Green Party leader passes

He left school at age 12, migrated to the UK when he was 18 years old during the Wind Rush period, and attended university when he had educated his five children. That is a brief snapshot of part of the journey of Ivan Bertie O’Neal. The retired Royal Air Force (RAF) military man who took to the political path on his return to St Vincent and the Grenadines, passed away quietly at his home at Harmony Hall last Monday May 27, 2024. His son, Donald, and carers were by his side when he departed this life.

His son recounted that O’Neal, who founded the St Vincent and the Grenadines Green Party, launched in January, 2005, was influenced by Major St Clair Leacock while they both were studying in the UK, to return home and enter the political arena. O’Neal was first involved with the Unity Labour Party, serving as treasurer, before a fall out led to him ‘going green’. O’Neal unsuccessful contested successive general elections where his party fielded a token of candidates. In the November, 2020 polls, the SVG Green Party fielded two candidates, O’Neal himself in East St George, and Kadmiel Mc Fee in North Central Windward. His son Donald, the fourth of O’Neal’s five children, remembers his dad as being “driven,different, ambitious”, a man who “believed beyond almost what other people thought was possible”. One poignant recollection of this spirit was when his dad applied for a job in Brunei sometime in the late ‘70’s. “People said to him ‘O’Neal are you crazy, you want to work for the richest man in the world! you’re black’, but he believed it was possible, Donald told SEARCHLIGHT. O’Neal who hailed from Caratal, Georgetown, was the first of his family to go to the UK, “and he sent for 29 other people to come across,” Donald recounted. “In those days, he could afford it; he saw it as an opportunity to help.

“ His main thing was education, he would say whatever happens you get these children educated, and also, not just get an education, its instilling the value of education as well,” Donald added.

O’Neal was said to have been influenced by the the philosophy of the Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore who is recognised as the founding father of the modern Singaporean State. In successive several articles in the local press, O’Neal, underscoring the importance of education in this turn around, advocated that this was possible also for St Vincent and the Grenadines were education made free from pre-school through to university.

One known for his military bearing and purposeful strides among other things, O’Neal had been ailing for a few years and had become physically frail in latter months, deciding to return home from the UK where he had sought medical attention and passing away just about two months following his return. Major Leacock told SEARCHLIGHT that he and O’Neal had three things in common which drew them together.

They both were military minded- O’Neal as a retired RAF man, and he as a former Commandant of the SVG Cadet Corp; both were at University in Bradford; and they both pursued studies in the same fields- Accounting and Finance though Leacock left university pre-maturely to return to a the political field. He and O’Neal “always maintained a very healthy relationship,” said Leacock, who also remembers O’Neal as “a very disciplined, principled, well meaning individual who had national development at heart,” one “ who never missed what we referred to as a ‘poppy day parade’, dressed in military gear with his breast plate of medals received while in military service”. Leacock said O’Neal “attached a lot of importance to us honouring those who stood and fought for our democracies…”.

No announcement has as yet been made about the funeral for the Primary School leaver, who graduated university with degrees in Finance and Accounting; Macro-economic Planning and Policy; and Business Administration. However, Donald who is dealing with these arrangement said he “doesn’t really want a mass crowd- more of a family funeral”, so he was not ready to reveal a date. O’Neal,was 86.