As the England men’s team arrive at Bridgetown airport for their three white-ball matches in Barbados over the coming days, the usual scrum of local and international media interest can be expected. Nothing, however, will compare with the chaotic scenes 41 years ago in the same place when the world’s press discovered that 16 West Indies players were flying out on a rebel tour to apartheid South Africa, a renegade action that shocked the cricketing world.
The rebels had planned to depart from Barbados in total secrecy, but their cover was blown in spectacular fashion by the Guyanese cricket commentator and journalist Joseph “Reds” Perreira, who lifted the lid on the enterprise after receiving a tip-off from a senior figure in the West Indies game.
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The identity of that person has always been kept a closely guarded secret by Perreira – until now. During research for my new biography of the great 1950s Bajan cricketer Clyde Walcott, Perreira spoke to me about the Bridgetown airport incident – and revealed for the first time that it was Walcott who provided the all-important inside information.
On the morning of 11 January 1983 Perreira was making his way by car to Kensington Oval in Bridgetown and as his vehicle paused at a pedestrian crossing Walcott, who was by then a manager and selector of the West Indies side, suddenly emerged by his window, leaning in to whisper: “There’s a rebel team going to South Africa. Do your homework,” before disappearing as quickly as he had arrived.
For Perreira it was the news lead of a lifetime. After making contact with a source at British West Indian Airways to see if there were any noteworthy passengers in the forthcoming schedules, he discovered that eight first-class Bajan cricketers were booked in to fly to Miami the following day, and on that basis he broke the story to the world at lunchtime, without naming names.
“Just about everybody came to the airport the next day, and my reputation was at stake,” he says. “None of the players were on the BWIA flight and I was beginning to sweat, but then a porter told me he had seen one of the rebels, Alvin Greenidge, with his suitcase, and suddenly there was a bus screaming into the airport with the rest of them. They had used BWIA as a decoy and were travelling by American Airlines. I was a relieved man, I can tell you, but it was thanks to Clyde Walcott that I got the story. I’ve never told anyone that before – but it was him.”
Walcott, a staunch and outspoken opponent of apartheid, was the last person the South African authorities would have wanted to know about the outlawed tour, and how he got wind of the rebels’ imminent departure is unclear. But Barbados is a small island and Walcott was a man with many contacts, and so would have been in an excellent position to keep abreast of developments, even if they were cloaked in secrecy.
Renegade tours by English and Sri Lankan players had taken place over the previous two years but the idea that black cricketers from the Caribbean might follow suit was thought highly unlikely, despite the huge amounts of money on offer. The world’s press had no inkling that anything of the kind was under way – until Walcott set the hare running.
The West Indies players who signed up for the rebel tour did so in defiance of a worldwide ban on cricketing relations with South Africa that had stood since 1970. Led by the Jamaican batsman Lawrence Rowe, most were fringe members of the West Indies set-up, either not yet established in the team or on their way out – although there were also players of the calibre of Colin Croft, Alvin Kallicharran and Sylvester Clarke who could expect to play many Tests for West Indies in the future.
Walcott was appalled by their actions, which he thought “brought no credit to anyone”, and fully backed the lifetime bans they were subsequently handed by the West Indies board. “I could not support any black man going to South Africa and being classed as an ‘honorary white’,” he said. “That was repugnant and dishonourable.”
Fortunately for Walcott, deliberations over selection were barely impinged upon as a result of the rebels’ bans. In the summer of 1983 only Kallicharran and Croft might have strengthened the side that progressed to the final of the third World Cup.
Later, as president of the West Indies Cricket Board, Walcott proved to be a powerful and effective opponent of moves by the International Cricket Council to backslide on the ban against South Africa. But after the release from prison of Nelson Mandela he was able to extend an invitation to South Africa to rejoin the Test match fold with a one-off encounter against West Indies at his home ground in Bridgetown in 1992. The following year, partly on the back of his principled stand on apartheid, he became the first non-white chair of the ICC, serving in that role until 1997.
As for the rebels, few prospered from taking the krugerrand – while many found themselves pariahs in their home territories. Walcott’s timely tip-off, which caught them in the spotlight trying to sneak away without being seen, put the rebels on the back foot even before their plane had taken off, and their reputations never recovered.
Clyde Walcott: Statesman of West Indies Cricket by Peter Mason, published by Manchester University Press, available on Guardian Books
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