They had the white man's house. They wanted his power. They got it
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
February 13, 2007
As I hear and read more about what they utter and write. As I see more of their lifestyle. As I hear about the things they do. As I learn more about our leaders from the fifties, the more I understand the disaster that has befallen this territory.
It will take centuries for this nation to undo the damage the main political actors of the fifties have left us with. For me, the one with the more innocent faults has been Eusi Kwayana. He is the best figure that post-war Guyana has given birth to.
Cheddi Jagan, his wife Janet Jagan and Forbes Burnham were the most destructive ones that came on the scene. But the rest were not far behind.
Jai Narine Singh was more interested in land for himself than freedom for the Guyanese people. Brindley Benn is a person that has no substance. One can say the same for Rory Westmaas who currently works at UG. I look at his attitude to workers' rights at UG, and I wonder how he came to be an anti-colonial activist. Martin Carter turned out to be an alcoholic. As for Ashton Chase, while he was a practicing communist, he had one of the most lucrative law practices ever.
Weren't these people amazing? Ashton Chase was Minister of Labour in the fifties and bought a house in the same neighborhood with the white colonials. Jai Narine Singh marched against the colonials during the gunning down of the Enmore protestors. But he owned one of the largest homes right in the heart of the colonial suburb on Church Street .
Cheddi Jagan purchased a large piece of real estate in Bel Air. Brindley Benn bought one of the biggest houses on the lower East Coast at a time when he shouted out loudly that, “you can stop tomorrow but you cannot stop communism.”
One of the biggest mistakes Forbes Burnham made in his entire 21 years of rule was not to confiscate these palatial mansions and turn them into welfare homes for the needy.
The man that lived in a working-class home and lived among the people without any wealth to his name was Eusi Kwayana.
Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, though not a politician, was the essence of what he stood for. He died in poverty. This is a true Guyanese hero. Not Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham.
I hope years from now, the generation of leaders remove the atrocity, deplorability and caricature of Jagan's and Burnham's name from all those places that they are currently are emblazoned on. How symbolic that UG which Jagan founded is now a dilapidated structure without even one functioning lab.
Most of the destroyers from the fifties are dead. I say “destroyers” without any insult to their families. But I am a historian and a social scientist and research my country's history. What I have found about these dead ones entitles me to classify them as destroyers. Why should I hold back on my feeling about these flawed leaders from the fifties?
This is my country. Unlike many members of their families, I have to live in it. The children of Forbes Burnham live outside. Mrs. Jagan's daughter is a Canadian. Her son and his family are American citizens. Why should my generation not be angry at what these leaders of the fifties did to this country, rated at one time as the breadbasket of the Caribbean and the West Indian country with the richest intellectual talent?
That is gone. It vanished a long time ago. Jagan and Burnham were the causes.
I guess you cannot blame the masses at that time. The white man dominated the society and the masses were treated as inferior creatures. There were the local dark-skinned boys all dressed up in their foreign qualifications - Burnham, a lawyer; Jagan, a dentist; Westmaas, an architect; Carter, a poet; Chase, a lawyer, Jai Narine Singh, a lawyer.
The working people were caught not so much by the learning of these people but were trapped in their own delusion that these educated men had to be genuine angels to be so bestowed with status and education, yet not side with the colonials.
The poor labouring classes hadn't the wisdom to see that these learned dark-skinned boys indeed hated the colonials just as they, the working people, did. But the comparison began and ended there. The masses wanted liberation from the colonial masters. The dark-skinned, educated, road-corner speaker wanted to replace the white foreigners and live in their houses and have their power.
Some of them already had the houses like Jai Narine Singh, Martin Carter, Brindley Benn, Ashton Chase, Cheddi Jagan. Power was the ultimate goal.
The dark-skinned aspirants were smart though. They fooled the masses into thinking that they were their saviours and not the ones that were of light-complexioned and who found friendship with the colonial administrators.
Read “The West on Trial” and it is all there to see. Jagan painted a picture of wickedness over the face of every intellectual that didn't side with the group he and Burnham led in the fifties. Decent men, far more honest than Jagan and Burnham were, and who had no cunning, political ambition, were exposed to the masses as traitors.
Looking back you can't blame the poorer sections of the Guyanese population whose large numbers helped the dark-skinned educated elite of British Guiana to pressure the colonials into giving them self-rule.
How could the masses have known that they would have turned out to be destroyers? Our local demagogues didn't have it so good though.
In a weird way, the defeat of the first British Guiana Government of local rulers may have been a blessing in disguise. After they got power, it was time to run the country the way they wanted to and not according to the wishes of the people that made them popular.
In 1953, the British Government invaded British Guiana and chased them away. They only had 133 days of power. Look at Burnham riding on his horse, sharing out cigarettes. Look at Jagan's obsession with Soviet communism. Look at the writings of Mrs. Jagan with its fascist overtones. They all point to the flawed characters of the people of the fifties that had no right to ever rule this lovely land. They did and look at what it is today – one of the eleven poorest countries in the world.