PM Douglas says the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party has been protecting and advancing interests of Kittitians and Nevisians

National Political Leader of the ruling St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party, Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas at Wednesday’s Press Conference.

Mr. Thomas Manchester, Founding Father of the St. Kitts-Nevis Workers League, now the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party.

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, FEBRUARY 23RD 2012 (CUOPM) -National Political Leader of the governing St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas says the Party has been protecting and advancing the interests of Kittitians and Nevisians for eighty years.

“This Party was founded, and has been maintained, by men and women who could see beyond the difficulties of the moment, to the tremendous potential and possibilities concealed therein.

That is why, at a time when the vast majority of Kittitians and Nevisians were denied the right to vote, the right to an education, the right to health care, the right to a secure old age, the right to assistance in times of illness, the founding fathers of this Party looked beyond the abject circumstances in which our people were forced to live, and saw, in the humble and shoeless cane-cutters, the mothers and fathers of amore just and hopeful nation,” said Prime Minister Douglas at a Press Conference at Masses House – the headquarters of the Party and the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union, called to unveil the events to mark the milestone.

Dr. Douglas, who served as the First Young Labour Representative on the Labour Party Executive in the early 1970’s, told reporters that a tradition was born, an ethos was established and a commitment was unleashed – a commitment that would pass from one generation of Labour leaders to another, “as each of us, in our respective eras, ensured that the poor of this nation were made working class, the working class, middle class, the middle class, wealthy, and the wealthy, in a position to invest in and contribute to the economic vibrancy and the social stability of this nation.”

Prime Minister Douglas said the Nation, which the founders of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party envisioned, the building blocks of which they fearlessly put in place, has been taken beyond the point to which they could have taken it, due to their own mortality and the constraints of time.

Mr. J. Matthew Sebastian, Founding Member.

His Excellency Lee Llewellyn Moore, former Political Leader and Premier.

” We, of this generation, therefore, have humbly grasped the baton that they entrusted to our care, remained true to their original mission, and have run for them, and for us all, the race which, again, due to the constraints of mortality and time, they could not,” said Dr. Douglas, pointing out that the founders of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party made it possible for the thousands upon thousands of ordinary children who had been forever locked out of high schools, to enter those high schools.

“The St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party of this generation moved to invest millions and millions of dollars in student loans and scholarships, so that ordinary Kittitian and Nevisian children, given access to a secondary education by Labour in earlier years, are now given access to a university education by Labour of today. Because, let there be no doubt, there is no greater socio-economic multiplier than education. And the history books will forever record that this most powerful and transformative bequest to the people of this country was delivered, with love and respect, by Labour,” said Dr. Douglas, who was first elected to the St. Kitts and Nevis House of Assembly in March 21st1989.

Dr. Douglas was elected National Political Leader of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party in May 1989 and has been re-elected unopposed at the Party’s Conference each year.

Noting that the Labour Party of an earlier era worked side by side with the sister organisation, the St. Kitts-Nevis Trades and Labour Union, to secure fair wages for the thousands upon thousands of sugar workers who worked the land, Dr. Douglas, who was appointed Prime Minister following the July 1995 General Elections, said the Labour Party of this generation then moved to construct homes, by the thousands, on these same lands, so that sugar-cane workers, their children, and their children’s children could at last assert their rights as land-owners and home owners, in this the land of their birth.