Dear Editor,
One of my contemporaries called from overseas to enquire whether I was paying attention to the recently published paeans to Dr. Cheddi Jagan. I had to confess indifference, reminding him of having been alive and active in that era of the 1950s. I next recalled the ‘Premier’ and me engaging in conversation when regularly attending documentary presentations at the cultural facility then operated by the representation of the West German Government at the time. The low concrete building still exists, located obliquely across from St. George’s Cathedral on North Road and immediately overlooked by the new NBS storeyed building at the southeastern High Street corner. What was impressive was that the Premier attended those interactions as an individual citizen, absolutely without any fanfare. On those occasions we were all ‘equal’, so to speak.
That generation would remember 1953 and onwards as quite turbulent times. It was the year of the Lancaster House, talks organised by the British Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, as to the construct of an independent government for Guyana which both Dr. Jagan’s PPP and Forbes Burnham’s PNC demanded. As it turned out the Premier, supported though he was by such eminent advisors as Ashton Chase, Fenton Ramsahoye amongst others, allowed himself to be convinced by Duncan Sandys that he only needed to attend the conference separately, careful not to indicate that the ‘opposition’ (Burnham’s PNC and D’Aguiar’s United Force) was going to be fully represented. As it turned out the issue of ‘Proportional Representation’ became plain sailing. Jagan was in fact substantively mislead by his mentor the Colonial Secretary, and much to the dismay of his colleagues, left stranded in their hotel rooms.
The records of the PPP’s publication, The Mirror, would show the intense anger directed to their leader on his return home – a period better forgotten. But all this is captured more credibly in Clem Seecharan’s comprehensively researched volume titled ‘Sweetening Bitter Sugar’ which dwells on the relationship Dr. Jagan enjoyed with Sir Jock Campbell, then Chairman of the Booker Group of Companies world-wide, and a socialist Peer in the House of Lords. One reason many in Guyana today would not have learnt about Professor Seecharan’s acclaimed book, was that along with its author, it has always been rejected by Dr. Jagan’s adherents. ‘Sweeten-ing Bitter Sugar’ can be accessed at Amazon’s Book Store. The book, incidentally, won the brilliant Guyanese intellectual at UWI, Jamaica, the Elsa Goveia Prize for 2005 – awarded by the Association of Caribbean Historians. Among the published commentaries was the following: “This book is about Jock Campbell’s role in the shaping of British Guiana (Guyana) by leading his Booker Company to secure major benefits for sugar workers in the 1950s-60s. But it is also about the interplay between Campbell’s programme of reforms and the doctrinaire Marxism of politician Cheddi Jagan who was unrelentingly hostile towards Booker. Jagan exploited the loyalty of Indian sugar workers to foment instability on the plantations thus, undermining Campbell’s mission to alleviate the colony’s bitter plantation legacy.”
Sincerely,
Elijah Bijay
