By David Comissiong
Citizen of the Caribbean
Way back in the 1970s, when I was a teenaged school boy at Harrison College in Barbados, I stumbled across an electrifying book entitled “Poems of Resistance from British Guiana”, authored by one Martin Carter, and read such inspiring words as :-
“You come in warships terrible with death
I know your hands are red with Korean blood
I know your finger trembles on a trigger
And yet I curse you – Stranger khaki clad.
British soldier, man in khaki
careful how you walk
My dead ancestor Accabreh
is groaning in his grave
At night he wakes and watches
with fire in his eyes
Because you march upon his breast
and stamp upon his heart.
Although you come in thousands from the sea
Although you walk like locusts in the street
Although you point your gun straight at my heart
I clench my fist above my head; I sing my song of FREEDOM!”
At that time , I did not have a clue who Martin Carter was, or what historical event he was writing about with such passion and power. But, of course, it did not take me long to discover that Martin Carter was one of our greatest Caribbean poets, or to learn about that most remarkable year of 1953 – the year in which the people of the then colony of British Guiana made history by electing into office the first authentic democratic socialist governmental administration in the Caribbean component of the British Empire, and thereby setting the stage for an historic show-down between the old backward forces of racism and imperialism and the new nationalist cum liberatory aspirations of the West Indian people.
As a student of Caribbean history and politics, I have long marvelled at the sheer abundance of human talent that Guyana’s original nationalist/socialist political party – the original People’s Progressive Party – was able to present to the Guyanese people in the General Election of 27 April 1953 – the first election to be held under the principle of “one man: one vote”. Pray tell me, which other nationalist movement – in any part of the world – could match that 1953 Guyanese line-up of:- Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Sydney King (aka Eusi Kwayana), Martin Carter, Janet Jagan, Fred Bowman, Ashton Chase and Rory Westmaas?
But, as we all know, the Winston Churchill-led, Conservative, pro-Empire British Government of the day felt so threatened by this remarkable display of nationalist initiative in Guyana, that in October 1953 – a mere 133 days after the new People’s Administration had been voted into power — it used the brute power at its disposal to send British warships and soldiers to invade and occupy Guyana; to remove the popularly elected Government from office; to suspend the Constitution of Guyana; to declare a state of Emergency; and to arrest and imprison many of the nationalist leaders of Guyana.
Martin Carter, who – along with Sydney King and Rory Westmaas – was among the first batch of political prisoners (incarcerated for 81 days at Atkinson Field Air Base, and only released after undergoing a 7-day hunger strike) tells the tragic/heroic story with poetic brilliance in his “Poems of Resistance from British Guiana”.
In a remarkable poem entitled “Cartman of Dayclean” Carter sets out what would have been the nationalist mission for a Guyana ravaged by centuries of slavery, indentureship and colonialism:-
“Now to begin the road:
broken land ripped like a piece of cloth
iron cartwheel rumbling in the night …
Now to begin the road:
the bleeding music of appellant man …
his hopes are whitened starched with grief and pain
yet questing man is heavy laden cart
whose iron wheels will rumble in the night
whose iron wheel will spark against the stone
or granite burden of the universe.
Now to begin the road:
hidden cartman fumbling for a star …”
But that noble, beckoning, self-determined nationalist mission of healing and redemption was brutally and callously interrupted and dislocated by the British military invasion of October 1953, as Carter recounts in :-
“This is the dark time my love.
It is the season of oppression, dark metal and tears.
It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery.
Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.
Who comes walking in the dark night time?
Whose boot of steel tramps down the slender grass?
It is the man of death, my love, the strange invader
watching you sleep and aiming at your dream”
Carter then goes on to describe the agony of imprisonment in poems entitled “Letter 1”, “Letter 2” and “On the Fourth Night of Hunger Strike”:-
“This is what they do with me
put me in prison hide me away
cut off the world, cut out the sun
darken the land, blacken the flower
stifle my breath and hope that I die …”
“After twenty days and twenty nights in prison
You wake and you search for birds and sunlight
You wait for rain and thunder
and you think of home with pain inside your heart …”
“I have not eaten for four days
My legs are paining, my blood runs slowly
It is cold tonight, the rain is silent and sudden
And yet there is something warm inside me.”
Martin Carter’s imprisonment was just the beginning of a comprehensive campaign of repression, slander and “divide and rule” subversion that was designed by the British imperial forces to fracture and destroy the then unified Guianese Labour Movement!
We have learnt from the history books that elements of that nefarious campaign included the disbanding of the militant Trades Union Council and its replacement with a sell-out neo-colonial organization; the orchestrated hounding and persecution of labour activists by Police and Military officers; the banning of demonstrations and public meetings; the outlawing of such organizations as the Pioneer Youth League and the B. G. Peace Committee; the banning of progressive literature; the prosecution and imprisonment of Cheddi and Janet Jagan; the placing of Forbes Burnham under restrictive orders that prohibited his movement beyond Georgetown; and the open threat not to restore the Guyana Constitution unless and until the progressive Labour Movement divested itself of its militant leadership.
The British colonialists set out to do maximum damage to the progressive cause in Guyana, and they certainly succeeded in sowing many seeds of suspicion and division and in laying the groundwork for much of the racial conflict and violence that so afflicted and traumatized Guyana in the years after 1953!
But we must leave the final word to the great Martin Carter who – with sublime integrity and commitment – was able to take upon his shoulders all the struggles, hopes, disappointments and traumas of those heroic and difficult years and – in his 1955 “Poem of Shape and Motion” – to craft an aspirational Creed that still speaks eloquently and urgently to the Guyanese people today:-
“I was wondering If I could shape this passion
just as I wanted in solid fire.
I was wondering if the strange combustion of my days
the tension of the world inside of me
and the strength of my heart were enough.
I was wondering if I could make myself
nothing but fire, pure and incorruptible.
If the wound of the wind on my face
would be healed by the work of my life
Or the growth of the pain in my sleep
would be stopped in the strife of my days.
I was wondering if the agony of years
could be traced to the seed of an hour.
If the roots that spread out in the swamp
ran too deep for the issuing flower.
I was wondering if I could find myself
all that I am in all I could be.
If all the population of stars
would be less than the things I could utter
And the challenge of space in my soul
be filled by the shape I become.”
