THE LIFE & LEGACY OF LFS BURNHAM, Part 2

Aug 22, 2010 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

---

Excerpts of Presentation by MR ROBERT H O CORBIN, MP, on Thursday August 7, 2008 in the National Assembly on the Motion Recognising the contribution of Mr. LFS Burnham to Guyana.

“In painful reminiscence
An evening shadow lurks
A kaleidoscope of memories
Hurries across a faded screen of life
As a weary warrior hopes vainly
For another sun to rise
But the bugle is sounded
The struggle is ended
A day is done
Whether he be victor
Or vanquished
Tomorrow’s laurels are pinned
On the mirrored diary of today.”
FINIS OF EFFORT by Ivan Forrester

MR SPEAKER,
I feel a sense of pride and I feel somewhat privileged to move the motion standing in my name HONOURING LINDEN FORBES SAMPSON BURNHAM, OE, SC, IN RECOGNITION OF HIS CONTRIBUTION TO GUYANA. I am buoyed further by the reassurance that this motion will receive the unanimous support of this Assembly. Such support signals a significant development and maturity, demonstrating that we are prepared, in a non-partisan way, to give credit where it is due and ensure that future generations can dispassionately judge from the facts, make their own analysis and arrive at their own interpretations of our history.
AUGUST 6TH IN HISTORY
On the 6th day of August, 1985, a personality that had dominated the academic, political, economic, social and cultural life of this Nation suddenly departed without notice or fanfare.
The sixth day of August is significant in history. It was this day, Monday August 6, 1945 that the first atomic bomb, code named, “Little Boy”, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan at the order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman, killing in excess of seventy thousand persons that day alone and sending shock waves around the world. Three days later, August 9, 1945, in the last known use of a nuclear weapon in modern warfare, the second bomb, code named, “Fat Man” was detonated on Nagasaki also killing some forty thousand persons that day. The two bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 and since then, thousands more died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs
As fate would have it, news of the death of President Forbes Burnham, nicknamed, ODO, the Old Man and the Kabaka, while serving as the first Executive President of the Co-operative Republic, sent shock waves all over Guyana and wider afield.
Making the announcement to a grief stricken Nation later that day, President Hoyte appropriately stated,
“The lamp which has lit our way for over two decades has gone out today. Our hero, guide, teacher, friend, protector, leader and indeed the Father of the Nation is no more”
That day brought to an end the life of a man who had to his credit a distinguished academic career; who earned the accolade as a luminary in the legal profession; a leading fighter against colonialism and in the struggle for Guyana’s political independence; the founder member of the two major political parties in Guyana; the first Prime Minister of independent Guyana; and, the first Executive President, and who devoted his entire life in service to our people and Nation.
CONTROVERSIAL: DEITY OR DEMON?
One writer described him as, “a somewhat controversial Caribbean figure, either well admired or passionately despised, an undeniable visionary of great intelligence”. In similar vein, Mellissa Ifill, writing in the Stabroek News of , March 6, 2003 stated,
“Few individuals in Guyanese history, more so political history, have generated such controversy as Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. More-over, few individuals have had such a lasting impact on the structure and character of the Guyanese society. For many analysts, respect for his intellectual capacity and achievements and his ability to catapult Guyana into regional and international prominence,…. Burnham, in both life and death aroused both admiration and scorn, he was revered and ridiculed, perceived as a deity and a demon”,
We in the PNCR recognise him, however, as a visionary who was the Founding Father of an Independent Guyana. His vision was to establish an egalitarian society where all races would enjoy social justice and political and economic emancipation. The pursuit of these objectives at the height of the Cold War was considered too dangerous by the West for the Caribbean region as his successful efforts could have empowered other leaders in Latin America and Africa to follow similar socialist policies that were opposed by the West. Consequently, he faced severe obstacles both internal and external as he introduced economic policies and programs to lay the foundation for the psychological, cultural and economic liberation for Guyana.
THE MOTION
For several reasons, therefore, Mr. Speaker, it is significant that this motion, which seeks, inter alia, not only to recognise the contribution of President Burnham to Guyana, but, also, “to designate a State institution to be responsible for historical Research and Documentation to chronicle and archive all of the works of each of the Presidents of Guyana for the benefit of future generations of Guyanese”, is being debated in the National Assembly of the Parliament of Guyana today.
In the ACDA Column, Burnham: a vision a legacy, posted on October 14, 2004 on the website, guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com, the writer states,
“Many have misunderstood Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham and the nation owes him an honest appraisal. To the extent that he lies buried in cloudiness our greatness and contribution to modern Guyana will not be appreciated, for it is a weapon in the enemy’s hand to dull one of the brightest lights of a people when there is no attempt to humiliate them.
To the extent that we do not articulate Burnham’s legacy to this nation we betray our ancestors’ struggle and contribute to our oppression.”
PERIODS FOR EVALUATION
Any evaluation of Forbes Burnham’s contribution to Guyana and the conditions which helped to shape his vision would require an analysis of several periods in our history. I dare suggest that the first period would begin from his youth in Kitty village and his period academic training in British Guiana and London until he was  admitted to the bar of the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn, London in 1948. This period would also include his Presidency of the West Indian Students Union in London, a position which allowed him to participate as a delegate of the Union in the International Union of Students’ Congress in Prague (1947) and Paris (1948)
The next period I suggest would be 1949 to 1955 the period of his entry into national and local government politics, his involvement in trade unionism and the period that I would describe as ideological experimentation in Guyana in the context of a colonial dilemma.
The next period would be 1955 to 1964 the period of the heightened independence struggle, the disintegration of a united national political movement and the political and ethnic polarization of the nation.
Tyrone Ferguson’s work, sought, ‘to provide a dispassionate description and analysis of the functioning of the political economy of Guyana’ during the Burnham era of Governance (1965 to 1985) that was ‘grounded in facts, rather than impressions and emotions; that eschews the narrowly partisan political motivations of so much of the commentary on that period and devoid of what he described as, the pervasive personal animosities and hatreds of the main political participants and their intellectual supporters.’ To facilitate his analysis, he divided the period 1965 to 1985 into three sub-periods, (i) 1965 to 1969; (ii) 1970 to 1978; and, (iii) 1979 to 1985.
He considered the 1965-1969 sub-period as essentially a phase of transition involving the movement of one political administration to another, from a situation of deep seated instability and inter ethnic violence to one of relative stability and non-violent relations from the status of colony to to independence and from the context of colonial responsibility for a country’s external relations to the assumption of full control by the leadership of an independent Guyana.
He considered the 1970- 1978 sub-period as a phase of the radical transformation of the political economy in the context of what was inherited, the experiences of the transitional years and the comparative situation of Guyana peer countries in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Finally he considered the 1979 – 1985 sub-period as a phase marked by the pervasive deterioration of the political economy especially at the level of political ordering and economic performance.
It is obvious from the above that, in the time available, we would be unrealistic to expect a complete and full analysis of President Burnham’s contribution. That is why the resolve clause to establish an institution for objective research is so important……
WORK HORSE OF THE NATION
There can be no doubt that Forbes Burnham made Guyanese proud and gave them the motivation and the self confidence necessary in a newly independent Nation. His international prominence was so recognized that by 1985, leaders from around the world spoke of his unquestionable greatness. We in Guyana knew of his greatness long before that and as most aptly described by one of his mentors, Dr. Ptolemy Alexander Reid, at the Place of the Seven Ponds, “such a Leader comes to a Nation once in an era and not necessarily with every generation”.
None of his many critics, has denied that he was richly endowed with those rare and special faculties that are reserved only for leaders of men and makers of history: prodigious intellect – keen probing, receptive to new ideas, new philosophies; seemingly inexhaustible store of mental and physical energies; a phenomenal memory for dates, events, faces and names; ability to make friends and to sustain friendships; a lively sense of humor; and, a commitment to exert all his energies to building Guyana.
WE owe him a depth of gratitude for developments in several areas. Many are the stories that one hears as one travels around the country of his personal interventions in young men and women’s lives. He was as Martin Carter described him, “a workhorse of the Nation” And he was posthumously named “The Caribbean Person of the Century”.

---

---