Today is the death anniversary of an anti-colonial politician regarded as Guyana’s greatest and most morally endowed politician, Dr Cheddi Jagan. A voluminous book has just been released on Jagan’s anti-colonial career.

Clem Seecharran’s “Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War, 1946-1992” documents Jagan’s activism during the colonial period and takes it up 1992.
The book is 743 pages so the four hours one spent on the biography of Burnham, released two weeks ago, will run into 48 hours for the Seecharran project.

One of the negatives I have read about the book is that it is too long. It depends on what you mean by “too long.” A substantial part of the book does not add to one’s understanding of Jagan’s politics in that period which the book adequately covers.

But those substantial parts are priceless historical notes that because of Seecharran’s work have now enriched Guyana’s historiography. So the historians should be grateful for Seecharran’s compendious text.

Despite its largeness, the book has a one-dimensional theme that is a continuous thread running its fabric – Jagan’s untergang (downfall – I inexplicably like that German word after seeing a movie by that name about Hitler’s untergang) came about because he was too inflexible in his communist orthodoxy.

The reviewer can literally cite dozens and dozens of instances where Seecharran makes that point. Seecharran runs into trouble when he blames only Jagan for the American unpleasantness in British Guiana.

It is silly for anyone to condemn Seecharran for painting Jagan as a communist. The amount of material where Jagan had espoused communist philosophy, communist epistemology and communist interpretation of history and capitalism is literally voluminous.

The question is whether Jagan’s embrace of communism was the cause of his untergang or whether Jagan’s communism was embellished by the Americans for reasons that had nothing to do with Jagan and British Guiana but President Kennedy’s ugly conceptualisation of wanting the US to rule the world.

Irish historian from Oxford University, Jane Sillery has a book that is far more generous to Jagan than Seecharran’s.
I cannot do an intensive review of Seecharran’s text in a newspaper column but reading his book in the uncivilised hours on my verandah overlooking the mighty Atlantic, the compelling feeling strikes you that Seecharran is anti-Jagan and you see Freud coming out in him based on the cynical words he consistently used.

Sillery’s book is titled, “Salvaging Democracy? The US and Britain in British Guiana.” Sillery had access to four libraries that Seecharran did not have – Dwight Eisenhower, George Meany, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. She had access to important American officials of that era that Seecharran did not have Sillery’s conclusions about Jagan’s untergang put her in direct confrontation with Seecharran. She argues that Jagan’s communism played no role in how the Americans felt about Guyana. She asserts herself on three points.

Jagan was more of a nationalist than communist and the British told Kennedy this over and over. Secondly, Jagan was prepared to tone down his leftist/Marxist/socialist rhetoric to please the Americans.
Thirdly, although Jagan had directly communicated to Washington about his intention not to rock the boat…Kennedy’s Cold War mentality prevented him from seeing the distinction between anti-colonial aspirations and communist embrace.

around the world. Sillery did not mince her words about Kennedy’s disingenuousness in his dealing with Jagan.
Seecharran is a very competent historian, and the adjective, “competent” fails to do justice to his skills. He is good. But the runner stumbles and Seecharran stumbles badly in his latest publication.

In discussing post 1970 Jagan, Seecharran borders on propaganda. He goes after Jagan with relentless insults that are not only unnecessary but cannot be proven by evidence.

Space has prevented more elaboration in the differences between Sillery and Seecharran, and I would like to conclude with two observations. Firstly, I think this book and Seecharran’s other masterpiece on the Booker magnate, Jock Campbell did not employ class analysis. This was Seecharran’s choice but it exposed serious flaws in both works.

Secondly, I was annoyed at how Seecharran dismissed the class analysis of the PPP on Guyanese sociology. Seecharran on page 705 poured scorn on the PPP’s interpretation of Stabroek News as having the right-wing ideology of Christian democracy. Why is this not a fair intellectual assessment? What is Seecharran’s interpretation of the Stabroek News?

Finally, I was elated that Seecharran has joined me in seeing the irony of the ultra-communist Martin Carter joining the huge plantocratic, capitalist enterprise named Booker’s and became the editor of their propaganda organ, “Booker News.” Nevertheless, this book is a fine work of scholarship that adds to Guyana’s historiography.