MR Hamilton Green on Wednesday called me on the phone in relation to the latest installment in this newspaper in my series on the political life of the Mulatto/Creole Class (CMC).
In that column, I looked at the rift between Prime Minister Forbes Burnham and the MCC in which Burnham sought to diminish their power, and he successfully did.

Mr Green asked me to account for Burnham’s embrace of two members of the MCC – Hubert Jack and Shridath Ramphal. That needs no elongated explanation. Mr Ramphal was never interested in politics.
Mr Burnham knew that. In relation to Jack, Mr Burnham had no objection to retaining members of the MCC once they showed loyalty to him. Mr Jack did, and others too like the deputy head of the United Force, Randolph Cheeks, who defected to Burnham and became Minister of Local Government, which at the time was the least important ministry.

By 1972, eight years after independence, the MCC was no longer interested in a relationship with Mr Burnham.
They felt that Burnham had strayed too far from the ideology and goals of the MCC’s party, the National Democratic Party of Sir John Carter. In fact, the first signal Burnham made to the MCC was the assignment out of the country of Sir John to be the ambassador to the US.

By 1974, two sections of the MCC began to plot against Burnham. One was the class itself, and the other was the intellectual appendage of the MCC – the intellectual middle class. The intellectuals formed a group called Ratoon, then, formed another entity named Movement Against Oppression.

The MCC financed another party which consisted of MCC Christian Indians – The Liberator Party. The Catholic Church birthed the Guyana Human Rights Association which consisted of pure Portuguese and Mulatto personalities and Christian Indians, especially from the Catholic Church.

Some middle-class Indians from the Creole stratum formed a group named the Guyana Anti-Discrimination Movement headed by a Portuguese gentleman named Ramon Gaskin.
After 1976, with Burnham’s declaration of the paramountcy of the party, the MCC was in relentless confrontation with the Burnham government, but in what was a classic example of class elitism, ethnic aloofness and purist racism, none of these middle class formations sought an alliance with the PPP that was seen as too working-class oriented and non-Christian.

In fact, it can be said that Burnham survived the turmoil of the 1970s because none of the MCC-related organisations wanted to team up with the PPP. See Dr Cheddi Jagan’s article in the PPP’s journal “Thunder,” of how he felt about these MCC-created middle-class outfits. The issue is July-December 1971.

Why the PPP was shunned was because of the numbers game that created paranoia in the MCC the first day it formed the National Democratic Party. It knew it did not have the numbers and was forced to align with the PNC.
In the 1970s, the MCC vowed it would not repeat that mistake and thus avoided any alliance with the colossal mass-based party of Dr. Jagan, whose supporters numbered almost half the country.

The MCC’s fear of the PPP’s numbers cost Walter Rodney his life. The rest of this column is devoted to the politics of the WPA after it was created by the MCC.
When the WPA was formed, one of its constituents, the Working People’s Vanguard Party, headed by Mr. Brindley Benn, father of the current Home Affairs Minister, pulled out, chastising the other WPA constituents as being a petty bourgeoisie group.
Indeed he was right, but his label of petty bourgeoisie was misleading. The WPA was essentially a middle-class formation funded by the non-Indian petty bourgeoisie.

The MCC pinned its hopes on regaining power it lost by bankrolling the WPA. The WPA’s reach into middle-class Guyana was fantastic. A good example was when one of the WPA leaders was being sought by the police, he was eventually found living in a suite in the foreign-owned Pegasus Hotel.

The WPA was an atavistic return to its pristine self- the League of Coloured People. The WPA harboured deep resentment of the PPP out of fear that it could not survive the numbers of the PPP; thus, the PPP will take power when Burnham fell in 1979 which was the planned date.

The planned revolt in 1979 was to overthrow Burnham and the WPA would take power with Rodney replacing Burnham. The PPP was completely shut out of the details which were only revealed last year by a newspaper letter by Mr. Ralph Ramkarran. After 1979, the MCC retreated into its shell.
Burnham survived and was accused of involvement in Rodney’s assassination. Next, I will look at the MCC’s physiology in 21st century Guyana.