Dear Editor,
I was privileged last weekend to attend a diaspora Guyana Speaks gathering to hear Guyana’s prize historiographer Professor Clem Seecharan launch his book Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War to a packed room in London’s Elephant and Castle. As ever with Clem, this tome is a triumph of careful scholarship. Hours spent in the UK National Archives and the British Library poring over records of Guyana of the past.
The result? A book of close to 700 (yes seven hundred pages!) detailing almost every cough and spit of Cheddi’s political and personal life. In my view, it is simply too long and maybe needed the careful hand of a professional editor to sort the wheat from the chaff. Door stoppers often put people off. Despite that, the few copies on sale were sold out.
Clem is a former Jaganite, PYO member, born again as a critic. In trouble at Queen’s College with the headmaster for inviting his hero to speak there. Twice. In later life he has come to see clearly the flaws in the political life of Jagan. Rigid adherence to Soviet communism as the future primary amongst them.
That belief, privately expressed to JFK in the White House Rose Garden, essentially cooked his goose in the eyes of the USA. He was not their man. A new Castro. They were happy instead to support Forbes Burnham ballot rigging and all. Clem was full of praise for LFS, quoting VS Naipaul saying ‘He was the most impressive speaker in the English language’. That facility with words and his undoubted charisma ,set against the personal modest and ideological purity of Jagan ensured the survival of Burnham’s dictatorship. ‘Jagan was Burnham’s greatest protector’ in Seecharan’s words. Cheddi and Forbes were the Punch and Judy of the political life of Guyana for decades.
Despite his intellectual critique, Clem still talked very warmly of Jagan the man and his integrity throughout his life. His greatest asset but also a huge liability in the milieu of the Cold War.
That afternoon in south London ,Professor Seecharan cemented his deserved reputation as a historian of Guyana sans parallel. On the new book and the ‘anti-Jagan’ thrust of it,why not buy it and decide for yourself?
That is called freedom.
Yours,
John ‘Bill Cotton/Reform’ Mair
Editor Oil Dorado 2024
