The Arts Forum

Jul 13, 2008 Features / Columnists, The Arts Forum

---

In his Foreword to The People’s Progressive Party of Guyana 1950-1992: An Oral History (2007), Cary Fraser writes: “Frank Birbalsingh has provided an important service to the people and history of Guyana. He has captured the voices, passions, and sense of betrayal that have shaped both Guyanese history in the second half of the twentieth century, and the contemporary context of Guyanese life which is hostage to the events and personalities of that period”.

Birbalsingh asked some tough questions of Martin Carter and this interview stands out (among twenty-seven interviews with politicians and academics) perhaps because Carter speaks not only as a politician but also as a poet.

Carter is the most revolutionary of all the Guyanese novelists and poets who have contributed to a body of imaginative writing that have shaped our perceptions and deepened our understanding of survival and existence in our homeland.

With his sharp insight into the human condition in post-colonial societies such as ours, Carter added the fire and fury to the call for freedom. There is no doubt that the voice of the artist reaches out where politicians cannot go and, ultimately, restates the notion that all art is political.

We bring you in today’s column Birbalsingh’s interview with Carter to allow readers to engage in a process of critically enquiring into the events that have brought us to this point, and especially those readers who were not born at the time or who were too young to understand the complexity of our dilemma:

Q. How did you become involved in Guyanese politics and how did you connect with Cheddi Jagan?

A. Cheddi came back to Guyana in 1943 [as a young dentist] and began agitating. I used to hear about his agitation and became interested in the movement he had started. He had founded the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and used to hold political meetings at Kitty YMCA. I attended those meetings.

Q. What about groups like the League of Coloured People (LCP), the British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA), and the British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU)?

A. The LCP was somewhat reactionary in our view. So was the British Guiana East Indian Association.

Q. What role did you play in the elections in 1953?

A. I ran as a PPP candidate in New Amsterdam and lost to WOR Kendall.

Q. After the British Governor squashed the PPP Government and suspended the Constitution, you and others were imprisoned. How did that happen?

A. I was abroad when the Constitution was suspended. I found the Suspension in force when I came back. Several members of our party went from Georgetown to Plantation Blairmont to speak to the people about the Suspension. We were arrested for breaking Emergency regulations that required us to remain in Georgetown. Sydney King, Bally Latchmansingh and Ajodha Singh were also arrested, and we were put in a detention camp for three months,

Q. Does the party bear some responsibility for provoking the Suspension?

A. There was mass hysteria in the country at the time. There was talk about Cheddi Jagan being a Communist. That was a big thing. There were all sorts of trade union and other movements in the Caribbean, including the local labour movement in Guyana with Critchlow; and one of the main things was to point a finger at those who were communists. The only way you could say that Cheddi brought the Suspension on himself is if you agree that someone like Mahatma Gandhi brought death on himself.  If he was not the pacifist who stood for power sharing between Hindus and Muslims, he would not have been killed; but he would not have been Mahatma Gandhi either. It is a closed rhetorical question to ask if Cheddi brought Suspension on himself.

Q. How relevant do you think was Dr. Jagan’s American student background to his political agitation and Suspension? Had he studied in England instead of America, like most Guyanese at the time, might the Suspension have been less likely?

A. I think his American education gave him a sharper cutting edge. Colonial politics were British. American politics was different. For instance, a lot of literature that Cheddi handed out was American. We must keep in mind that the British Communist Party was playing an active role in the labour movement, and British socialists had their own ideas about how we could achieve colonial freedom. At the same time, you had Americans like Ferdinand Smith, Caribbean representative to the World Federation of Trade Unions, and Paul Robeson who were communists.  So Jagan brought a new American element into the scene of British Caribbean politics.

Q. Since Republicanism is more radical in style than Constitutional Government Dr. Jagan was seen to introduce an American element alien to the British style of colonial politics?

A. Cheddi’s vocabulary was different from that of people who were trained in Britain. Even the PAC was based on an American model— the Political Actions Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) of the US.

Q. What happened between 1953 and 1955 to cause the fragmentation of the PPP?  Who were the genuine ideologues in the party? There was yourself, Rory Westmaas . . .

A. Sydney King and Ram Karran

Q.  At the Metropole cinema meeting in February 1955 was there a concerted plan to oust Dr. Jagan from leadership of the party, or was it a fortuitous circumstance of which his enemies took advantage?

A. They took advantage of it. It was not organized; but there was an agreement that if Burnham’s faction of the party moved a motion to put a spanner in the works, the Jagan faction would walk out.

Q. So, before the meeting, there were already two factions of the PPP, one led by Burnham and the other by Cheddi?

A. Absolutely.

Q. What was the basis of the factionalism? Was it ideological, personal cultural, racist?

A. It was everything. It was racial and cultural because there were Indo- and Afro-Guyanese party members, and those who belonged to Georgetown, generally Afro-Guyanese, were against those from the countryside who were generally Indo-Guyanese.

Q. What happened after your faction walked out?

A. There were two PPPs, one consisting of the Burnham faction, and the other of the Jagan faction.

Q. After the Burnham faction lost elections, firstly in 1957, and then as the People’s National Congress (PNC) in 1961, they manoeuvred successfully to win elections in 1964. Apart from the change in the electoral system to Proportional Representation, what other factors helped the PNC to win in 1964?

A. They had input from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and there were Guyanese “agent provocateurs” who were hired and paid by the CIA. Many of these, though not all, were urban Afro-Guyanese, some of whom were trade unionists.

Q. By 1964, the country was racially divided and the Socialist Burnham had teamed up with the capitalist Peter D’Aguair. Dr. Jagan himself has said that Burnham had lofty socialist ideals in the early years of the PPP.

A. There is no doubt about that at all: Burnham was considered a leading figure in the fight against colonialism in the Caribbean.

Q. What happened to transform him between 1953 and 1964?

A. I think it was opportunism plain and simple

Q. But Burnham did not only abandon principle by teaming up with D’Aguair: he ruled for twenty-one years until his death in 1985, and wrought havoc on his people and country. Was Burnham motivated purely by opportunism while his country was reduced to shambles?

A. He was Titoist rather than Stalinist.  Tito was not a communist: he was a man in the middle, and I believe that Burnham took his political positioning from Tito. Tito was interested in himself.

Q. You worked for Burnham?

A. Yes, I worked as a member of his Government from 1967 to 1970.

Q. Considering the moral integrity of your writing, why did you work for Burnham?

A. It was a time when the racial crisis in this country was severe. I had become convinced that this country would not get anywhere because of the racial divisions. First I went to Booker’s from 1959 to 1967, working as Information Officer. Then I joined Burnham’s party for three years and came back out again. It was a time of transition. One was trying to find a way to bridge the gap between the races. There were competing power blocs between Burnham, Jagan, D’Aguair and a set of splinter groups between them. Everyone was trying to find his own way. There was also a feeling that it was possible for Guyana to achieve a sort of Independence, different from other countries in the Caribbean. We always looked on Guyana as a separate place from the Caribbean.

Q. But Burnham’s party might still be ruling if the Cold War had not ended.

A. That is because the world has changed from what it used to be some years ago. The Americans can’t get away with what they used to get away with in the past. Countries like Germany and Japan now have economic power. Americans have to be very careful about what they are doing.

BITTER WOOD
   
Here be dragons, and bitter
cups made of wood; and the hooves
of horses where they should not
sound. Yet on the roofs of houses
walk the carpenters, as once did
cartographers on the spoil
of splendid maps. Here is where
I am, in a great geometry, between
A raft of ants and the green sight
Of the freedom of a tree, made
Of that same bitter wood.      
(1988)

---

---