Dr. Peter Pritchard: "You don't have to be a dinosaur."

Note: This post was first written back in 2012, on another of my blogs . In view of my soon to be published novel set in Guyana, in which Peter and his wife Sibille make a cameo appearance, I'm reposting it so that it is new on this blog.

Sadly, Peter passed away in early 2020.

There’s no way I can call Dr Peter Pritchard an unsung hero. He’s already been named a Hero of the Planet by no less than TIME Magazine, and he’s already famous in animal conservation circles as the leading expert in marine turtles. 

 Yet he’s a prime example of those people I mentioned in my last post—people who go about their work quietly and diligently, doing what they know is right; if they ever do call attention, it’s to the objects of their ardour, not to themselves, and that’s Peter all over: a big, unassuming man beating the drum for a humble animal he’s determined to save from a ruthless world.

 I was little more than a giggling teenager when I first met Peter, working at my very first job as a staff journalist at the Guyana Graphic. My own personal hero at the time was one of my editors, Sibille, a few years older than me and already a household name in the country due to her bylines. A tiny woman with a huge personality, Sibille was everything I wasn’t: confident, outspoken, spunky and funny, and I looked up to her no end. She was also a great writer, and I wanted to be a great writer; I couldn’t believe it when she took me under her personal wing, and in time we even became friends, close friends, in fact. She drew me out of my shell and helped me find my feet as a journalist.

My other friend, Pratima, and I would tease her mercilessly about her “Turtle-man”—the gentle giant who every now and then would swoop in from Florida to take her, and sometimes us as well, out to dinner, or off on expeditions in Guyana’s swamps, forests and beaches. One day, Sibille flew off to Florida, and didn't come back.

Reader, she married him.
That was over 45 years ago.

More about Peter and Sibille, "one of Central Florida's most exotic, and unlikely, power couples".

A few days ago I called their home in Florida—where in 2004 I was their guest for three weeks--just to let them know I was going to Guyana.
“I’ll be there myself in March”, Peter told me, and so yet another case of serendipitous scheduling slotted into place.

Of course, knowing that Peter will be in Shell Beach working on that project means that, once again, my plans have changed.
Karanambu. Jonestown. Shell Beach. I just hope I will have time for the real reason for my visit: my mother.
She’s my third Earth Hero, to be introduced. Coming up tomorrow.

About Peter Pritchard:

From Wikipedia:

Dr. Peter Pritchard (born 1943) is a leading turtle zoologist. Educated at Oxford University and the University of Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. in Zoology, he is most commonly known for his campaign of almost 40 years for the conservation of turtles. Appropriately, his privately funded Chelonian Research Institute, for the study and preservation of turtles, is located in Oviedo, Florida, United States, just a half hour's drive from Disney World. Frank Sulloway had noted that Pritchard 'has amassed nearly 12,000 tortoise and turtle skeletons - the third largest collections in the world.'

 

From Time Magazine:

Pritchard has done his most innovative work along the Atlantic coast in Guyana, a haven for sea turtles. By the 1960s, overhunting by local Arawak Indians--themselves an endangered group--had ravaged the turtle population. But Pritchard helped save both turtles and tribe: he has lobbied Guyana and private sources for grants that have weaned the Arawaks off turtle meat and into chicken farming. And he hires Arawaks to tag turtles for research and defend nesting grounds. The killing has largely stopped, he says, because turtle protection is now "a family discipline thing" among Arawaks, "rather than an outsider laying down the law."

There's a wonderful video interview with Peter on this site: Oceanology. Watch it, below this post; it's about far more than turtles. There's real wisdom here:

Narrator: Turtles are slow and not very smart, but they've been around since the day of the dinosaur.

Peter: I think the moral of the story is: don't try to be dominant. Try to have your place, but you don't have to be the big dinosaur. That lasts for a while, and, you know, it comes to an end.

Only These Grandmothers: a poem by Maggie Harris

 

Only these Grandmothers

 

Only these grandmothers can see down the long road travelled

where all the love and pain converge like cars in a traffic

jams. Only these grandmothers carry the scent of kitchens

infused by cooking pans and garlic pulled out of the wild woods

to layer the earthenware pots where rabbits simmer.

 

Only these grandmothers smell of milks suckled at the breasts

of Amazons and lowly countrywomen whose babies

make do with Cow & Gate, make room

for others who will inherit the world.

 

There are grandmothers who left those kitchens long ago

for factories and offices where the typing pool

and the cleaning women all walk on rollercoaster

ledges, keeping their determined stares ahead

not looking back the way they came where sheer edges

mark the abyss of failing

to be  mother  father  provider   teacher.

 

Generations on, the mother’s sleep is haunted

by dreams of a succubus inhabiting her body

and soul, when every fever of your child ushers

in the terror of gravestones

fists beating where the heart should be

pounding into midnight

the long hours of midnight

cloaking the bedroom floor with a terror

unnamed.

 

Blessed are those who remember the burial place

of the navel string

Blessed are those whose faces still glow faintly in daguerreotypes

whose gold bangles circa 1903 swing from the wrists of a favourite child

Blessed are those whose memories string like fairy lights

between balconies and high-rise flats

villages of lamplight

country lanes and cane fields

blackberry bushes and mango trees.

 

Only these grandmothers can raise their rifles over the gates

and shoot into the trees where the limbs of young men

flail into the foliage.

Only these grandmothers can halt the slingshots aimed at birds

in the knitted palms of their hands.

Only the grandmothers can look down the long roads travelled

into the histories of yesterday

and back to the future where the children test the waters

with their toes

and languages ricochet like gunshots.

 

Only these grandmothers can stand between yesterday

and tomorrow

and tremble, at the knowledge they have gleaned.

 

MAGGIE HARRIS

Maggie Harris is a Guyanese writer living in Kent. Twice winner of the Guyana Prize, she was the Caribbean Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and has travelled to the Caribbean, Europe and India. As well as poetry she has written short stories and a memoir, Kiskadee Girl. She has taught Creative Writing and was International Teaching Fellow at Southampton University. Guyana continues to inspire her and her latest poetry collection is ‘On Watching a Lemon Sail the Sea.’

Down Memory Lane: Georgetown Cinemas of Yesteryear

So, the Astor Cinema is up for sale (* see update at end of blog post).
It’s now a derelict hulk, just one more eyesore in a city that was once deemed the most beautiful in the Caribbean. The tiny For Sale sign hangs on its façade like a timid afterthought, a hopeless plea to some rich saviour to swoop in and rescue this one-time Castle of Dreams; save it from crumbling to the ground. 

The Astor -- Palace of Dreams?

 With a pang, I stopped to take a snap. And I made a wish. Someone, please, do it! Someone save this monument to Georgetown’s Golden Age! Such wonderful stories have played out here; so many people escaped their humdrum lives within these crumbling walls. This was once the home of romance and glamour and joy. Bring it back! Cinemas took us Georgetowners to far-off lands and transported us into the exotic lives of others; they showed us the world beyond our shores, and took us on adventures and exploits beyond our wildest dreams; they sowed the seeds of  ambition within our souls and lit the fuse of our most daring aspirations. They did it in a way the now ubiquitous DVD—sold now in pirated copies at every street corner—cannot; and that Multiplex Cinema I heard is planned for Georgetown? Phooey! It can’t compare. 

  Going to the cinema was a big event. You dressed up, and you were on your best behaviour. I went on my very first date to the Astor: I was 14, and it was My Fair Lady, and I was petrified. It was always a double-feature, back then, and in the pause between films you could buy soft-drinks and popcorn. 

Before the film started they'd play God Save the Queen and show a short film with the young Queen Elizabeth II in Royal military scarlet uniform. She'd be sitting side-saddle on a horse, at the trooping of the colours. Everyone would stand up in respect, except those in the Pit, who continued laughing, talking, shouting, cursing. We ignored them. This was before Independence in 1966, of course. 

After the Queen they'd show British New Reel, Pathé and British Council films, which showed new developments all over the British Empire, where the sun never set. This would be followed by Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse cartoons, and trailers for coming films.

I remember well the owner and manager of the Astor. He was a young man named Gregory G., and he liked to hang around outside the cinema with other young men of his ilk, ogling us teenage girls in ways that, in retrospect, were decidedly creepy.

In this article another writer, Godfrey Chin is nostalgic for the good old cinema days:

In 1940 the Correia family built the magnificent Astor on Waterloo Street, and in spite of WWII the film fare of Hollywood’s best, delighted the locals. The classic Gone with the Wind which opened in Atlanta, in December 1939, debuted at the Metropole in March 1941, and all the great classic movies such as Gunga Din, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Robin Hood and Singing in the Rain, kept the locals up to date with the fashions, styles, norms, etc, of the outside world. Cinemas were our windows to the outer world. Even the British Council utilised 16mm shows to educate us about our then British ‘overlords.’

The Astor was, the story goes, the scene of an embarrassing éclat between my aunts and my Uncle Denis. Everyone in Georgetown had heard of or knew Uncle Denis, a rather eccentric bachelor. The eldest of eight brothers, he rode around town on a rusty old bicycle wearing khaki short pants, long socks, and a hat. If he saw one of his many nieces and nephews he would immediately jump off his bike and call us to him, whereupon he’d tell us a joke, guffaw loudly, and ride off again. So very embarrassing! 

Uncle Denis was quite brilliant, though his formal education was limited. He had taught himself German and was well known for tutoring pupils who weren’t doing well at school, especially in mathematics; and never taking any money for his efforts. Uncle Denis was a Christian and believed in Christian charity. Which also meant he had not a selfish or mean or snobbish bone in his body. And also that he was quite poor all his life.

Which was why, when he went to the cinema, he would always sit in Pit. In the classist, racist Georgetown of those days, the cinema was the one place that told you where you stood in the hierarchy. If you were black and poor, you paid a pittance and sat in the Pit, at the front of the cinema. Here there were only wooden benches; it was a noisy, raucous place and those who considered themselves better off would never set foot down there. Behind the Pit was the House, where the general populace sat. Above the House ranged the quiet comfort of Balcony, floating above House in velvet exclusivity. And at the front of the Balcony, if you could afford it, was the serene luxury of the Box.

Uncle Denis was fair-skinned, but he always sat in Pit. And there he was spotted by my aunts one day at a cinema outing. “Look; there’s Denis down there in the Pit!” said Aunt Edith* with a shudder, pointing down. “I hope he doesn’t see us!” said Aunt Doreen* as they all moved along to take their seats. And just at that moment, Uncle Denis looked up and spotted them in the Box.

Uncle Denis immediately rose to his feet; he turned around and waved, his face a big joyful grin. “Doreen, Edith, Marjorie*! Hold on, I’m coming!” he yelled for all the world to hear, and proceeded to step over all the benches in Pit, climb over the barrier to House, and up the staircase to Balcony and Box. I don’t know if my aunts were required to pay extra for Uncle Denis; but he certainly watched that film in comfort that day. And I don't know how true the story is, but knowing Uncle Denis -- well, let's just say it's credible.

The Pit, apparently, was quite a ribald place, to put it politely. Another writer describes it thus: 

To venture into the Pit toilet (urinal), which was usually at the end of a long, dark tunnel, was to enter a stinking, crowded, noisy hell hole that only the brave, reckless and desperate could deal with! I usually held my waste in, almost giving me "nara" pains by the time I got out of the Pit.

During a show, a Pit patron may let off a stink bomb, or a firecracker squib, which would create a stir, or an argument and a fist-fight may break out among the brethren. I say brethren because few women, with the exception of ladies of the evening, would venture into the Pit.

These ladies were often welcomed with open arms and pants, sometimes going to the back of Pit, where House overhung Pit, and setting up business there. In the middle of the show, it was not unusual to hear groaning and rustling from that section, providing a distraction from the main event on the screen, and causing some patrons to complain loudly. I wonder if this perhaps gave rise to the term "Passion Pit"?

          (from Moving pictures: a nostalgic look at Guyana's cinemas) 

Opposite the Astor on Waterloo St was the Globe. Today, where the Globe used to stand is just an empty lot gathering the usual Georgetown garbage. But the Globe too has memories for me, and evokes for me one particular event.

Where the Globe once stood

 I was a junior journalist at the time, working for the Chronicle. Apart from the obvious advantage of laying the foundation of my life as a writer (though I didn't know it then), the job came with certain perks, the chief one being getting to meet interesting people—especially foreigners to our shores—and attend interesting events. 

One of the latter was a concert by Mahalia Jackson at the Globe Cinema; it must have been around 1969, a few years before her death in 1971. We of the Press got to sit in a Box, while all the other invitees—for the most part, members of Society  sat nearby in Balcony and Box rustling their programmes and clapping staidly at the end of each of Mahalia’s songs, or maybe rattling their jewellery. The Pit, of course, was closed. This was a celebrity concert—they couldn’t have the hoi-polloi lowering the tone.  

Mahalia Jackson

However, one door, right next to the stage, stood open—only a chain closed it off from the street, and that’s where the banished hoi-polloi gathered, pushing and jostling to get the chance to see their idol. A guard stood there with a baton, pushing them back and trying to keep them from getting too rowdy.

Mahalia Jackson noticed the little rumpus down there in the corner, and assessed the situation in a moment. “Remove that chain!” she called. Next thing the chain was down and the city’s poor black population was pouring into the Pit. They filled the benches; they sat on the floor and stood on the sides and simply crammed themselves into every last inch of space.

Mahalia began to sing again, and this time, what a difference! The crowd in the Pit went wild. They clapped along, they sang along, they cheered, they rejoiced. Whether it was a slow and intimate Take my Hand, Precious Lord or a jubilant He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands—the Pit crowd was with her, heart and soul. Life came into that staid cinema hall, and joy and celebration. It was magnificent! Up in the Balcony and Boxes the Upper Echelons of Society sat stiff and silent, clearly out-privileged. And I would have loved to make the reverse journey to Uncle Denis: down from the Box and into the Pit, into the midst of the rejoicing. For most of those people down there it would have been an evening they would never forget—just as I have never forgotten it.

The Strand de Luxe -- Now the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Other cinemas in Georgetown were the Metropole, the Plaza, the Empire, the Hollywood and the Strand de Luxe. The Strand was called de Luxe as it was a new build, the first air-conditioned cinema in town and quite special. Now it is another derelict hull; perhaps a church hall of some kind, judging by the sign across the building.

The Strand -- back in the day.

The Plaza was in Camp Street, just around the corner from my home in Lamaha Street. The Plaza showed all those Beach Party movies with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. I saw them all with great delight; I was in my early teens, and American teenagerdom seemed to me the height of all that was good and worth striving for in the world. I watched every one of them.

The Hollywood in Alexander Road showed classic Hollywood movies from the 50's to the 80's. The Rio/Rialto in Vlissingen road showed almost exclusively Hindi or Urdu movies, so I never went there. And I have no memories whatsoever of the Empire. There remains the Metropole, and with it a memory of little Charlie. 

Jerry Lewis

When I was ten years old I broke a bone in my hand and was in the Georgetown Hospital for a few days. I remember a huge ward full of screaming children; I hated it, but luckily my Dad came to visit each day. Mum was working in Trinidad at the time. In the bed next to mine lay a little Amerindian boy. Possibly, he had polio; I remember both his legs were in callipers. 

Dad made some enquiries and discovered he was an orphan, and in and out of hospital. Charlie must have tugged at Dad’s heart-strings, because after I was released from hospital Dad took me to the cinema at the Metropole to see a Jerry Lewis film, and he stopped at the hospital to pick up Charlie. It was a Jerry Lewis film, and it was the first time Charlie had ever been to the cinema. So it’s thanks to little  Charlie that the Metropole gets a place in my Memory Gallery of Georgetown cinemas.

But there’s one more.

Which Georgetown teenager of the 60’s and 70’s can forget the Starlite Drive-In? Of course, for most of those years, my generation was too young to own a car or even have a driving license, but if we were lucky we knew someone who knew someone and could wangle an invite. The big deal was Tuesday night: Carload Night! We’d load up the car with as many teenagers as possible and drive up the East Coast Demerara towards Ogle—that’s where the big screen of the glorious Starlite was to be found. We never went for the film. It was for the event, the experience, the company that we went. It was a party, and we were young; those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.

I'll end this eulogy with another quote from Godfrey Chin:

Christmas 2008 the Astor, the last cinema standing, was showing a powerful action double, Casino Royale and Quantum Leap. As I sat in their balcony reminiscing, there were about 12 patrons in the entire cinema. I was impressed that the upkeep and maintenance in the balcony and house area was pretty good. The leather upholstered box seats are still there.

As I thanked Desmond Woon, the Manager, for his cinema tour, I quipped that his last stand reminded me of Errol Flynn in They Died with their Boots On, which opened at the Metropole around 1943. I should really name this Nostalgia, ‘The Astor’s Last Stand.’

So, any offers for the Astor? Or if not, why not post your own memories of Georgetown Cinemas in the comments?

* The For Sale sign is gone; but I don't think it was sold. Will find out.

* New update: 2019: the building has been pulled down. It's an empty site. Something mew will go up there one day.
*Aunts' names changed to save them further embarrassment.

The Girl from the Sugar Plantation

The New York Times gets it totally wrong in this article. It's not as simple as that.

Read the post before this about the Charisma of Jock Campbell to understand more.

Better yet, read my new book, about to be published, TOMORROW.

Here it is:

"These books have taken me to a far off land, to another time, that feels nothing like the world I have grown up in. The experience is always a very overwhelmingly real and emotional one, but I just can’t get enough of it. The Girl from the Sugar Plantation is no different. The magic and power of music, the pain and pleasure of love, the destructive nature of secrets and lies all delved deep into my heart and I expect will stay there for some time. This is a powerful and emotional story that will melt even the coldest of hearts. I challenge you to enter the world of The Quint Chronicles and not fall in love."

From this review on Goodreads 

The blurb: An unputdownable story about a woman in search of the truth, the man she falls in love with, and the devastation of the Second World War. 
1934, Georgetown.

All her life, Mary Grace has wanted to know the truth about who her parents really are. As the mixed-race daughter of two white plantation owners, her childhood has been clouded by whispered rumours, and the circumstances of her birth have been kept a closely guarded secret…

Aunt Winnie is the only person Mary Grace can confide in. Feeling lost and lonely, her place in society uncertain, Mary Grace decides to forge her own path in the world. And she finds herself unexpectedly falling for charming and affluent Jock Campbell, a planter with revolutionary ideas.

But, with the onset of the Second World War, their lives will be changed forever. And Mary Grace and Jock will be faced with the hardest decision of all – to fight for freedom or to follow their hearts…

An utterly compelling and evocative story about the heart-breaking choices men and women had to make during a time of unimaginable change. Perfect for fans of The Secret Wife and Island of Secrets . (less)

The Booker Prize Backstory. Part 4: the charisma of Jock Campbell

So, I kept the best for last. Here, with kind permission of Ian McDonald, is an essay on Jock Campbell. Whereas the previous posts are more about what he did, this one is about who he was; which is the key to everything else. He was surely an Everest among humans, and if Guyana had been, say, a country more in the public eye Jock would have had his rightful place as one of the few greats of the last century.

JOCK CAMPBELL

An Essay by Ian McDonald

After reading

“Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell – The Booker Reformer in British Guiana, 1934-1966”

In my last months at Cambridge University, in early 1955, I was offered a number of jobs including one by the Shell Oil Company to work for them in Trinidad where I had been born and lived as a boy and gone to school. I had decided to take up this offer when out of the blue I was asked if I would be interested in a job in British Guiana with Bookers. The job sounded interesting and I went up to London to meet the Chairman of Bookers, Jock Campbell, for an interview over lunch. It is nearly fifty years ago but I remember that meeting as if I was there earlier today.

I had already met a number of very remarkable men including my tutor at Cambridge, the future Regius Professor of Modern History, Geoffrey Elton, the dedicated and daunting English lecturer, critic and editor, F.R. Leavis, the celebrated economist Arthur Lewis of St. Lucia and an astonishing sportsman named Dennis Silk who later became President of the MCC – but now I found Jock Campbell easily the most charismatic man I had encountered in my life.

It is impossible to convey by simple description the force and compelling attractiveness of a truly charismatic person. How can you exactly describe an emanation of energy, a unique aura that goes far beyond physique and appearance and words uttered? The word derives via ecclesiastical Latin from the Greek kharisma meaning a divinely conferred power or talent. That captures something of the essence of what is involved since it infers that the charismatic person attracts and deserves devotion. I was a Jock devotee from the very start.

Jock Campbell’s eloquence made the heart beat faster and my young undergraduate mind and soul responded to his fervour. That first meeting lasted for a long time, well past the cheese and liqueur part of lunch, and by the end I was completely and utterly converted to this extraordinary man’s vision of how practical good could be done in this world. I have been in the Guyana sugar industry for nearly fifty years and I have never stopped looking upon what has to be done not just as a job, though of course it is that too and has to be done well, but also as a sort of crusade.  The Jock effect has never really worn off.

I remember him at that meeting as restlessly enthusiastic, inspired with convictions that he could hardly contain. I recall to this day how one expansive gesture scattered green peas all over the table! I was enthralled by the man and the story he told and the ambitions he held and wanted to explain. Jock told me then of his early days in British Guiana and his shock at the terrible conditions he saw at first hand on his family plantations and his determination to introduce root and branch reform as soon as he had the authority. He described the steps he had already taken to reorganize completely the chaotic shambles of the sprawling Booker empire in British Guiana into separate companies with Boards and well defined areas of operation and responsibility – Bookers Sugar Estates, Bookers Stores, Bookers Shipping, Bookers Rum and Bookers Industrial Holdings. He had put in train and was determined to carry through a revolution in the whole ethos of Bookers, how it was run, what it would try to achieve, how people throughout the whole organization must be made to matter. He told me of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement – I found out later that he was its principal architect – which provided a secure basis on which to build improved conditions for those who worked in sugar.

For the first time, and I was to have the concept elaborated often in the future, Jock gave me a glimpse of his belief that Bookers had to exercise a four-fold responsibility: to shareholders who provided the investment and deserved a return; to employees who were the company’s lifeblood and deserved decent remuneration and ever-improving life conditions; to customers without whose satisfaction no business could exist; and to the community and country in which the business operated since the ultimate test of a company was how much it contributed to the enrichment and modernization of the whole civic body. Nowadays, the concept in the business world of balanced responsibilities may seem well worn but fifty years ago it was new and revelatory. If any concept held sway then it was the imperative of maximizing profit which Jock rejected completely.

Now, fifty years on, I find Professor Clem Seecharran’s book on Jock Campbell magnificent.  Because I held Jock in such esteem, and still hold his memory in high honour, if this book had fallen short in telling his story I think I would have been the first to be critical.  But it measures up exceedingly well to the man and what he tried to do and what he achieved. It is a book of immense significance in telling the story of Guyana at a particularly important juncture in its history – the era just prior to independence. But for me it is also a book which tells the story, and fills in countless interesting details, about the life of an extraordinary man who was my friend and mentor in an unforgettable period of my life.

I joined Bookers, in 1955, at a time when the Jock Campbell revolution was in full flow. I found myself in the middle of a process in which Bookers was being completely recreated. In this process the sugar industry in British Guiana was transformed from a run-down, unprofitable, inhuman, parternalistic and plantocratic expatriate family concern into a rehabilitated, forward-looking, productive and dynamic enterprise basically run by Guyanese for the much improved good of Guyanese and Guyana.

Sugar production grew from 170,000 tons to 350,000 tons. Estates were consolidated and factories modernized. Drainage and irrigation facilities and the whole infrastructure of field works were completely revamped. Agricultural practices and applications were overhauled in line with current world-class technology. The first sugar bulk-loading terminal in the Caribbean was established to replace the drudgery of loading sugar in bags.

And the people side of the industry was simply revolutionized:  remuneration vastly increased, the old logies eliminated and 15,000 new houses in 75 housing areas built with roads and water supplied, medical services upgraded to cater for all sugar workers and their families and the scourge of malaria eradicated, Community Centres established on all estates and welfare, sporting, cultural and library activities expanded, training and education immensely stepped up, a world-class Apprentice Training Centre established, a cadet scheme and scholarships introduced and all along Guyanisation pressed forward until the time came when the industry was being run almost entirely by Guyanese. It was an era of tremendous growth and change for the better in the sugar industry and indeed throughout all the enterprises making up the Booker Group in Guyana at the time.

I cannot forget that wonderful time. All that was being done was captured in a phrase Jock Campbell as Chairman used in all his key addresses: “People are more important than ships, shops and sugar estates.” We tried to act in the belief that business could not possibly just be about making money if only because that would be soul-destroyingly boring. Business had to be about making the lives of people better and more fulfilled. People in any case always came first however you considered what you were trying to do in business. Creating profit was vital but not just for its own sake but for good, everyday, ordinarily human, immediately flesh and blood, life-enhancing purposes.

 Working in that old Bookers with Jock Campbell was marvelously exhilarating. There was a feeling of fervour and achievement – even in a small way of being involved in making history. Getting things done in a good, progressive cause was the essence of the job, not simply maximizing efficiency and making profits which were to be seen as necessary means and never as ultimate ends. I remember the clear purpose, the hard but satisfying work, the extraordinary leadership, the good humour, the enthusiasm and high spirits, the overall intelligent humanity of the operation, the camaraderie and the sense of fulfillment.

It was Jock who showed me the passage from Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago in which Strelnikov, caught in the in the huge ebb and flow of the Russian Revolution, amidst the tremendous events taking place all around him, the giant turns and turnabouts of history, suddenly realizes that the small concerns of individual men and women are what count in the end:

“And in order to do good to others he needed, besides the principles that filled his mind, an unprincipled heart – the kind of heart that knows of no general causes, but only of particular ones and knows the greatness of small actions.”

Understanding the importance of small causes, appreciating the greatness of small actions: that is the essence of compassion in the exercise of power and that is what Jock Campbell most certainly and most deeply understood.

I remember him as the man who told us in no uncertain terms that no person is ever redundant, only jobs, and we were never to forget that. I remember him as the man who often reminded me, and others, that it was important to pay attention to one man’s grievance as well as to Three-Year Plans. And I vividly remember him as the man who when he retired as Chairman asked me to keep an eye on six old pensioners who had given him good service in his younger days and make sure every Christmas to send them a card and a gift on his behalf – which I faithfully did until one by one over the years they died. And so it came to one last Christmas I only had one card and one gift to send and my last communication from Jock was a Christmas card of his own, scribbled in his distinctive hand, wishing myself and family the blessings of the season and, in a postscript, thanking me for again doing him the small service of sending that last old pensioner his greetings and gift for work done so long ago and still so well remembered.

In a letter to me once he quoted approvingly a saying of the American Irving Howe: “There is utopia and utopia.  The kind imposed by an elite in the name of an historical imperative, that utopia is hell. It must lead to terror and then, terror exhausted, to cynicism and torpor. But surely there is another utopia. It cannot be willed into existence or out of sight. It speaks for our sense of what may yet be.” Jock Campbell himself had a profound sense of what should be attempted and what might be achieved in the cause of a better society. All his working life he strove pragmatically to improve the lives of people whom his decisions touched.

 I remember it all so vividly. I see now more clearly than ever that we lived and worked in an exceptional time for an extraordinary man. I am more pleased than I can say that in Professor Clem Seecharan Jock Campbell has found a historian worthy of his remarkable personality and achievements and in Sweetening Bitter Sugar a classic book which preserves his legacy for new generations.

Ian McDonald.

Previously:          Part 1: Slavery, James Bond, and an Aristocratic Scottish hero

                                              Part 2:  Jock Campbell moves into the Booker Stronghold

                                              Part 3:  Reform, Reform, Reform

(Note: this article has been abridged. S. Maas)

Albion Estate Today. A recent visit: The Making of Demerara Gold


Sweetening Bitter Sugar  Jock Campbell  The Booker Reformer in British Guiana 1934-1966   Clem Seecharan Ian Randle Publishers 2005