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Aug 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev
(The following was the fourth in a fourteen-part series on LFS Burnham in KN during 2000. We offer it on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of his death.)
Forbes Burnham entered London University – belatedly on account of WWII – as a Guyana Scholar and obtained his LLB (Honours) in 1947, the same year he won the “Best Speakers Cup”. He was called to the bar the following year. Plunging into university politics, he was elected president of the West Indian Student Union in 1947-48. In that capacity, he led delegations in both years to the World Youth Festival, first in Czechoslovakia and then in Paris. The Festival provided the opportunity for Leftist/Communists/Nationalist youths to network internationally.
From what we know of Burnham’s class-origins (lower-middle), training (Queen’s College) and lifestyle in Guyana, this participation was somewhat unexpected: he had displayed no leftist leanings “back home”. What was even more unexpected was his association with, or possible membership in, the British Communist Party. One has to wonder what caused this ideological shift in Burnham’s ideological horizon within three years in London.
Burnham had arrived into an exhausted England, in the throes of massive changes and ferment. The end of WWII had witnessed the election of a leftist Labour government and a grudging acceptance within the political establishment that Britain did not have the wherewithal to hold on to its far-flung empire. Not all accepted however, that the sun was about to set on that empire. Critical to Burnham’s political development was the 5th Pan African Congress (PAC) held October of 1945. The idea for the Congress was mooted during the leftist-dominated World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) held in February of that year, by the Pan-African Federation (PAF) of Manchester.
Led by George Padmore and most ably assisted by CLR James, the PAF drafted a tentative agenda for the Congress, which was expected to follow a follow-up WFTU’s Conference scheduled for Sep-Oct in Paris. The list of attendees to the PAC read like a who’s who of the African/Caribbean anti-colonial struggle: Nkrumah (who had arrived in the UK in June 1945 and made regional secretary of the PAF), Kenyatta, Banda, Eric Williams, Arthur Lewis, CLR James, Padmore, leaders of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP), the African Student Organisation and representatives from the Caribbean and Africa.
Between the two WFTU conferences, Padmore and others had edited, published and circulated several books and collection of speeches – including Eric Williams’s, “The Negro in the Caribbean”. At the Manchester Congress, the august assembly heard presentations on, “The Colour Problem in Britain”, “Imperialism in North and West Africa”, “Oppression in South Africa”, “The East African Future”, “Ethiopia and the Black Republic” and “The Problem in the Caribbean”. Padmore’s and Ken Hill’s presentations set the tone for Marxist interpretations which, as Hill reminded the Conference, did not mean that “racial origins” were forgotten. The resolutions were edited by Padmore and published as “Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Program for Action”. For the West Indians, it demanded institutionalisation of the Commission’s recommendations and exhorted all to battle Imperialism: “Your weapons – the Strike and the Boycott – are invincible.’ Labour and politics were linked inextricably.
The Manchester Congress was the turning point for African and Caribbean activists since it redirected the attention and orientation of the generally middle-class activists and intellectuals away from simply petitioning the “home government”, towards a program of activities focused in their own countries and grounded in the masses of their peoples. This was a radical step.
While it does not appear that Burnham actually attended the Congress, he did become an active and vociferous spokesperson as a member of the LCP, headquartered in London and led (until 1947) by Dr Moody, a Jamaican. The LCP was mandated by the Congress to “publicise the resolutions and other directives adopted by the delegates.”
While a young man in Guyana, according to his sister Jessie, Burnham had declared his intention to be leader of Guyana and he was consciously preparing himself for the task: in his estimation, the oratorical skills were crucial. He was now exposed to a vision and program that exposed starkly the irrelevance of the old style “gentleman’s” politics. Burnham quickly saw the utility of the Marxist critique for the colonial situation into which he would soon be returning. Burnham, who Martin Carter pointed out was pragmatic politically but not philosophically, adopted Marxism in London.
Burnham’s segueing into Marxism, then, arose out of a cerebral appreciation of its insights as a tool for conducting the anti-colonial struggle within countries soon to be granted the franchise. His socialism did not come out of a concrete personal struggle and experiences among the masses – whether in Guyana or in London. Those expenses not covered by his scholarship were taken care of by his family – as per his sister.
The London phase of Burnham’s life left him with a lifelong appreciation of the influence of Marxist analyses on third world intellectuals and leaders. His craving for recognition as a member of the latter group would play no small part in his later more open embrace of Marxist praxis. His own intellectual acuity in grasping the essence and power of Marxist theory, however, would also leave him with a lifelong overestimation of theory over practice; of learning as an intellectual process over concrete activities – his protestations to the contrary, notwithstanding.
His name would be passed on to Dr Jagan and the other leaders of the Political Action Committee (PAC) that were about to launch the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) by the British Communist party. As he was returning to British Guiana towards the end of 1949, he was asked to stop over in Jamaica to observe the mechanics of political organisation. Ashton Chase had been asked to step aside for the bright new lawyer on account of his popularity in the urban African community due to his academic achievements. It was to prove to be a rather momentous decision.
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