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The People’s Progressive Party of Guyana, 1950-1992
An
Oral History
By
Frank Birbalsingh
(2007)
price:
UK pounds £10.99
US dollars
$15.50
Paperback
208 pages
228 x 152mm
978-1-870518-91-8
|
The
People’s Progressive Party of Guyana, 1950-1992: An Oral History
is a
collection of twenty-seven interviews with members (and opponents) of the
party, and with commentators who observed the party closely for a long time.
Interviewees include founding party members such as Dr Cheddi Jagan and his
wife, Janet, Ashton Chase, Eusi Kwayana, Martin Carter, Eric Huntley, and
commentators from the wider Caribbean such as Richard Hart, Lloyd Best,
George Lamming and George Belle, as well as independent Guyanese observers
such as Father Andrew Morrison, a Roman Catholic priest, Randolph George,
former Anglican Bishop of Guyana, and David de Caires, a national newspaper
editor. From such people, one gets a many-sided view of the origins, crises
and personalities of the party, and of issues of class, colour and ethnicity
which, along with external Cold War factors, played a crucial role in the
party’s exclusion from power for most of the second half of the twentieth
century. The fate of the PPP also vividly illustrates the shift in hegemonic
power from Britain to the United States, after the Second World War,
especially where the Caribbean and Latin America are concerned.
The informal oral medium of the interview makes for a lively text that is
more willing to trade punches than staid academic writing. The People’s
Progressive Party of Guyana, 1950-1992: An Oral History conveys the
insights of academic writing in a fresh, readable and entertaining format. |
