Sunday, March 12th 2006
Alice Thomas
Suave, stylish and attractive, Alice Thomas always seemed to exude an air of gracious living; of belonging to an idyllic society of good manners; of having been bred in an age of decency and decorum. But such appearances were only one aspect of Alice Thomas's complex character; she was never a complacent elitist, lost in luxury and longing for a life of ease. Rather, she was agitated by the condition of the poor and of victims of oppression and official neglect. She became a passionate revolutionary, struggling to transform the old order and build a new world without the barriers of racist and sexist discrimination.
Alice Thomas possessed all the credentials of the colonial middle class. Her father Sydney Miller was a judge of the High Court who later became the first Judge Advocate of the Guyana Defence Force, and her uncle, Cecil Miller, a distinguished World War II veteran of the Royal Air Force, became Chief Justice of Kenya. Her mother, Kathleen, was a member of the famous Fraser family of Berbice which included high-profile political and cultural personalities such as Valerie Rodway, CCH; Hyacinth Goddett, CCH; and Aubrey Fraser, the first Vice-Chairman of the original People's Progressive Party in 1950.
Born in Georgetown in March 1943, Alice Thomas's upbringing was not uncomfortable. Her life came to reflect the subtle interplay of the conservatism which she inherited from her father, and her mother's modernism which her marriage reinforced.
She did marry early, at 23, to a young economist, Clive Thomas who, by 1963, had already become a leading light in a revolutionary discussion group, the New World Associates (NWA). Although not a political party, NWA played a major role on the political stage by proposing political solutions to the economic, ethnic and social problems of the country through its publications and actions.
Accompanying her academic husband during his lectureships at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica), the University of Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), and back home at the University of Guyana (UG), Alice Thomas deepened her commitment to political and social change and broadened her vision of the condition of children, women and the poor in the Third World. Not least, she forged new friendships with other families, such as that of another well-known Guyanese revolutionary, Dr Walter Rodney. The decade of the 1970s was a time of ferment, especially on the university campuses of the newly-independent states where academics and students were frequently at odds with officials and politicians. Guyana and UG were no different and Alice Thomas was there.
By the 1970s, she had plunged deep into revolutionary action when the NWA dissolved and gave rise to new groups such as the Movement Against Oppression (MAO), and eventually, the Working People's Alliance (WPA), organisations which came into conflict with the People's National Congress (PNC) administration of the day. Her political affiliations incurred disapproval within her family and among a few of her more fastidious friends. But she was no hothead; she never sought publicity by pursuing high office or posing as a ringleader. She was content with being a strong supporter of change.
Most recently, although terminally ill, she gave support to the campaign of the Women Against Violence Everywhere (WAVE) which condemned the surge in criminal violence in Guyana.
Alice Thomas was an independent working woman. She ran a speciality shop - Craft and Things - in Quamina Street, Georgetown, selling craft and women's fashion items in the 1980s. For over a dozen years, with the assistance of other fashion designers and models, she selflessly and successfully organised the annual Tea Party and Fashion Show to raise funds for the Guyana Red Cross Society (GRCS). These popular shows not only supported the GRCS's programme of helping the needy but also popularised sensible and comfortable ladies' fashions and gave exposure to the efforts of women and groups such as the Red Thread Women's Organisation.
For Alice Thomas, there was no contradiction between the apparent glamour and luxury of fashion shows and the grim penury of the lives of the women and children which she tried so hard to change. She believed in a better life, not for some but for all and devoted her energy among the richer class to the benefit of the poorer.
It was this same interplay that led her from narrow Guyanese patriotism to the broader love of humanity by being a citizen of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. It also led her away from the ritualism of Anglicanism to what she saw as the universalism of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'i community, which she served as Secretary. Her social consciousness was reflected in feminist and other social issues of the day, as well as fashion, which she introduced as the first editor of the women's page of the Stabroek News in 1986. That page was a mirror of her interest in women's welfare.
Alice Thomas moved to Kenya where she had inherited a farm from her uncle, Cecil Miller, taking to commercial agriculture for a while before plunging into public relations as an executive with the largest shopping mall in Nairobi. There, she also became something of a 'Queen Bee' in the hive of Nairobi society, struggling for prison reform, especially for incarcerated mothers who endured the most appalling conditions, and of their newly-born children who were obliged to spend their formative years with them.
Alice Thomas was the same in Guyana and in Kenya. A woman of her times, she was trapped in the transition from traditional to independent society but her Weltanschauung could not be clearer. She did not stand on the sidelines but committed herself to the struggle for a better world, not with rage and rancour but, in her inimitable way, with sincerity, strength and style.
Source:http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_archive?id=47543008
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