and a devotee of the works of William Shakespeare. The first State’s Art Festival of 1964 was his brainchild. He was the founder of the Chief Minister’s Cricket XI in 1960 and later President of the St. Kitts Cricket Association. He was also an enthusiastic golfer. Southwell pioneered the economic diversification in St. Kitts and Nevis. The industrial site is named in his honour and is called the C.A. Paul Southwell Industrial Park.
Joseph Nathaniel France, K.C.M.G., C.B.E., J.P. was born in Mount Lily, Nevis, on the 16th September, 1907 and came to St. Kitts at the tender age of 13 years to spend school holidays with his relatives at New Town, Basseterre.
Before the holidays ended, he was offered a job as Office Boy with the St. Kitts-Nevis Universal Benevolent Association Ltd., a friendly society then called "The Union.”
France later became a printer at the Progressive Printery Ltd., which was connected with the Universal Benevolent Association, which in 1921 started publication of a newspaper, The Union Messenger, edited by J. Matthew Sebastian, the father of the current Governor-General, Sir Cuthbert Montraville Sebastian.
As a champion of the underprivileged, the paper paved the way for the formation of the St. Kitts Workers' League Ltd. in 1932, afterwards renamed the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Labour Party.
As a Director of the Workers' League, he was in the front line of Labour leaders filling the role of peacemaker on the scene of the Buckley’s Riots of 1935.
In 1938, France was elected Secretary of the Workers' League and was a member of the League's delegation which gave evidence before the Royal West India Commission of 1938-39 appointed to inquire into social and economic conditions in the British Caribbean.
In 1940, Mr. France was elected as the first General Secretary of the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union and was re-elected every year until his death on May 21st, 1997.
Mr. France was first elected to the St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Parliament (Legislature) in July 1946 when there were just three (3) elected representatives provided for St. Kitts under the Constitution Ordinance of 1937. (The other two elected representatives on the Workers League ticket were the late revered Labour leader Comrade Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw and Maurice H. Davis, (the late Sir Maurice Davis) who went on to become Chief Justice of the West Indies Supreme Court.
Comrade France served as “Member for Social Services” (from 1952) before the full Ministerial System was introduced in 1960. He then became the Minister for Social Services (which included Education, Health and Social Affairs under the then Labour Administration headed by Chief Minister the Hon. C. A. Paul Southwell.
When the new hospital in Basseterre was put down at its present site in Buckley’s in 1967, it was named after him, on account of his invaluable service in the field of health and other related areas.
Mr. France successfully contested nine General Elections - 1946, 1952, 1957, 1961, 1966, 1971, 1975, 1980, 1984 - as a representative of the people of St. Kitts (representing the constituency and people of West Basseterre since 1952 when adult suffrage was introduced in the territory of St. Kitts-Nevis and Anguilla).
In 1978, he was graciously awarded the honour of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) and in 1996, Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George by Her Majesty the Queen.
