Adams played a single match of first-class cricket for Barbados during the 1925–26 season, as a wicket-keeper against British Guiana in the Inter-Colonial Tournament.

He attacked their strike efforts as editor of the Agricultural Reporter, a planter paper that had opposed workers' rights since its nineteenth century inception.

With a growing reputation and popularity among the conservative establishment, Adams' entry into the House of Assembly in 1934 was assured by his role in the deconstruction of the socialist League, including bankrupting one of the key journalistic voices in support of workers' rights.

[5] Nevertheless, Adams' fundamental belief in liberal policies meant that he tended to support pro-working class efforts once he was installed in the House, and continued to espouse many of O’Neale's causes after the man's passing in 1936.

In 1952, Adams became a political enemy of Billy Strachan, a Jamaican communist and former Royal Air Force pilot who went onto become a pioneer of Black civil rights in Britain.

Adams served this role from 1958 to 1962; Barbados was one of the ten provinces of the West Indies Federation, an organisation doomed by nationalistic attitudes and by the fact that its members, as British colonies, held limited legislative power.

His leaderships's failure to form unions such as the BWU and his rejection of attempts to speed up the push for Independence was used by his opponents as evidence that he was no longer in touch with the needs of his country.

As such, Barrow instituted many progressive social welfare focused on demolishing long-standing class barriers, including free education for all Barbadians, and the School Meals system, the latter being vehemently derided by Adams himself.