Dear Editor,
Some encounters over recent weeks have proved enlightening. To my surprise I discovered different generations of our citizenry were totally unaware of the most influential institution in the societal culture in which too many of us continue to subsist.
The sugar industry, which brought all our forebears to populate this country and dominated every community of endeavour for at least three hundred years ‒ crystallising by 1846 in the over-riding management entity named after Josiah Booker who arrived in British Guiana in 1815, and partner, John McConnell.
Booker Bros was founded in 1833. Bookers Sugar Estates Ltd was itself formally established in 1951, as part of the Booker Group which included:
Bookers Stores Ltd – department store, self-service grocery, motor vehicles, agricultural machinery, hardware and electrical goods, pharmaceuticals, office equipment.
Bookers Shipping (Demerara) Ltd – coastal fleet operating between sugar estates and George-town, and between Georgetown and Port-of-Spain; Agent for Booker Line Service between Demerara and Liverpool; for Pan American Airways, travel agency and insurance business.
Industrial Holdings (BG) Ltd – drug manufacture, lithographic printing, Graphic newspaper, box making, shrimp processing.
Guiana Merchants Ltd – stockfeed manufacture, balata bleeding, advertising, marketing petroleum products.
Albion Distillers Ltd – producers and exporters of Demerara Rum.
When a few months ago I met a bright young computer professional to discuss setting up a station for me, and got to discussing my proposed project about writing about Bookers, he quite innocently enquired, “What is Bookers?” My brief recital was total news to him. He had never heard the name, much more that Bookers ever existed.
Not long after, I had a similar experience with a young woman but who could be described as of the older generation. Both of these young people would have been born some time after 1976, so that their lack of knowledge may be forgivable.
Much less so than a group of adults with whom I engaged not long after to discuss aspects of the sugar industry.
The ages of the mixed group ranged from thirty to sixty years plus, but they proved as scantily informed about a time of history when this country’s sobriquet was ‘Bookers Guiana’ (BG).
One reason that the largest business organisation of its time in Guyana and the Caribbean (with important expansions in Africa, Asia and even the Middle East) which contributed substantively to both the technical and academic education of thousands of employees and their families; to the social, artistic, health and sports development in communities (except villages) along the coast of Guyana, is that its history has either accidentally, or deliberately, been obfuscated, and that there is no memento – stone, plaque, flag ‒ nothing to show that even what perhaps was once the most internationally known address of 22 Church Street, Georgetown – the headquarters of Bookers Stores and Bookers Sugar Estates ‒ Bookers Universal Building existed; its identity mutated into what ironically is now known as Guyana Stores.
How many indeed will recall Bookers Guiana?
Yours faithfully,
E B John
