Between 1969 and 1977, I became pushed and pulled between the ruling PUP, the Opposition NIP, the emerging PDM and Liberal parties, and then the new UDP to such an extent that I was perhaps a classic “tunu ball.” I suppose it was a case of paying my dues, but to join which club?
Over the years since 1969, I’ve spent a deal of time trying to figure out why there was a move to oust Philip Goldson from the leadership of the NIP around May of 1969. I’ve reached the point where I’m looking hard at the fact that Goldson was an original PUP – from the time of that party’s foundation in 1950 until he and Leigh Richardson lost a power struggle to George Price in 1956.
On the rebound from their PUP disappointment, Goldson and Richardson formed the Honduran Independence Party (HIP) in 1957, but Richardson soon left for work and exile in Trinidad. Goldson then took what was left of the HIP into an alliance with the National Party (NP), led by Herbert Fuller, in 1958. Thus was formed the National Independence Party. But, to repeat, Goldson was an original roots PUP, and the National Party was fundamentally bourgeois and actually pro-colonialist.
Today, a sliver of that bourgeois, reactionary NP element remains within the leadership and the ranks of the United Democratic Party, which incorporated the NIP at the time of the UDP’s founding in September of 1973. At least, that is sometimes the way it appears.
The PUP was built on the foundation of the working masses of British Honduras who were organized within the General Workers Union (GWU). Yes, the richest native in the colony of British Honduras, Robert Sydney Turton, had use for the PUP as an instrument to weaken British power in the colony and facilitate his business ties with the United States. Perhaps more important historically, the Roman Catholic Church in B.H. had use for the GWU/PUP, and so the SJC Jesuits sent some of their most talented graduates into the leadership ranks of the GWU/PUP – Nick Pollard, George Price, Johnny Smith, et al. But, in the beginning, when Goldson was there, the PUP was really the GWU.
Goldson did not go to high school. He educated himself through correspondence courses, and in this manner achieved his high school diploma in the 1940’s. Philip was not a child of privilege. He was self-made.
Around the time of his marriage to Hadie Jones in 1954, Philip converted to the Roman Catholic religion. This was an interesting decision, and I’ve never heard anyone shed any light on the subject.
The fact of the matter is that the esuits (and the Church) clearly preferred a Central American destiny for Belize, whereas Goldson and Richardson still appeared to be sympathetic to West Indies Federation at the time when the epic PUP power struggle took place in 1956. Richardson was overthrown as PUP Leader, and Mr. Price took over. It has always been felt that the Landivar priests supported Price. It is for sure that he supported them and their schools during his pre-Independence leadership.
In March of 1961, a general election was held under a new constitution, which allowed for eighteen members in a House of Representatives, along with a Speaker and an appointed Senate. It is interesting that Mr. Goldson did not run as a candidate in the 1961 general election. At the time he was the editor of The Belize Billboard, which was then the largest and most successful newspaper in Belize. In addition, Mr. Goldson and his wife already had several children by 1961.
In that same year, Mr. Goldson and his wife made the extraordinary decision for her to go to London and study law. It was a visionary decision, and had Mrs. Goldson been the modern woman lawyer, like say Lois Young-Barrow, history may have been different. But after she was admitted to the B. H. bar in 1965, Mrs. Goldson became more of a curiosity in Belize’s legal circles rather than a real force.
Philip had become the NIP Leader in 1961 or 1962 following Herbert Fuller’s death, and he ran for the Albert seat in the March 1965 general elections, winning one of the two NIP seats in the 1965-1969 House. In 1966, he displayed his national hero credentials again (he had been imprisoned for nine months in 1951 on sedition charges) by risking jail to expose the Thirteen Proposals. Belize City rioted. When the Seventeen Proposals in early 1968 confirmed Goldson’s Thirteen Proposals story, Belize City rioted again. In the old capital city, we believed that Philip Goldson had saved us from Guatemala.
Yet, a little more than a year later, there was a strange move to replace Goldson as NIP Leader. The man who challenged Goldson, Dean Russell Lindo, had support from the New York City-based British Honduras Freedom Committee which had financed the NIP through the 1960’s. But Goldson’s popularity in Belize was huge.
Lindo’s challenge to Goldson took place during the height of the early UBAD phenomenon, when the black power organization was drawing thousands to public meetings at Courthouse Wharf. As the young president of UBAD, I paid little attention to the NIP power struggle. I had my own problems. For example, I’d just lost my teaching job at Belize Technical College.
One night at Courthouse Wharf in that exciting summer of 1969, a taxi driver by the name of Gilbert Pollard asked to say a few words on the UBAD rostrum. I am not sure if this was before or after the August 20, 1969 fight between UBAD and CIVIC, which was an organization loyal to Mr. Goldson. It was probably after, because why would I have allowed Pollard to speak when I knew he was one of Mr. Lindo’s followers and would criticize Mr. Philip?
Gilbert Pollard used the UBAD rostrum to make a personal attack on Mr. Goldson and his wife. I remember two UBAD followers who were also long time NIP supporters – the late Mrs. Gladys Bailey Hoare and Theola Turton, quickly came up from the crowd and berated me for allowing Pollard to speak. I agreed with them. This was probably my first real lesson in the nasty side of Belize politics. Dean Lindo and my mom are first cousins, and Lindo was one of my childhood heroes, but Mr. Philip was an icon. Pollard’s attack was bitter, low down.
For sure Mr. Goldson and his wife were experiencing marital problems at the time. Women who are mothers are pragmatic and realistic. They don’t care about heroism. In Belize, it is extremely difficult to pursue politics full time and sustain a strong marriage.
In November of 1969, Goldson and Lindo were forced to come together and form the ill-fated NIPDM alliance after Mr. Price called general elections four months early.
Lindo and Goldson separated again right after their December 1969 general election defeat.
When I began public life in February of 1969, I was an anti-PUP. I had been an NIP most of my life. Guatemala was the issue, and Goldson was our saviour. But already in 1969, there were powerful forces in the Opposition who wanted Goldson out. A series of events began which made yours truly into a political tunu ball between that year and 1977. In 1991, Mr. Goldson became estranged from the UDP and formed the National Alliance for Belizean Rights (NABR). At the time of his death, he remained estranged from the UDP. There are things which are the way they are because of the remnants of the National Party. It was a bourgeois and reactionary party. I would go so far as to say that they were collaborators with white supremacy. Check it out.