I WAS chatting last week with former President, Donald Ramotar and the recondite topic came up of how the WPA intellectuals really changed into racially driven people we never would have known them to be. I pointed out to President Ramotar that I think Andaiye was a different Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) personality and that was because of her skin colour.

It doesn’t matter how rich or how educated you are in the Guyanese middle class, you will not be allowed total integration into the world of the MCC if you are dark-skinned. Only two persons made it into the MCC even though they were of a dark hue – Hugh Chomondeley (deceased), the father of Cathy Hughes of the AFC and Andaiye of the WPA, who died in 2019.

They were MCC people who were/are of deep brown complexion and still became quintessential members of the MCC, Names like Lloyd Searwar (deceased) of the Catholic Church, Nigel and Cathy Hughes. But Andaiye and Chomondeley were very, very dark.

I say honestly, I haven’t seen any prominent MCC personalities that were as dark as Chomondeley and Andaiye. The darkest Guyanese I have known was Llewellyn John (deceased), a wealthy landed lawyer who was accepted by the League of Coloured People but was rejected by the MCC because of skin colour.

Father Terrance Montrose of the Catholic Church was as dark as Andaiye and Chomondeley but he cannot be described as your typical MCC elitist for reasons that are complicated and cannot be elaborated on. This column here is about the unique insertion of Andaiye into the MCC, a uniqueness that made her less racially biased than her famous MCC acolytes in the WPA, Red Thread, other women rights organizations and at the Stabroek News.

I cannot comment on the MCC’s acceptance of Mr. Chomondeley as I can with Andaiye because I did not know Mr. Chomondeley. I believe he managed to integrate himself into the MCC despite his black skin colour because he was given leadership of the state media by Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham after Independence.

Because radio at that time carried enormous status, Chomondeley was able to secure the companionship of the MCC, who had thrown in their support for Burnham against Cheddi Jagan during the violent sixties. The MCC was naturally patronised by Burnham and given enormous state authority.

It would be no exaggeration to say the PNC state after independence was an MCC state. MCC personalities had serious power under the PNC and UF government after 1964. They were the untouchables of Guyana. The two most graphic examples of this were the murder of Brazilian artist, Cletus Henriques.

Henriques lived alone at Fullton Court at the corner of Irving and Church Street. He was discovered murdered, with his head bashed, in 1969. All the evidence pointed to his homosexual lover, Billy Pilgrim (deceased), one of the most prominent MMC personalities at the time. PM Burnham intervened to stop the police investigation.

In 1970, the wife of the then head of the army, Colonel Price (deceased) was found with injuries after she and her lover were attacked; the lover was murdered.  The evidence pointed to lover’s jealousy, but PM, Burnham ensured Price was not investigated.

Chomondeley’s longevity into the MCC was nurtured by two of the crème de la crème of the day – Miles Fitzpatrick and David DeCaires. They became close to Chomondeley and Chomondeley became close to them. Chomondeley, unlike Andaiye, had no association with working-class people and he never socialised outside of his MCC world.

Andaiye did not have the enormous facility Chomondeley had to become integrated within the MCC. Her father was Mr. Burnham’s personal physician and through that route she courted MCC people. Andaiye found acceptance among MCC through two avenues. She married a White Englishman, Bill Carr who was a literature professor at UG (for an account of Bill Carr’s life with Andaiye, see his biography written by his son, Matthew Carr titled, “In My Father’s House,” Penquin Books, 1998).

The other avenue Andaiye used was the Working People’s Alliance. Here she became one of the famous names of the WPA. But Andaiye was always conscious of her black skin and it formed into an enormous complex.

While MCC men in the Caribbean would have wild dates with MCC women in the WPA, Andaiye was not on their radar and she knew this was because of her skin colour. The only lover Andaiye attracted was Walter Rodney, a disclosure never made public before.  It was because of her complex, Andaiye reached out to working class Guyanese and befriended Indian people. She was not in the elitist school of the MCC and that made her one of the better activists Guyana produced.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.