Hu­bert Williams

Through­out his ca­reer, span­ning more than half a cen­tu­ry, the out­stand­ing Guyanese, Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal jour­nal­ist known as Rick­ey Singh has had five great loves, pri­ori­tised in this way: his God, his fam­i­ly, his coun­try, his work, his friends.

No in­flu­ence … eth­nic, na­tion­al, po­lit­i­cal, cul­tur­al, re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al ... was ever strong enough to dis­tress these es­sen­tials in his very ac­tive life, many el­e­ments of which have nev­er re­al­ly come to pub­lic at­ten­tion, al­though every­where he worked or went ... in Guyana, in T&T, in Bar­ba­dos, in the Unit­ed King­dom, in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, his skill and courage brought him ad­mi­ra­tion from the pub­lic, but al­so in­to con­flict with of­fi­cial­dom, many of whom tend­ed to feel that be­ing in pub­lic of­fice ac­cord­ed them the right to do as they damn well please. So, heav­en help those who dared to present them with a chal­lenge, as Rick­ey Singh so of­ten did.

In Guyana, he dared and chal­lenged Forbes Burn­ham, the coun­try’s first ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, who must have breathed a sigh of re­lief when Singh left with his fam­i­ly to work in T&T as ed­i­tor of “Caribbean Con­tact”, the of­fi­cial news­pa­per of the Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Church­es (CCC).

How­ev­er, in time the Gov­ern­ment there could not tol­er­ate his delv­ing in­to mat­ters they did not wish ven­ti­lat­ed and with­drew his work per­mit, which had been is­sued on ap­pli­ca­tion by the church or­gan­i­sa­tion.

It was to Bar­ba­dos he came with wife, Pa­tri­cia “Dol­ly” Singh (an Afro-Guyanese), and their six chil­dren, and he pro­ceed­ed to, as with T&T, pro­duce a qual­i­ty of “Caribbean Con­tact” that ex­celled in lo­cal pub­li­ca­tions with its in-depth re­ports and analy­ses about the crit­i­cal do­mes­tic and re­gion­al is­sues that de­served se­ri­ous ex­am­i­na­tion and ex­po­sure.

The crux for him in Bar­ba­dos came when he “crossed swords” with then prime min­is­ter John Michael Ge­of­frey Man­ning­ham “Tom” Adams over the Unit­ed States in­va­sion of Grena­da in 1983 to top­ple the com­mu­nist ad­min­is­tra­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Mau­rice Bish­op.

The Bar­ba­dos ad­min­is­tra­tion with­drew Singh’s work per­mit, but gen­er­ous­ly ig­nored the fact that his wife and chil­dren re­mained res­i­dent on the is­land. Singh de­vised a means of some­what neu­ter­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tion against him, though it proved a fi­nan­cial strain.

He left Bar­ba­dos when first put out, but short­ly af­ter­wards re­turned as a tourist, spent the time giv­en by Im­mi­gra­tion, but on­ly to re­turn short­ly, to va­ca­tion for a while … and that strat­e­gy kept the Singh fam­i­ly to­geth­er.

My pre­sump­tion at the time was that the Gov­ern­ment must have per­ceived what was hap­pen­ing, but de­cid­ed to wink at it, lest any fur­ther ac­tion to keep Singh out in­cit­ed in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism against Bar­ba­dos.

Rick­ey Singh, 82, to­day (Feb­ru­ary 1, 2019), knows that he has much for which to thank God, prin­ci­pal­ly, his life, for as a 17-year-old of­fice boy in the Ed­i­to­r­i­al De­part­ment of the “Chron­i­cle” news­pa­per on Main Street, George­town, he and an­oth­er young em­ploy­ee were ac­ci­den­tal­ly poi­soned when they poured out and drank from what they thought was a bot­tle of iced wa­ter but was a chem­i­cal stored by the Pho­to­graph­ic De­part­ment for de­vel­op­ing pho­tographs to be sub­mit­ted to the Ed­i­to­r­i­al De­part­ment.

They were rushed to hos­pi­tal and ad­mit­ted. The oth­er youth died.

Even be­fore then, death had prowled with­in the home and he lost his moth­er while still a child. He was raised by his sis­ter Be­tia, who mar­ried at just 15. Lat­er, el­der broth­er Richard, who had ad­vanced to a good po­si­tion at Sand­bach Park­er & Co in Wa­ter Street, George­town, be­came stand-in par­ent, guid­ed his ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties and was a close con­fi­dante dur­ing his long ca­reer.

Rick­ey Singh de­vel­oped al­most in­to a leg­end in Guyana, and his vo­ra­cious read­ing and knowl­edge ac­cu­mu­la­tion skills led to a wide ar­ray of friends, ac­quain­tances and in­for­mants in very high places. When I first saw his ros­ter of con­fi­den­tial con­tacts through­out Guyana and the en­tire Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean I was flab­ber­gast­ed ... the very high­est lev­els in pol­i­tics, busi­ness and com­merce, po­lice and de­fence forces, cul­ture and the arts, ed­u­ca­tion, sports every­where.

Rick­ey Singh main­tained close re­la­tion­ships with writ­ers and artists … among the clos­est be­ing Mar­tin Carter, George Lam­ming, Wil­son Har­ris, Derek Wal­cott, Edgar Mit­tel­holz­er, Vidya Naipaul, Den­nis Williams, and so many oth­ers in the Re­gion and fur­ther afield. His as­so­ci­a­tions and the qual­i­ty of his work earned him an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Those who knew him best trust­ed his pro­fes­sion­al­ism and hon­esty.

For one who has known him bet­ter than most, I would say just about every­body ad­mired the per­son and pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist he is–cer­tain­ly not a con­ser­v­a­tive, but far too dis­ci­plined and re­li­gious to be com­mu­nist.

Once when he ac­com­pa­nied me to No 40 Vil­lage on the West Coast of Berbice in Guyana to vis­it some of my rel­a­tives, an old man who had long been a great fan of his writ­ings and ra­dio broad­casts shook his hand with great en­thu­si­asm and in clas­sic rur­al style (like the Ba­jan “Speechi­fy­ers”) said out loud “Su­perfine in­tro­duc­tions to you Mr Singh.”

Many peo­ple through­out the Caribbean, and es­pe­cial­ly in the US State De­part­ment, con­sid­ered Rick­ey Singh a Com­mu­nist, for they feared his courage, his knowl­edge, his work, his pas­sion, his ca­pac­i­ty for elic­it­ing cru­cial in­for­ma­tion, and his re­mark­able gift of speech, with­out know­ing the man out­side of his jour­nal­is­tic en­deav­ours.

I might al­so add his dis­arm­ing per­son­al­i­ty, for few in the pro­fes­sion laugh as nat­u­ral­ly as he. Some US diplo­mats be­ing post­ed to the Em­bassy in Guyana with a dis­tress­ing dossier on Rick­ey Singh came to ask af­ter get­ting to know the man “What are they talk­ing about?” as one re­marked to me in George­town.

‘Ex­cit­ing and dan­ger­ous en­coun­ters’

His mod­er­ate rad­i­cal­ism and ex­pan­sive knowl­edge and warm per­son­al­i­ty at­tract­ed in­to his cir­cle of friends and ad­her­ents bright and am­bi­tious young­sters who were to flower in­to lead­er­ship po­si­tions in the Caribbean. They supped at the ta­ble of Rick­ey Singh’s en­thu­si­asm, knowl­edge and po­lit­i­cal savvy, and some lat­er as­cend­ed to promi­nence.

Among them can be count­ed Dr Comp­ton Bourne, who as a youth I saw com­ing fre­quent­ly in­to the Graph­ic’s Ed­i­to­r­i­al De­part­ment to con­sult Singh as he re­searched for his first de­gree. Dr Ralph Gon­salves, Ms Gail Teix­eira, Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny and many oth­ers now promi­nent were at­tract­ed to­ward the friend­ship and po­lit­i­cal guid­ance of this en­thu­si­as­tic, bright young re­porter from Guyana.

Young in­tel­lec­tu­als and po­lit­i­cal ini­ti­ates found val­ue in his com­pa­ny when they were go­ing through the crit­i­cal and ex­cit­ing stages of their up­per teens. Many have main­tained a stead­fast friend­ship over the years, with their lo­ca­tions ex­tend­ing from Cu­ba, Ja­maica, Lee­ward Is­lands, Wind­ward Is­lands, T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Suri­name.

In­dis­putably, dur­ing the lat­ter half of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, a good­ly num­ber of oth­er as­pir­ing young politi­cians sought out Rick­ey Singh, a jour­nal­is­tic leg­end in his life­time, for coun­sel and guid­ance.

He gave much and in­spired many oth­ers, but al­so re­ceived in re­turn. I re­mem­ber his friend Clive Thomas com­ing night­ly in­to the Ed­i­to­r­i­al De­part­ment of the Guyana Graph­ic when most oth­er staff mem­bers had gone to tu­tor Singh in prepa­ra­tion for the A-Lev­el ex­am­i­na­tions.

As to his less-known re­li­gious com­mit­ments, many parish­ioners with­in the Pen­te­costal Church, of which he is still a very ac­tive mem­ber, know him as a strong be­liev­er and a very dy­nam­ic preach­er whose lead­er­ship has tak­en many fol­low­ers on­to the path of God.

He preached. He taught Sun­day School. And at one stage he left George­town, the Guyana cap­i­tal, week­ly to go in­to the rur­al ar­eas to preach at bot­tom-house ser­vices, to the dis­pos­sessed and those who might have felt they had no ap­pro­pri­ate cloth­ing for at­tend­ing a for­mal ser­vice in a tra­di­tion­al church build­ing.

There is to­day a se­nior priest at a ma­jor church in George­town who at times re­counts to his con­gre­ga­tion the very in­flu­en­tial role he said Rick­ey Singh played in his life and re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment.

For years he had at­tend­ed the church and Sun­day School class­es con­duct­ed by Singh. Then one Sun­day, amid the class, teacher Singh called to him by name and said “You no longer have need of these class­es. You are ready. Go forth and spread the Word.”

And thus he be­gan. Now he is a high­ly qual­i­fied and in­flu­en­tial re­li­gious leader in George­town, con­nect­ed to one of that city’s largest re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tions.

Once on an of­fi­cial vis­it to the USA on in­vi­ta­tion from the State De­part­ment, Singh was tak­en by a host of­fi­cer to at­tend a Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice at a large church in Wash­ing­ton. As an of­fi­cial guest from the then colony of British Guiana, South Amer­i­ca, he was asked to ad­dress the con­gre­ga­tion.

He de­liv­ered a fiery short ser­mon fo­cus­ing on their fin­ery, their val­ues, their con­cept of God and re­li­gion, their sin­cer­i­ty, and their ev­i­dent lack of com­pas­sion for the poor; and com­pared what he was see­ing with the dis­pos­sessed, ill-clad but sin­cere and deeply re­li­gious flock to whom he preached week­ly in vil­lages un­der “bot­tom hous­es”. They ren­dered their hearts, not flaunt­ed their wealth and gar­ments.

The priest lat­er in­formed Singh that he had been told af­ter­wards by a State De­part­ment of­fi­cial “You should nev­er have al­lowed that young man to speak.”

On Singh’s re­turn home, the shock of his in-church per­for­mance had pre­ced­ed him and he was sum­moned (or “in­vit­ed”) to Gov­ern­ment House by the then British Gov­er­nor who ex­pressed his dis­qui­et over the re­ports out of Wash­ing­ton and re­marked that in the US cap­i­tal, Singh had by his ac­tions bit­ten the hand that had fed him.

When Singh first went to the USA, even the Amer­i­cans at the then Con­sulate in George­town did not know, though he did not de­lib­er­ate­ly seek to de­ceive them.

He had ap­plied for his first pass­port, but the lo­cal im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials pre­sent­ed a bar­ri­er, in­sist­ing that the pass­port could on­ly be is­sued in the name on his birth cer­tifi­cate: just “RA­MOUTAR”… some Hin­dus say that means a god on earth. He used that pass­port for ear­ly trav­els, but af­ter some time there was a for­mal change and a new pass­port is­sued in the name by which he is known.

Well ahead of the promi­nence of cel­e­brat­ed Evan­ge­list Bil­ly Gra­ham (de­ceased at 99), an­oth­er great Amer­i­can cru­sad­er of Pen­te­costal­ism (Re­vival Time), the Rev Charles Morse Ward (1909-1996) had for months spo­ken in his in­ter­na­tion­al re­li­gious broad­casts of the re­mark­able young man he had met in South Amer­i­ca–Rick­ey Singh, who he said had a gift for preach­ing. He was cap­ti­vat­ed by the re­li­gious knowl­edge, fer­vour, style and dy­namism of the 5’ 4” young East In­di­an Chris­t­ian who im­pressed great­ly wher­ev­er he did his part-time preach­ing.

It was there­fore nat­ur­al that in ad­di­tion to his very ac­tive sched­ule in jour­nal­ism (at the time for the “Guyana Graph­ic”, then the coun­try’s lead­ing Sun­day and Dai­ly news­pa­pers) he main­tained a very hec­tic re­li­gious pro­gramme with­in the church walls and in vil­lages around the coun­try­side.

In the dark­est days of Guyana’s eth­nic split when Africans and In­di­ans were killing each oth­er and ma­raud­ers with guns and cut­lass­es mur­dered in­no­cents and caused the seg­re­ga­tion of mixed com­mu­ni­ties along the At­lantic Coast and up the many large rivers, Rick­ey Singh and col­league jour­nal­ists, in­clud­ing me, had to face the mu­sic, pro­tect our own lives, de­fend our col­leagues and get the sto­ry and ac­tion pho­tographs.

There were so many, many in­ci­dents of dar­ing, at times death-de­fy­ing ac­tion, on oc­ca­sion res­cu­ing in­no­cent peo­ple from known ter­ror­ists, some of whom lat­er rose to promi­nent po­si­tions in the state. But that is life.

One day there was even a ra­dio re­port that Rick­ey Singh’s body had been found float­ing in a canal in Al­bouys­town, a ward in south­west­ern George­town. His wife col­lapsed in­to hys­ter­ics. Lat­er we were all in the home with doors locked when some­one rapped. As the door was opened from the in­side, Mrs Singh burst in­to tears of joy, for, un­be­liev­ably, her hus­band was stand­ing there un­in­jured, and we lat­er un­der­stood that the killer had sought Singh but misiden­ti­fied the vic­tim.

As we pur­sued our work, there were many sit­u­a­tions in which we came un­der di­rect threat, with one of the most mem­o­rable in­ci­dents be­ing on Mid­dle Street, George­town.

Singh and his wife, and me and my wife, had just left a night-time po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Pa­rade Ground in Mid­dle Street when a gang of Black youths at­tacked us shout­ing “Kill the coolie, and the coolie-lovers.”

That was a very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion for us, with nowhere to run. We had noth­ing in our hands and there was no place to hide. Just like that, the heart starts pump­ing in fear. Then out of … it seemed … nowhere came a com­mand­ing voice, a God-send, say­ing “Who is that?  Hu­bert???  Rick­ey???  Back off boys … back off … Don’t touch them.”

It was one of the lead­ers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Con­gress hit squad, known as “Bon­ny Limpy”, who walked with a “hop and a drop” from an in­jury ear­ly in life.

We had been in “Lil ABC” Class to­geth­er at “Miss Fri­day School”–St Am­brose An­gli­can School at Third and Light Streets, Al­bert­town, and for many years lived a few hous­es away from each oth­er. He had been to me a prin­ci­pal in­for­mant about the ac­tiv­i­ties un­der “PLAN X 13”, the ter­ror­ist man­i­festo of one of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

“Bon­ny Limpy” took my group out of the en­cir­clement and ac­com­pa­nied us up to the in­ter­sec­tion of Mid­dle and East Streets be­fore bid­ding us safe­ly on our way.

Singh by him­self has had many ex­cit­ing and dan­ger­ous en­coun­ters, the most mem­o­rable has to be that which oc­curred in the of­fice of a then se­nior Cab­i­net min­is­ter.

As he lat­er told it, he had gone to the of­fice on Brick­dam to trash out a mat­ter and the ar­gu­ment be­came so heat­ed that the min­is­ter, not able to cope with this bright and ar­tic­u­late jour­nal­ist, slapped him in the face. Singh, though much small­er in physique, im­me­di­ate­ly sprang, grabbed the throat and had him gasp­ing for breath when the armed se­cu­ri­ty guard, who was at all times in the of­fice, in­ter­vened and pulled him off his boss.

As I said at the time, Prov­i­dence was on Singh’s side that day, as the guard could have shot him dead and claimed jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, for here was some­one chok­ing his boss in his boss’ of­fice and there was no oth­er wit­ness but him to the ini­tial slap to Singh’s face.

On nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions dur­ing Guyana’s racial cleav­age in the 1960s, we had faced dan­ger to­geth­er, al­most al­ways in the com­pa­ny of oth­er col­leagues.

At that time, the Guyana Graph­ic’s ed­i­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy was to cov­er all events and send out mixed teams of Blacks and In­di­ans … In Black vil­lages, the Black staff mem­bers would pro­tect their In­di­an col­leagues from at­tack, and in In­di­an vil­lages, the In­di­an staff mem­bers would do the same. On­ly rarely did it not work and we had to run for our lives.

Once in Bux­ton Vil­lage, on the low­er East Coast of De­mer­ara, when an el­der­ly cou­ple (George and Eliz­a­beth Stephen­son) were mur­dered in the Back­dam, we had a mixed team of six in­clud­ing dri­ver Mr Adder­ley, a be­spec­ta­cled Bar­ba­di­an.

It seemed that the whole vil­lage had as­sem­bled on the east­ern bank of the Mid­dle Walk Canal to await the ar­rival of the boat bear­ing the two corpses. When it was sight­ed in the dis­tance, a mourn­ful wail be­gan and grew loud­er as the boat got clos­er.

Then it be­came al­most deaf­en­ing, but not so loud that we could not hear the an­gry chant “Don’t let dem coolie get out of here” and they came to­wards our group with clear in­tent. We did not hes­i­tate. All plunged in­to the ve­hi­cle, with the Ba­jan first in at the wheel.

Mr Adder­ley gunned the en­gine and the Graph­ic van lunged down the path at the ap­proach­ing crowd which when they re­alised what was about to hap­pen part­ed like the Red Sea and our team sped safe­ly out of Bux­ton Vil­lage.

Singh and I can say much about those dark days when po­lit­i­cal mad­ness by the three ma­jor par­ties (each had its ter­ror­ist squad) brought death and de­struc­tion to many ar­eas, re­sult­ing in a sep­a­ra­tion of com­mu­ni­ties, the stain of which the coun­try still bears.

In those test­ing times, it was crit­i­cal to have the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion, so se­nior jour­nal­ists un­der­stood there were sit­u­a­tions in which they had to give to get, with­out be­ing con­sid­ered an agent of state se­cu­ri­ty.

In those days, Guyana was blessed with one of the clever­est ever chiefs of se­cu­ri­ty, Hen­ry Fras­er, who used the code name “Un­cle” and picked his team of of­fi­cers with the ut­most skill. He was lat­er to be­come Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, and a few years ago died in the Unit­ed States.

In the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment of a vir­tu­al civ­il war, an ex­ces­sive­ly sen­si­tive Gov­ern­ment sought to dis­pense with those in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ists they could not con­trol.

In my case, hav­ing delinked from the in­creas­ing­ly gov­ern­ment-in­flu­enced Graph­ic to work from my home as a Reuters Cor­re­spon­dent, the then Min­is­ter of In­for­ma­tion un­known to me wrote to Reuters head­quar­ters in Lon­don mak­ing com­plaints and re­quest­ing my dis­missal. They not on­ly re­fused but sent me copies of his let­ter and theirs in re­sponse.

In Singh’s case, the tech­nique turned his­to­ry on its head. Fol­low­ing a lengthy meet­ing at the Pe­ga­sus Ho­tel in North­west George­town in­volv­ing lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives and of­fi­cials from the British group which then owned the Graph­ic news­pa­pers, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to send Rick­ey Singh away from his coun­try and fam­i­ly to Eng­land to work cov­er­ing court cas­es for a provin­cial news­pa­per.

As I said at the time, it was a re­ver­sal of his­tor­i­cal prac­tice where those in dis­favour or caus­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion to the pow­ers-that-be were ban­ished from Eng­land to the colonies. Now here was Rick­ey Singh be­ing vir­tu­al­ly ban­ished from his ex-colony home­land and sent to the “Moth­er Coun­try”.

He tol­er­at­ed it for six months and then, un­known to every­one else but me, booked a flight and high­tailed it back to Guyana. I re­ceived him at Timehri Air­port, drove him to the Singhs’ res­i­dence, went up and rapped at the locked door, and was there to wit­ness the ab­solute shock, then joy, as Dol­ly Singh saw her hus­band, then em­braced him.

He was de­ter­mined to raise his chil­dren as Caribbean peo­ple. In Oc­to­ber of 1974, he took them to Trinidad, found a Pen­te­costal Church and with hard work and de­ter­mi­na­tion and the sup­port of friends, ed­u­cat­ed his six chil­dren in the Caribbean school sys­tem en­trench­ing a strong West In­di­an iden­ti­ty and keen sense of in­de­pen­dence. His four girls went on to high­er ed­u­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al ca­reers while the two sons com­plet­ed high school, though lat­er not al­ways re­flect­ing their par­ents’ val­ues.

Singh strong­ly be­lieves that the dai­ly fam­i­ly prayers said around his bed­side each morn­ing and at meal­time over many years, will some­how serve its pri­ma­ry pur­pose, to have all his chil­dren live a God-cen­tred life.

Dur­ing his long ca­reer, he has been but­tressed by his faith, sto­ical­ly en­dured much, but there have been oc­ca­sions when he cried like a child–for fam­i­ly mat­ters close to his heart, one of those be­ing the death of his beloved wife on April 8, 2015. He was al­so very dev­as­tat­ed when his great friend Dr Wal­ter Rod­ney was mur­dered in George­town on June 13, 1980.

But he con­tin­ues to say he is blessed, prays at every meal, knows the myr­i­ad times that he bare­ly es­caped from tragedy, ex­ults in the love of his chil­dren, the very many good friends he still has; and even at 82 as he bat­tles de­clin­ing health, finds re­sus­ci­ta­tion in his church, his chil­dren, grand­chil­dren and great-grand­chil­dren, it is more than like­ly that he will find the en­er­gy to pro­duce a mas­ter­piece on the life and times of “Ra­moutar” Rick­ey Singh, the cel­e­brat­ed Guyanese jour­nal­ist of the 20th Cen­tu­ry … All he needs to do is search his files and re­pro­duce.

Singh turned 87 on Feb­ru­ary 1.

This ar­ti­cle was writ­ten by Hu­bert Williams, a for­mer jour­nal­ist and friend of Singh, in 2019.