They fired her in 2015. In 2011, they firebombed her home. In 1995, she was supposed to be mayor of Georgetown, but they conspired to prevent her from being sworn-in as Mayor. In the 1960s and 1970s, they jailed her many times. But “Fireball” Philomena Sahoye-Shury stood tall, unbowed and untamed. She was a warrior for the working-class people for almost 80 years of her life.
On October 2, just a few days before her 92nd birthday, Phiomena Sahoye-Shury passed away quietly at her home. Although Philo was ailing for some time now, it was unwelcome news for many of us who knew her. While some of us have lost a cherished comrade, our country has lost a woman of genuine worth, a genuine Guyanese heroine. One thing is certain for those of us who, in the last six months, had had opportunity to speak to her: she had not lost her vitality and her abiding interest in the vulnerable and working-class people of Guyana. She lived for, and died with, the working class on her mind.
Calling her in recent times to discuss her health was always an exercise in futility, as she inevitably diverted the discourse to those whose welfare she had championed all her life.
Philo could not be intimidated – the reason many called her a woman of steel. When I was a boy, while she and her colleagues were in our backyard, a group of Police officers approached to arrest her. She insisted that they first must eat something, and then she would go with them. She showed no fear, she smiled through it all. Eventually, the Police took her away, but they did not take her to the Albion Police Station, which was about a half-mile away, rather, they took her to the Reliance Police Station in Canje. Being locked up and whisked away to mystery Police stations were regular things for Philo. Not long after that, she was arrested and sent to Sibley Hall.
For women, other than Janet Jagan, Philo was jailed the most times for her political struggles in Guyana.
We shared a longstanding relationship that dated back to my boyhood days. Philo was a young trade unionist in those days, gorgeous and dignified. She worked alongside Harry Lall, Victor Downer, Pandit Ramlall and Pandit Mahadeo, and with several of my uncles and older cousins, moving from one sugar estate to another, organising the sugar workers in the days when GAWU was agitating for recognition.
In those early years, in the early 1960s, Bookers, the sugar lords, continued to treat sugar workers as peasants and indentured labourers. On many occasions, Harry Lall, Philomena and Victor Downer had come into the Albion area to hold meetings. Cheddi and Janet Jagan and Ashton Chase spoke at many of these meetings. At the time, Bookers had completely bought out the recognised union, the MPCA, which was led by Richard Ishmael. After the PPP was thrown out of office in 1964, the Burnham-led PNC Government sought to consolidate the MPCA as the trade union representing the workers, and the work of Philo and her colleagues intensified in the sugar belt. In Berbice, where a Police team was always on hand to arrest Philo, she was a fixture, with people eagerly awaiting to hear the person they called the “Fireball”.
Harry Lall was a good speaker on the platform, as was Victor Downer from Canje. People adored Cheddi spoke and hanged on every word he spoke. But Philo generated a special kind of oratory that excited people. Once it was announced that the “Fireball” was scheduled to speak, people flocked to hear.
Our home was where the GAWU team gathered before all public meetings, the place where the leaders would have their private meetings. She engaged us in long discussions about social justice, and why there was a dire need for the MPCA to be replaced. She lit up as she spoke about the inhumane working conditions that the then-MPCA colluded with Bookers to continue in the sugar industry. The downtrodden always had a special place in her heart.
After studying and working in America, when I returned to Guyana, we met again at Freedom House in 1991. It was the first time I had seen her after more than twenty years. She was the same dignified, stately woman, and the same “Fireball” I had known in my boyhood days. There was no reason for her to remember me, but once I reminded her who I was, she began a long journey of reminiscing, reminding me about my mom’s roti and stew fish. Philo had not lost her passion for the struggle; she had not lost sight of those she had dedicated her life’s journey to help: the vulnerable, the poor, the women and children.
From 1997 and up to the 2011 elections, we shared the public platform many times. Each time she spoke, I was awed by the continued passion and vigour that she brought to the public platform. After 1992, she became an MP, and we served also in Parliament for many years together. In Parliament, her speeches were of the same oratory that she had on the public platform, always well-prepared, almost as if choreographed. She had also become the National Director of Community Development, a role she used to promote women in small enterprises and to build vocational capacity among women’s groups across Guyana.
Rest in peace, Philo. Your time on earth has made a difference.
