Errol Barrow Barbados Dollar

Errol Walton Barrow (1920-1987)

โ€œWe will not regard any great power as necessarily right in a given dispute unless we are convinced of this, yet at the same time we will not view the great powers with perennial suspicion merely on account of their size, their wealth, or their nuclear potential. We will be friends of all, satellites of none.โ€

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Released in 2013, the Barbados $50 features perhaps the most beloved of all Barbadian statesmen, Errol Barrow. The design also features Independence Square, which was opened in 2007 as a civic space overlooking the Careenage. Standing high above the square is a statute of the Right Honourable Errol Walton Barrow.

Known as the Father of Independence, Barrow was a lawyer by profession who entered the political arena when he joined the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and immediately won a seat in the House of Assembly. Four years later, he left the BLP and formed the Democratic Labour Party (DLP). He won the 1961 general elections as leader of the DLP and become Premier, a position he held until 1966, when he led Barbados to independence from Great Britain. He then succeeded at becoming the nationโ€™s first Prime Minister and led the nation until 1976. Barrow achieved many social reforms and national advances during his time in power, including establishing free secondary and tertiary education, the introduction of a National Insurance and Social Security, as well as launching the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA), the forerunner to CARICOM.