Irfaan Ali and Aubrey Norton, PPP and PNC: A class analysis

Mar 20, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The difference historically between the working class praxis of the PPP and the PNC is that the PPP never compromised its working class credential. The PNC was forced to do that under Burnham because of electoral demographics. But Burnham eventually took the PNC back to working class roots but in a strange way that today still remains a complex phenomenon.
With this kind of ponderous historical material here readers will have to accept brief notes. The Creole middle class (CMC) did not accept the PPP under Cheddi Jagan and the PNC under Forbes Burnham. Both men and parties were viewed as socialists.
There is a huge vacancy in Guyanese scholarship on the relation between the united PPP under Jagan and Burnham and the CMC in the 1950s. One book that should have filled that gap is, “A People’s Political History of Guyana, 1838-1964 by Kimani Nehusi.
This book is disappointing in that it is purely descriptive without even a modicum of analysis. There was no use in Nehusi’s book for the work of Guyana’s leading sociologist, Percy Hintzen who remains the foremost authority on the reactionary role of the CMC in contemporary Guyanese history.
What is still lacking is analytical outpouring of that period. It is a fascinating era because it marked the beginning of the awakening of Forbes Burnham as to the power of class forces in British Guiana. Not so for Jagan, who was awakened to that reality long before Burnham did.
While Burnham needed the CMC and played up to Dr. Claude Denbow, head of the League of Coloured People (LCP) and John Carter, leader of the elitist National Democratic Party (NDP), Jagan did not have to even look in their direction. With the proclamation of universal adult suffrage and the removal of the literacy requirement, Jagan knew he had the numbers to win elections.
The CMC knew this and flooded the PPP with the intention of wresting the PPP away from the working class leadership of Dr. and Mrs. Jagan to stop the PPP from wining and catering for the Indian majority. For a good outline of the anti-Indian feelings that Jagan had to face from the CMC see the unpublished paper by Professor Jay Mandle; “Cheddi Jagan and the Ultra-Left in Guyana (no date).
Burnham was in confusion at this time. He knew the CMC was not interested in working class politics. He knew his party the PNC was looked down upon by the LCP, NDP and the rest of the CMC clique but Burnham played the race card to widen his political space. He deliberately spread the news, transmitted by his sister, Jesse that he was going to put the Indians in their place. This was for the ears of the CMC.
Both Jagan and Burnham returned to the classical working class roots after Independence. After a number of middle class men left the PPP in the late 1960s because they felt that Guyana was now Burnham’s property so the PPP was dead. Jagan began building an essentially working class party with about 80 percent of the cadres coming from the rural working class. Bharrat Jagdeo and Dr. Irfaan Ali are the descendants of that generation.
By 1973 when the second national election was rigged, the PPP was devoid of middle class leaders the type that came on board from 1955 to 1970. Interestingly the PNC under Burnham at the same time, was transformed into what Burnham always wanted, a proletarian, socialist party. State resources were put at the disposal of the vast majority of ordinary people by the PNC who at this time had a school of leaders at the top who were from proletarian backgrounds.
But the contradictions in the socialist pathways of Burnham were fraught with danger. One is that his working class state was oligarchic and not democratic. Secondly, the country’s resources were not transferred to the working people but remained in the hands of a powerful state dominated by the personality of Burnham. Thirdly, and most ironically, Guyana’s Indian population didn’t accept that the Burnhamite state was interested in their livelihood. Interestingly, both Jagan and Burnham were alarmed when the CMC attempted once more to wrest power from them by sponsoring Walter Rodney and his middle class outfit – the WPA.

Sorry, space has run out. In the second part, I will argue that Aubrey Norton is only the second working class leader the PNC has produced in its history after Robert Corbin. Ptolemy Reid and Hamilton Green though from the working class, did not become leader of the PNC. And it is no accident that both Corbin and Norton became head when the PNC was in opposition.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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