MY column for yesterday was on the alleged spy role of national poet, Martin Carter, for British intelligence.
The release of documents by the British Government on the PPP leadership of the 1950s revealed that M1-5 had a mole in the PPP leadership. It baffles me that the files did not name the person; just his code name, “Lascar.”

Released documents are always redacted and one of the compelling reasons is to protect the life of persons still living.
When MI-5 released its archives on the PPP in 2011, only one person from the 1950s was still alive in the world- Ashton Chase. One can assume then, Ashton Chase was Lascar. I have no evidence from reading the documents that it was Chase.

Most people I have spoken to told me it was Forbes Burnham. Not for a moment do I believe it was Burnham. From reading the documents, it is difficult to secure proof as to who was Lascar. The name Gangadin looks likely, but I doubt it was him because he was very loyal to Mrs. Jagan and would not have wanted to undermine the PPP.

The legal system has a methodology called “circumstantial evidence” which is accepted in courtrooms all over the world. In the social sciences, there is the methodology of logical deduction.

I have used both circumstantial evidence and logical deduction to reasonably suspect that Lascar was Martin Carter.
Unless evidence is presented to me, I will continue to write that the national poet, Martin Carter of Guyana, was a spy for the Colonial Office when the PPP of Burnham and Jagan was formed.

Yesterday, I got several emails accusing me of staining Carter’s name.
Most of these emails manifest a deep sense of ignorance and it makes you wonder how can humans, living, sane humans with normal relations in life be so ignorant.

Not one of the emails responded to my fairy-tale life of Martin Carter. It was from that fairytale life I used logical deduction and circumstantial evidence to determine that he might have been a mole.
One email asked me how I can slander the national poet. That is stupid a question but because of the analytical preciousness in the answer, I will explain.

When we are young, we never know how we would turn out fifty years after. We do self-destructive things characteristic of youth.
In the Guiana Graphic, there is a printed news item in 1955 of an employee in Bookers Garage being charged and convicted of larceny by a clerk. His name was Rex McKay.

Decades after, Mr. McKay became perhaps the richest lawyer in Guyana and became the most trusted confidante of former President of Guyana, Mr. Burnham.

When I was Mr. Kay’s age, I stole books from the National Library and was caught. I would never have dreamt when I stole those books at 18 that I would go on, in later life, to top the entire graduating class at UG and win a scholarship to one of the best universities in the world through competition with applicants from all over the globe.

My point is simple. A human’s social life keeps evolving and we may look back at some destructive, youthful escapades and wish they didn’t happen.
At the beginning of the 1950s, a young man named Martin Carter was of unknown quantity. He joined the anti-colonial struggle and became a name in the big, anti-colonial party, the PPP.

Carter became a very famous Caribbean poet long after the 1950s. You cannot rewind the tape to 1955 and ask how a national poet could have been a spy. None of the emails I received yesterday, have sought to engage me on the fairytale life of Carter.
If you are going to reject my assessment and say that Carter was not a spy, then please analyse the fairytale life of Carter.

He was the most inflexible communist in the PPP leadership who picketed Queen Elizabeth’s sister, and held an insulting placard for her to see.

He proclaimed support for the cruel, Russian dictator, Josep Stalin, that no PPP leader would dare to do. He was expelled from the PPP for being a wild communist.

At the time in colonial Guyana, the British Council was equivalent to the British High Commission. Why would the colonial office employ a Stalinist at the British Council?

Of all persons, a Stalinist! Next, he became a senior employee at Bookers Head Office. I ask again; why the Colonial Office and capitalist British Guiana was so enamoured with this ultra-communist Stalinist. I know why and so do you.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana Chronicle.