History
The DLP was founded in 1955 by Errol Barrow, James Cameron Tudor, Frederick "Sleepy" Smith and 26 others. Once members of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), these 26 broke away to form this more left-leaning alternative. However, as a result of this common origin, the two parties have been and remain ideologically similar. In the 1956 general elections the party received 19.9% of the vote and won four seats. In the next elections in 1961 it received fewer votes than the BLP, but won a majority of the seats in Parliament, with Barrow becoming Premier.
After the party retained power in the 1966 elections (this time with a plurality of the vote), Barrow became the country's first Prime Minister. The party won a third successive election in 1971, but lost power to the BLP in 1976. They remained in opposition until victory in the 1986 elections, in which they won 24 of the 27 seats. They remained in power following the 1991 elections, but were defeated by the BLP in the 1994 elections. They returned to power again in 2008.
Read more about this topic: Democratic Labour Party (Barbados)
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—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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