Dear Editor,
By some quirk of memory I related to Carl Greenidge’s excellent commentary (‘The composition of the new GuySuCo Board is highly unsatisfactory,’ SN, August 24) on the wilderness through which the sugar industry is headed (by pedestrians), again recalling the inspiration Blairmont Estate of the 1950-60s has been to my later professional life. I too slowly recognise that there were several other experiences that nurtured what I embrace as the spirit of Blairmont.
However, incredible (and even unpalatable) it may sound to the newcomer in the sugar industry, in those colonial times there was the transformational philosophy that people were more important than shops, ships and sugar estates. The mandate to which Chairman Sir Jock Campbell committed his managers, proved to be truly exciting, evolving into a multifaceted range of realities: at work, in sports and every other kind of cultural and recreational interaction.
The Personnel Department throughout the estates was, in the early 1960s, increased from a single staff member to five. My nemesis counterpart Office (Finance) Manager offered me “the four worst clerks I have.”
His generosity turned out to be a challenge I never regretted accepting. Apart from testing my presumed organisational leadership skills, it was fundamentally more important as an Afro-Guianese stranger from far Georgetown to win the trust of older adults who were all so long isolated in their Indo-Guianese traditions, as presumably I was in mine. We were going to have to work as a team to launch a bateau called “Personnel” that neither we nor our prospective clients understood – a deficiency compounded by the entrenched hostility of the unions and indeed the workers.
Trust was key. But there had to be a door. There was no pun intended when I took the ‘bull by the horns’ and welcomed my new staff (all heads of their respective families) with the descriptor passed on by their former ‘boss,’ countering quickly that not only did I not believe a word of it, but that as far as I was concerned they were no longer clerks, but men who would be as responsible for delivering their assignments in much the same way they accepted responsibility for managing their respective households, and for being role models for their children. They would not only monitor and evaluate self, but each other. Needless to say there was an eloquent silence – even during our subsequent weekly staff meetings at which for weeks I alone articulated the agenda on each of their behalfs, and mine of course.
It took nearly two months before the dam of suspicion was pierced by the intensive scrutiny I was put under. But when it broke there overflowed an avalanche of ideas, arguments, critiques, plans, and resultant productivity; most of all camaraderie – to the extent that they would queue up to remind me (in a forgetful moment) that it was time for the scheduled staff meeting. They actually became proud of being ‘Personnel’, and in time earned the respectful reciprocity of their colleagues.
So when opportunities were offered for better educated and more literate candidates to challenge for careers in the field, all but one felt confident enough to apply. Following as transparent a selection process as was then available, each in turn bid Personnel a nostalgic farewell.
During my stay at Blairmont, Raymond Bacchus rose to Field Supervisor and was later transferred to Rose Hall Estate as Field Superintendent, the first rank of senior staff. Prantrantram Anantram of Bath Section of Blairmont Estate also became a Field Superintendent on my watch and by the time he later visited me in the Head Office, Georgetown, had graduated to the position of Assistant Field Manager. His response was a gift of a number of ties.
Daniel Bhagwandin (Workmen’s Compen-sation Clerk) was content to become a Supervisor, old as he was, before retirement.
I truly do not recall even the suggestion of differentiation alluded to in Carl Greenidge’s terminology ‘multiculturalisms.’ All we knew at the time was that, i) we were men; ii) we respected each other’s productivity; iii) we were a team with shared trust between leader and led.
Is it too much to wish that the spirit of Blairmont can be rekindled in the sugar industry, if strategically well planned?
Yours faithfully,
E B John
