George Price

George Price, who died on September 19 aged 92, was regarded as the father of Belize, formerly British Honduras.

George Price

Independence for the colony was both complicated and delayed by the claim on the central American territory by neighbouring Guatemala; it was three decades before Price, who had been a nationalist agitator in the early Fifties, became, in 1981, the new state of Belize's first prime minister.

George Cadle Price was born on January 15 1919 in the colonial capital, Belize City, later to lend its name to the whole country. The third of 10 children of a devout Roman Catholic family, George was educated at St John's College High School before in 1936 going to St Augustine's Seminary, Mississippi, to study for the priesthood.

In 1941 he was studying at the National Seminary in Guatemala when his father's illness forced him to return to Belize City to support his family. For the next 13 years he worked as secretary to a local millionaire, Robert Turton. In 1947 he won a seat on Belize City Council.

A claim to the colony had been written into Guatemala's constitution in 1945, and fear of invasion hung over British Honduras thereafter. In 1950 Price was among the co-founders of a "People's Committee" which later that year became the stridently pro-independence People's United Party (PUP). Suspicion quickly grew that the PUP was colluding with Guatemala – which was thought to be funding it to "do as the Malayans are doing" and rise up against "the English dictator".

When three of the PUP's founders were found guilty of sedition Price, the party's secretary, escaped imprisonment, but an inquiry found in 1954 that he had been secretly in contact with Guatemalan officials. In 1954 he was elected to the colony's National Assembly, and two years later became the PUP leader. Thenceforth, independence would be pursued within the constitutional framework, as Britain gradually delegated powers of self-rule.

In 1961, under a revised constitution, Price was elected First Minister, and he immediately introduced a change that was largely symbolic: traffic would no longer travel on the left of the road but on the right. Later that year Belize City and the low-lying coastline were devastated by Hurricane Hattie, and Price decided that there should be a new capital city – Belmopan – established away from the coast and without links to the colonial past.
Guatemala broke off diplomatic relations with Britain in 1962, in protest at the moves towards self-government (rather than a process that would end with Belize's incorporation into Guatemala), and two years later most of the governor's powers were handed over to an Executive Council headed by Price. The country was now self-governing except for defence, internal security and external affairs, with power shared between Price, the Governor, and the commander of the British forces permanently stationed in the country.
Price proved to be the most pastoral of leaders. He remained unmarried, and tirelessly travelled the country talking to people and listening to their problems, however small. He always had a biblical quotation to suit the occasion.
Indifferent to pomp and personal wealth, he continued to live in the ramshackle house he had inhabited as a child, and it was said that he kept government papers in a shoebox. His opponents accused him of many things, but never of corruption.
In 1972, following aggressive noises from Guatemala, the British garrison was increased, as it was in 1975, when a squadron of Harrier jump-jets flew out to reassure the colony. Price's strategy, meanwhile, was to win international recognition of Belize's right to self-determination and, in particular, acceptance within the Americas, with the United States or Canada as an eventual defence guarantor. His vision was of Belize as a Central American rather than a western Caribbean nation. He preferred to stress the country's Maya Indian prehistory, rather than its British colonial past.
The diplomatic battle seemed won when the United Nations voted unanimously (with the exception of Guatemala) to recognise Belize. But then, in 1978, the British Foreign Secretary David Owen considered a plan to cede a large tract of land in the south of the country to give Guatemala better access to the Caribbean.
Price successfully fought off this proposal. The plan eventually accepted, in the early Thatcher years, was the so-called "Djibouti solution", by which British forces on jungle training would stay on after independence. In March 1981 there was a tripartite agreement between Britain, Guatemala and Belize.
Independence Day was on September 21. In a somewhat eccentric ceremony, interrupted by a violent rainstorm, the flag was lowered on Britain's last colony in the Americas.
In another symbolic gesture, Price had insisted that it be lowered in complete darkness, so that Belize should not be left with the impression that she had been left abandoned and alone. In his speech he praised "the very honourable role" Britain had played over the years, and in his first statement as Prime Minister he announced that Belize would not accept Cuban offers of military help.
In the first post-independence elections in 1984, the United Democratic Party (UDP), led by Manuel Esquivel, defeated the PUP, which under Price had dominated national politics for nearly 30 years. Price was returned to power at the 1989 elections, but lost again in 1993 to the UDP.
George Price was sworn of the Privy Council in 1986 and appointed to the Order of the Caribbean Community in 2001.