Vere C Bird Sr., who rose from childhood poverty and overcame a lack of formal education to bring independence to Antigua and found a family dynasty that still rules the Caribbean nation, died Monday. He was 89.

Bird had been in the intensive care unit at St John's Holberton Hospital for three weeks and died on a life support system there Monday evening, according to a Government spokesman who interrupted the 7 p.m. news bulletin to make the report, after days of rumours that he had died. Radio and television stations broadcast solemn music and showed old clips of Bird. The Government and the Bird family control both.

He was a revolutionary union leader who defied British colonizers in the 1950s to demand higher wages for Antiguan cane cutters.

Bird led his country to independence from Britain in 1981 and still is revered by many as a saviour, despite the many scandals that have tainted the family name and left the country hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Under Bird, Antigua emerged from a poverty-stricken British colonialism through rapid development. But in more recent years, the nation also became known as one of the most corrupt in the Caribbean.

As chief minister and later Prime Minister, Bird and his family amassed interests in some of the nation's most lucrative businesses.

The dominant figure in Antiguan politics for more than 50 years, Bird retired in 1994. A son, Lester, was elected Prime Minister and re-elected this year.

A defining moment in the history of the two-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda is a legendary - some say apocryphal - speech by Bird under a tamarind tree near the village of Bethesda in January 1951, when Antigua was still a British colony and Bird was a labour leader.

Bird threatened a strike if sugar workers were not given a raise. When Alexander Moody-Stuart, the powerful head of the Antigua Sugar Estates, scoffed and asked what the striking workers would eat, Bird replied: "We will eat cockles and the widdy-widdy bush. We will drink pond water."

The widdy-widdy bush is a common weed in Antigua that was part of the diet of slaves. Bird's reply became a permanent part of the lexicon of political oratory in Antigua.

Bird, by then called "Papa" by his followers, did organize the strike and there was no sugar harvest that year. The strike consolidated the Antigua Trades and Labour Union's power, and Bird went on to serve 21 years as its president. As an offshoot, he formed the Antigua Labour Party, and he later led the colonial government and the nation to independence in 1981.

Born December 9, 1909, Vere Cornwall Bird was the illegitimate son of a father who eventually committed suicide. He grew up in a squalid slum of dirt roads and overcrowded housing in St John's, the capital, and barely finished elementary school.

When British landowners decided to close down the sugar plantations, Bird got a loan from the Royal Bank of Canada so the local government could buy them, which amounted to 80 percent of Antigua.

Bird introduced free secondary education, island-wide electricity service and building projects such as an international airport, deep-water harbour and interior village roads. He aggressively promoted tourism, making Antigua a leading Caribbean destination.

Amid a long string of corruption charges, Bird was accused of dipping into a health care fund for US $25,000. He admitted to the charges, but said it made up for money he gave to an ailing woman.

A son, Vere Bird Jr., resigned from his father's Cabinet in 1990 after Israeli and Colombian authorities accused him of conspiring to ship ten tons of Israeli arms through Antigua to Colombia's Medellin drug cartel.

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