thumb|right|Statue of Sir Grantley Adams in front of the [[w:Cabinet of Barbados|Office of the Cabinet complex in Barbados]]
Sir Grantley Herbert Adams, CMG, QC (28 April 1898 – 28 November 1971) was a Barbadian politician. He served as the inaugural premier of Barbados from 1954 to 1958 and then became the first and only prime minister of the West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962. He was a founder of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), and he was named in 1998 as one of the National Heroes of Barbados.
Early life
Adams was born at Colliston, Government Hill, St. Michael, on 28 April 1898. He was the third child of seven born to Fitzherbert Adams and the former Rosa Frances Turney. Adams was educated at St. Giles and at Harrison College in Barbados. In 1918, he won the scholarship and departed the following year for his undergraduate studies at Oxford University. Adams played a single match of first-class cricket for Barbados during the 1925–26 season, as a wicket-keeper against British Guiana in the Inter-Colonial Tournament.
Political career
Adams's political interest began when he was still a law student in England. He became a member of the Liberal Party at Oxford, finding his views aligned best with those of the Asquithian liberals, in support of private enterprise and trade. Under the Liberal ideals of the era, support of trade union action, representational government and reform of the land ownership and taxation system were towards the overall goal of fostering free trade.
As the British liberals that shaped him rejected the socialism of the British Labour Party, so too did Adams oppose the labour-focused efforts of the Democratic League of Charles Duncan O'Neal and Clennell Wickham on his return to Barbados in 1925. He attacked their strike efforts as editor of the Agricultural Reporter, a planter paper that had opposed workers' rights since its nineteenth century inception. With a growing reputation and popularity among the conservative establishment, Adams's entry into the House of Assembly in 1934 was assured by his role in the deconstruction of the socialist League, including bankrupting one of the key journalistic voices in support of workers' rights.
Nevertheless, Adams's fundamental belief in liberal policies meant that he tended to support pro-working class efforts once he was installed in the House, and continued to espouse many of O’Neale's causes after the man's passing in 1936. Adams therefore consolidated his position by subsuming the fragmented Labour movement he had shattered, and marrying them to his own liberal ideals. It is this face that embraced the workers' rebellions of 1937 and lead to the establishment of the Barbados Labour Party in 1938. In further defiance of Adams, Strachan and fellow communist activist Ferdinand Smith conducted a speaking tour of the Caribbean.