June 27, 2023
Barbados’ fourth Prime Minister, Sir Lloyd Erskine Sandiford, died at the age of 86. Remembered as one of the nation’s post independence architects in its development, particularly in the area of Education, Sir Lloyd served his country for more than three decades in the politics.
A member of the Democratic Labour Party, he was appointed to the Senate, and ran for elections in 1971, winning a seat in the House of Assembly, when Errol Barrow formed the government. There he served in several cabinet positions, including Minister of Education. The DLP would lose elections in 1976 to the Barbados Labour Party, BLP, and formed the opposition. However, DLP would return to office with Barrow as Prime Minister in 1986. Things would see a change for Sandiford, with him assenting to office of Prime Minister following the death of Errol Barrow in 1987. And while he led the DLP to victory in the 1991 polls, and also held the additional portfolio of minister of finance until 1993, in 1994 Sandiford narrowly lost a no confidence motion brought against him by the opposition when a number of members of his own party broke ranks and voted in support of the motion. He would prematurely call elections in 1994, two years before it was constitutionally due, to only lose to the BLP led by Owen Arthur. However, he remained in parliament until 1999 as part of its opposition.
His knighthood title came in 2000, under Prime Minister David Thompson who saw it fit that Sandiford be made a Knight of St. Andrew (KA) of the Order of Barbados, In 2010, he received a diplomatic post, with the appointment as Barbados’ first Ambassador to China.
Coincidentally, the news of Sir Lloyd’s death met Prime Minister Mia Mottley while on her trip to China, where she signed several bilateral agreements for export from her country. In offering her condolences, she expressed her “deep sadness, to say goodbye to yet another Barbadian nation builder, a true statesman”.
She shared that “Sir Lloyd, who has been known affectionately across the length and breadth of Barbados as “Sandi” since the late 1960s, has had the distinction of maintaining a political career of more than three decades without a single instance in which bad behavior or the use of the robust language and colourful metaphors so common to Caribbean politics has been attached to his name”.
And while she recalled that painful period of his political career in having been ousted by his own party, she said it “was his capacity to take a position on any matter and remain resolute and unmoved, even in the face of the most unrelenting pressure. Sir Lloyd was what Bajans would respectfully describe as, “his own man” at all times.”
She recalled that she was able to spend quite a sum of time with him as “a young Parliamentarian to my assumption of this Office”, as well as some time “prior to the pandemic” , where they discussed their shared passion for their country, and
the need for us to do all that was necessary to keep it stable and unified”. She added that “in spite of his own challenges, Sandiford was “present on that historic night of November 30, 2021” when their country formally became a Parliamentary Republic.
Sir Lloyd is survived by his wife Angelita, Lady Sandiford, son Garth, and his daughter Inga.