LFS Burnham

Aug 10, 2008 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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(The following is an excerpt from a paper on the Guyanese Dictatorship. It was written in 1988 and is offered on the occasion of the death anniversary of Mr Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham.)

“The trouble with us, comrades, is that we don’t know to read between the lines; we are always reading on top of the lines; we are more democratic than the people who teach us democracy.” Burnham, 1979.

The personality of the leader is a most crucial variable in the determination of the precise form a dictatorship will assume.

Burnham’s overriding characteristics were his ambition and his intellect. These qualities, along with his oratorical virtuosity and tactical skills, earned him the label “charismatic”.

A member of the communist party while a student in England, in 1949 he was recommended by that group to Jagan as a “suitable” African, who tactically could rally the African section for the soon-to-be formed nationalist PPP.

He became Chairman of the party under the leadership of Jagan, whose position he craved and fought for from the beginning.

Other ethnic leaders were recruited, as the party ironically attempted to define itself as a “revolutionary” party exploiting the cleavage of “class” — with the British ruling class and its small local representatives as the “enemy”.

The ambiguities and contradictions inherent in this approach were myriad but were masked by the electoral mobilization in the first general elections under universal franchise in 1953.

They were exposed as soon as victory was won and the “spoils” were to be distributed; they are exemplified by Burnham’s persistent pursuit to be the leader from 1953 to the formation of the PNC in 1958.

Burnham craved to be leader for three reasons: his undeniable personal ambitions; his membership in the Creole/African sections that increasingly saw themselves in danger of being overwhelmed by Indians; and his realization that Jagan and other “extreme” leftists had a very naïve apprehension of the geopolitical realities of the era.

The second reason stemmed from several factors. Firstly, even though the PPP thought it had addressed the racial cleavages by recruiting leaders from each racial/ethnic group, the dominance of the Indian top leadership, the aggressive entry of Indians into positions formerly dominated by Creoles, the economic development plans that stemmed towards agriculture, and the generally jingoistic response of this previously politically backward but numerically largest section, raised concerns in the other sections as to the implications of their “minority” status.

While the PPP had defined itself as a “revolutionary” party, which would eliminate the “ruling class” and fuse the rest of society with the “working class”, the minority group began to perceive themselves as potentially permanently dependent on the beneficence of the “major group”.

The PPP was being defined, both by its supporters and its detractors, as an exclusionary party, with its constituency (Indians) and excluded group (Africans and Creoles) racially defined.

Secondly, the discomfiture of the African and Creole sections was exacerbated by the implications of being dominated by a group with a completely different culture — one it had been taught to consider as “heathen” and “inferior”.

The national ethos had defined Guyana as a “Creole” nation, and the Creoles and Africans, as the guardians of this ethos, naturally presumed they were to be the inheritors of the nation on the departure of the British.

It was unthinkable to permit power to fall into the hands of the group which was considered to be ambivalent about its national allegiance.

Burnham, as a consequence, did not have much difficulty in legitimising his drive for power by articulating the fears of the African and Creole sections, when he launched the PNC and provided a vehicle to address those fears.

In fact, Burnham was promised help by Manley and Bustamante of Jamaica, Adams of Barbados, and Padmore of Trinidad if he formed a party to prevent Jagan from creating an “Indian State” in Guyana.

The formation of the United Force (UF) in 1960, representing the white and near-white bloc, further increased the apprehensions of the African and Creole sections.

In a plural society where one section is over fifty percent of the population, “democratic elections” are not very comforting to minority groups.

It is simply a prescription for permanent exclusion from power and the perquisites thereof, which issue from the exclusionary politics practiced once a group acquires power.

There is no question that the fears of the minority groups can be, and have been, heightened by demagogic politicians like Burnham; but one can assert with as much certitude that the fears are rational and real, based on the experience of minorities the world over.

Unless these fears are addressed, minority groups will continue to be receptive to mobilization by ambitious politicians.

Burnham, then, received increasing support from Africans and Creoles as he strove for power, because, to reiterate, they perceived their interests and his as coincident.

Burnham’s attempt to wrest control of the PPP between 1953 and 1955 resulted in a spilt of the nationalist movement.

The ignominious defeat of his faction in the 1957 general elections persuaded him that he could not win over Indian support by merely utilizing Jagan’s tactic of fielding prominent candidates from the “other” group.

Jagan had pre-empted the field. Burnham’s fusion with the United Democratic Party (UDP) — the political offshoot of the League of Coloured People — in 1958 to create the PNC was a natural development.

It combined Burnham’s support among the lower class rural Africans with the strategic support of the urban-based Creole and African middle class.

The subsequent defeat of the PNC in the 1961 elections demonstrated to Burnham that the PNC could not win office under the existing electoral rules.

Presented with opportunity to change those rules, he joined the CIA/Trade Union/UF- sponsored violent destabilization of the PPP government between 1962 and 1963.

The Trade Union Congress, (TUC) dominated by Creole and African middle class leadership, provided both the external links to the US and the internal support to paralyse the PPP government.

Burnham, to whom politics was the “science of deals”, moderated his socialist rhetoric to obtain the support of his new partners.

His first priority was removing Jagan — to him it meant becoming leader; to his external supporter (the US) it meant removing a communist threat in its “backyard”. Installed into power in 1964, Burnham resumed his drive for absolute control over the polity.

This control, as the other totalitarian leaders have recognised, cannot be achieved through sheer will alone: individuals and organisations are needed.

To the dictator, however, he is presented with a dilemma: the individuals and organisations that he must use will also be strategically positioned to accumulate power and therefore become potential competitors to his rule.

The totalitarian leader addresses this concern by simultaneously publicly building his instruments of rule — the party, the army, the bureaucracy, etc., while privately manipulating them to ensure their complete dependence and loyalty, and forestalling any existence outside of his “beneficence”.

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