THIS is the second installment of the review of John Mair’s (aka, Bill Cotton) article, “The Moray House Mensheviks” in the 5th edition of the journal he edits, titled, Oil Eldorado. In part 1, I stopped at the point where I interrogated Mair’s expatiation on the journalistic generosity and nice disposition of the co-founder of the Stabroek News (SN), David DeCaires.

I ended part one on the speculation that Mair could not have seen through the legacy of European elitism in DeCaires because Mair was seen by DeCaires as someone like himself – A European-born Guyanese. We arrive at different conclusions about humans based on the angles involved in the relationship.

Many of my former students would bang into my ear constantly that some of the people that I preferred at UG, they didn’t care about because they saw their cultural and racial preferences that they hid from me because I was Freddie Kissoon. I don’t doubt that for a moment. That is human nature. You would hide your true arrogant self when you are socialising with the Police Commissioner.

I saw the two cofounders of the SN – DeCaires and Fitzpatrick- from a different angle than the one Mair used. Mair was a White European. I was a dark skinned Indian, non-Christian boy from working class district in South Georgetown. Unfortunately, Mair who meant well in his piece on DeCaires did not get to see the reversion to 19th century Portuguese elitism at SN. It was never shown to him.

My father worked as a groundsman at two highly concentrated outlets of European cultural superiority in Guyana – GCC cricket ground and St. Stanislaus cricket ground. I saw apartheid in Guyana at a tender age and I grew up as an angry young man. The essential flaw in me is that I did not eradicate that trauma after I attained psychological maturity and became an academic and a university lecturer. A dilution did occur and that was due to my wife’s influence.

I had thought that Portuguese anthropological superiority was long, long gone from Guyana through the anti-colonial activism of Jagan and Burnham when I started to write in 1988 for a Portuguese-owned newspaper. Mair wrote that DeCaires established the SN as the home of the national debate.

This interpretation does not square with what DeCaires himself said about the intention of starting the newspaper. He said he wanted the paper to assist in the resuscitation of the business sector in Guyana. That made sense because DeCaires and Fitzpatrick were wealthy lawyers. The second volume of Yesu Persaud’s autobiography (released a month ago) describes how the Royal Bank of Canada, on leaving Guyana, sold its trust company to these two men.

Mair wrote that DeCaires was a firm believer in freedom of speech. I would say to a certain extent. He was not a philosophical embracer of free speech but had a bourgeois/liberal interpretation to what free speech meant. DeCaires had a class dislike for the PPP and its ideology and he made sure that the SN maintained that stance under his editorial leadership. Today, the anti-Indian, anti-PPP tradition has become a staple diet at SN. That was no accident.

What I saw as a ten-year-old boy at Saint Stanislaus and GCC in the 1960s, I saw at SN in 1988. Three stories tell the tale of European condescending mentality at SN. One day Moses Nagamootoo as one of the country’s leading politicians and a senior parliamentarian in Guyana at the time, walked up the stairs to see Mr. DeCaires. Apparently, the clerk at the entrance was not there.

I will not name the woman because although she did it and I was there at the time to see it, she may sue for libel. Nagamootoo was ordered out and told that he just cannot walk in like that. She would never have said that to a Portuguese businessman.

The second one has to do with what one of the children of Mr. DeCaires did. That person along with the daughter of the head of the OMAI gold company just took over the running of the newspaper for a particular Sunday edition and the journalistic staff had to accept that. When it happened, I couldn’t believe such a thing would return to Guyana. Bert Wilkinson, one of the senior journalists in the Caribbean can testify to that if he can still remember the incident.

Thirdly, as a columnist, I was told never to approach Mr. DeCaires. And don’t ever speak to him. No one was allowed to go to his office. Any comment or query must be conveyed to his secretary. No one could have known the direct telephone line of the secretary. That class abomination still exists at SN. Part 3 is forthcoming.