P.M.’s sudden death shocks Caribbean

Press, 13 March 1985, Page 11

P.M.’s sudden death shocks Caribbean

NZPA-Reuter Bridgetown, Barbados Government leaders throughout the Caribbean have voiced shock at the sudden death of the Barbadian Prime Minister, Mr Tom Adams, a force in Caribbean affairs. Mr Adams, who had governed Barbados, a Caribbean island of 250,000 people since 1976, died from a heart attack yesterday, aged 53. His wife found him sprawled over his stamp collection in a room of his official residence. “The news ... has taken us all off-guard,” said Grenada’s Prime Minister, Mr Herbert Blaize. An astute, conservative leader, Mr Adams played a key role in keeping the Commonwealth Caribbean in close alignment with the Western democracies and strongly supported the

United States. Bernard St John, his 53-year-old Deputy Prime Minister, was sworn in as the new head of Government and pledged to continue his policies, saying that no early Cabinet changes would be made to ensure

continuity. Tributes to Mr Adams poured in equally from figures on the Right and Left of the Caribbean’s political spectrum. Eastern Caribbean leaders particularly remembered Mr Adams for his strong support of the United States-led invasion of Grenada, which ousted the island’s Marxist Government. “We know to what extent that man went to help us in our time of need in October, 1983,” said Mr Blaize, whose elected Government took power three months ago. The Dominican Prime Minister, Miss Eugenia Charles, another staunch supporter of the Grenada invasion, joined St Vincent’s Prime Minister, Mr James Mitchell, and the Jamaican Prime Minister, Mr Edward Seaga, in expressing grief over Mr Adams’s death.