“The second recollection was of Mr. Turton, one of two millionaires in Belize who had vast holdings and was also a member of the Legislative Council. After work, Sir W. Harrison Courtenay, Rev. Gilbert Rodwell Hulse and Mr. Simeon Hassock would go to the office to talk business with Mr. Turton. George would be called in to review Mr. Turton’s papers and to take down notes and he would also write the drafts for Turton’s comments on papers. It was Turton who got him into politics.”
– pg. 11, George Price – Father of the Nation Belize, Chapter 2, “Formative Influences,” by Edward Greene and Francisco Galvez, Jr., ION Media, Belize, 2000.
The time has come for us to clarify our perspective on a few things for the benefit of our readers. You know that it is said that people who do not know their history, are condemned to repeat it. This newspaper has therefore dedicated itself to keeping some fundamental historical matters alive, because myths have been created by specific ruling politicians with the naked collaboration of their allies in the educational and media systems. There are powerful people in Belize who have propagated half truths, propaganda, and ignorance.
To begin with, Rt. Hon. George Price did not ride a white horse out of nowhere, a la St. George, to slay the British colonial dragon. Mr. Price was “made” by Bob Turton. When Mr. Turton died in 1955, Mr. Price’s patron of choice became the Roman Catholic Church. The issue of Mr. Price’s friendship with members of the Guatemalan ruling class has been discussed and debated publicly for several decades, so we will leave that be for the moment.
In the 1940s, Robert Sydney Turton, Belize’s second native millionaire (after Isaiah Morter), was in a bitter business fight with the Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC), a colonial British powerhouse, over hegemony in mahogany and chicle production and export, and also import commission activities. George Cadle Price was Mr. Turton’s personal secretary, and Robert Sydney pushed Mr. Price into politics and sponsored him.
The reason the implications of the Turton vs BEC fight were national, regional and even international in scope, was because of something explained in an article we reproduced in the mid-week issue of Amandala. In a book review by Professor Jeffrey Collins published in the Thursday, December 9, 2010 issue of a leading American newspaper, Professor Collins, who is a professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and currently a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, considered the book COMPANIES TO COLONIES: Merchant Kings, a recent effort by one Stephen R. Bown. (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s, 314 pages)
In discussing Robert Clive and Cecil Rhodes, Collins refers to them as “iconic figures in the annals of imperial history.” He goes on: “It is thus remarkable to remember that neither man commanded royal troops or acted as an official of the British Government.” (Acting on behalf of private companies, Clive and Rhodes killed many thousands of Indians and Africans in Bengal and Matabeleland, respectively. The Bengal and Matabeleland massacres took place in 1757 and 1893, respectively.)
Collins continues: “History tends to portray the European empires as the creations of kings and nation-states. But as Stephen Bown’s ‘Merchant Kings’ reminds us, private economic interests did as much as statesmen to colonize the globe on behalf of Europe.”
We are saying in this editorial that in 1950 in British Honduras at the birth of the People’s Committee, there were many similarities between BEC, on the one hand, and Clive’s East India Company and Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, on the other. More than that, Belizeans would be well advised, we think, to seek out the similarities between Lord Michael Ashcroft, on the one hand, and Clive and Rhodes, on the other. In 1950, British colonialism had a business face on North Front Street and in Gallon Jug – BEC. In 2010, Belizeans have to ask themselves just what exactly does the business face of Lord Michael Ashcroft represent where Buckingham Palace and Whitehall are concerned.
We are not trying to make a hero of Bob Turton. He was a businessman, which is just another way of saying “predator.” But, he was a Belizean. He got into a fight with other predator business interests, which were British in their shareholding and loyalty. And so, partly because human beings usually protect their own, in 1950 Belizeans rallied behind the PUP, which was native and therefore pro-Bob Turton.
Sometime during the PUP’s 1989 to 1993 term of office, Lord Michael Ashcroft, if we are to judge by his gobbling up of Belize’s most important and profitable business asset – BTL, at fire sale rates, essentially “acquired” the PUP. At the time, the Rt. Hon. George Price was only the titular Leader of the PUP. The de facto PUP leaders were Ralph Fonseca, Said Musa, and Glenn Godfrey, personal favorites of Mr. Price’s. Bob Turton must have turned in his grave.
It has gotten worse. The present Leader of the Opposition People’s United Party has been a serious business partner of Lord Ashcroft’s for several years. It is not a partnership Mr. Briceño has given any indications of abandoning. Yet, Mr. Briceño aspires to leadership of the nation-state of Belize. It must be that he believes that there is no conflict of interests between being Lord Ashcroft’s partner and being Leader of Belize. We think that most Belizeans think otherwise, but that is what elections are about, you know. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.