Tribute to Lloyd Best
Excess of love
David De Caires

It has been convincingly argued that the Easter uprising in Ireland in 1916 was doomed to failure. There were not enough men and arms. It has also been suggested that some at least of the leaders were aware of this. The uprising, in this interpretation, becomes a symbol of protest against British rule ending with the execution of some of the leaders. It was immortalised by William Butler Yeats in the magnificent poem `Easter 1916' which ends as follows:-

    "Was it needless death after all?

     For England may keep faith

     For all that is done and said.

     We know their dream; enough

     To know they dreamed and are dead;

     And what if excess of love

     Bewildered them till they died?

     I write it out in a verse -

     MacDonagh and Mac Bride

     And Connolly and Pearse

     Now and in time to be,

     Wherever green is worn,

     Are changed, changed utterly:

     A terrible beauty is born."

Though he has never taken up arms physically one might feel that Lloyd Best has for the last forty years been involved in making a symbolic statement of some kind, perhaps quixotic, often deeply flawed, marked by rhetorical excesses, marred by human weaknesses, sometimes almost incoherent, to the effect that we have not done enough, we have not achieved our potential, we have not aimed sufficiently high, we have not completely shaken off the shackles of the plantation, we are mediocrities, just not good enough.

I have often said that I sometimes felt uncomfortable in the presence of my late friend Martin Carter. Martin was a large man in every way, you felt that he expected a lot of you and others, and that you were  not delivering and indeed perhaps could not deliver. It was, of course, an impossible quest but he wanted us all to be better than we were. He never lost his impossible dream though it ended in great bitterness.

I got to know Lloyd in the sixties when he worked in Guyana advising government on the setting up of a planning unit.  It was a good time. Inevitably, we discussed the problems of Guyana.  The destabilisation of the Jagan government was  in train. In 1964 he would lose power under the imposed electoral system of proportional representation to a coalition government led by Burnham. Neither of us was particularly enamoured of Jagan's ideology or his praxis, though living through the subversion of a duly elected government with all the hypocrisy, dishonesty and shamelessness involved is not a pleasant experience.  In 1963 the well known first issue of the New World Quarterly proposing a coalition government between Jagan and Burnham was published. That was not to be.

We also played football and had a pleasant social life. I remember to this day with some affection some of his more extravagant  phrases such as "when we take the full  power."

Lloyd subsequently entered politics in Trinidad. I have never been convinced that that was the right decision as I felt he might have had more to contribute in the academic field, in particular if he had pursued the work he had been doing on the plantation model. Be that as it may,  in 1976 when it was known that Tapia would be contesting the elections in Trinidad and Tobago the excitement in Guyana among his former colleagues was considerable. It was reported to us that the party was having a good campaign and on election night myself, my legal partner Miles Fitzpatrick and other friends got together to eat black pudding, drink rum and wait for the results on the radio.  They were, of course, bitterly disappointing. I have always felt that that night was a watershed in the evolution of the West Indian intellectual,  an enlightenment that politics was about more than bright people and impressive manifestos. In particular, it was about appealing to specific interest groups and constituencies and the need for organisational capacity.

Our senses that Lloyd has never really been a team player. There has always been in him something of the maverick.  He has also not been free of that particular characteristic indulgence of intellectuals in Caribbean and other ex-colonial societies to pour withering scorn on the capacities and achievements or lack thereof of their own people. This phenomenon is particularly rampant in Guyana where the excoriation of people in public life goes to extreme lengths and sometimes betrays a peculiar parochialism.

Yet if one looks at the body of Lloyd's work one cannot fail to see that it is always motivated by a redeeming hope that things could be better if only, as he would put it, the educational system were not so bankrupt or the validating elites took more responsibility for their conduct.  It is this unquenchable optimism that has always made him a little larger than life, this conviction that a brave and better new world lies in the future if only we had the wisdom and the fortitude to get there. I have said before that he has played the role of the Socratic gadfly, raising questions, trying to provoke dialogue.

Kirk Meighoo has argued that Lloyd displays some conservative values. What we all badly need to understand, I suggest, is that it is essential to preserve some things  from our past, harsh as that was, some pride in the achievements of our ancestors, even if we believe those were mainly the ability to survive and adapt.  The debilitating cynicism that is prevalent among our intellectual elites makes nation building even more arduous. We have to stop feeling so badly  about ourselves as a country.  We have our heroes, for MacDonagh substitute Butler, for Mac Bride Cipriani, for Connolly Williams and for Pearse whoever you think appropriate.

"(A)nd at the brink of this dawn this is my virile prayer may I heed neither laughs nor cries, eyes riveted on this city which I prophesy, beautiful,

give me the savage faith of the sorcerer

give my hands the power to mould

give my soul the temper of the sword

I do not dodge. Make of my head a prow-head

and of myself, my heart, do not make a father nor a brother

nor a son, but the father, but the brother, but the son

nor a husband, but the lover of this unique people."