WHEN I first wrote a column based on circumstantial evidence that Martin Carter was the British mole that declassified documents listed as “Lascar,” Mr. Carter’s family members and relatives contacted Mr. Glenn Lall, the owner of Kaieteur News and criticised the column. They got Mr. Lall to pull the online edition of the article.

I contacted the editor at the time, Sharmaine Gra

nger, a very decent woman. She told me she disagreed with Mr. Lall and argued with him that for the sake of press freedom and robust intellectual exchange in Guyana, Carter’s people must write and engage the contents of the column. She told me she would ask Mr. Lall to reverse his decision. She subsequently told me, Mr. Lall refused.

As simple as that story was, I believe the Martin Carter incident with Mr. Lall was the beginning of the end of Ms. Granger’s stay at Kaieteur News. She was very upset at what Mr. Lall did. Her argument with Lall was that he cannot distrust his long-serving columnist just because a family member of a man I wrote about disagreed with me. She insisted that Lall contact Carter’s people and request that they rebut the column.

I went to see Lall myself. I told him it was the end of my relationship with Kaieteur News because you do not drop an analysis by a columnist because there is the obligation of an explanation and I was given no reason. Lall was conciliatory. He told me he didn’t know who Carter was and didn’t know anything about Guyana in the 1950s, and who was this or was that in those days.

I then assessed the politics of Carter for Glen. I remember the night very well. It was a Sunday evening and he was alone in his office. He offered me a can of juice and a jumbo date. I ate the date and took more from the tray because I never saw such huge dates although I lived in Canada.

I explained to Mr. Lall that Carter was painted as a loose cannon by the leadership of PPP in the 1950s by both Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. He picketed the sister of Queen Elizabeth with his placard reading “Limey go home.” He exclaimed that he was more than a normal communist; that he was a Stalinist.

I described for Mr. Lall that Carter was so extremist and communist that the PPP leadership expelled him. Lall laughed when I went on to tell him that this same Carter, after expulsion from the PPP, got a job with an office the colonial government set up in British Guiana named the British Council. Then Carter went on to become the Public Relations Officer for the British Empire – Booker Group of Companies in British Guiana

I told Lall the jobs Carter got you only find in comic books not real life. Why would the Colonial Office in London and the CIA in the US allow Carter, a devoted communist, to work at such sensitive levels?

I asked Lall if Forbes Burnham had to please the Americans when they brought him to power in 1964, and his government had to be anti-communist and was anti-communist, then why would he give Carter, a strong communist, a Minister’s job.

I convinced Lall that Carter was rewarded by MI5 in the UK and the CIA in the US for being the informant in the PPP leadership in the 1950s. He said he will talk to the people who called him and asked them to reply to my column. Weeks and months passed and I simply forgot to raise the issue again with Lall because there were so many things that occupy a columnist’s mind in Guyana.

I remember the night very well last year when former President Donald Ramotar called me over my Martin Carter column; this time in the Guyana Chronicle. I was sitting with my dog on the seawall when Mr. Ramotar called. He said that he disagreed with me that Martin Carter was the mole MI5 named Lascar.

He believes it was Burnham. But he said he understand my strong points about the types of jobs Carter held during the colonial days in British Guiana.

After my Carter piece in the Chronicle last week, I got three emails from people who live abroad. They told me that they do not believe Carter was Lascar. I wrote back and asked them why they thought so.

All three of them simply said they do not think it was Carter without explanation. I asked about the sensitive jobs he got while being a communist. They admitted like President Ramotar that they can’t explain it. I could and I did. Carter was a spy for the colonial government in London.

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.