What is Mottleyism?

It would be enlightening for Barbadians if the Deputy Prime Minister Mia Mottley or Elombe Mottley could respond to this article about the Mottley family which has become a dynasty. Barbadians deserve to know.

David

Submitted by Gary Cole

I am going to give a detailed account of what I think is the psychology and motivation of Mia Mottley. I cannot be one hundred per cent accurate, psychology is not an exact science but for those of you that will like to read my book Boys in the Band you can click the link and read a limited preview online at Googlebooks – Or you can visit my mother’s official website In that book we argue explicitly this:

“The private lives of public officials are subject to the morality of the office they hold. Adultery, homosexuality and prostitution are the age-old partners in crime. If there is evidence of the subjection of high office to any of these vices then the private lives of public officials cannot be ignored.” This article will seem remorseless in its attack on Mia, but in terms of elections, I have already argued in my previous post why Mia is key. Here is the reason why she is key, and an exposition on the term you use against her – Mottleyism.

Before I go on I must tell you a bit of myself with reference to Mia. My mother Angela Cole and Mia’s mom and dad, Eliot and Amor, were the best of friends, when I was a boy. Amor would hold great parties and I grew always overhearing my mom and Amor, who is not a Mottley, having long conversations on the phone, as friends do, and they were very close friends, so much so that I came to regard Amor as some kind of mother removed. She was a very loving caring woman, and I suppose she still is today, and what I say is in no means disrespect to her or my mother, to which I have for personal reasons come to a kind of falling out, but this is politics and this is the nation.

That was before my mothers fall from grace, which was just the result of my mother wanting out of some horrible nasty things. Carlton Brathwaithe, who was my mom’s partner, and lived together as man and wife, and through his divorce from his first wife, asked my mother many times to marry him, but she wouldn’t, and who I regarded as a father, is a very amoral man. And this hurts to say from a boy who considered him a father to a man who treated me as a son.

People may not know Carlton Brathwaithe and all the schemes he dreamed up with Roll, because that was a different time, but when people mention Errol, I see a different person, we lived with him in our house, know one of his two sisters well, and the woman he lived his last 17 years with remained a close friend and confidant of my mother, the Belgium expat Jeanine Chipalato. Errol would always lately quarrel with Jeanine, after my mothers fall from grace, for talking to Angela, he considered my mother a close friend turn nemesis, the worse kind of enemy, but my mom could track his every move – he would step out the house and Jeanine would call my mother. So I know the DLP party process intimately, and was always close to the DLP, and naturally see why I would support David, but this is how it relates to Mia, dating back to when she first got involved in politics. But first the story begins with Mia’s grandfather, Ernest Deighton Mottley.

I think there is more political experience coursing in the genes of Mias blood than the whole of the BLP put together. She is the man who would be king, and sometimes belief and conviction count more than ability, acumen, and intelligence. I am not saying the BLP are stupid, but Mia is making up her own mind, to do what her grandfather couldn’t do, and that is take over and destroy the BLP of Grantley Adams. That doesn’t mean the end of the BLP it just means it has been taken oven by its antithesis the heir to the planter association and the electors society of Ernest Mottley.

Some people say Mottley was a good man some people say he was a bad man, but even the people who say he was a good man say he was a ruthlessman. And his ruthlessness scared Grantley. Mottley’s ruthlessness terrorized my family, and I think to this day with the exception of my mother kept my family out of politics and in the boardrooms and in the background of the civil service. And my family accuses Ernest Mottley of nothing less than the demise of Allen Brown the father and grandfather of my aunt and cousins, who played cricket for Barbados, but was a godfather in the association of Ernest Mottley.

Ernest Mottley started out as a lowly tout, with no reputation and a shaded background in the united states where he was said to have to be involved in the old profession before he eventually came to resettle in Barbados. He was the son of Walter “Jube” Reece and it makes no sense me repeating what my mother has so beautifully written, but yes which I also wrote along with her – but this is her writing, and this is her story…

“Walter Walton Reece, Q.C. was District Grand Master of the Scottish Fraternity of Masons. He was the son of H. Walter Reece and born in 1897, the Jubilee year of the late Queen Victoria, and thus his nickname was Jube. He was an astute, handsome, popular, quick-witted with eyes of steel and completely untrustworthy. He was nine years older than Sissy. He was elected to the House of Assembly as a Member for St. Michael in 1930 and was E.K. Walcott, the Attorney General’s junior. He worked as Solicitor General, was a good lawyer but politically corrupt. He appeared to be Allan’s best friend, but the relationship was for his own wants. He was twelve years younger than Allan and was also a member of Spartan’s Club. Jube needed Allan. Clennel Wickham, the writer for the Herald Newspaper in the 30’s described him despite his hail-well-met manner as subtle, dangerous, below contempt and caring only for his own ends. He behaved as he pleased and cared not for nor about public opinion. He acknowledged his black blood in order to manipulate the electorate but tried to put fourteen-year-old children out of elementary school. His routine was to leave work on afternoons and drop a man called Lyden Goring in Eagle Hall. He knew Barbados and Barbadians very well and was no more than a guttersnipe. He eventually lost his seat.

“Do not trust him.” Maude warned her daughter when “Rugged” Mottley came to the house with Jube. She kept him in the kitchen. “Where he belongs.” Rugged was the son of Jube’s father and Miss Skinner, his maid, from Hothersal Turning. He looked like a dark version of Jube. The mother and child were shipped out to America. How he got the name Mottley and what he did in the States are a mystery. He returned to Barbados in the mid 30s. Officially there is not much written about Mottley, not his mother’s name or who his father was. His obituary reads: “Like most Barbadians he /Mottley] returned to his old home bringing with him an air of worldliness and youthful sophistication and this at once brought him a following of youngsters.’ Rugged was a pimp when he first returned and the youngsters spoken of were the young girls and boys he supplied to mainly the white and wealthy gamblers. He married and kept a stable of young girls from whom he had many children. His obituary continues: ‘He was popular and soon entered his first business with the Brighton Club on Brighton Beach. Club life was given a much-needed fill up and so Mottley attained the status of a man about town.

Closely connected with the Reece family of lawyers, he soon acquired a deep knowledge of the social and political life of Barbados. He exchanged club life for real estate. Values were changing and the land hunger that was quite noticeable made his effort a successful financial proposition. It kept him in the swing of things political because of the anxiety of small landowners to get past the Registration Officer and have their names added to the three thousand voters list with an unchallengeable land qualification. This was the key to Mottley ’s success. He knew everybody and everybody knew him so that when he hoisted his own political banner he found ready support. Sugar suffered one of its many setbacks and plantations as well as tenantries and small lots were sold and Mottley was in the thick of things. During this time he had been assisting in the political campaigns of members for the House of Assembly and the Vestry.”

Mottley was not allowed into decent drawing rooms. He attached himself to Jube and began touting. A barrister’s tout is described in the “Wayside Sketches” of the 30s as ‘Our tout usually attaches himself to one (and sometimes more than one) of our barristers and plays the role which the pilot fish takes the shark to its victims. He may often be seen browsing in the courtyard and with a vast army of people always eager to ‘ha up’ somebody. Blessed with a conniving manner, very often he supplements his income by making out documents and complaints.”

Later Mottley become the first political tout, touting for Jube and the Electoral Association. With the lowering of the franchise in the thirties, the white planters formed the Electoral Association to counteract the newly formed Progressive League, and used Mottley to secure black votes. He sold land to selected people allowing them to be registered as voters provided they joined his association and voted for its candidates.

Now this is a personal and autobiographical story my mother is writing and she is saying many things but for the moment forget about Jube Reece and settle on what she is saying about Mottley, and understand that what Mottley brought into black Barbadian politics is the very heart of ruthlessness, immorality, amorality, a political movement associated with the mob in the united states that became known in the 30s as syndicalism. That is running a country like a criminal syndicate, and this is what I think Mia will drag the country completely into without her even knowing it if she takes hold of the party and establishes her rule, her destiny.

And it doesn’’t have to be that way. Grantley wasn’t that way, he became more removed from the people after becoming prime minister and Errol was able to snatch the government from him, but Errol too was not like that. And he did a great many things to me and my mother, but he wasn’t like Mottley. Now Tom I think suffered as his father did as a child with being pushed too hard into his father’s footsteps, and it changed him, and made him a ruthlessman, but it was a ruthless born of ambition. This is important enough for a nation to know. Mottley marks a departure from the kind of politics that has always been mainstream Barbados. This is another essay to explain what I mean by Barbadian main stream politics, but it relates back to Samuel Jackman Prescod, who is on the face of our dollar bill.

If Mia gets to be prime minister she will first rehabilitate her grandfather, perhaps he will be on the next change in currency, she will attempt to erase the truth that Grantley and Errol knew about, these the national heroes in our country. And this is why Owen remains to the conservative center of her, as long as he rules in the name of Grantley, Tom, and Errol, she is neutralized. But Owen is going down the way how all leaders go down after they remain in power so long, the knives come, and people are waiting their chance…he cant pretend to be this benevolent grandad of politics in the image of the great prime ministers, with his party getting out of line and Mia waiting in the shadows to complete the Motley revolution. My mom always used to say that Eliot used to like to watch, and that Elombe felt that Eliot had everything because he was illegitimate, and I think politically when Elliot started handling all the drug cases he was doing a disservice to his daughter if she went into politics, and then I realized no – that’s the Mottley way.

And I told you before how to attack Mia, on the issue of homosexuality and Lesbianism; a friend of mine ran a gay bar and my girlfriend worked behind the bar and at the table, and it was a nice atmosphere, Buddies it was called, right there in Hastings. And I’m straight I’m not gay, I don’t know what it feels like to be gay, but I have a great many friends who were gay and are gay, and they have rights and they are people too. And things may not be as bad as in Jamaica where gays are killed and the police don’t even investigate, and out of which the music of gay hatred spews out, and country after country in the civilized world have to ban them from performing and their music from playing because they recognize the message of hatred..kill a gay…They say it in their songs and we as a nation are content to watch our child play and listen to these messengers of hate – and think it doesn’t make a difference. If Barbados had decent laws protecting the rights of gay and lesbian couples, establishing their rights for civil partnership, and brought itself in tune with the civilized world on this issue, we could stand as an example to Jamaica and not be satisfied to accept its export of hate. And that might shame Jamaica. But enough of that, if you pressure Mia to take the lead on this, and say to her I know I am putting you on the spot but look what good it will do for your kind, she will betray her kind for votes, she’ll say Barbados isn’t ready, its a conservative country. And then you ask ..So you expect to be prime Minister still? And you will have neutralized her, and still have the conservative center, but done it one a principle, and people will respect you for it, gay and homosexual have every bit of rights and heterosexuals.

So when I used to see Mia, we knew each other and she’d say hello Gary, and hello Mia, and I detected a kind of relief in her that she felt she could be herself, and I respect her for it, and to tell you the truth I would advise David to try every means to get her over to the DLP, and bury her hatchet with Errol and make a good woman out of her, because she is the best politician in Barbados, but you have to understand her flaws and that you just can’t take the Mottley out of the child, he was really horrible man. I know some may disagree but I had a family member who suffered at the hands of Mottley and his crew over land and property, and I direct you to George Lamming’s book in the castle of my skin and show you how the great land theft in Carrington’s village, the murder threats form Mottley and the association to steal the land from the people, literally ran him as a young boy away from the thought of growing up in Barbados.

Nuff said

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