No stranger to sailing in rough as well as calm water, David Thompson, prime minister of Barbados, is under no illusions as to the size of the task the stormy economic climate presents his country. "When I came into office in 2008 I faced a challenge which surpassed my wildest expectations. We faced economic, political and social destabilisation," he says.
Today, Mr Thompson implies, times are difficult in many parts of the world - but few have it more difficult than the people of the Caribbean. West Indians are used to hurricanes but the financial 'hurricanes' from the world's banks prompted him to come to London in April shortly after the G-20 meeting to remind the Western world that the interests of vulnerable countries, such as Barbados and other nations in the Caribbean, must not be forgotten.
Some hope
There are some causes for optimism. Barbados, which is second home to many UK residents, is better off than Caribbean countries which are more dependent on US tourism. "But", Mr Thompson emphasises, "hope is still only a glimmer". Alluding to what he considers the lack of true concern for developing countries at the recent G-20 meeting, Mr Thompson says that it contained representatives from small, rich countries. "But there was no one representing small countries which are not rich", he says.
However, even as he contemplates the economic and financial threats that loom over his island, he expresses himself with the measured reticence which seems to come naturally to Barbadians who have traditionally had very close political and cultural ties to the UK.
Early determination
Mr Thompson studied law at the University of the West Indies and had become a cabinet minister of community before he turned 30. Graduating with a finance portfolio in 1992 and 1993, he steered the difficult restructuring of the sugar industry and the application of an International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programme. Even so, his party, the Democratic Labour Party, lost the elections of 1994 and 1999. However, Mr Thompson steered the party to victory again in 2008, when it won 20 of the 30 seats in parliament.
The eastern Caribbean has faced its own crisis, similar to that in the US of the American International Group, with the collapse at the beginning of the year of Clico, the insurance and financial giant born out of the Colonial Life company which is based in Port of Spain. Clico's assets were equivalent to a quarter of the gross national product of Trinidad and Tobago and consequently, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States have had to club together to provide a $80m aid fund.
Sitting beside Mr Thompson at Canning House in London's Belgravia at which he was delivering a speech about the difficulties his country is facing, Marion Williams, the governor of the central bank of Barbados, explains how long-mooted ideas of regional collaboration on a Caribbean pooling of reserves have foundered on simple shortage of cash. "The pooling of reserves is kind of utopian for the moment", laments Mr Thompson.
