Almost 55 years ago there was a historic power struggle inside the leadership of the People’s United Party (PUP), which was truly nationalistic, anti-colonial and populist at the time. As a result of that power struggle in 1956, Hon. George C. Price became the PUP Leader for the first time, and the previous Leader, Leigh Richardson (deceased), and Philip Goldson (deceased) were purged from the PUP.
There was an ethnic undertone to that struggle in 1956, in that Mr. Price was seen as Latin, whereas Richardson and Goldson were black. It should be noted that British Honduras was clearly black in majority in 1956, so that, given the popular aspect of the Price accession to power, it must have been that a substantial element of our black population sided with him against Richardson and Goldson.
There was an element of the power struggle which was geopolitical in nature. Mr. Price was opposed to the West Indian Federation destiny proposed for the colony by the British, and he looked towards a Central American future for Belizeans. Mr. Richardson and Mr. Goldson were considered pro-West Indian Federation, as was the attorney W.H. Courtenay (deceased), a powerful personality on the colony’s religious-socio-political scene at the time. Within a few years after Mr. Price took control of the PUP, Mr. Courtenay, and his children after him, became Mr. Price’s firm and consistent allies. With the Courtenays being as pro-British as they have been, the chances are that there was some kind of adjustment in Mr. Price’s politics.
In view of the fact that the Caribbean is majority black, ethnicity, again, was a factor in the religious-socio-political ferment in British Honduras where the geopolitics was concerned. It is very difficult to get away from geopolitics when you analyze the realities on the ground in any case such as Belize’s. The nearest Caribbean island is hundreds of miles away from Belize, whereas we share northern, western and southern borders with Latin Central American republics.
We are considering the history involved with the 1956 power struggle because, when Mr. Price soon surged to the peak of his power even as Mr. Goldson was taking over the Opposition National Independence Party (NIP), there began a kind of hype which projected the NIP as a “black man’s party.” Vociferous elements in the NIP went so far as to deride blacks who supported the PUP as political dupes, or just plain stupid.
Any analyst worth his salt would have seen that there was a class explanation here: PUP blacks were working class, whereas NIP blacks were middle class. But in the 1960s the political discourse was not at a high level. There were very, very few university graduates, no television, and the only radio station was a government monopoly. Marxist-Leninist models would only become a reality at the very end of the Sixties.
The change of government from the PUP in 1984 was a change which was necessary for Belizeans to experience what it was like to have the Opposition party in power. The present term is the UDP’s third since political independence in 1981. The comparison of the UDP (successor to the NIP) being black and the PUP being otherwise comes up every now and then, but 55 years of geopolitical reality have pushed this type of ethnic analysis to the background. We still hear it from Belizeans who remember the old days, but not nearly as much.
A lot of things have changed in Belize since 1956. The most stunning is the fact that while our population has increased perhaps five times, our murder rate has increased fifteen times. No doubt the strongest argument in favor of the status quo during colonial times in British Honduras was the fact that there was peace and quiet here, while the violence was frightening around us in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The dramatic increase in Belize’s domestic violence since our political independence suggests, in the first instance, that we are becoming like those who are closest to us geopolitically.
The similarities in the situations of the Falkland Islands and Belize are interesting. In the modern era, the most important similarity is that both these small territories have significant petroleum deposits. The Falkland Islands remain a British possession, whereas formerly British Belize went independent 29 years ago. The British spent money and shed blood to defend the Falklands from Argentina in 1982. It must be because the majority of Belizeans suspected that the British, perfidious as they have proven themselves where black people are concerned, would not be as eager to defend us as they later were to defend the Falklands, that Belizeans gambled with independence. Remember, the British had pushed the Seventeen Proposals in 1968 and the Heads of Agreement in 1981, establishing that they were in favor of Belize’s becoming a satellite state of Guatemala. The Falklands, incidentally, are white. Belize is, by comparison, black. Their geopolitics are different where ethnicity is concerned. There is more here than meets the eye.
Power to the people. Power in the struggle.