Skip to main content

FM
Former Member

The  year 1953 and the shaping of the soul of Guyana

By David  Comissiong, Citizen of the Caribbean, , July 01, 2019, Stabroek News, https://www.stabroeknews.com/2...-the-soul-of-guyana/

https://s1.stabroeknews.com/images/2019/06/david-comissiong.jpg

David  Comissiong

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.”

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Not in so many words.

The year of 1953, like so many years of decades that had gone by, the people lived peaceful lives in the world's golden era of the 50's.

Martin Carter was a communist who failed to recognize what the soviets was all about. He was not a moderate. He was an extremist to the hilt of killing his opponents, setting fire to properties of the crown, contrary to the rule of British Law, the Monarch as the Head of State and complete chaos of the running of the government. To the PPP and the chorts of that era, winning the elections meant an approval to create chaos and mayhem. They began by trying to outs the MPCA and forcing the Sugar Producers to recognize the GIWU. Their ealier endeavors resulted in the death of the Enmore workers-all soviet tactics.

The PPP is no different today. Pre-Independence was the British now it is Black ppl. Always some kind of confrontation.

Her Majesty the Queen enacted the Emergency Order to save Guianese lives. Had it not been so, the Ethnic Cleansing of Wismar that occured later would have have been worst in the 50's. Blacks had juss welcomed LFSB. And we know Jagan could not even save the ppl in Wismar and he was going to tackle the British Empire. What a ding bat.  

Martin Carter was an elitist from GT, maybe all he did was put ink on paper. Claude Christian was another, he sold soviet propaganda on the corner of streets in GT. The minds of these chaps were too free, dey should have been cutting cane instead of hating white man and wishing to replace with soviets.

What a legacy they left for Guyana.

S

Seig, I totally agree with you. The British soldiers in BG saved many East Indian lives. That is why it is important that a British Gorkha base be built in Guyana capable of landing planes and helicopter gunships.

 

 

Prashad
Last edited by Prashad
Bibi Haniffa posted:

We finally have a decent and informative thread on GNI.  Let’s hope the jumbie crew don’t come on here and have their daily mental breakdown.

So tell us what you think Missy!

Was it justified?

did our local leaders go too far?

Did they play a role in precipitating the crisis?  

What you think could have avoided it?

And we know is all hindsight for all of us, except DG, so don’t be worry, there is no wrong or right answer!

FM

Add Reply

×
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×