Dear Editor,
I wish to add my quota of experience to that of my comrade Allan A Fenty in his column ‘Frankly speaking’ in Stabroek News of Friday, May 25 under the caption ‘H N Critchlow in Guyana’s history.’
I had finished my school leaving exams at St Francis Xavier RC School at Charity and was preparing to do Junior Cambridge at Anna Regina. It was Monday, the traditional market day at Charity, Pomeroon in 1950, when I first recognized Mr Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, speaking to a crowd of middle-aged farmers under the zinc roof shed where farmers met to sell produce. He was of medium build and wore a black jacket, a bit old, and his black cap was squeezed under his right arm. He moved his hands continuously while speaking without a loud speaker; he spoke of unity, how to organize and the human right to vote.
Many people looked on with curiosity and felt it was another Coptic preacher. But his associates at that meeting were leaders of the community like H M Pilgrim, Vibert Chase, R C Holder, Solomon David JP, Alvin Cox, and Ruplall and Harry Prashad. I then recall he was invited to East Germany, a visit which set the Guyana upper class against him since trade union organizations would have made the “iron Grip” employers exercise on their employees.
The privileged class not only used every means to restrict his revolutionary zeal to organize workers, but subscribed to the composing of a calypso to further ostracise his work. The calypso went as follows:
The people of Guyana they sleeping
And they don’t realize what happening,
They put all they trust in the Old Blunderbuss,
And they gone home striking
Chorus:
So Trinidad got Cipriani,
Jamaica got Bustamante,
But British Guiana
We got a mocking bird as a labour leader.
The old dam fool he never bin to school
To learn the situation,
The Germans they say, they won’t prevail –
Man got no record where he went to jail.
(Chorus)
However in the early sixties, a statue was made of this hero; the opposition to this statue and its intended location became a political issue – one of the many strategies to derail the PPP at the time. This statue remained for years abandoned in some store bond, until wisdom prevailed and this hero of ours has found his rightful place in the precincts of our national Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
Isahack Basir