For many years in the most repressive era of the Burnham government some vestige of press freedom was maintained due to the efforts of a frail Jesuit priest and his little eight page weekly magazine, the Catholic Standard. At that time the sole daily newspaper and the radio station were owned and controlled by the state and the government's many wrong-doings, ranging from rigged elections to repression, sometimes violent, of its opponents and critics were reported by those media in a manner that would have been familiar to readers of Pravda.

Fr Andrew Morrison's job, as he saw it, was to tell his many readers what in fact was happening. It was a task that required energy, dedication and courage. He had to rely to a large extent on information from people in the governmental system who were unhappy with what was going on. The Catholic Standard also gave a voice to opposition politicians who tended to become non-persons in the state media. Over the years, it became the voice of dissent as repression increased, democratic freedoms were curtailed and people voted with their feet as life in Guyana became increasingly unbearable.

The thin, fragile figure of Fr Morrison going round town on his journalistic missions became a familiar sight. The threats to the Standard's survival were many. There were a number of libel actions filed by leading government functionaries, starting with the Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham. These posed an obvious financial threat and indeed funds had to be raised on at least one occasion to pay damages awarded by a court. Efforts were made to starve the Standard of newsprint. The refusal of a licence to import newsprint donated by the regional media was, scandalously, upheld by the court. And there were, of course, physical threats which culminated in the murder of Father Darke, widely believed to have been mistaken for Fr Morrison. In the face of it all `Morrow', as he was usually called, never flagged. Indeed, his determination seemed to become more formidable.

Though not a professional journalist trained in the techniques of that profession (his lawyers had to insist on editing the Standard in an effort to avoid unnecessary libel actions) he had many of the qualities of the top class journalist including courage, energy and persistence. Week after week he would get real scoops from various sources and on those weeks when there was no good news (read bad news) he would be visibly disappointed. He had to face vilification from government politicians. He also had critics in the church who felt that under his guidance the Standard had become too political. Yet he never had any doubt that he was doing the right thing, that the story must be told and that what was hidden must be revealed. He succeeded in doing this with remarkable effectiveness for a number of years and that little sheet became a symbol of resistance.