Tom Adams (politician)

John Michael Geoffrey Manningham "Tom" Adams ( * September 24, 1931 in Spooner's Hill, Barbados; † March 11, 1985 in Bridgetown ) was a politician from Barbados.

Biography

The son of Sir Grantley Herbert Adams, founder of the Barbados Labour Party ( BLP ) and Prime Minister from 1954 to 1958 studied, after which school attendance law. After his father's death he was Chairman of the BLP in 1971 and began a rebuilding the party after the vote losses in the election to the Assembly House ( House of Assembly ) in the same year.

In the parliamentary elections of 1976, the BLP was with 17 of the 24 mandates the strongest party, so that he became prime minister in place of Errol Walton Barrow itself on 7 September 1976. At the same time he assumed the office of the Minister of Finance and Planning. His economic austerity measures proved successful, so that the BLP won the elections of 1981.

As a moderate politician he concentrated on the expansion of education and social services, the construction of new roads as well as the development of industry. He was one of the leaders within the Caribbean Community ( CARICOM) in 1979 expressed concern about the radicalization in Grenada after the inauguration of the local Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement ( NJM ). In October 1983, he won the approval of the opposition for its request to the United States and Jamaica to assist in the maintenance of security in the region. Therefore He was also one of the proponents of a U.S. invasion of Grenada. On 25 October 1983, just days after the Bishop himself assassinated by radical opponents, landed U.S. troops, along with a few hundred soldiers from other Caribbean countries in Grenada.

Once Adams died during his tenure, was Harold Bernard St. John still on 11 March successor as prime minister.