Tuesday, September 29, 2009, marks the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People’s United Party (PUP). Following the devaluation of the British Honduras dollar on December 31, 1949, a People’s Committee was formed in January of 1950 to fight for the restoration of the dollar’s value. Previous to the devaluation, the British Honduras dollar had been on par with the United States dollar. Following devaluation by the British, the British Honduras dollar was reduced to seventy United States cents. The PUP grew out of the People’s Committee.
Mass parties in Belize’s version of democracy represent a convergence of interests. One of the interests which was involved in the formation of the People’s Committee, and later the PUP, was that of the native businessman and mahogany/chicle contractor, Robert Sydney Turton, whose enterprises had grown to the point where they competed with the British-dominated Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC). Devaluation hurt Turton much more than it did BEC, because the British had tipped off BEC where devaluation was concerned.
The man who would take over the leadership of the PUP in 1956 and dominate it for the next 40 years, was R. S. Turton’s personal secretary in 1950 – George Cadle Price. Price had studied at separate Roman Catholic seminaries in Mississippi and Guatemala City in his attempt to become a priest, but he returned to British Honduras in the early 1940s to resume working for Turton.
Our opinion at this newspaper is that there was a conspiracy inside the PUP to erase the records and contributions of various people within the pre-1956 PUP. Amongst those who were prominent in the pre-1956 PUP, those whose names have become nothing more than names for the 2009 PUP faithful, were Turton, Clifford Betson, Johnny Smith, Leigh Richardson, Philip Goldson and Nicholas Pollard, Sr.
It was Betson, the leader of the General Workers Union (GWU), who brought the mass foundation to the fledgling PUP. All the elections which the PUP successfully participated in between 1951 and 1957 featured a coalition between the PUP and the GWU. At the time, everybody in British Honduras knew this. Today in Belize, nobody does.
The early star of the People’s Committee and the PUP, so much so that he easily became an elected GWU leader, was Nick Pollard. A wonderful orator, Pollard appeared to have a brilliant future, but the fact that he was born in Mexico prevented him from consolidating his street popularity with constitutional, electoral power. Thus, while Richardson, Goldson and Price were elected to office in the pivotal national elections of 1954, the elections when adult suffrage was introduced in the colony, Nick Pollard was not allowed to run for office because of his Mexican birth, even though his parents were Belizeans. Confined to the trade union movement, Pollard saw Price become a Belizean idol while he, Pollard, slowly sank into oblivion. Such is politics. Such is life.
In the case of Philip Goldson, who, along with Leigh Richardson, was ousted from PUP leadership by Mr. Price in 1956, he became Mr. Price’s principal political antagonist in the 1960s. But Mr. Goldson’s National Independence Party (NIP) suffered crushing defeats in national elections in the 1960s. One of the reasons for this was that Mr. Price, a single man, had raised the bar of political campaigning to a point where Mr. Goldson, who was trying to be a good husband and father, could not compete. Working all the villages and remote countryside areas on weekends, Mr. Price constructed a formidable power base.
The first serious challenge to Mr. Price’s political kingdom took place in 1974, after the Opposition UDP chose Dean Lindo to replace Goldson as Leader. Mr. Price’s PUP survived in 1979, but fell to the UDP in 1984 after Mr. Price had led Belize to political independence in 1981.
During the 1970s, the PUP had built a personality cult around the figure of Mr. Price, and by the time the PUP fell in 1984, while it remained a progressive party compared to the UDP, internal party democracy had shrunk to the point where insiders described it as “guided.” “Guided democracy” is an oxymoron. This was the contradiction which eventually led to the PUP’s electoral disasters from 2006 to 2009. The PUP had fallen before, badly in the general elections of 1984 and narrowly in the generals of 1993, but both their defeats were under the leadership of Mr. Price, whose personal ties to the workers’ foundation of the 1950s provided the PUP with the institutional memory, though not the reality, of party democracy. Today, on the party’s 59th anniversary, even though the Said Musa leadership was personally blessed by Mr. Price, its oligarchic nature was exposed after 2004.
Mr. Price’s attitude towards the PUP’s Johnny Briceño leadership, elected in a national party convention in March of 2008 after Mr. Musa resigned the previous month, has been almost scandalous at times. The Said Musa/Ralph Fonseca faction of the PUP had proposed Ralph’s nephew, Francis Fonseca, as the leadership replacement for Mr. Musa. Following Mr. Briceño’s upset victory, Mr. Price did not transfer his respect from Mr. Musa to Mr. Johnny.
Fearing a Mark Espat leadership challenge, Briceño bent over backwards last week to mend fences with Mr. Musa. The indications are that Mr. Musa plans a return to leadership, so next year’s PUP national convention should be energetic, if not downright combative.
At its foundation in 1950, the PUP was a revolutionary party in that it fought British colonialism in an aggressive manner. Electoral success after electoral success bred arrogance, cronyism and nepotism inside the PUP leadership. Undefeated before 1984, the PUP has lost three of the six general elections since independence. While the party remains progressive in the sense of being creative, the PUP of 2009 is a far cry from the PUP of 1950. Lord Ashcroft, the British banker/businessman, may be compared to BEC in the sense of his impact on the Belizean economy and his loyalty to Mother England. In 1950, the PUP was an open enemy of BEC. In 2009, the PUP is allied with Lord Ashcroft. So then, if Lord Ashcroft is an enemy of the Belizean people, who and what are the PUP of 2009? If the PUP cannot prove to the Belizean people that Lord Ashcroft is really our friend, then the PUP of 2009 is going against the grain of the people of Belize. This must be what they call “coming full circle.”
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.