– Guyana’s gilded gift to journalism and ‘Our Caribbean’

VETERAN Guyana-born Caribbean journalist, Rickey Singh, observed his 86th birthday on February 1st in Trinidad & Tobago with close friends and family, welcoming posted and online greetings from professional colleagues he influenced across the Caribbean — and refreshingly walking-back down memory lane.

Rickey published his first article in 1957 at age 20 and his last in 2017 at age 80 and proceeded into involuntary retirement, forced by elements of advanced age. But while the lion ages gracefully at the top of his and our profession, never for one day, minute or second does he fail to remind anyone listening of the breadth and depth of his diligent decades on the Caribbean beat.

On his last (as in latest) birthday, Rickey recalled his first job as a proofreader [one who reads articles to ensure grammar, spelling and other technical aspects of writing are in order before going to print] and how it was through the long hours painstakingly reviewing stories and articles for linguistic and grammatical verification that he started developing an interest in how West Indian politics worked.

Just 17 then, Rickey had graduated from Central High School in Georgetown – miles from Perpetua Kawal Memorial Primary School in Canal No. 2, where he’d first developed his writing skills and an eternal love affair with books.

Orphaned at age nine, he remains grateful, to this day, to his brother Richard, who brought him to Georgetown and ensured he went to school daily and had access to the public library.

Rickey’s first media job was as a general reporter, but he quickly transitioned to political reporting, also quickly becoming Senior Political Reporter at the Guiana Graphic [predecessor of the Guyana Chronicle].

His professional life is dotted with colourful stories, like: escaping being lynched in Buxton while on duty; an encounter with a ‘Death Squad’ in Georgetown’s Botanical Gardens; and a near-death experience from accidental poisoning at work.

But none compared to the hair-raising exchanges Rickey had with larger-than-life political figures at home and across the Caribbean.

For example, he’s proud to be – to this day — the only journalist from the English-speaking Caribbean to have had a full-length interview with Cuba’s President, Fidel Castro; he also fondly recalls on a “rich” one-on-one interview with Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams and the rare experience of sharing ‘The Doc’s’ sense of humour.

And Rickey is also a prime exemplar of the rule that journalists don’t make enemies, best seen in the fact that despite their deep differences and being forced into exile by Guyana’s first Prime Minister and President, Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, he still describes his eternal tormentor as “an incredible intellectual and a master of (the English) language…”

And he offered similar respect due to Dr Williams to another Caribbean leader under whose watch he was also forced into Caribbean exile.

Rickey Singh’s travails earned him the support, admiration and respect of colleagues and Caribbean citizens from as far back as his early stints at the ‘Graphic’ when he was targetted very early by the colonial authorities and local politicians who couldn’t stomach his fearless reporting.

His reporting didn’t fit into the partisan political and strategically-contrived race narrative that prevailed after the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) was split between its Founding Leader and General Secretary Dr Cheddi Jagan and Chairman L.F.S. Burnham.

The English owners of the Graphic would move Rickey to the UK to cover courts in London, which they determined was for his and his family’s “protection”, but he chose not to stay in the UK, or extract his family from the then British West Indies.

After returning home from London, he continued reporting with his by then patented fearlessness, until he left in 1975 — for higher and better ground — to assume the role of Editor of Caribbean Contact, the organ of the Caribbean Conference of Churches (CCC).

He succeeded his respected Caribbean colleague and friend Barbados’ Harold Hoyte (who’d been the Contact’s editor from 1973) and would move on to become Editor of The Nation newspaper.

Under Rickey’s watch (from February 1975) the Contact assumed Caribbean-wide readership for its fearless and to-the-point factual reporting.

But it was Contact’s coverage of the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana on November 18, 1978 (in which American Jim Jones encouraged followers to drink poison instead of co-operating with investigating US officials) that first earned it – and Rickey — region-wide respect for its and his bold reporting style and featuring issues and items of regional interest, across political, cultural, religious or race lines.

That the CCC’s organ was not only publishing church news would become a bother for those in the regional political directorate who had reason to fear the broad strokes of Rickey’s pen, which persistently exposed much they would have preferred hidden – from a photograph showing the level of involvement of Guyana’s Defence Force (GDF) in moving ballots from the 1974 Local Government Elections, to the Contact’s coverage of the aftermath of the Grenada Revolution in 1979 and the US-led invasion in 1983.

During his long stint at the Contact, Rickey also became the most-harassed and politically-punished Caribbean journalist.

He was forced to leave Trinidad & Tobago, where the Contact was established and registered during the reign of Prime Minister Williams and relocated to Barbados — only to be forced-out again, this time by Barbados’ Prime Minister J.M.G. ‘Tom’ Adams, after Contact’s coverage of the 1983 US-led invasion that called-out the role he and Barbados played in facilitating an armed invasion of a fellow CARICOM nation, instead of the political solution being sought by Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago.

With his work permit withdrawn by ‘Tom’ Adams and his Barbados Labour Party (BLP) administration, Rickey suffered the invidious position of having to leave his wife and family in Barbados and return to Trinidad every 17 days, to be able to continue his journalistic work, each time classified as a ‘visitor’ to the island.

Rickey’s wife and family suffered the plight of any such family living in the shadow of the political uncertainty that had plagued their lives just because of his insistence on being true to his calling and refusing to submit to the political pressure aimed at gagging him, or intended to force him to either leave the Contact, or change his profession.

Rickey, to this day, recalls being offered jobs as Editor of other publications by key figures out to lure him away from political reporting, but that was never to be — and even after the Contact eventually became silent, Rickey developed his ‘Our Caribbean’ column that appeared weekly in the region’s main newspapers in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago (Nation, Chronicle, Daily News and Express, respectively).

His regional column drew as much attention across the region and the wider Diaspora as he’d drawn to the Caribbean Contact, because of the way it addressed regional issues from a regional (‘Our Caribbean’) standpoint.

The venerable Rickey Singh was indeed an architect and Founding President of the original Caribbean Association of Media Workers (CAMWORK), a professional network established to “Foster and maintain a high standard of journalism in the region…”

Forever describing himself as “A Caribbean Man” with “A Caribbean Family”, Rickey, who ceaselessly traversed and covered the Caribbean all his working life, has spent the last six years with his sons and daughters and immediate family and relatives between Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago, while trying [believe it or not] to rationalise his immigration status.

He occasionally visits his sister and remaining relatives in his native Guyana, the latest in 2022 when he was ferreted out of humble isolation by a local journalist for an interview that allowed him to share his views on Guyana today.

In that interview, Rickey indeed offered an interesting proposition for addressing the apparently-eternal racial-religious-cultural political divide: establishment of a national statue featuring late Presidents Jagan and Burnham, arm-in-arm as the comrades-in-arms they were before the 1964 split that rendered them apart and gave birth to the deep political divide that has (to date) forever crippled ethnic and race relations in his homeland.

On his 86th birthday, Rickey blew the single candle on his cake and revelled in the long list of pre-recorded video messages, compiled by Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) President, Wesley Gibbings, that featured friends, colleagues and many others who attributed their places in the Caribbean media to their interactions with Rickey and his encouragement, advice and support.

This list is too long to provide here, but those congratulating Rickey included diplomats, regional public servants, religious and political figures that he mentored, as well as old friends and professional admirers influenced by his work, one way or another.

Like everyone lucky enough to live to his age, Rickey has to encounter natural declines in some senses, but certainly not his memory of important regional and international events that matter to the Caribbean and developing nations — from the birth pangs of Guyana’s road to independence in 1966, to the birth of CARIFTA in 1969 and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 1973, to the death by suicide of the Grenada Revolution.

He also nurses continuing regrets that “Caribbean leaders, after 50 years of working together, have still been unable to agree more than disagree on where the region heads next.”

But never mind sensitivities and sensibilities, despite missing his dear wife “Dolly” (who departed suddenly eight years ago), Rickey remains in good-enough health and retains all of his traditional sense of being seriously humorous.

He still enjoys reading, an occasional swim, a good “Mutton Curry” — and a chocolate after dinner.

My good old friend and mentor still wants (like we all do) to read all the newspapers every morning — and on occasions when he’s not satisfied there was enough news worth the time, he spent browsing dry pages, he’d simply remark: “There’s no news in this newspaper. It’s just paper…”

As Guyana observes its 53rd Republic Anniversary on the road to its 57th Independence Anniversary at a time of renewed national joy and pride in Guyana starting on a new road for the better, as Guyanese remember the contributions made to Guyana’s media development by the likes of the late Fathers Morrison and Wong, his fellow citizens should also take some time off during the 2023 celebrations to also pay tribute to the fearless journalism that Rickey Singh patented in Guyana and shared with the rest of the Caribbean for well-over sixty (60) years – and still counting!

Long Live My Ever-Effervescent Guyanese and Caribbean Brother and Mentor!