Stafford Sands

Who was Stafford Sands?

Sir Stafford Lofthouse Sands was a former finance minister of the Bahamas, who held other high positions in the islands until his self-chosen exile in 1967. He helped create the Bahamas' tourism industry and is credited with being an architect of Bahamian post-war prosperity.

Sands was a lawyer who, from 1946, represented Wallace Groves and other Americans who sought to establish casinos, resorts, free-trade areas, and other developments in the islands, primarily at Freeport. From 1958, when party politics began, Sands had a prominent role in the United Bahamian Party, which was in power until 1967. The 1967 Royal Commission of Inquiryreported that Sands and the UBP received large payments, represented by Groves as "consulting fees," from the casino interests. Sands then left the islands for exile in Spain, along with his considerable fortune.

A white Bahamian economist, Sands was branded a racist by many when he left the country, after a black majority government first came to power in 1967, and vowed never to return. There is a school of thought, that Sir Stafford was behind the economic exploitation of the descendants of the freed slaves of one, Robert Miller a planter of colour in The Bahamas during the nineteenth century. Sir Stafford with the help of a crooked and racist lawyer named, Foster Clarke were parties to a common design with the American industrialist,Arthur Vining Davis in the theft of thousands of acres of land from the descendants of these slaves at South Eleuthera Island, The Bahamas. The crooked deal was orchestrated at the Court of King James through its minion Daniel Knox aka Daniel Ranfurly, the Sixth Earl of Ranfurly who was immediately knighted upon his return to England by Queen Elizabeth 2 upon the recommendation of Sir Winston Churchill who was at the time Prime Minister of England. The belief is held in some quarters that Arthur Vining Davis received the land that had already been granted to poor Black freed slaves for the part he played in ensuring that aluminium was available to the Allied cause in the maintenance air superiority during the course of World War 2.