SIR WILLIAM DOUGLAS, KCMG, PC

Chief Justice who upheld the strength of the judicial system as Barbados settled into independence

WILLIAM DOUGLAS was appointed Chief Justice of Barbados in 1965, a year before its independence from Britain. A Barbadian, then still in his mid-forties, he had benefited from an international education, and had had extensive judicial experience in Jamaica.

Above all, perhaps, he had a great knowledge of the social and legal history of Barbados. Nowhere else in the Caribbean are due process and legal procedures insisted upon more than in Barbados, a legacy of the manner of its founding in the 17th century.

Douglas’s court made it clear that the final stage to independence would see no relaxation into licence, even though the danger of this was remote. On the bench he had a fierce judicial manner. He started his court promptly at 9.30 a.m., working at great speed, and his judgments came quickly. A disciplinarian, he demanded similarly high standards from the Bar, always insisting that advocates came to come fully prepared.

William Randolph Douglas was born in Barbados and educated at Harrison College. He completed his secondary education in Quebec, which gave him his command of French. He graduated first at McGill University and then took an LLB at the London School of Economics. He seemed rarely to be seen in Barbados without the vibrant purple, black and gold of the LSE tie. His Caribbean contemporaries there included Errol Barrow, the first Prime Minister of the independent Barbados, and Michael Manley, later Prime Minister of Jamaica, both of whom were to remain friends.

He was called to the Bar in Britain in June 1947 by Middle Temple, and in Barbados in 1948. Particularly strong on the civil side, he presided over a judiciary where initially there was no separate Court of Appeal, which meant a heavy workload for him and his fellow judges. He saw to it that the highest traditions of the judiciary we maintained and, as chairman of the Judicial and Legal Service Commission, chose judges who have continued to uphold the impartiality of the judicial system.

In 1977 he was appointed to the Privy Council, and he sat several times in the judicial committee. He was knighted in 1969, and appointed KCMG in 1983.

Off the bench he was disarming: the stern persona abated. He was a great conversationalist, his talk illuminated from his voracious reading. He liked classical music, played tennis, and was to join the Barbados Yacht Club, which, before independence, had a rigid whites-only membership policy. Tall, handsome and distinguished in appearance, he was charming, courtly even. These attributes served him well in his second, diplomatic career, and when for short periods he was acting Governor-General, once in 1976, and again in 1984.

A year after leaving the bench, he was appointed Ambassador to Washington, where he served until 1991, when he became High Commissioner for Barbados in London for two years. He then served on a succession of commissions of inquiry for the International Labour Organisation, a connection that began in 1975.

Although pan-Caribbean (he was chairman of the Commonwealth Caribbean Council of Legal Education, 1971-77), he was also very much an international man. He spent some time in Canada after serving, as High Commissioner in London, and enjoyed his visits to Geneva for the International Labout Organisation.

He was married first to Thelma Ruth Gilkes, a Barbadian, who died in 1992. He then married Denise Alva Hope, a former head of the Barbados Board of Tourism office in London, and they made their home at Pau, near the French Pyrenees.

Sir William Douglas is survived by his wife and by a son and a daughter from his first marriage.

Sir William Douglas, KCMG, PC, former Chief Justice of Barbados, High Commissioner for Barbados in London, and Ambassador to the United States, was born on September 24, 1921. He died on August 12, 2003, aged 81.