There is an old saying that it is not good to mix politics with business. Yet in Belize, Lord Michael Ashcroft’s business and his politics are so intertwined that sometimes they are inseparable. So, I guess you can mix politics and business when your business is so huge that you can easily cross the party lines or, perhaps better still, obliterate the lines. Straight up, when you have enough money, you can buy politicians.
The early history of this newspaper is not one with which the younger generations of Belizeans are familiar. Six months after Amandala began publishing as the mimeographed voice of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD), its publisher and editor were arrested and charged for seditious conspiracy. Sedition is a totally political crime. Was the PUP government’s target in February of 1970 the UBAD organization, was it this then tiny newspaper, or was it the controversial young Ivy League grad who had taken to the streets?
The three entities were, of course, inseparable, at the time. The reason for the question in the previous paragraph is that sedition, to repeat, was a political charge, and it was placed by a political organization – the ruling PUP Cabinet. What was the political danger to the PUP represented by UBAD – a cultural organization, Amandala – a tiny newspaper, and/or Evan X Hyde, 22 years old, unemployed and broke? The answer is that in February of 1970, there was no real and present danger to the 17-out-of-18 seat PUP government, just returned to office in December of 1969, no real and present danger presented by UBAD, Amandala and/or Evan X Hyde. But someone in high places was seeing a future danger, a problem down the road.
I do not remember if Rev. Eldon Anthony Sylvestre had already been ordained Anglican Bishop of British Honduras when he stepped out of the St. John’s Cathedral, the September 10th morning of 1969, to stop and bless the UBAD march which had just left from the Yarborough Green. Over the years since, it has been suggested to me that Sylvestre was sending a message to the security forces which may have planned to provoke and brutalize the parade. UBAD’s rostrum rhetoric had been Black Panther-ish that summer of 1969, and that was our first public parade. Perhaps some big people were not sure what to expect after the Harley’s Open Lot uprising the month before.
The relevant comparison is what took place two years later, in December of 1971, when UBAD was on its best behaviour as the junior partner in a Belize City Council election campaign coalition with Philip Goldson’s National Independence Party (NIP). At St. Mary’s Hall election night, where the counting was being done, it became clear that the PUP had organized for violence. They made two distinct attempts at provoking same.
When the sedition arrest was made, the people who would have known more than anybody else the danger that UBAD/Amandala/X Hyde represented, or would later represent, were not politicians. They were the priests at the Landivar campus, led by the brilliant, world-class tactician, diplomat and fund-raiser, Leo Weber, S.J. The Belizean educational curriculum, and the fact that it excluded African and Indian history, had been perhaps the no. 1 target of Evan X Hyde on the UBAD rostrum and in his early writings. At that time, the educational qualifications of Evan X Hyde were still considered impeccable, so that he had to be attacked on grounds which were not academic. We are placing the February 1970 sedition arrest in context.
Researchers have noted the absolute lack of financing within the UBAD movement. There were rudimentary business activities through which we survived. We took collections at public meetings; we sold food (suppers and boil-ups); we held house parties and big hall dances. Then, in August of 1969, we started selling newspapers. Before there was any politics involved with UBAD, then, there was business. UBAD went political after the sedition arrest and Supreme Court trial. We were pushed into politics by forces more powerful than we.
So, in December of 1971, UBAD is in a municipal election coalition. The PUP defeated the NIP/UBAD. (Dean Lindo’s PDM boycotted.) Goldson went to study law in London in January of 1972, and in the months following the PUP provoked a street war with UBAD.
In September of 1971, UBAD had received its first significant political donation. Rev. Gerald Fairweather, the Brooklyn-based Anglican cleric who later organized and financed the Unity Congress (precursor to the United Democratic Party) in early 1973, bought red and green cloth for uniforms (with black berets) for UBAD to march in on St. George’s Caye Day that year. In retrospect, that was when politics first became business for UBAD, but none of us knew that at the time.
I have tried to give you some background history before we come to early 1977. This was when Said Musa essentially brought Amandala into party politics in a business sense. Amandala had been brought into party politics in 1974 in a personal sense when the UDP leadership embarked on a character assassination campaign against Evan X Hyde. Now Said Musa invested $20,000 in a company which would move Amandala from obsolete letter press to modern offset printing. That company was capitalized at $50,000. Myself, my dad and one of my aunts invested $25,000. The other $5,000 came from other PUP leaders and cronies. So, it wasn’t just a Musa thing. It was a PUP-approved plan.
There was one PUP Cabinet Minister who definitely didn’t approve. That was Education Minister Louis Sylvestre. For months and months, he refused to bring the necessary three-phase electricity to Partridge Street. (In 1983, he and Musa clashed for the chairmanship of the PUP. Sylvestre won that battle, but ended up losing the war.)
Business and politics became mixed up in this newspaper almost four decades ago. I would put it to you that this happened because education in Belize was more politics than anyone cared to notice or admit. And so when the early Amandala criticized the educational curriculum, it became a political threat. Hence, the sedition arrest of February 1970.
In last weekend’s issue of the main PUP newspaper, there was a big time attack on Mose Hyde. The dissident PUP weekly had been hammering him off and on for a long time, but this was the first time the main PUP newspaper went after the non-political Mose in such a serious way. This was per instructions from the businessman Lord Ashcroft, whose loyalists had quite obviously been running the dissident PUP newspaper. Last week the octopus flexed his muscles to make sure the main PUP newspaper joined in the music, so to speak.
In Mr. Ashcroft’s business, politicians serve his purpose. On Partridge Street when we fight for the rights of the people, those Belizean politicians on el pulpo’s payroll come after us. Nothing’s changed, except the faces. In 1970, it was Father Weber pulling the strings. Today, it’s the octopus. Back then, I man was the problem. In 2009, it is Mose. Bite the bullet, youth.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.