Belize is still reeling from the disaster of Hurricane Iris. Nevertheless, the country pauses to mark the passing of an Icon. And we that have gathered here at historic Holy Redeemer Cathedral do so not just to bury his mortal remains, but to begin the formal process of immortalizing his life and work, consecrating his memory to the glory of our nation.

            Haven been asked to do the funeral speech made me feel a bit of an impostor. There are so many that knew Philip far longer and better then me. What I have done, therefore, is to make liberal use of ‘the Goldson Story’ prepared by the Belizean Heritage Foundation and the recent tribute of Mrs. Gilda Lewis on the occasion of Philip’s haven been conferred the Order of Belize. These two pieces offer a good start to the copious written record of Philip’s politics and persona that we now expect our scholars and historians to prepare. As well of course, I have drawn on recollections of Philip’s family and friends, most notably his wife Hadie and the Honorable Michael Finnegan.

Philip Stanley Wilberforce Goldson was born in Belize City on July 25^th, 1923, the second son of Peter Edward Goldson and Florence Matilda Babb. He attended St. Mary’s Primary School, but for one reason or another was not able to go Secondary School. From early though the resolve for which he was to become a legend, stamped his character. Studying entirely on his own, the teenager sat and passed the Cambridge University Overseas Junior certificate in 1939 and the Senior Certificate in 1941.

            He worked in the Civil Service from 1941 ton 1947, then joined Leigh Richardson as Co-Editor of Belize Billboard. Like so many of the other larger than life Caribbean figures – Bustamante and Manley in Jamaica, Eric Williams in Trinidad, Robert Bradshaw in St. Kitts, Vere Bird in Antigua and Eric Gairy in Grenada-Philip’s route into politics was via the Labor Movement. He first became General Secretary of the General Workers Union; and together with Johnny Smith and George Price presided over the birth of Nationalist politics in Belize, forming the People’s United Party in 1950. Philp Goldson’s personal odyssey led him to break with the PUP in 1956 and begin his own Honduran Independence Party, then to merge that with Herbert Fuller’s National Party. The new creation was known as National Independence Party.

            Later still, in 1973, the NIP, together with Dean Lindo’s People’s Democratic Movement and Manuel Esquivel’s Liberal Party, became the United Democratic Party. But Philip’s political journey did not stop even there. In 1991, notwithstanding the approaching twilight years, Philip formed and led his party, the National Alliance for Belizean Rights.                

            Throughout Philp Goldson’s storied career, the issue that most obsessed him was the Guatemala Claim to Belize. And the quality that most identify him was the iron will. Subsumed within the latter were his tenacity, his personal courage, and his absolute refusal to comprise.

            On 11^th April 1962, Philip held a demonstration to protest the composition of Belize delegation to the Puerto Rico Conference. That conference had been convened between Britain and Guatemala to discuss the claim, and for the first time Belizean leaders were allowed to participate. But Philip, the uncompromising defender of Belizean Rights, the most vociferous proponent of no concessions, was excluded from the delegation. On his own, Philp went to Puerto Rico and demanded admittance to the meeting. When he was refused, Philp staged a one-man picket in front of the building where the talks were being held. Now it is one thing to dissent, perhaps even break the law, in your own country. It is quite another to do so in a foreign land-alone, unaided, unfamiliar with the language and laws of the place, without any money even to secure the services of an attorney should you be thrown in jail. His Puerto Rico vigil was the defining moment of an epic crusade that would continue well into Independence and beyond.

            The magnitude of Philip’s stand in Puerto Rico is made great still, when we recollect that he held already gone to prison here in Belize. The incident for which he was sentenced also gives some idea of the malice and power of the force he was prepared to challenge. He was tried and convicted of sedition merely for writing and the following: “There are two roads to self- government: Evolution or Revolution. We are now trying evolution.” The colonial government held that the words imputed an intention to make revolution if evolution did not succeed. Today, of course, because of the free speech democracy Philip Goldson pioneered, it would be laughable for authorities to try and take up a man for expressing comparable sentiments.

            Both Philip’s wife and his sister Mrs. Maude Williams, point out that it wasn’t just that Philip was incarcerated for a year. It was also that it was imprisonment ‘with hard labour.’ And in those days hard labour meant exactly what it said.

            Throughout the 1960s Philip Goldson was involved in skirmishes, and sometimes pitched battles, with the authorities. Because of the militant language he used at a May 15^th, 1962 Public Meeting, he was hauled before the courts by the Attorney General. Shortly thereafter, he was again arrested and charged with a breach of the peace.

            In 1967, after self- government, the PUP administration refused permission for as L and POB march to celebrate the Battle of St. George’s Caye. Philip led the parade anyway on September 10^th.

            In 1962 he staged his first protest over government’s monopoly use of the only, and publicly owned, radio station; and the continued denial of Opposition access to the airwaves was something that galled him for years. When finally in 1968 the National Assembly introduced live broadcasts of House of Representatives meetings, it was payback time. Philip Godson spoke non stop for 8 ½ hours.

            In July of 1963, Philip went on hunger strike to denounce the one –party representation to the London Constitutional Conference on self- government; and in 1966 led massive public protest against the 13 Proposals, the result of a mediation effort obviously designed to favor the Guatemalan claim.

            In 1967 Philip was again arrested, this time for blocking the Belize City Swing Bridge as a way of dramatizing his opposition to any deals with Guatemala. Later that year, he led Belizeans in New York in a demonstration in front of United Nations Headquarters.

            Throughout all this time, it was worth noting, he was the target of a sustained campaign of harassment on the part of his political opponents. It included attempts to break up his public meeting, media unification, the hurling of racialist epithets, and outright physical assaults. Both his home and newspaper offices were set on fire, and not even his wife and children were spared, forcing them eventually into a kind of exile in the United States. 

            In August of 1967, Philip addressed the de-colonization Committee of the United Nations. It was such a compelling performance that he was asked to come back later in the year to speak before the entire General Assembly. He was the first Belizean to have that honor. He it was that began the process of internationalizing the Belize issue, touring the Commonwealth Caribbean and Canada in 1966 and 1967 as Leader of the Opposition. As a result, then Jamaican Prime Minister Hugh Shearer agreed to lead the diplomatic effort on behalf of Belize’s independence; and Philip’s contacts with Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Paul Martin, also bore fruit in the formalization of a Canadian programme of aid to, and cooperation with, Belize.

            To locate properly in the historical context, we must always remember that at the time of his crusading crisscross of Belize, infrastructure was poor and modes of travel rudimentary. Accordingly, his pilgrimages into the rural areas could be quite dangerous. During the 1966 town Board elections, foe example, Philip was traveling in a dorey across the Crooked tree lagoon. The dorey capsized and Philip’s NIP companion, Andrew Meighan, drowned. Philip himself, who could not swim, was only saved by the frantic efforts of the guide.

            To identify a patriot, it is said that he would lay down his life for his country. But often, that is no more than rhetorical. In Philip Goldson’s case, there was never any doubt that at any moment he was prepared literally to die for Belize.

            Again, society in Belize in the 1960s was not nearly as free from divisions of race and ethnicity as it is now. Thus it was, that Philip’s opponents always tried to make an impediment of his being a Black Man. But Philip’s charisma and nationalist fire were so transcendent, that he quite early succeeded in winning the primarily Mestizo municipalities of first Benque Viejo, then Orange Walk, to his cause.

            While his long years in Opposition marked him indelibly as the avatar of the stubborn, unconquerable political warrior, it is not to be supposed that endurance was Philip’s only distinction. Before self-government and during the time of the appointed Membership System, Philip was in charge of Social Services. He established the Village Council System, enacted a new ordinance providing free primary education, granted government assistance to secondary schools, created the department of Housing and Planning, and initiated a special allowance for retired teachers.

            Much later, when he finally became an elected Minister in the UDP government in 1984, he launched the Family Court, the Department of Women’s Affairs, and the Disabilities Service Division.

            These latter achievements, of course, took place at a time when Philip had long since gone blind. On his own blindness, the Poet John Milton said:

            Yet I argue not

            Against Heav’n’s hand or will, nor

            Of heart or hope; but still bear up,

            Right onward.

            Milton might just as well have been speaking for Philip Stanley Wilberforce Goldson. And the marvel was that a man who was physically blind nevertheless continued to be such a seer.

            But Philip always had vision. In 1978, just when he was being afflicted with glaucoma, he moved a resolution in the House denouncing land cession to Guatemala and calling for a 10 year moratorium on independence unless security could be assured. While his motion was killed that day, after Philip was named and suspended from the assembly, when Belize finally gained independence it was with the security guarantee Philip had envisaged.

    Far earlier, in 1964, upon Belize becoming self-governing, Philip had proposed the commissioning of a 500 man battalion to help guard against the external threat. He was scoffed at. But can anyone doubt that idea was the precursor to today’s Belize Defense Force?

            When we survey the trajectory of Philip Goldson’s life, when we recall his almost mythic personal and political battles, we recognized how impossible it is to capture the essence of the man in a few, paltry words. But it struck me that what Barry Goldwater said in 1964 perhaps comes closest to illustrating Philip Goldson’s motto in life and his epitaph in death.

            ….extremism in the defense of

Liberty is no vice!

            ….moderation in the pursuit of

            And now he is gone. Our North Star, our cynosure, is dead. But the things that he spurned in life, the badges and insignia of office, the pomp and circumstance of power, must not be his in death. They must be his because he who in life sacrificed all for his country can surely in death make one last sacrifice- that of his natural modesty. For after all, the memorials and the busts, the commemorative coins and the statues, the monuments and the shrines, which a grateful nation will now dedicate to his memory, are really not for him, but for us. We must show the world and ourselves, that we know how to honor our heroes; to guard and expand their legacy; to institutionalize and make fast their inspiration.

            It was his challenge, in his life, to be the foundation stone of our democracy. It is our challenge, in his death, to hallow him forever as the Patron Saint of that democracy.

            Let us not fail him as he did not fail us.         

Source: Journal of Belizean Studies Vol. 24 (1), March 2002