Guyana - Fraudulent Revolution

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First published in Great Britain in 1984 by
Latin America Bureau (Research and Action) Ltd

Digitized in [2015]. This edition is a eo-publication between
Latin America Bureau and Practical Action Publishing.
www. practicalactionpublishing.org
I Amwell Street
London EC I R I UL
Published with the assistance of

The World Council of Churches
The views expressed, however, are those of the authors
Copyright @ Latin America Bureau (Research and Action) Ltd

1984
ISBN 0 906156 20 3
ISBN 13:9780906156209
ISBN Library Ebook: 9781909013735
Book DOl: http:l/dx.doi.org/10.3362/9781909013735
Design by Jan Brown Designs

Map by Michael Green
Photos by Jenny Matthews
Typeset, printed and bound by Russell Press Ltd., Nottingham
Contents
Foreword 4
Map 6
1: Guyana in Brief 7
2: Sugar Dictatorship: Colonial Origins of Guyana 13
3: The Rise and Disintegration of the National
Movement: Preparing the Fraud 29
4: Independence to Paramountcy: Consolidating the
Fraud 46
5: The PNC and the IMF: The Cost of the Fraud 62
6: Paramountcy to Executive Presidency: The Fraud
Disintegrates 73
Appendices
1 The Essequibo Border Dispute 91
2 Cultivating Violence: Jonestown and the House of
Israel 96
3 The Role of the Christian Churches in Guyana 100
Bibliography and Suggested Reading 106
Foreword
The causes of the present tragic situation in Guyana are complex in

themselves. They have been rendered even more complex by the
manner in which they have been recorded. This is especially true of the
period after 1950 when the 'cold war' language of communism versus
the defence of the free world began to dominate accounts of political
developments. If for no other reason than to present events in a more
balanced light, an independent text has been necessary for some time.
The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is consequently very
happy to endorse the initiative of the Latin America Bureau in
producing such a text.
This publication fulfills several useful purposes. Guyanese familiar
with the events have for the most part not been able to evaluate them
calmly. Additionally, the people of the Caribbean region have a
greater need to counter the distorted versions with which they have
been fed. Finally, and no less importantly, an independent version of
events is necessary for the general public beyond the region, which has
little or no idea of the process of disintegration to which the country
has been subjected. Within the space of three decades Guyanese
society has been transformed from one noted in the region for its
economic potential, cultural achievements and progressive politics
into the most tension-ridden, desperate and repressive in terms of
social decay and economic decline.
This essay attempts to explain the process of disintegration and why
the methods used by the imperial powers in the 1950s and the 1960s to
destroy the national movement for economic and political
independence poisoned the life of the society for the next generation.
The text correctly emphasizes that it would be erroneous to consider
that the destruction of that process and the subsequent consolidation
of the People's National Congress in office is only, or even
predominantly, a tale of terror. It has been fundamentally a tale of
fraud regularly punctuated by violence. This publication comes at a
most opportune time since the fraudulence can no longer disguise the
extent of the economic and social crisis, and the resort to terror to
sustain it is increasing.
We would recommend any person who wishes to understand the
Guyanese situation, especially the deterioration in observance of
human rights, to begin the task by reading this study.
r
Guyana Human Rights Association
ATLANTIC OCEAN
SURINAM
BRAZIL
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Milts
1 Guyana in Brief
Statistics
Area 84,000 sq miles (214,000 sq km) (UK = 94,200 sq
miles)
Population 803,000 (1982)

growth rate I OJo (1970-80 average)
population density 9.4 per sq mile
People East Indians 51 OJo

African 31 OJo
Mixed (Creole) II OJo
Amerindian 50Jo
Chinese & Portuguese I OJo
Other I OJo
Religion Christian 460Jo

Hindu 370Jo
Muslim 80Jo
Not Stated 90Jo
Health Life Expectancy (1975-80) 69.1 years

Infant Mortality 50.5 per 1000
No of doctors 1:7,660 (1981)
Pop. per hospital bed 1:207
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Economy GNP (1982) US$430m
Income per capita US$693
Currency G$3.03 = US$1
Percentage of total exports (1981):
bauxite 32.307o
sugar 27.4%
rice 10.6%
alumina 8.8%
Total exports US$241m
Total imports US$290m
Principal towns Georgetown (capital) 183,000

1979/Estimate
New Amsterdam 30,000
1979/Estimate
Corriverton 11,000
1979/Estimate
Government Executive Presidency since 1980
Chronology
1580 Dutch make contact with Carib Indians.
1621 Dutch West India Company takes control of Essequibo

trading posts.
1651 Berbice under Dutch control.
1665 British attempts to drive out Dutch fail.
1678 Shipment of African slaves to British Guiana to work on

the sugar plantations.
1708 French fail to drive out Dutch.
1814 Territory ceded to Britain by Treaty of Utrecht 1814.
1831 Three counties. of Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara

merged into British Guiana.
1838 Abolition of slavery in British territories.

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1841 Portuguese immigrants arrive.
1851 Indentured Indian labourers brought in to replace slaves.
1853 Chinese immigrants arrive.
1917 End of indentured immigration.
1919 British Guiana Labour Union formed - the first trade

union in the Caribbean.
1939 Moyne Commission established to investigate social unrest

in West Indies.
1950 PPP formed under leadership of Dr Cheddi Jagan.
1953 First elections under universal adult suffrage.

Constitution suspended after 135 days.
1955 PNC formed from split in PPP led by Forbes Burnham.
1957 PPP wins general election.
1961 PPP wins general election.
1963 80-day general strike led by civil service, financed by the

CIA. Right-wing firms lock their workers out, leading
to rioting.
1963-64 Racial violence, murder, arson, hundreds killed as PNC

and UF supporters denounce PPP government as
communist. Britain refuses to grant independence to
British Guiana under PPP rule.
1964 Elections under new proportional representation system.

Despite increasing its share of the vote, PPP wins only
24 seats. The PNC wins 22 seats and the UF seven.
PNC asked by Governor General to form a government in
coalition with UF.
Geneva Agreement reached on Venezuelan border dispute.
1966 Independence from Britain. Name changed from British

Guiana to Guyana.
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1968 Elections massively rigged by introduction of 'overseas
vote'. PNC wins majority, drops UF from coalition.
1970 Guyana declared a 'Co-operative Republic'. Governor

general replaced by non-executive President.
Protocol of Port-of-Spain freezes Venezuelan border
dispute for twelve years.
Nationalization of bauxite industry from the Demerara
Bauxite Company (DEMBA).
1970-76 Nationalization of all major foreign economic assets

except banks and insurance companies.
1972 Diplomatic relations estabished with Cuba.
1973 Elections massively rigged. Ballot boxes seized at close of

polling by the army. Released after 24 hours, when PNC
declared to have won a two-thirds majority.
1975 Doctrine of the 'paramountcy of the party' enunciated in

the Declaration of Sophia in which all state institutions
including government institutions are declared to be
arms of the ruling party.
All private schools taken over by the state.
1978 Referendum to allow a two-thirds majority to change any

provision of the constitution. Aimed at postponing
elections, government claims a 71 per cent turn-out and
a 97.7 per cent 'yes' vote. Civic groups claim a 14 per
cent turn-out and PPP claims 12 per cent. A two-year
extension of the life of parliament follows.
1979 Formation of WP A: multi-racial independent Marxist

party.
1980 Assassination of Dr Walter Rodney, leader of WP A, by

government.
1980 New constitution promulgated. Executive presidency

introduced with 'virtual imperial powers'.
General elections denounced as fraudulent by
International Observer Team.
1981 Government spending cuts cause major redundancies in
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the civil service. Widespread food shortages and
breakdown of public and social services occur.
1982 Food shortages broaden, flour imports stopped,

production and exports reduced.
1983 Bauxite industry in crisis, strikes in sugar and bauxite

industries.
Political Parties
1. People's Progressive Party (PPP)
The first party formed in Guyana, under the leadership of Dr Cheddi

Jagan. The PPP won the first elections held under adult suffrage in
1953. The constitution was suspended later that year because,
according to the Colonial Office, 'the intrigues of communists ...
some in ministerial posts, threaten the welfare of the colony'. The
party split in 1955. Since that time its political base has been the rural
Indian population. The PPP won the elections in 1957, when the
constitution was restored, and in 1961; but it lost power in the 1964
elections. Since that time the PPP has participated in all subsequent
elections, though denouncing the results as fraudulent.
2. People's National Congress {PNC)
Originaliy formed as a result of a split in the PPP, the PNC came to

power in a coalition government following the 1964 elections. In 1968,
1973 and 1980 the PNC claimed electoral victories, the validity of
which have been widely disputed. The traditional political base of the
PNC, subsequent to the 1961 elections, has been the urban Afro-
Guyanese population. Forbes Burnham has been party leader since its
inception. Ideologically, the party claims to be establishing co-
operative socialism.
3. Working Peoples' Alliance (WPA)
Originally a group of small left-wing interests, the WP A formally

declared itself a party in 1979. Its collective leadership is multi-racial
and its ideological orientation independent Marxist. The WP A has
apparently made significant inroads on the traditional support of the
two older parties. The WP A boycotted the 1980 elections.
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4. Vanguard for Liberation and Democracy (VLD)
Formed in 1979 by a coalition of three small parties, the Vanguard,

the Liberator and the People's Democratic Movement. Of the three,
the Liberator, led by Dr Ganraj Kumar, is the largest. Of a centre-
right orientation, the VLD boycotted the 1980 elections.
5. United Force (UF)
Since its coalition with the PNC in government in 1964-68, the UF has
dwindled into a very small right-wing party. Despite its apparent
distance in ideological terms from the ruling party, it has consistently
colluded with the PNC, a fact which largely explains its continued
survival in parliament. The UF participated in the 1980 elections.
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2 Sugar Dictatorship:
Colonial Origins of Guyana
Creating a Country and a Population
In the late eighteenth century, sugar was the most lucrative

commodity of international trade, and the West Indies its most
important source. In the area now known as Guyana, the fortunes and
tribulations of the sugar industry mirrored and moulded the political,
economic, social, commercial, cultural and even geographic life of the
country. This was not always the case, however, since the area had
been the largest producer of cotton in the world in the seventeenth
century, and coffee had also preceded the emergence of sugar as the
dominant crop.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Dutch business acumen
and hydrographic talents, together with the labour of tens of
thousands of slaves, created the complex of drainage and irrigation
systems necessary for the production of sugar on the uniformly flat
and low-lying coastlands of Guyana (see box). Since capital
investment in slaves and drainage equipment was so high as to make
human considerations a luxury, even the conformation of the towns
and villages which developed, and in which 90 per cent of the
Guyanese people came to live, were determined in strict accordance
with the requirements of 'King Sugar'. Even after emancipation in
1833 the plantation economy, supported by a colonial administration,
continued to dominate the life of the society at considerable cost to the
independent social and economic development of the country.
Fearing that labour costs on the sugar estates would increase if
alternative employment became available, estate owners sought to
frustrate the independent economic development of their ex-slaves.
This they did by restricting the development of ex-slave village
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A 'Narrow Strip of Land'
' ...... every acre at present in cultivation has been the scene of a struggle
with the sea in front and the flood behind. As a result of this arduous labour
during two centuries, a narrow strip of land along the coast has been rescued
from the mangrove swamp and kept under cultivation by an elaborate system
of dams and dykes.'
The 'narrow strip of land' lies within a coastal plain that covers an
area of 1,750 square miles out of Guyana's surface area of 83,000
square miles. The maximum width of the coastal plain is about 40
miles on the Corentyne to the east, but it practically ends on the
Essequibo coast. Most of the coastal plain comprises clays at sea
level or as low as six feet below sea level. Waterlogged conditions are
the understandable consequence of constant flooding from the sea
and from the heavy rainfall, which averages about 90 inches per
annum on the coast and the near interior. Apart from a few natural
sand ridges at seven to ten feet above sea level, all areas of the coast
that came under permanent cultivation had first to be drained and
protected from further inundation.
The Venn Sugar Commission of 1948 estimated that each square
mile of cane cultivation involved the provision of forty-nine miles of
drainage canals and ditches and sixteen miles of the higher level of
waterways used for transportation and nngation. The
Commissioners noted that the original construction of these
waterways must have entailed the moving of at least 100 million tons
of soil. This meant that slaves moved 100 million tons of heavy,
waterlogged clay with shovel in hand, while enduring conditions of
perpetual mud and water.
As soon as slavery ended, planters in British Guiana established
work schedules to be fulfilled before the labourer was paid for his
nine-hour working day. At the top of these schedules were listed two
tasks: (I) digging canals 12 feet by 5 feet, and throwing the ground
on both sides - 600 cubic feet in nine hours; and (2) throwing back
6-foot parapets from the above - 72 feet in nine hours.
Flooding was as likely to come from the sea pouring through
breaches in the sea dams as from direct inundation and the overflow
of fresh water from behind the back dams. Drainage had to be
conceptualized in conjunction with irrigation, and both were
meaningless without sea defence. Many planters in the nineteenth
century seemingly lived in fear that for each one of them the day
might dawn when their puny efforts to keep out the sea might come
to nought. When an estate was said to have 'gone under', this was
more than a merely figurative expression, because it was usually the
invading sea that completed the demise of a failing estate. Maps of
the Demerara estuary in the eighteenth century indicate the existence
•
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of estates that were subsequently swallowed by the sea. An estate
fought the sea at a line of defence constituted by the front dam. If it
proved economically or technically impossible to continue repairing
a front dam in a given location, then the estate 'retired' that dam
many roods inland and renewed the struggle after conceding many
valuable acres of its frontlands.
The enormous influence of flood and drought was brought to bear
on several facets of the lives of working people. They were
unemployed in periods that were extremely dry because estates had
to cut back on their allocations of task work. Any drought in
November-December and a drop in the level of water in the canals
meant that punts could not operate to carry canes from the fields to
the factories; cane cutting and grinding therefore ceased. When the
rains were excessive the ultimate result was the same- namely, an
increase in seasonal unemployment. In times of drought planters
fumed and fretted, while workers had little to drink or even eat. The
incidence of gastroenteric disease shot up, and such water as was
available was imbibed along with the mud of the trenches. Floods
took an even greater toll on health, on livestock, on crops, on the
roads and dams and on the capacity of the villagers to pay rates and
retain possession of their houses and provision lots.
Source: A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, Walter
Rodney.
communities, placing obstacles in the way of agricultural

diversification, and finally by the introduction of indenture-
immigration. The acquiring of lands by the ex-slaves was hindered by
the extortionate prices demanded when it became known that they
were interested in purchase. Through their control of expenditures in
the Combined Court (the body which exercised legislative and
executive authority within the colony), the planters consistently
refused to approve funds for improvements to roads, dams, and
drainage for village purposes. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of
public funds were spent on drainage and irrigation which private
planters deemed necessary for their estates, while any request,
however modest, for similar expenditure in the free villages met with
considerable hostility. The villagers had to contend, therefore, not
only with the natural hazards arising from floods and erosion, but
also with a ruling class which saw the villagers' every attempt to
control these hazards as prejudicial to its interests. In addition, the
villagers had to subsidize the estate infrastructure through taxation.
In order to ensure that crops other than sugar did not offer a
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substantial income to peasant farmers and free labourers, no attempt
was made to assist the development of non-sugar agriculture. Plans
for exporting plantains, cassava, yams and sweet potatoes to the
Caribbean region were actively discouraged. Antipathy to alternative
forms of agriculture was translated into unscrupulous flooding of
village agricultural lands which sabotaged their progress. In addition,
many free labourers who desired to get away entirely from the sugar-
dominated coastlands and who attempted to develop market-garden
agriculture in the riverain areas of the Essequibo and Demerara were
deterred by the rules governing land purchases.
The third major strand in the planters' efforts to protect their sugar
monopoly was the use of indentured labourers in the colony. An
indentured labourer was a bonded immigrant who in return for his
passage to Guyana (and return passage home) was committed to work
on a given plantation for a stipulated number of years at a fixed rate
of pay. The usual length of time for indentureship was five years. This
was the single most controversial and far-reaching of the measures
used to protect the sugar producers from increasing wage costs.
From the 1840s onwards, the plantocracy lobbied the Colonial
Office through the influential West India Committee in London and
the West India Associations in Liverpool and Glasgow for both
permission and a subsidy to introduce indentured labour into the
sugar industry. The basic argument was that since the abolition of
slavery, the cost of labour was making sugar from the British West
Indies uncompetitive in relation to Cuban and later Brazilian sugar,
which continued to be produced with slave labour. The first
experiments with indentured labourers involved groups of Madeiran
Portuguese and Chinese from Canton. Neither group successfully
adapted to the rigours of estate life and they were released from their
indentured contracts. Large-scale importation of indentured labourers
from India began in 1851. Between that year and 1917, when
immigration was finally suspended, 228,743 Indians were brought to
the colony. Although the phenomenon of indentured migration is
largely identified with Indians because they were numerically the
largest group which arrived in British Guiana by this route, groups of
Chinese continued to arrive until the 1860s and groups of Portuguese
until 1882. A significant number of indentured Africans also arrived
between 1840 and 1865.
By 1870 the labour force was divided into three main groups:
indentured immigrants, ex-indentured immigrants and their
descendants, and the village population, which was predominantly
black ex-slaves and their descendants. The three categories of labour
were set in antagonistic relations towards each other within the
plantation context. Indentured labourers, no matter how efficient or
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skilled, could earn no more than the 24 cents per day legal rate, while
village free labourers could band together into work gangs to
negotiate 'task' rather than time rates. They were also adept at
knowing when to press for higher rates and when to avoid plantation
work altogether in favour of other temporary pursuits. They knew the
various industrial gambits which enhanced their bargaining position
vis-a-vis the planter and estate managers. This expertise was
undermined by the planters who utilised the different segments of the
labour force to undercut each other, sometimes knowingly, sometimes
out of ignorance.
It was this structural weakness of the labour force, rather than its
ethnic composition, which was responsible for its lack of internal
unity. From the labourers' point of view, tension was caused by the
low wages and appalling conditions imposed by the owners of the
sugar industry and their managers. The fact that the divisions between
categories of labour also reflected racial differences led to an over-
simplified conclusion that the lack of unity was primarily racial,
whereas there is little evidence of racial conflict reported in the
nineteenth century. Nor was the planters' divide and rule strategy
directed against any one group. Indentured or ex-indentured
immigrants might be used to undercut a strike or a pay claim by free
creole labourers on one occasion and the situation reversed on
another. The benefits of stimulating racial antagonism were clear to
the plantocracy and colonial government. As one contemporary
wrote:
'The coolie despises the negro because he considers him ... not so highly
civilised as himself; while the negro ... despises the coolie because he is so
immensely inferior to himself in physical strength. There will never be much
danger of seditious disturbances among the East Indian immigrants ... so
long as large numbers of negroes continue to be employed with them.'
Thus, not only did indentured labour reduce wage costs, it also
afforded the planters a certain degree of protection against social
unrest. Self protection against revolt was explicitly linked with the
immigrant question in one submission to the West Indian Commission
of 1897 which stated:
'They do not intermix and that, of course, is one of our great safeties in the
colony when there has been any rioting. If our negroes were troublesome every
coolie on the estate would stand by one. If the coolie attacked me I could with
confidence trust my negro friends for keeping me from injury.'
Despite these structural divisions within the labour force the

evidence is that repressive measures were still needed to contain labour
unrest. From the slave period, when a handful of white planters and
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administrators faced an overwhelmingly black labour force, Guyana
had developed what was, by West Indian standards, a high degree of
militarization. With the introduction of immigration, the indentured
labourers found themselves hedged around with a plethora of legal
restrictions embodied in labour ordinances. The maxim enunciated by
one planter but practised by all was that the coolie should either be 'at
work, in hospital or in prison'. The rigour with which labour laws
were applied and the level of resentment and resistance which this
provoked are indicated by the fact that between 1866 and 1870, 65,084
cases were recorded involving a breach of the ordinances. This
averages out to 18.5 convictions every day for the five-year period.
What is remarkable, however, is not the resistance offered by these
three groups in the labour force to their work situation, but rather that
there is no record of violence of a purely political nature throughout
the nineteenth century. While there were several incidents of violence
arising out of industrial disputes, it was the reaction of the colonial
power structure that turned these industrial disputes into political
riots. This was a pattern which was to continue for the rest of the life
of the colonial state.
By comparison with the treatment of the Indian and negro
populations, treatment of the Portuguese and Chinese was benign if
not enlightened. Discriminatory rules governing the sale of land
usually worked in their favour and they were able to acquire sufficient
lands around Georgetown to dominate the production and
distribution of agricultural products for the local market. Thus was
laid the financial basis for later generations to transfer almost entirely
out of agricultural production and into commerce. In addition to the
agricultural exploitation of land, the Portuguese were better placed to
exploit the prospects for charcoal than other groups. Once again they
were favoured by a land policy which required land to be sold in large
blocks, which they were able to buy using their accumulated savings
from market gardening. Thus the charcoal industry, which had
formerly been a cottage-scale pursuit of creole blacks, was raised to a
level at which they could not compete. Formerly independent charcoal
makers became wage earners on Portuguese-owned timber grants,
once again frustrated in their attempts to function as independent
producers.
The story of gold production follows a similar pattern of
Portuguese immigrants establishing themselves in an industry due to
their capacity to finance its operations from savings accumulated on
the land. In the case of gold and timber, working capital in the form
of provisions and credit for labourers was provided by both Chinese
and Portuguese who had further differentiated themselves from the
ranks of manual labourers by dominating distribution in the rural
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areas, most notably on the East Coast of Demerara. Thus, although
not challenging the English commercial houses such as George Little,
Cottam Morton and Thomas Daniel, which dominated both Guyanese
and West Indian commercial trade, the Portuguese were laying the
foundations to replace them. Unlike the Chinese and Indians after
them, the differentiation which was taking place between the
Portuguese settlers and creole labourers was mirrored by a similar
class differentiation within the Portuguese community itself. There
appears to have been no strong sense of class or racial solidarity
among the Portuguese, and social stratification is still a notable fact
today, to which the significant numbers of Portuguese labourers and
fishermen attest. By contrast the Indian immigrant community
achieved and retained a remarkable degree of internal racial cohesion,
especially in view of the potential for strife provided by the Muslim-
Hindu religious division and the caste system.
The Emergence of a Middle Class
Following the 'juridical revolution' of emancipation, education

proved to be the motor force behind the gradual improvement of
urban creoles. A generation of clerks and domestic employees
struggled to ensure the acquisition of a rudimentary education for
their children. The first generation of educated Guyanese, almost
exclusively black, or of black descent, secured for themselves
positions as teachers and public servants, thereby laying the
groundwork for the formation of a social class distinct from the estate
labourer, draycartmen and unskilled labourers. However, for black
Guyanese the post of headteacher or rural postmaster was as high on
the social ladder as they could normally hope to aspire, although the
churches also provided their own avenue of social acceptability.
Occasionally, members of this group could break new ground, but
only with considerable difficulty. This was the case with Dr Rohlehr,
who in 1890 was the subject of controversy owing to the refusal by the
Governor to appoint him as a medical officer on the grounds that he
was black. Although popular pressure eventually forced the
appointment to be made, such a breakthrough remained uncommon
because it was viewed as threatening to the white power structure.
When advancement became constitutionally possible at the end of the
century, the ruling clique responded by erecting social barriers to such
progress.
Among the ex-indentured Indian population social progress was to
be the result of economic rather than educational opportunities. For
this reason, advancement was an individual achievement rather than
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the result of group pressure such as that which created the educational
opportunities in the black and coloured urban areas. Indians rose as
the result of opportunities provided by the estate economic structure.
Foremen among cane-cutters, known as 'drivers', used the influence
their positions gave them to acquire land and cattle. Towards the end
of the century, as a result of land grants replacing return passages on
completion of indenture, rice-farming brought a significant rise in
income and status to the Indian community although this was not
normally accompanied by social recognition by the creole
establishment. Thus with the exception of a few families, who
benefited from their relations with the colonial authorities, the
growing middle class Indian community mainly established itself on
the basis of agricultural activities and was content to consolidate itself
by expanding principally in the areas of rice, cattle farming, copra
production and market gardening. Economic advancement
encouraged this class to remain in the rural areas.
Walter Rodney, the eminent Guyanese historian and political
leader, has suggested that Guyanese working people in the nineteenth
century can be divided into three groups, determined by their income
levels. The first group was of those who earned G$600 per annum and
were therefore entitled to vote. This group saw the current colonial
administration, in which they participated, as the focus for political
development. In this first category of income earners were, not
surprisingly, the skilled workers of the sugar industry, foreman
engineers and head pan-boilers (those in charge of the sugar refining
process).
However, the potentially most vocal element in the working class in
the decade prior to 1891 was the second group, made up of workers
who anticipated obtaining the vote if any reform measures were
introduced. This group included pan-boilers, headmasters, foremen,
carpenters, shipbuilders, tailors, postmasters and sanitary inspectors,
all of whom were earning upwards of G$300 per annum. With the
exception of the pan-boilers, these occupations had a heavy urban bias
and were filled by black and coloured people who by virtue of
education had established themselves as tradespeople, junior civil
servants and teachers.
The third category in the working class, those who would not
benefit at all from any extension of the franchise, included cane-
cutters, blacksmiths, wharf-hands, domestics and draycartmen. Also
to be found in this group were the so-called 'centipedes', casual
drifters who sought employment on a daily or casual basis.
The majority in both black and Indian groups were unskilled, and
competition for jobs in a situation of economic insecurity inevitably
fostered racial suspicion. The planter class was very much aware of
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the dynamics of this insecurity and elevated almost to official policy
its goal of generating a high level of racial tension between the two
major groups by having one group threaten the livelihood of the other
through strike-breaking and undercutting wage rates. Despite these
efforts, there is no evidence to suggest that such racial incidents as
occurred were anything more than spontaneous reactions to specific
situations. The colonial authorities were unsuccessful in their attempts
to create systematic racial feelings among the working class.
Legally indentured labourers were free men, but the conditions of
their existence were not much better than slavery, and this prevented
them from showing any kind of solidarity with other sections of the
working class. They were used as a reserve pool of labour for the
purpose of depressing wages. However, the high level of coercion
required to maintain the indentured population quiescent undermines
the popular conception of them as freely submitting to this role.
Nevertheless, the physical separation of the sugar estates from the
black urban centres worked to the advantage of the ruling interests in
that the relative isolation and ignorance of each other's conditions
provided fertile ground for rumours and stereotypes to develop.
Between 1850 and 1880 the main form of economic organization
among the creole population was the Friendly, Benefit and Burial
Societies. Given that trade union organization was impossible due to
the presence of a large indentured labour force, these alternative
societies were the only means of furthering the interests of the creole
population. Despite the economic, political, social and legal obstacles
in the way of working class progress, the pressures for reform during
the last quarter of the nineteenth century had their origins in this
section of the population. Yet it would be an error to deny the role of
the newly emerging middle class in the reform process. Although this
class was not homogeneous, being differentiated by its rural, urban,
educational, financial, commercial or landed origins, the extension of
the franchise consolidated the advantages of unity. This created the
circumstances in which middle class urban pressure and working class
pressure would jointly challenge the planter oligarchy. Nevertheless,
the circumstances in which the call for reform was made were not
primarily of middle class making. Toward the end of the century
relationships between the colonial administration and the sugar
planters came under considerable strain.
The Colonial State
Until 1881, when certain constitutional reforms were introduced, the

political administration of Guyana was carried out under
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arrangements which had been largely inherited from the Dutch. Under
the governor, who was appointed by the Colonial Office, the local
Court of Policy and Combined Courts, which were elected by a very
small segment of the population and dominated by the sugar planters,
administered the colony. To the extent that the Combined Courts
controlled taxation and finances, including the salaries of the colonial
officials, Guyana was more independent than other West Indian
territories. While ultimately the governor could invoke his emergency
powers to assert the authority of the crown, the concerted action of
members of the Combined Courts could frustrate his wishes on day-
to-day matters. Both the colonists and the governor were aware that
the planters' power rested in their having to approve the 'civil list'
(budget) every five years.
Under the Dutch administration the raison d'etre of colonial
politics was the protection of the sugar industry; this continued to be
so under the British. This approach to administration grew
increasingly anachronistic as the society became economically more
diverse and socially more complex. Resistance by the planter class and
its commercial allies to any modification of the colonial power
structure to accommodate the new interests was vigorous, and, despite
occasional tensions over the intransigence of the planters, the colonial
administration generally shared their position. Whenever local
domination of the Combined Courts by the planters was insufficient
to press home planter policy, the powerful sugar lobby at Westminster
was brought to bear on a recalcitrant governor to take a more
understanding line.
In theory, the British colonial administration functioned under the
doctrine of 'trusteeship', according to which the inhabitants of a
colony who were as yet not sufficiently 'responsible' to govern
themselves could look to the governor and his officials, who wielded
power on their behalf, for protection against the economically and
politically powerful forces in the colony. The trusteeship doctrine,
which served as a rationale for plunder and subjugation, was further
devalued in British Guiana where the colonial government for long
periods was exclusively an agency for the promotion of planter
interests. Circumstances in British Guiana were such that sustained
planter objections to any measure proposed by the governor usually
ended with the governor retreating. Des Voeux, a nineteenth century
magistrate of greater intellect and social sensitivity than most of his
peers, noted that if the governor did not acquiesce in whatever the
planters were seeking, they could make his life a misery, prevent him
receiving supplies and practically drive him out of the colony. In an
illuminating note on the pervasiveness of planter power, Des Voeux
states:
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'Though the legislative body of the Court of Policy had a bare majority of
Officials, some even of these were permitted, as I think improperly, to own or
to be found pecuniarily interested in sugar estates, while the whole of the
unofficial members owed their position and livelihood to the same product.'
As we have noted, the growth of the population due to indentured
immigration and the economic and political diversification of the
colony brought with them a challenge to the prevailing political order.
This did not constitute as effective a pressure, however, as internal
changes taking place within the sugar industry itself. Far-reaching
technological improvements and the varying fortunes of the planters
as a result of them were bringing about important changes in the
ownership structure of the industry. Concentration of ownership
during the last quarter of the nineteenth century led to the
disappearance of 63 estates, while the trend towards absentee
ownership created a situation in which by 1904 four firms, all of which
had their headquarters in the United Kingdom, controlled 80 per cent
of the sugar industry.
During the period in question political influence in the colony had
been shifting away from domination by individual planters to the less
direct manipulation by the limited liability companies which were
buying up estates. One consequence of this ownership change was that
the colonial government no longer needed to tolerate the limitations
which planter control of the legislature had exercised upon the
administration. Ostensibly responding to middle class pressures being
channelled through the Reform Association, founded in 1889, the
colonial government introduced constitutional changes in 1891 which
took the initiative away from the planter class. The significance of the
constitutional changes of 1891 lay in the fact that they eventually gave
rise to a shift within the legislature, from a situation in which
confrontation primarily had been between the colonial officials and
the planters, to one in which both of these interests banded together to
confront the emerging non-sugar, middle class influences which began
to appear in the legislature.
By 1916 the Colonial Secretary was calling for constitutional
protection for the mercantile and sugar interests. What the colonial
authorities had envisaged as a mild adjustment to pacify middle class
ambitions and to curb the power of the planters was in fact a growing
movement towards the democratization of the economic and political
life of the colony. The tendency to misread the political currents in the
society was a constant feature of colonial rule, which usually led to
over-reaction by the authorities. This was particularly noticeable in
the industrial disputes of the early years of the twentieth century,
which the authorities termed, and then turned into, political riots.
Despite the rational arguments advanced in the name of the
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doctrine of trusteeship, the real relationship between the governed and
the rulers was coercive. The colonial state in British Guiana developed
as the needs of capital developed. The response of the state to labour
unrest, caused by low wages and the degrading housing and medical
facilities provided for the indentured labourers, was to use the law as
part of the coercive apparatus to keep labour in line. Labour
ordinances, riot acts and states of emergency were the normal
instruments of justice. In addition to the use of the judicial system to
maintain its dominant position the colonial state also created a militia.
Membership of the militia required an annual income of G$300, which
would have admitted lower middle class occupations such as bakers
and tinsmiths but not unskilled labourers. The function of the militia
was to contain disturbances and riots until the British troops could be
brought from the West Indian islands.
Against this background of 200 years of unbroken absolute rule in
the interest of sugar, the minor adjustments made to the constitution
in 1891 were insignificant. Their limited significance was
demonstrated by the Georgetown riots of 1905. What began as an
industrial dispute over wages ended on the scale of an insurrection
thanks to the high-handedness of the governor. Labourers on the East
Bank Demerara sugar estates went on strike and began a march to
Georgetown to discuss their grievances. Police blocked their entrance
to Georgetown and in an ensuing melee opened fire on the workers.
Seven died and 17 were injured, and as the news spread, rioting and
some looting of shops took place. One colonial report stated that
'four-fifths of Georgetown seemed to have gone stark, staring mad'.
Large numbers of the militia refused to answer the governor's call,
and eventually order was restored when British warships arrived. The
governor actively intervened to prevent a settlement taking place
because it contained certain wage increases. The failure of the militia
to answer the call to muster demonstrated how little sympathy the
middle class had with the colonial authorities. Although middle-class
advance was dependent on their acceptance by the social and political
elite of the colony, the evidence suggests that they were not as fawning
or slavish towards this group as is usually suggested.
Individual members of the middle class such as lawyer Patrick
Dargan and Dr Rohlehr showed active solidarity with the working
class and attempted unsuccessfully to mediate between the workers
and the authorities. Despite the openings for middle class
participation which the 1891 reforms had created, the colonial
authorities were not prepared to view them as the thin end of the
wedge, enabling middle-class elements to champion working-class
causes. By and large the colonial strategy worked, because the middle
class for the most part earned its living in occupations ancillary to the
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main areas of production, which were themselves in expatriate hands.
The lack of familiarity of the middle class with the forces of
production left it as a class in a dependent economic position. By
contrast the ruling elite and the working class represented the two
indispensible elements in the process of production, namely capital
and labour. Since the raison d'etre of British Guiana was the
production of sugar at an exploitative rate, the relationship between
the two groups was always tense, with the plantocracy ever mindful
that it could lead to violence at any time.
Trade Union Development
The aftermath of the 1905 riots saw several attempts to form trade
unions, especially of craftsmen. Carpenters and printers were among
the first to attempt to combine to improve their economic position.
However, despite the 'respectable' character of the associations, they
did not prosper. Between 1910 and 1917 several attempts were made
by boat captains and even civil servants to form organizations to
defend wages and working conditions but none of them took root. In
1919, following agitation among the waterfront workers over the
rising cost of living, the British Guiana Labour Union (BGLU) was
formed by Nathaniel Critchlow. Besides being the first union in
British Guiana, the BGLU was the first in the West Indies. In the early
years of its existence the BGLU attracted members from a wide range
of occupations. Membership rose to 7,000 and the dues paid
amounted to over G$9,000. The formation of the BGLU was the
culmination of two years' work by Critchlow and was crowned by an
unprecedented two wage increases in one year for waterfront workers.
Critchlow was eventually fired from his waterfront job when he
started to campaign for an eight-hour day.
The BGLU faced a complex situation. From the point of view qf the
industrial situation there was need for considerable militancy if any
improvement for the workers was to be won. At the same time, the
colonial authorities were ready to use any pretext to destroy the
nascent union. Critchlow had the job of maintaining the union's
credibility with the workers without provoking a confrontation with
the authorities which he could not sustain. Alarm among the colonial
officials at the development of the BGLU was centred on the fact that
the union had more than industrial goals. Not only was the union
attracting members at a rapid pace but it had political objectives. The
first constitution of the BGLU stated explicitly among its objectives
the pursuit of a socialist state in British Guiana. Even less reactionary
capitalists than those who controlled the country at that time would
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have been alarmed at this propositiOn, coming two years after the
upheavals of the Russian revolution. However, given the primacy of
avoiding confrontation with the colonial authorities until the union
was properly established, the socialist objectives of the union were
never given concrete expression.
Organizational weakness proved to be a recurring problem for the
BGLU over the years. This was manifested dramatically by the widely
fluctuating membership figures from year to year. The most obvious
explanation for the organizational weakness of the BGLU was that, as
with all other attempts at industrial action since emancipation, a pool
of reserve labour was always available to undermine union activity.
This weakness was most dramatically illustrated in 1922 when the
BGLU agreed to accept a pay reduction in order to safeguard jobs.
This action on the part of the union did not foster any comparable
sense of social responsibility on the part of employers, whose refusal
in 1924 to accept an increase in stevedore wages from G$1.60 to
G$2.00 per day led to a widespread strike, involving waterfront,
sawmill, sewerage, public works, electricity corporation, railway and
commercial sector workers and domestics, carpenters and waterworks
employees. As in 1905, workers on the East Bank decided to march to
Georgetown to lay their grievances before the governor. At Ruimveldt
the marchers were halted by the police force who read the Riot Act.
When the marchers did not disperse, the police opened fire, killing
twelve marchers and leaving fifteen wounded. The ensuing
commission of inquiry produced no indictments nor any redress for
the workers.
In the face of such intransigence on the part of the colonial
authorities, it is to the credit of men like Critchlow that they managed
to hold the union together at all. It should be noted that the BGLU
had been in existence for two decades before the sugar workers won
union recognition for themselves. This did not occur until 1939, when
the Manpower Citizens' Association, led by Ayube Edun, was
recognised by the Sugar Producers' Association following the death of
four workers at the hands of the police at Leonora estate. The BGLU
was also distinguished by the role women played within it. By 1935 the
President of the BGLU was a woman, Johana Harris, and more
women than men were members.
Although the socialist objective of the BGLU may appear to have
been utopian under the conditions in which the union was trying to
survive, the union was politically active in favour of universal adult
suffrage and political reform. The BGLU established relations early
on with the British Labour Party, an indication perhaps that it
perceived that any industrial gains would be a function of success in
the broader political struggle. Thus the effective goals of the trade
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union movement could be described as Fabian and welfare in
character. While union gains may not have been notable in the 1920s
and 1930s, the union's performance must be judged against both the
internal repressiveness of the colonial regime and the collapse on a
world scale of capitalist economies.
Through the BGLU, organized labour in British Guiana was in
contact with the labour movement in the rest of the Caribbean. The
BGLU was a founder member of the Caribbean Conference of
Labour. A strong radical strain ran through the regional union
organizations of this period, and they do not appear to have found the
affiliation of unions to political parties to have been a problem. In the
early days of unionism the struggle for better wages and working
conditions was seen as part and parcel of the broader emancipation of
the working class. Lack of political participation in the society was a
fundamental problem, and without the resolution of that problem
both political and industrial life were plagued by a series of
confrontations in an atmosphere of tension, as was borne out by the
frequent riots and disturbances during the 1930s.
Despite the reactionary constitutional reforms of 1928 which
instituted a form of government in which the colonial officials could
not be over-ruled by the elected members of parliament, the trade
union movement, principally the BGLU, lobbied for a series of
reforms. In keeping with its strong regional orientation the BGLU
pressed for the federation of the West Indian colonies under a regional
parliament, thus foreshadowing developments which were to take
place over 20 years later. On the industrial front, the struggle for
workmen's compensation achieved some success in 1934 and
minimum wage legislation was introduced in 1942. Related reforms
such as prison reform, the right to peremptory challenge of juries and
universal adult suffrage were longer in becoming realities. Given the
unfavourable conditions in which the struggle to establish protection
for working people was taking place, in terms of the economic
depression, the political restrictions on working people and the use of
special juries and of the Riot Act, the achievements of the nascent
trade union movement were remarkable.
During the 1930s the social and economic hardships endured by the
mass of the working class proved too much to contain within the
repressive political system operating in British Guiana. The almost
incestuous relationship between the Sugar Producers' Association and
the colonial authorities which had blocked economic development,
militarized industrial relations, restricted political participation and
neglected the welfare of the colony, depended for its existence on the
uncompromising support of Westminster and a form of preferential
economic treatment for the colony, neither of which could be
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sustained any longer. In 1938 the British government appointed a
commission under the chairmanship of Lord Moyne which was to
prove to be the most thorough indictment of British colonial policy
ever documented in the West Indies. The Royal West Indian
Commission or the Moyne Commission, as it came to be known,
compiled an account of the social and economic neglect of the region
which was so explosive in its findings that the British government felt
advised for security reasons not to allow its publication until after the
Second World War.
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3 The Rise and
Disintergration of the
National Movement:
Preparing the Fraud
Post-war Britain was too preoccupied with domestic reconstruction to

pay much attention to its West Indian colonies. In 1939 the West
Indian Royal Commission had recommended sweeping welfare
reforms, more systematic economic investment and a greater degree of
political self-determination for British territories. By 1945 global
conditions had rendered these suggestions inadequate. It was clear
that one of the inevitable consequences of Britain's reduced role in
world affairs was to be political independence for its colonial
territories, a fact confirmed by Indian independence in 1948.
The relationship between Britain and its West Indian colonies in
1945 was similar in some respects to that which had prevailed 150
years earlier between Spain and the Spanish American empire. By
1800 Spain had long since spent the vitality and drive which created
and administered its colonies. All that remained was a bureaucratic
shell without roots and ready to be shaken off. The wars of liberation
in Spanish America were not struggles against a prevailing economic
system, namely mercantile capitalism, but rather opposition to being
excluded from the benefits of that system by the inefficient and
corrupt elite which administered the Spanish colonies.
In the case of the West Indies similar considerations motivated the
independence movement. Neither the political nor economic systems
by which the islands functioned were called into question by the major
political parties. The basic grievance was that West Indians were not
administering them. As Britain was no longer strong enough to
exercise imperial control over its West Indian territories,
independence was achieved bloodlessly. The British posture was
encouraged by the fact that the United States was waiting in the wings
to incorporate the newly-independent territories into a network of
29
defence and military pacts as a form of insurance against any
developments that might fundamentally contradict the established
order.
The exception to this general pattern of relations between Britain
and the Caribbean territories was British Guiana. After the emergence
of the PPP in 1951, there was no fundamental consensus in the
country over maintaining either the political or the economic system
which had dominated the colonial period of the country's history.
This exception to the major political trends in the region generated
uncertainty among both the British and United States governments
and prompted them to delay independence until domestic politics
conformed to the more familiar pattern. Creating that pattern
required a decade from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s of bloodshed,
arson, murder and traumatic racial violence, factors which set British
Guiana apart as an exception to the largely peaceful West Indian
independence movements.
The official version of the pre-independence decade in British
Guiana is of a communist-inspired attempt by the People's
Progressive Party to subvert the constitutional processes which would
have brought independence in the normal way, and to impose in its
stead a revolutionary state governed by a dictatorial minority. In
reality, the British and United States governments conspired to allow
the constitutional processes to be subverted by a minority of which the
People's National Congress was the largest constituent part. This
ensured that independence would occur only under a government
whose loyalties to the Westminster model of government, and
especially to multinational capitalism, could be predicted.
The Rise of the People's Progressive Party

In addition to the accumulating neglect of the social and economic
development of the West Indian colonies, the post-war period saw the
return to the region of significant numbers of West Indians who had
fought in Europe. Their experiences and the ambitions which these
fostered were not compatible with the restricted opportunities which
the colonial administration held out for them. Moreover the war had
denied a large number of young men and women the educational
opportunities that they would normally have enjoyed and thus added
to the growing numbers for whom the existing political arrangements
were an obstacle.
It was in this climate of growing but inarticulate and unorganized
discontent that the Political Affairs Committee was set up by Cheddi
and Janet Jagan in 1947. The Jagans had returned to British Guiana in
30
1943 and in 1946 he was elected to the Legislative Council (Legco) as
representative for the Lower East Coast Demerara constituency. Party
developments at that time had not progressed much beyond the phase
of creating electoral machines whose function was to return their
candidates to the legislature, but without serious commitment to party
programme or discipline. Cheddi Jagan was the first member of the
Legco seriously to challenge the monopoly of that chamber by pro-
government legislators whose business interests depended to a large
extent on public subsidies, preferential markets and the security which
the colonial administration could provide should industrial unrest get
out of hand. Jagan consistently exposed the social cost of the existing
economic system to the mass of Guyanese in terms of their wages,
working and health conditions and the unrepresentativeness of the
local and central governments. He fought for increasing minimum
wage levels and improvements in the health services, and exposed the
privileged position of the sugar companies in terms of access to public
funds which bolstered the profits the industry generated and sent
abroad. Predictably, he was attacked as a communist, a description
which at the time he had done nothing to merit. Such attacks were to
become the cornerstone of the strategy which destabilized lagan's
government in the early 1960s.
The inaugural group of the Political Affairs Committee comprised
the Jagans, Ashton Chase and Jocelyn Hubbard. The PAC provided a
forum both for intellectual discussion and for the formulation of a
programme of action which built on the positions developed by Jagan
in the Legco. In 1950 the PAC declared itself a formal political party
under the banner of the People's Progressive Party (PPP). Cheddi
Jagan was declared leader and Forbes Burnham, recently returned
from law studies in the UK, was named chairman. At its inception the
party was firmly rooted in the rural areas, especially among the sugar
workers organized under the Guyana Industrial Workers' Union, led
by Dr J.P. Latchmansingh, and the Sawmill Workers Union, of which
Cheddi Jagan was president. In addition, the mass base of the party
was strengthened by the support of peasant farmers, especially from
the heavily populated Lower East Coast of Demerara, and a cross-
section of urban workers which included stevedores, tradesmen and
commercial workers.
In 1948, the shooting by the police of five workers from the Enmore
sugar estate vividly demonstrated how little had changed since 1905 in
terms of the denial of a political or industrial voice to the mass of
Guyanese workers. The shootings were seen as a national tragedy
uniting the various threads of discontent in the colony. A massive
funeral procession was prevented from entering Georgetown by the
authorities, who feared a popular uprising.
31
In 1950, the Waddington Commission recommended the
introduction of universal adult suffrage for all persons over 21. This
was aimed at directing protest into parliamentary channels, thus
defusing the potential for more violent political action among the
excluded majority. Universal adult suffrage set the scene for the
emergence of the PPP as a national parliamentary force. The 1953
elections confirmed this process with the PPP sweeping the field by
winning eighteen of the 24 seats. The programme of the PPP at that
time was radical in relation to the remarkably regressive political
arrangements which had stimulated the national movement. In itself,
however, it was neither revolutionary nor especially coherent. That
greater consensus was evident on the level of principle than
programme was not surprising since the party represented a coalition
of interests. Central features of the PPP programme were political
independence, the channelling of greater economic benefits to the
social and welfare needs of Guyanese workers and, in particular, a
reduction of the excessive exploitation and dominance of the sugar
multinational, Booker Bros McConnell. However, suggestions that
the PPP was capable of sustaining a united challenge to the political
and economic power structure were misplaced, as internal
developments within the party immediately after the electoral victory
were to demonstrate.
In some ways the relative ease with which the PPP won a decisive
victory in 1953 was deceptive. Agreement over the programme of the
party, the role of the various component groups and the ideological
differences they represented, factors that characterize the normal
internal developments of a political party, had not taken place with
anything like the rigour which a political struggle would normally
demand. Having opted for parliamentary power as the channel for
change, anything which would have encouraged divisiveness or
exposed differences was subordinated to the vote-catching demands of
electoral politics. Once the elections were over, however, the
submerged rifts began to surface. Foreshadowing the split which was
to occur in 1955, a power struggle developed over who should lead the
PPP government when it entered parliament after the 1953 elections.
Burnham pressed his own claims but was defeated when the central
committee of the party remained loyal to Jagan. However, the
eventual sharing of ministries led to Janet Jagan stepping down,
contrary to previous agreements; it was not an auspicious beginning
for a party riding the crest of a wave. Despite this evidence of lack of
internal unity within the PPP there was still enough common ground
shared by the various factions for the general character of the party to
be identifiably socialist.
32
1953 Government and the Suspension of the Constitution
The PPP refused to accommodate the colonial fears and pressed

ahead with a programme of social reform and political independence.
Various pieces of legislation illustrate this position. The Rice Farmers'
Security of Tenure Ordinance of 1945 was amended to force
landowners to maintain drainage and irrigation facilities for tenants as
the counterpart to the obligations of the tenants to maintain the land
in good order. An attempt to include rice lands leased from the sugar
estates was, however, defeated in the state council. The Undesirable
Publications Ordinance was revoked. This piece of legislation had
originally been placed on the statute books as the result of a motion by
the leader of the anti-communist National Labour Front, Lionel
Luckhoo, with a view to restricting communist publications. The very
day that the constitution was suspended a labour relations bill, which
would have compelled employers to recognize trade unions and which
had the support of the majority of workers, was before the House.
Despite the fear which it generated, this Bill was not unlike
contemporary legislation in a number of industrialized countries.
These reforms were vigorously denounced as communist-inspired
by the country's hierarchy. Such was the level of hysteria generated
that after 133 days the colonial authorities were able to suspend the
government. A statement issued by the British government and read
on the local radio on 9 October 1953 stated:
'Her Majesty's government had decided that the Constitution of British
Guiana must be suspended to prevent communist subversion of the
Government and a dangerous crisis both in public order and economic
affairs.'
The evidence for such infiltration was, in the words of one

contemporary, 'pitiably unconvincing' and the subsequent Robertson
Commission of Inquiry only served to underline this conclusion. The
elected government was replaced by an interim administration,
entirely nominated by the governor, which contained many of the
figures defeated in the 1953 elections, and which administered the
colony until 1957.
The theme of communist subversion was embroidered into a plot to
burn down Georgetown and was given sensational coverage in the
local and the British press. When the debate in the House of
Commons took place a fortnight after the emergency was declared, it
came as a sequel to lurid propaganda which effectively convinced
moderate opinion in Britain that the measure had been necessary to
avert an upheaval. The Labour Party dissociated itself from the PPP
policies and only nominally opposed the suspension of the
33
constitution. They were encouraged in this attitude, as was the
Conservative government, by the telegrams and delegations received
from bodies such as the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) and the
National Democratic Party expressing support for the action of the
British government.
The gulf between fact and official exaggeration disturbed the
Times, which complained on 21 October that 'the Communist plot
... is not exposed with the clarity and completeness which many in
the country expected'. The Observer attacked the British government
for 'serious mistakes'. However, these misg1vmgs had no
reverberations in official circles in the UK and the US, and the
unquestioning manner in which the theory of communist infiltration
was accepted on all sides initiated the process which was to flourish
and dominate the political climate in British Guiana for the next
decade. Regional opinion was remarkably supportive of the British
action, with both Normal Manley and Bustamante in Jamaica
criticizing the PPP leadership. Grantley Adams in Barbados stated
that, 'However much we regret the suspension of the constitution, we
should deplore far more a government that put communist ideology
before the good of the people'. When Jagan and Burnham attempted
to go to London prior to the debate to brief opposition
parliamentarians, they were refused permission to travel through
Trinidad and Barbados.
Whatever the spuriousness of the British claims about communist
infiltration, within the PPP the loss of office proved too great a strain
on a party which was an alliance organized primarily to win power.
Whether the PPP strategy of gaining independence by winning control
of the legislature was ever likely to be effective is a debatable point.
What is clear, however, is that loss of office split the party. The loss
carried greater significance for the urban middle class within the
party, those who had chafed under their previous exclusion from
political power, than for the working-class sectors which, in many
cases, had never even exercised the vote until that year. The middle-
class section of the PPP, by virtue of its social background and
aspirations rather than of its ethnic composition, offered fertile
ground for forces both internal and external to the party which were
interested in widening the rifts.
Furthermore, the middle-class members of the PPP were not from
the solid professional and business ranks of that class, a group which
had always been suspicious and hostile to the party. They were the
younger, liberal professionals and civil servants, who by joining the
PPP had already created a distance between themselves and the more
established elements of the middle sector. The suspension of the
constitution confirmed the fears of the establishment middle class and
34
undermined any possibility of a rapprochement between the party and
this element in the society. Thus the middle class within the party came
under the additional pressure of increasing isolation from the
mainstream of their social and economic class.
1953-61: Disintegration of the National Movement
Following the suspension of the constitution, a campaign of

repression and harassment of the PPP leadership was initiated.
Cheddi Jagan was given six months' hard labour for violating a
restriction order, and a similar sentence was imposed on Janet Jagan.
Other leaders were detained without trial for three-month periods,
made to report to the police daily, restricted to different districts, had
their homes searched frequently and were generally subjected to
considerable harassment. The exception to this was the treatment
received by Forbes Burnham, who was served with a restriction order
but ignored it without retaliation from the government. In 1954 the
headquarters of the party was closed by the police. Because of their
disruptive effect on the prison administration, the imprisoned PPP
leaders were transferred to the Mazaruni Penal Settlement in the
jungle. Among other things, Jagan had argued his way into
conducting the weekly prison religious service, the 'uplift hour'.
Addressing his fellow prisoners on the text 'Thou shalt not steal', he
proceeded to denounce imperialist plunderings and the role of the
colonial administration in blocking Guyanese independence.
Apart from attempting to strengthen the credibility of the
communist subversion theory, the attacks on the PPP leadership were
calculated to exacert.ate internal weaknesses within the party by
isolating the leaders from the rank and file. The Robertson
Commission, which sat in 1954 to review constitutional developments,
stated as much by the repeated innuendos about the rapid progress
which could be made towards independence once a suitable political
leadership was available. By going on to describe Jagan as a
'communist' and Burnham as a 'social democrat' the commission
pointed the direction in which a suitable alternative lay. It encouraged
a split in the PPP and a search for alternatives among the middle class
in the party who were not happy with the prospects of an indefinitely
suspended constitution.
Suspension in itself had shaken the middle class. The communist
plot propaganda had mobilized the right wing and the churches;
regional isolation was growing; detention of the left-wing leadership
had weakened their influence in the party by restricting their ability to
communicate with the rank and file; and the Robertson Commission
35
had proposed the indefinite postponement of the major prize, political
office, until a new leadership emerged. The pressures proved too
much for the progressive leadership to contain, and in 1955 the PPP
split into two wings, one under the leadership of Jagan and the other,
the breakaway faction, under Forbes Burnham.
While the British government used all its bureaucratic power and
media access to sell the idea of a communist plot, internal political
developments in the party were influenced not only by real ideological
differences but also by Burnham's personal ambitions. Frustrated in
his earlier leadership bid in 1953 and encouraged by the internal and
external reactions to the suspension of the constitution later in the
same year, Burnham organized an attempt to pull the party away from
the control of the left-wing leaders by taking advantage of the
detentions and emergency restrictions under which they were held. In
1955 he organized a congress of the party in Georgetown and, had his
manoeuverings gone according to plan, he would have taken over the
party and moved it in directions more acceptable to the colonial
powers. The manoeuvre ended up splitting the party rather than
removing it from Jagan's control.
In 1958, following amalgamation with the United Democratic Party
(UDP), which was closely associated with the League of Coloured
Peoples and had a solid middle-class urban base, the Burnham faction
renamed itself the People's National Congress (PNC). Burnham had
carefully calculated that if his leadership bid failed, the faction which
he would take out of the party which included Jai Narine Singh and
J.P. Latchmansingh, would be capable of winning the next election. It
was estimated that Burnham would win the five Georgetown seats and
that if Latchmansingh, with the influence that his leadership of GIWU
in the sugar belt afforded, could bring in a further eight seats, the
party would have a majority of one in the 24-seat legislature.
The removal by Burnham of a substantial part of its right wing
created the need for the PPP to shift to the right in order to fill the
vacuum created by the Burnhamites, if the party was to retain its
national character. Without such an accommodation the PPP was
vulnerable to attack from the right. In fact, it was the need felt by
both parties during the late 1950s to present themselves as
'responsible' and so accelerate the return to constitutional government
that largely influenced the shift to the right in Guyanese politics. This
shift brought to the surface the fundamental structural weakness of
Guyanese society, the geographic and corresponding occupational and
class divisions between the major race groups.
The importance of the racial composition of the early PPP has been
frequently singled out as the most important issue in understanding
the PPP split. The PPP was the first movement to unite the mass of
36
Guyanese of Indian and African extraction, and cultural differences
cannot be ignored as sources of internal tension. However, in terms of
potential structural weaknesses in the PPP edifice, its racial
composition was not an over-riding issue. Much more important were
the difficulties of organizing previously isolated sectors of the society
for the first time, and the twin conflicts of interest between the rural
and urban members and the middle- and working-class members of
the party. These differences represented points of greater potential
vulnerability for the PPP. Furthermore, although the composition of
the original PPP had been predominantly Indian, this was not by
design. The East Indians were the largest and most exploited bloc in
the country and therefore the natural starting point for any political
party concerned with economic transformation. Jagan was a product
of the sugar plantations and took up cudgels against the social
injustices which he best understood.
If the first tragedy of Guyanese politics lay in the geographical
isolation of the most exploited section of the labour force on the sugar
estates and in the intensifying of the differences this produced by an
ethnic division, the second tragedy was in the inability of Cheddi
Jagan to recognize the potential explosiveness of the situation after
the defection of Burnham. Jagan's preoccupation with the ideological
balance of the party after the split led to an influx of middle-class
Indian farmers and shopkeepers into the PPP. This made it appear
much more as a party of the Indo-Guyanese community and created
great pressure on the non-Indians who remained. The new middle-
class Indo-Guyanese now in the PPP tended to be discriminatory in
their attitudes to Afro-Guyanese, having suffered direct racial
exclusion at the hands of the creole middle classes. This racial
polarisation was not part of Jagan's calculations. His view was that if
the PPP assumed a more balanced character politically, the British
respect for constitutionality would lead them not to tamper with the
colony's Westminster-style system and to accept the impossibility of
defeating him electorally. All that was needed, Jagan argued, was for
the PPP to survive long enough for its unbeatable majority to reassert
itself.
Burnham's problems were more complex. His political base was
urban and the urban middle class to which he looked for support was
black and creole. Such people were, as a group, comfortable with the
prevailing power structure to the extent that they understood how it
functioned, identified with its goals and, except to seek greater
participation in its upper echelons, did not wish to promote structural
changes in its operation. As a group they wanted to direct the society,
not change it. For this reason Burnham was not an immediate success
story with them. His antecedents were not reassuring, since
37
distinctions as to which 'wing' of the party a person belonged cut little
ice with people who despised or feared the party as a whole. Burnham
had made his name with the PPP and that was an obstacle to be
overcome. Thus, he was faced with the need not only to reassure the
middle class that he shared its aspirations (which he succeeded in large
measure in doing by amalgamating with the UDP in 1958), but also to
demonstrate that, unlike other urban parties such as the UDP and the
National Labour Front, the PNC could win mass support.
It was the strategy adopted by Burnham to attract this mass base
which provided the essential ingredients for polarizing the country and
for its descent into racial violence in the early 1960s. He was aided in
this manoeuvre by the fact that the split in the PPP revealed the extent
to which the Indian community had progressed in British Guiana. The
realization by the black urban middle classes that their former
advantages could be offset indefinitely by the racial arithmetic of
demographic growth, which pointed to an absolute majority of
Indians in the population by the mid-1960s, provoked fears and racial
tension. This growth in the Indian population, combined with
universal adult suffrage, meant that they had emerged within a
generation from being politically insignificant to dominating electoral
politics. The speed with which this change occurred is illustrated by
results from the 1915 election. In that year, although the Indo-
Guyanese population made up more than half the population, only
6.4 per cent of those elected were members of that racial group. The
black vote had been in an unassailable position (see table).
ELECTION RESULTS 1915

Percentage of
Percentage elected members
of the from racial
population group
Negroes 42.3 62.7
British 1.7 17
Portuguese 2.9 II
Chinese 0.9 2.4
East Indian 51.8 6.4
Burnham was conscious that time was not on his side. The 1957
elections had proved his calculations with Latchmansingh incorrect,
and the PNC (at this time still called PPP-Burnham) was shown to be
a mediocre electoral force. Overtures for a possible coalition with the
PPP had been rebuffed due to the latter's confidence that it would
38
survive in power until it became unbeatable. By the 1961 elections the
realignment of parties along clearly identifiable racial lines was
complete. The black radical and intellectual element in the PPP,
notably Sydney King, Eric Huntley, Rory Westmaas and Martin
Carter, had been expelled in 1957, branded 'ultra-left' by Jagan. The
expulsion took place over the party's position on the Federation issue,
which this group opposed. Finally the United Force (UF) came into
being after the racial character of the two major parties had been
established. The wealthier white and Portuguese business sector,
which did not trust Burnham and which bitterly opposed lagan's
'communism', was in danger of becoming politically isolated. Rather
than work out a modus vivendi with the PNC, which was more
feasible politically than it was socially, this group formed the UF
under the leadership of Peter D' Aguiar, the most successful private
businessman in the colony.
1961 Elections: End of the National Movement
The 1961 elections were fought by the UF on a virulently anti-

communist platform to which both the press and the churches
contributed, the latter especially motivated by opposition to the PPP
plan to take education under state control. The PNC for its part
asserted that regardless of which party won the elections it would
support independence afterwards. Out of 35 seats the PPP won 20,
the PNC eleven and the UF four, a result which showed the UF as a
more vigorous political force than anticipated and constituted a
considerable personal setback for Burnham. More important than the
actual election results, however, was the fact that this third
consecutive victory for the PPP triggered the disintegration of the
political system. The election results convinced the opposition that the
PPP was electorally unbeatable as long as racial considerations were
the determining factor in voter behaviour. From this point on, the UF
and the PNC actively sought to replace the electoral arrangements
with a system of proportional representation which would reduce the
PPP's voting base. The fundamental political goal of achieving
independence was also set aside until such time as the PPP was
removed from office.
Although numerically smaller than the PNC, the UF was the
dominant opposition and was perceived as such by the PPP, which
referred in a parliamentary debate in 1964 to the 'UF with its poor
little cousins, the PNC'. The UF wedded its forcefulness and
ideological simplicity to effective control of the media and its
influence on the colonial power structure. The PNC in contrast took
39
no parliamentary initiatives, professed a vague socialism but was wary
of defining itself too clearly because both its middle- and working-
class support was unstable. In addition the 'anti-communist' feeling
which led to a rejection of the PPP could not automatically be relied
upon to translate itself into votes for Burnham, who was personally
mistrusted and who had shown himself to be an ineffective electoral
politician by losing ground to D' Aguiar in the 1961 elections.
During the next three years the determination to de-stabilize the
PPP turned Guyana into a racial battlefield, with arson, murder and
strikes leading to a polarization of the country from which it took
years to recover. It began in 1962 with the opposition taking to the
streets to protest against the PPP budget prepared by Cambridge
economist Nicholas Kaldor. By labelling as 'communist' plans to
introduce a capital gains tax and a compulsory savings scheme for
upper income earners, the UF led the opposition on to the streets in
demonstrations which destroyed a considerable part of the
commercial section of Georgetown. Both Burnham and D' Aguiar
were responsible for misleading the crowds; both took to the streets
without exhausting the parliamentary process. Similarly, in the
following year, after the government had announced its intention of
reintroducing the controversial Labour Relations Bill which would
have made a secret ballot the basis of union recognition by employers,
the opposition took the issue out of parliament and on to the streets
without any serious attempt to deal with the bill via the parliamentary
process.
How the CIA got rid of Jagan

In the House of Commons on Tuesday, the Prime Minister faces a
more than usually leading question. Stan Newens, Labour MP for
Epping, will ask:
'Will the Prime Minister make a statement on his policy towards efforts
which are being made by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and
other United States intelligence organisations to infiltrate and influence
organisations which function in British administered territories for purposes
of subversion of law and order?'
Although Mr Newens himself appears to know nothing of the
details, he is in fact hinting at a substantial case.
This is the downfall of the Left-wing Jagan Government in the
colony of British Guiana (now independent Guyana) in 1964.
Inquiries by Insight last week made it clear that this was engineered
•
40
largely by the CIA. And the cover which the CIA used was a
London-based international trades union secretariat, the Public
Services International.
As coups go, it was not expensive: over five years the CIA paid out
something over £250,000. For the colony, British Guiana, the result
was about 170 dead, untold hundreds wounded, roughly £10m-worth
of damage to the economy and a legacy of racial bitterness.
The Public Services International had been in contact with the
Guyana Civil Service union since the early '50s. It was one of the
weaker and less prestigious of the various international networks
which exist to export the union know-how of advanced industrial
countries to less developed societies.
By 1958 its finances were low, and its stocks were low with its own
parent body, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
It needed a success of some kind.
The financial crisis was resolved, quite suddenly, by the PSI's
main American affiliate union, the Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees. Its boss, Dr Arnold Zander had, he told the
PSI executive, 'been shopping', and had found a donor.
The spoils were modest at first - only a couple of thousand
pounds in 1958. It was, the kind donor had said, for Latin America.
The money went towards a PSI 'recruiting drive' in the northern
countries of Latin America by one William J. Doherty, junior, a
man with some previous acquaintance of the CIA.
The donor was presumably pleased, because next year, 1959,
Zander was able to tell the PSI that his union was opening a full-time
Latin-American section on the PSI's behalf. The PSI was charmed.
The PSI's representative, said Zander, would be Howard McCabe.
McCabe, a stocky, bullet-headed American, appeared to have no
previous union history, but the PSI liked him. When he came to its
meetings, he distributed cigarette lighters and photographs of
himself doling out food parcels to peasants. The lighters and the
parcels were both inscribed, 'with the compliments of the PSI'.
The full ludicrousness of this situation appears not to have dawned
on the PSI. Zander's union had about 210,000 members at that time,
and a monthly income of about £600 - barely enough to cover its
own expenses. Yet everyone in the PSI knew that the Latin-American
operation must be costing every penny of £30,000 a year.
'We did not ask where the money came from,' said the secretary of
the PSI, Paul Tofarhn last week, 'because I think we all knew.'
The general strike (in Guyana) began in Aprill963. Jagan seems to
have thought that the unions could hold out a month. It was an
expensive miscalculation, and by the tenth week it was Jagan, not the
unions, who was desperate.
•
41
What Jagan had forgotten was the presence of a stocky, bullet-
headed man tirelessly bashing a typewriter in the downtown
Georgetown hotel that was the strike headquarters - Howard
McCabe, the American representative of the Public Services
International of London.
McCabe was providing the bulk of the strike pay. McCabe found
the money for the distress funds, and for the strikers' daily 15
minutes on the radio, and their propaganda, and considerable
travelling expenses. All over the world, it seemed brother unions
were clubbing together.
It was a touching vision, marred only by the fact that the PSI
London office sent less than £2,000 to the strikers. Zander's 'kind
donor' was putting up nearly all the rest. The best estimate is that the
kind donor produced at least £150,000, which reached McCabe from
Zander's office.
Jagan was crushed by the longest general strike in history - 79
days. Even the mediator sent from London, Robert Willis, then
general secretary of the London Typographical Society and a man
not noted for his mercy in bargaining with newspaper managements,
was shocked.
'It was rapidly clear to me that the strike was wholly political,' he
said. 'Jagan was giving in to everything the strikers wanted, but as
soon as he did they erected new demands.'
To Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys, the strike furnished the
required proof that Jagan could not run the country. He used it to
justify a remarkable constitution which, by splitting up Jagan's
voters, made it inevitable that Jagan lose the 1964 elections to
Burnham.
In February 1967, Zander confessed that his little union had been
heavily financed by the CIA from 1958 to 1964. The 'kind donor'
was in fact an outfit called the Gotham Foundation - run from a
small law office in New York by 'a man with a funny sounding name'
which Zander does not now recall. The Gotham Foundation, now
wound up in the Johnson CIA clean-up, is acknowledged to have
been a CIA front.
Source: Sunday Times, 16 April 1967.
The Trades Union Council (TUC) ostensibly led the struggle against
the bill and called a strike, which became a general strike and lasted
for 80 days. The Civil Service Association joined the strike, and from
the outset employers locked out workers, encouraging them to strike.
Members of the Chamber of Commerce were encouraged by their
organization to pay the wages of striking workers. The funds to pay
these wages plus the other costs of the strike were met by the CIA,
42
which channelled funds through the Civil Service union (see box). The
general strike was the first manifestation of the links between the PNC
and successive US governments, a relationship which has been largely
responsible for the PNC obtaining office and retaining it for so long.
Burnham for his part no doubt recognized that the US had to develop
a modus vivendi with him as the likely alternative to Jagan. While
D' Aguiar was in all respects a more attractive candidate from the US
point of view, the racial alignment of Guyanese politics and the right-
wing views of D' Aguiar left no possibility of his ever being elected.
The racial alignment of the parties brought parliamentary politics to
an end because the two opposition parties were convinced that the
present constitutional arrangements would lead to the indefinite
tenure in office of a party which was both Indian and 'communist'.
The PPP, for its part, supported 'first-past-the-post' elections because
they suited its racial arithmetic. In these circumstances the
'Westminster model' of parliamentary politics was retained only in
form. Political strategy was determined outside parliament and racial
violence was the inevitable consequence. Both the UF and the PNC
adopted strategies that called into question the constitutionality of the
government and consequently won the approval of the colonial
authorities. Despite the discovery of arms and explosives in the PNC
headquarters, no legal action was taken against the party. A police
report prepared on a PNC terrorist organization was not acted upon
by the colonial authorities, which strengthens the argument that the
colonial authorities supported the violent de-stabilizing of the PPP
government.
Physical violence was also legitimated at the cultural and social
levels by the intemperate attacks of the larger Christian
denominations against the PPP. Identified, as the churches
traditionally were, with the urban creole culture, these attacks served
to exacerbate the racial tensions which the parties were promoting.
The Christian churches assumed the creole culture to be a national one
and disguised in a virulent anti-communist campaign their anti-Indian
bias and underlying support for the elite power structure in the
colony. The culmination of the racial violence, which continued after
the general strike was settled, took place in the bauxite mining town of
McKenzie-Wismar in May 1964. While the police and Special
Volunteers looked on passively, the Afro-Guyanese engaged in an
orgy of violence against the Indian community, involving rape, arson,
beatings and murder.
Behind the violence the struggle for independence was taking place
between the PPP and the colonial authorities. The commission of
inquiry which sat after the budget riots and the strike encouraged the
political opposition to continue their campaigns by intimating that the
43
UK government might have to 'impose a settlement' if social and
economic conditions continued to deteriorate. This was precisely what
the opposition wanted to hear. In the constitutional conference which
took place in 1962, 1963 and 1964 between the political parties and the
colonial authorities, Jagan resolutely opposed proportional
representation and demanded independence under the existing system.
The opposition parties were equally intransigent over a system of PR
and elections before independence. The impasse was resolved by the
three parties taking the extraordinary step of signing letters of
agreement that the colonial secretary, Duncan Sandys, produce a
settlement which they would all accept. This remarkable abdication of
responsibility was particularly staggering in the case of the PPP.
Jagan later justified his action on the grounds that he could not afford
to return to Guyana yet again without a firm date fixed for
independence. As things turned out, Sandys deferred setting a date for
independence and instead instituted PR as the electoral system, setting
December 1964 as the date for elections. While Jagan mistakenly
placed his faith in the British commitment to parliamentary fair play,
he may have also been guided in his agreement to Sandys' settlement
by the fact that the country was becoming ungovernable as a result of
the unspoken alliance between the colonial authorities and the
opposition parties.
Following his return from London Jagan set the PPP on a
confrontational course, but the battle had already been lost.
Widespread mobilization of supporters in the rural areas and a long
strike in the sugar industry in 1964 only served to re-fuel the violence
which had accompanied the Labour Relations Bill the previous year.
The effects of the Wismar violence in May of that year on the Indo-
Guyanese community were profound. The events clearly
demonstrated that the colonial government was prepared to allow the
PNC to use the largely Afro-Guyanese security forces while PNC
thugs terrorized the Indian population. The PPP was, therefore, faced
not only with political opposition but with hostile security forces
which were only nominally under the control of the PPP minister of
home affairs. The colonial authorities used the Wismar pogrom to
assume dictatorial powers and intensify a glaringly discriminatory
campaign against the PPP. Over 30 leading PPP activists were
detained, in contrast to only two PNC members detained despite
detailed knowledge of the latter's terrorist activities.
Despite these constraints the 1964 elections saw the PPP win the
largest number of votes in the third consecutive election, increasing
their share of the vote over 1961 from 42.6 per cent to 45.8 per cent.
The PNC vote was reduced by 4 per cent and the UF vote by 3.9 per
cent. Nevertheless, under the new proportional representation
44
arrangements this meant that the PPP won 24 seats, the PNC 22 and
the UF seven. The governor ignored the PPP and invited the PNC to
form a government, which it did in coalition with the UF, thus finally
ousting the PPP from office.
45
4 Independence to
Paramountcy:
Consolidating the Fraud
1964-68: Coalition Government
Once the PPP had been removed from office the main obstacle to
independence had been overcome. Two years after the new
government was sworn in, the country achieved its long-awaited
independence from Britain and its name was changed from British
Guiana to Guyana. However, fundamental British and US political
and economic interests were not sacrificed in granting independence.
This was clearly illustrated in the free market development strategy
adopted by D' Aguiar, who was responsible for finance and economic
development in the new government.
D' Aguiar brought the UF development strategy to bear on the
coalition's plans, even if in a somewhat modified form. The UF had a
scheme for attracting $900m in foreign investment in a vast and
ambitious scenario for transforming the economy. To make the
country attractive to foreign investors plans for the provision of
industrial sites, transport facilities and other infrastructural
requirements were drawn up. Attractive fiscal incentives completed
the range of enticements. The savings levy which had caused such
controversy on its introduction in 1962 was declared unconstitutional,
foreign exchange controls were removed, enabling the free
repatriation of profits, the gift tax on inheritance was reduced to a
nominal level, and property taxes were lowered.
The economic strategy was based on the free enterprise model of
Puerto Rico, a country which was recording rapid economic growth
and attracting considerable investment under an 'industrialization by
invitation' policy. Sir Arthur Lewis drew up the First Development
Plan (1966-72) for the PNC embodying this strategy. Guyana,
46
however, had neither the access to the US domestic market nor the
established investment opportunities which had made Puerto Rico so
attractive to foreign capital. By 1970 the Plan had been abandoned
and in its wake was left a manufacturing sector as small and ailing as it
had been in 1964, a higher rate of unemployment and a neglected
agricultural sector.
The neglect of agriculture which the industrialization drive had
occasioned was reflected in the failure to diversify out of sugar, a
decline in the rice industry and the neglect of peasant farming. Sugar
production was dominated by the multinational Booker McConnell
Ltd. This company exercised a remarkable degree of control over the
economy, both through its dominant position in the sugar industry
and through its interests in fisheries, cattle, timber, insurance,
advertising and retail commerce. Booker McConnell had extended the
dominance of sugar within the economy, and the company's influence
was reflected in the concessionary measures from which it benefited,
the abolition of acreage tax and export duties on sugar, and the sale of
unused land to the state at enormously inflated prices. Of the 12 sugar
estates which had survived the process of amalgamation and
concentration, Bookers owned eight. Of the remainder the Demerara
Company owned three, and one remained in the hands of a Guyanese
planting family.
Political considerations dominated the government's policy towards
the rice industry, which was seen to be entirely under the PPP's
control. Under the PPP governments the rice industry had developed
a successful and expanding export market, which included Cuba.
After 1964 the PNC government reduced prices to farmers, removed
the Rice Producers' Association representatives from the Rice Board,
over-staffed the board, confiscated farmers' lands for non-payment
of rent, ceased exporting to Cuba, and neglected the infrastructure to
such an extent that the rice industry never recovered the prosperity
and efficiency it had enjoyed under the PPP.
Discrimination against rice farmers reflected a deep-seated dilemma
facing the PNC, a dilemma which was partially responsible for
encouraging an industrialization rather than an agricultural
development strategy. The PNC could find no way to develop
agriculture without benefiting those whose political support they did
not enjoy. Any attempt to diversify the agricultural sector, for
example by curbing the Booker McConnell monopoly, would have
worked to the advantage of the Indo-Guyanese peasant farmers, and
was thus rejected by the PNC government. The dilemma became more
acute after 1970 when the industrial development strategy was
abandoned in favour of giving greater attention to agriculture.
The Booker McConnell sugar monopoly, and the lack of state
47
control over the economy's main source of export production and
employment that this entailed, was further enhanced by the fact that a
substantial part of the middle-class leadership of the PNC had come
up through the Booker ranks. Indeed a number of cabinet ministers
were products of the Booker training system. This was the result of the
process of 'Guyanization' of senior management in expatriate firms
operating in Guyana, aimed at countering the evident lack of national
control over key sectors of the economy. The appointment of
Guyanese staff, it was argued, would bring these companies to
function more in the national interest. It was a resounding failure.
Rather than introduce nationalist goals into the operations of foreign
companies, the Guyanese managers were drawn to closer
identification with the transnational ethic and in a number of cases
they functioned with a confidence and aggression that their expatriate
colleagues would have never dared to adopt.
To complete the dismal picture of the coalition government's four
years in office, the substantial and unproductive foreign loans
contracted during this period became a heavy drain on foreign
reserves. Also the country's balance of payments had been adversely
affected by the increased cost of imported foodstuffs caused by the
decline in agricultural production. While the failure of the economic
strategy to generate growth brought strains to bear on the coalition,
the rampant misuse of public funds exacerbated the relationship even
more. Both D' Aguiar and the director of audit reported the
unaccounted use of sums running into millions of dollars. Eventually
D' Aguiar resigned, both in disgust at his inability to stop what was
taking place and because he had successfully completed his task of
dismantling many of the controls introduced by the PPP government
that had hindered the business class's accumulation and export of
wealth. The defection of D' Aguiar to the opposition benches went
against the flow of traffic. The PPP in particular suffered a number
of defections from among its middle-class representatives whose
affinity with the party had been a matter more of race than class and
who were attracted by the economic policies of the new government.
Following the demise of the UF after the 1968 elections, the middle
class, or at least that element in it which was organized, was to be
found within the PNC ranks.
Co-operative Republic and Co-operative Socialism
The 1968 elections were dominated by the PNC's use of an electoral

device known as the 'overseas vote' whereby Guyanese resident
abroad, regardless of the length of their time overseas, were eligible to
48
vote in the general election. Of the 60,000 votes cast in this way,
30,000 went to the PNC, the PPP and UF receiving 15,000 each. A
documentary film made in Britain by Granada television documented
the wholesale fraud underlying the overseas vote, a finding which was
confirmed by a reputable British research institute which estimated
that no more than 15 per cent of the names on the electoral list used in
Britain were valid. By the use of the overseas vote and the continued
and exaggerated use of proxy voting, the PNC won 30 seats out of the
total of 53, compared to 19 seats won by the PPP and four by the UF.
Thus the PNC was able to take full control of the government.
Following the 1968 elections, the government announced its
intention of making Guyana a republic, thereby replacing the Queen
as titular head of state and, more importantly, replacing the Privy
Council as the final court of appeal by a local court of appeal.
Although not essentially related to the economic development of the
country, the move to republican status in February 1970, was used as
the opportunity for the PNC to unfold its strategy of 'co-operative
socialism'. Ostensibly, this was an attempt to give a stake in the
economy to the previously excluded mass of Guyanese, a policy
sloganized in the phrase 'making the small man a real man'. Perhaps
of more concern to the ruling party than the plight of the small man
was the discontent with the existing economic strategy felt by the left
wing of the ruling party, which was generally identified with the
African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa
(ASCRIA). Together with the PPP and independent left-wing
observers, ASCRIA had been exposing the failures of the old PNC
economic strategy.
While co-operative socialism appeared to bow to these pressures to
shift the economy leftwards, the end result was that the process of
capital accumulation by the ruling group was never seriously
challenged. The most substantial part of the new strategy was to
obtain greater national control over the economy by making the co-
operative sector the dominant economic sector, by introducing a
strategy of import substitution and by nationalizing foreign
enterprises. To this end a National Co-operative Bank was opened in
1970, the lending policies of which were aimed at giving preference to
co-operative ventures and through which all state business was to be
conducted.
Although co-operative ownership and control were supposed to
provide the economic foundation for a socialist transformation, the
co-operative sector never remotely attained this level of importance.
Within the sector itself the major co-operatives were either state-
sponsored, such as the co-operative banks and co-operative insurance
companies which functioned on a normal commercial basis, or private
49
sector enterprises which hired wage labour and functioned in all but
name as limited liability companies. The most prominent co-
operatives of the latter type operated in the construction industry and
benefited from government contracts. Members of these co-operatives
were senior party members or persons close to the government. The
co-operatives were, therefore, in large measure a convenient medium
for private profit-making. A typical operation in this respect was the
creation of a co-operative for the purposes of acquiring state lands,
which once acquired, were promptly sub-divided and exploited on an
individual basis. The exceptions to this general rule were the co-
operatives fostered by ASCRIA. It has been suggested that the success
of ASCRIA sponsored co-operatives, in which working-class people
had won some degree of influence, may have been one reason why the
original policy of making the co-operative sector the dominant one
was never pursued. Had there been a serious attempt to co-operativize
the nationalized corporations, thus making the co-operative sector the
dominant one, the role and influence of ASCRIA and the left wing of
the party would have been given a firm, central base at the expense of
the established middle-class leadership.
Led by former PPP Central Committee member Eusi Kwayana
(originally Sydney King), ASCRIA attracted some members of the
middle class, but its greatest appeal was to that sector of the working-
class black population which had been forced, in the aftermath of the
racial polarization of the society, to associate with the PNC although
having an ideological orientation closer to the original PPP. Strong on
the east coast of Demerara and in Georgetown, ASCRIA functioned
as both the conscience and critic of the PNC. Dedicated to the
improvement of Afro-Guyanese in cultural and economic terms,
ASCRIA was criticized by the PPP as a racial organization due to its
emphasis on black achievements, black dignity and black history. It
was, in reality, a more complex organization. ASCRIA was founded
on the need for Afro-Guyanese to develop a sense of worth and self-
confidence in order to deal with other races in a positive rather than a
defensive and hostile manner. Apart from its success in the co-
operative field, its influence on the PNC can be seen in the official
party positions on such issues as 'pan-Africanism' and 'black power',
two important issues in Guyanese politics in the early 1970s. The
apparently progressive postures of the ruling party on these questions
was more a manifestation of ASCRIA's influence than an indication
that the middle class leadership of the party was being radicalized.
This is illustrated by the fact that when ASCRIA's influence in the
party waned after it became critical of PNC economic politics, the
PNC's relations with Southern Africa became identified with UNIT A
in Angola and with Nkomo's ZAPU in Zimbabwe.
50
The second policy in the economic strategy was import substitution,
introduced in 1970 when the government took control of all imports
and exports through the newly-created External Trade Bureau.
Although the aims of the policy had much to offer, like the co-
operatives, it suffered in implementation and it deteriorated into a
mechanism for dispensing import licences to favoured businessmen.
Import substitution was one strand in a larger policy of 'feeding,
clothing and housing the nation', a target which the PNC set itself to
achieve by 1976. Production was to be nationalized and geared to
these ends, and economic rationalization was introduced to save
precious foreign exchange. However, the attempts at import
substitution were never co-ordinated into an overall plan. An ever-
increasing range of goods became short in supply, with the long-term
effect of an overall drop in consumption levels. Ventures such as fruit
canning factories, cassava mills, a corn and soya company and salt fish
production all came into existence, but never flourished, and by 1978
had all gone out of business.
More significant than the formation of co-operatives or import-
substitution for both the economic and political future of the country
was the programme of nationalization of foreign interests which
began in 1971 with the purchase of the Demerara Bauxite Company
(DEMBA), a subsidiary of the Canadian bauxite transnational
ALCAN, for US$107m. This was the first of a series of
nationalizations which, over the next five years, included commercial,
manufacturing, communications, transport and agricultural
companies. It culminated in 1976 with the nationalization of the
Booker empire, which consisted of 16 separate companies, of which
all but three were wholly owned. Booker received US$55.3m for its
eight sugar companies and a further US$41.9m for its non-sugar
interests. These included stockfeeds, distilleries and transport
facilities. In all cases the nationalization was arranged on mutually
agreeable financial terms and not a single foreign company
complained about the terms on which its business was acquired. This
gave rise in nationalist circles to accusations of 'mortgage finance'
nationalizations. Although the figures for some of the
nationalizations are not available, the overall debt incurred by the
government to implement its nationalization policy was well in excess
of US$250m.
Thirty-two companies were nationalized during this period. A
further seventeen new enterprises were initiated by the government,
four in the financial sector, three in public utilities and the rest in
fishing, communications, agriculture and industry. Together with the
state enterprises which existed prior to 1970, the new companies were
controlled by the Guyana State Corporation (GUYST A C), the
51
chairman of which was the prime minister.
The withdrawal of expatriate personnel together with a substantial
number of Guyanese from the managerial positions of the new
corporations provided the government with the opportunity of
creating a class of bureaucrats dependent on the ruling party. While
the middle-class base of the party was consolidated by jobs in the state
corporation, a similar type of patronage was put into effect at the
working class level also, providing jobs for party supporters. This was
immediately reflected in the wage bill of GUYBAU (the renamed
DEMBA bauxite operation), which in 1971 was G$9.6m and which by
1972 had risen to G$25. 7m. This clearly illustrated one reason why the
expansion of the state sector was attractive to the PNC. Production on
the other hand fell from 3 .1m tons in 1970 to 2. 7m tons in 1971 and
declined in every subsequent year. This growing inefficiency in the
bauxite industry was typical of the state sector in general. As the PNC
control of the state sector grew a considerable number of Guyanese
technicians and managers left the country protesting that party
interference in their professional work made it impossible to run the
nationalized industries efficiently.
During the three years following the inauguration of the 'Co-
operative Republic' it became increasingly clear that no fundamental
change of economic orientation was intended under the new regime.
Neither organized labour nor the working class in general assumed
more influence over national affairs than they had under colonial rule.
The TUC demanded 'less talk and slogans and more jobs to prevent
an explosive situation' and the business community argued that the
government should indulge in 'less confrontation and more
consultation'. The extent of these criticisms made it clear that only a
very small segment of the population was benefiting from the new
economic policy. The government was fortunate, however, to the
extent that world prices for all of Guyana's main exports were
buoyant and remained so during the early years of the 1970s. This
provided sufficient export revenue to maintain employment levels
despite the state sector's inefficiency.
On the foreign policy front the PNC enjoyed considerable success,
most notably in forcing Venezuela to sign the Protocol of Port of
Spain in 1970, shelving the Essequibo border dispute for 12 years.
Guyana also took a leading interest in Southern Africa, opening an
embassy in Zambia. In December 1972, on the initiation of Dr Eric
Williams, the prime minister of Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica,
Barbados and Trinidad took the significant step of establishing
diplomatic relations with Cuba. As a result, Guyana was able to carve
out for itself a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement. The high
point of this diplomatic manoeuvring was the hosting in Georgetown
52
of the Third Non-Aligned Heads of Government conference in 1973.
This gained for Guyana a diplomatic prestige far beyond anything the
size and importance of the country would normally command.
However, the elections of 1973 demonstrated clearly how an
apparently progressive foreign policy is quite compatible with
domestic repression. After the first voting returns indicated a
dramatic swing away from the PNC, all broadcasting of results ceased
until the following day. In the meantime all the ballot boxes were
taken into the central army camp and when broadcasting resumed
next day the PNC had won 37 of the 53 seats, the PPP just 14 and the
UF two. Two supporters of the PPP were shot dead when they tried to
intervene to prevent the army from removing the ballot boxes. The
UF, in a remarkable piece of opportunism, broke an agreement with
the predominantly middle-class Indo-Guyanese Liberator Party with
which it had fought the elections on a shared platform and to which it
owed its revival as a party, by accepting the seats offered by the PNC.
The PPP boycotted the parliament in protest at the manner in which
the elections had been conducted. The cynicism with which the press
greeted the election results led to a $100,000 libel suit against the
Guyana Graphic owned by the Thompson group. This was eventually
dropped in exchange for the dismissals of the leading journalist and
managing editor, Rickey Singh and Ulric Mentis respectively. The
Catholic Standard editor, Father Harold Wong, suffered a similar
fate following an editorial entitled 'Fairytale elections'.
The PNC received only an estimated 60 per cent of the votes in
Georgetown, underlining the extent of black disillusionment with the
ruling party and indicating that Burnham had no future if his
retention of office had to depend upon the electoral machinery. By
assigning himself two-thirds of the seats in parliament Burnham was
taking the first step in a process of freeing himself from electoral
dependency, since with this majority he could change certain articles
in the constitution without support from opposition members of
parliament. Indeed, over the next five years Burnham took a number
of steps to ensure the survival of his party in office without a popular
base.
Paramountcy of the Party
The first steps to ensure the continuation of PNC rule were outlined at
the special Party Congress held in December 1974 when Burnham
revealed the doctrine of the 'paramountcy of the party', according to
which:
'It was agreed after lengthy discussion that the emphasis should be on
53
mobilising the nation in every sphere and not merely for periodic elections and
in support of specific actions and programmes. It was also decided that the
party should assume unapologetically its paramountcy over the government
which is merely one of its executive arms.
The comrades demanded that the country be given practical and theoretical
leadership at all levels - political, economic, social and cultural - by the
PNC, which had become the major national institution.'
The policy defined in the Declaration of Sophia rested on three
main pillars, the allocation of state funds by way of a new body
consisting of an amalgamation of the office of the general secretary of
the PNC and a newly formed ministry of national development, the
expansion of military and para-military forces, and a policy of
controlling the economy, especially employment, through the state
sector. In 1975 the party and the state were fused in a symbiotic
creation known as the 'Office of the General Secretary of the Peoples'
National Congress and the Ministry of National Development'
(OGSPNCMND). This new body, effectively the administration arm
of the paramountcy doctrine, was not provided for in the 1966
constitution, since it was at once an agency of the ruling party and a
ministry of the government. The resources of the government,
especially a large fleet of vehicles carrying the complex acronym of
this entity, were put at the disposal of the party. From an auditing
point of view the OGSPNC is clandestine, since the 'Office of the
General Secretary' does not appear in the annual estimates submitted
to parliament. In comparison to the other ministeries, details of
expenditure are sparse, a block vote of millions of dollars being
assigned to 'other charges'. Ten million dollars were assigned to this
head in 1975, G$13.6m in 1976 and G$8m in 1980. Thus, public funds
were officially channelled into the hands of the ruling party.
The ministry's main work involved the mobilization of public
servants and schoolchildren to ensure their presence at rallies
addressed by the (then) Prime Minister and now President Burnham.
It also includes organizing 'developers' courses for senior public
servants at which co-operative socialism and the paramountcy
doctrine are the principal subjects for analysis. These 'live in' courses
which have been described as party indoctrination, are compulsory.
Through the department of propaganda and agitation the
OGSPNCMND both deters criticism of the ruling party and is
responsible for collecting party funds, such as the I 0 per cent levy on
their wages imposed on public servants and the armed forces in 1975
as their contribution to the First Biennial Congress of the PNC.
A further expression of paramountcy was the shifting of the
institutional loyalties of the armed forces and the police to the party
leaders and away from the titular head of state. Symbolic of the fact
54
that the aims of the ruling party were the first consideration in the
dispensing of justice, the party flag was flown over the court of
appeal. Public directives were given to judges which were later
followed by the Administration of Justice Act, which was amended to
allow magistrates to adjudicate over a wide range of offences.
The second pillar on which the PNC built its independence from
popular support was the extension of the armed forces. From its
inception in 1964 the PNC government had always governed with the
assistance of emergency powers. Prior to Independence British troops
had performed security functions and in 1966 a National Security Act
was passed, giving the government wide powers of search and arrest,
which has never been repealed. From 1974 a considerable expansion
of the armed forces occurred with the creation of the Guyana National
Service (GNS) followed in 1976 by the formation of a People's Militia.
By creating employment opportunities in the armed forces for a large
number of unemployed and unskilled urban blacks, Burnham was
both reducing unemployment and simultaneously offering the
minimum security of food and board to a large number of persons
who were then available to be used to deter political opposition. An
estimated I in 35 of the population was a member of one or other
military or para-military group in 1976. Besides providing the ruling
party with a formidable means of deterring opposition, incorporating
large numbers of urban unemployed into the military also ensured
that they did not themselves become a focus of opposition to the
government. The GNS was presented as an educational rather than a
military organization, aimed at providing skills for those
disadvantaged young people who were willing to assist develop the
interior. Hinterland development had been high on the PNC's list of
priorities, given the pressure applied by groups such as the ASCRIA,
which foresaw the provision of jobs for unemployed blacks in such a
policy. However, despite pioneering work by the military in the
interior, there is no evidence that any significant number of people
stayed on as independent farmers in the interior areas.
Although the labour provided by the national servicemen and
women was free, the capital investment in militarizing the country was
enormous. Defence allocations from the public treasury rose from
G$8.76m in 1973 to G$48.72m in 1976, a six-fold increase.
Within the ethos of paramountcy the role of the GNS, and to a
Jesser extent all educational institutions, became one of socializing
young people into the mores and ideology of the ruling party in much
the same way as occurs in youth movements under totalitarian
governments. Although nominally voluntary, theGNS had a coercive
element which was provided by linking all post-secondary education
and the granting of scholarships to a one-year period of national
55
service. The Guyana Defence Force expanded considerably at the
same time. Formed out of the original Guyana Volunteer Force, the
post-independence GDF was the only armed unit in the country until
the formation of the GNS. Other armed units now include the
People's Militia, the Women's Revolutionary Socialist Movement
(WRSM) and the Young Socialist Movement (YSM). The intake into
all of the disciplined services is 90 per cent black, reflecting the
widespread violation of entrance requirements exercised by leaders of
the ruling party.
As a day-to-day form of PNC control, however, the military has
been a less visible weapon than the direct political control of state
sector workers. This has proved to be the most effective method of
keeping the labour force submissive. Publicity surrounding dismissal
of workers for political reasons has served to produce an atmosphere
of caution which has been reinforced by the warnings of Prime
Minister Burnham that 'if I fire you, you remain fired', a reference to
the limited job opportunities outside the public sector. In addition to
the direct control of labour in the public sector, the state has
considerable influence over private sector firms, especially in the
matter of import licenses and access to spare parts.
During the period of the early 1970s the trade union movement was
not an obstacle to the PNC's policy of making the workers scapegoats
for the deteriorating levels of production. PNC control of the labour
movement rested on the MPCA-GMWU axis, the former being the
official union in the sugar belt and the latter, the Guyana
Mineworkers' Union, controlling labour in the bauxite areas.
Together with the PNC-controlled Public Service Union and the
Guyana Teachers' Association, these unions were sufficient to ensure
that the PNC dominated the TUC delegates' conferences. Even if the
delegates' conference did make demands that were against the wishes
of the PNC, the TUC executive committee could, and often did,
ignore them. Another tactic of the PNC to control organized labour
has been to create unions with a fabricated membership, such as the
Public Employees' Union (PEU) and the Government Employees'
Union (GEU). Dues for these unions have been paid by the Ministry
of National Development and on the basis of a fictitious membership
they have been assigned delegates at conference.
Furthermore, the Guyana National Co-operative Bank Staff
Association (GNCBSA) and the Mortgage Finance Bank Staff
(GCMFBSA), with a combined membership of 138, were assigned six
delegates rather than being encouraged to join existing unions. A
loophole in the union law allows such tiny unions to register and
acquire an influence out of all proportion to their size. PNC control of
the larger individual unions was assured by a variety of electoral
56
malpractices. The most notable of these was in the Mineworkers'
Union in which for many years the PNC kept a compliant executive in
office despite rank-and-file opposition. This manoeuvre eventually led
to the formation of the Organisation of Working People (OWP) in the
bauxite areas which had some success in electing genuine
representatives in 1980.
Of the three pillars on which state control was consolidated the
control of jobs has been the most evident. Through its control of the
media, surveillance of the workforce, and systematic distortion and
indoctrination, the ruling party created the impression of being
capable of detecting any deviation from total compliance with
government policy. This deterred industrial action and public
protests, and ensured attendance at government rallies. During the
early years of the 1970s the workforce was also confused ideologically,
being confronted by three antagonistic political groups, all of which
laid claim to Marxist-Leninist inspiration.
A further step in collective indoctrination was encouraged by the
government abolishing private schools in 1975. As with foreign
companies, private schools were acquired by purchase or rent without
a murmur from the churches. Rather than dispute the take-over on
educational, religious or other grounds, the churches acquiesed
limiting themselves merely to discussions about compensation.
Having made it known that the terms of acquisition would be
attractive, no further opposition was forthcoming. This was in
marked contrast to the furore which the churches created in 1960
when the schools issue had been broached by the PPP.
Ideological control was completed by the government's acquisition
of all the national media. In 1973 the state acquired the Guyana
Graphic from Thompson Newspapers and in 1976 changed its name to
the Guyana Chronicle. As the Evening Post had collapsed in the late
1960s, the Chronicle remained the only daily paper. The Mirror,
organ of the PPP, appeared four evenings a week and on Sundays
until 1978, when its access to newsprint was cut off. The Catholic
Standard, the weekly paper of the Catholic Church, gained
prominence in 1978 when it opposed the referendum and served as the
only independent source of news until its access to newsprint was also
cut off following the referendum. Open Word, a weekly Working
People's Alliance oriented newsheet, has never had access to
newsprint. It should be borne in mind that in their present one-page
formats, none of the above papers, with the exception of the
Chronicle, would normally be considered a newspaper at all. Radio
Demerara, a subsidiary of Rediffusion, was acquired by the state in
1976 and merged with the state-owned Guyana Broadcasting
Corporation in 1980 as its second channel.
57
Access to information became a serious problem after 1978, given
the restrictions placed on the independent press and the fact that party
control of the state-owned media reduced them to party propaganda
instruments. Further deterrents to the independent media have arisen
from the fact that the government has not hesitated to sue papers on
very flimsy legal grounds, knowing that serious monetary damages
can be inflicted through the government controlled courts. The state-
owned media have developed a well-deserved reputation for
unreliability and dishonesty and the average Guyanese is not readily
persuaded by what he or she sees or hears from them. The national
media rationalizes its subservience to the ruling party by a doctrine of
'development-support communications' which supports an
authoritarian control of the media. This attitude also characterizes
Guyana's enthusiastic support for the New International Information
Order.
Opposition Parties and Groups
The progressive, even socialist, postures which the PNC adopted on

international questions had the effect of convincing the PPP that the
ruling party could be pressured into implementing a genuinely socialist
programme domestically and this led them to adopt a policy of
'critical support' for the PNC. This was despite the fact that PNC
policies had demonstrated a clear antipathy for socialism. The evident
spuriousness of much of what passed for socialism in Guyana and its
inability seriously to influence PNC policy, left the PPP in a dilemma.
This can be seen in the number of times it has left parliament, refused
to take up seats, re-entered under protest, boycotted and finally re-
entered under the rationale of 'struggling in every forum'. While the
vacillation in its policy towards the PNC may reflect turmoil within
the PPP itself, many observers have questioned why a supposedly
Marxist-Leninist party should make a corrupt legislature, in which it
has made no gains, the principle arena of its political action.
An explanation of the PPP-PNC relationship may more reliably be
found in the relation of the two parties to the Cuban Communist party
and to the Soviet Union. Burnham had made a very successful visit to
Cuba in 1975 and had been decorated with the Jose Marti Award, the
second highest Cuban honour. This was the high point of a
relationship which had developed over the previous two or three years
and in which Burnham had offered refuelling facilities to the Cubans
for flights to Angola. Apart from the direct assistance offered by
Burnham to Cuba, Guyana's co-operative socialism seemed to the
Cuban government to be leaning in the correct direction. Given these
58
considerations, together with the fact that Cuba was, for the first time
in many years, making headway in normalizing relations with her
Caribbean neighbours, there was sufficient ground for the Cubans to
develop relations with the Burnham movement. An additional factor
which no doubt influenced the Cubans was the inflexible and
intransigent support for the Soviet Union which the PPP displayed
and which, if they were ever returned to office, would no doubt have
provoked de-stabilization by the US. With their expanding
commitments in Southern Africa, the Cubans did not welcome the
prospect of further conflict with the US. Both the Cuban and Soviet
positions appear to have been that they could work with Burnham and
since there were no prospects of his losing power, pragmatism dictated
this as a sensible course of action.
With the main opposition party ambivalent in its reaction to the
skillful foreign policy of the government and the trade union
movement and the churches largely acquiescent to the ruling party, the
only consistent opposition came from the small right-of-centre
Liberator Party and the left-wing grouping known as the Working
Peoples' Alliance (WPA). Neither of these organizations could claim
to be national either in terms of organization or following prior to
1976. The Liberator articulated the interests of the commercial sector
while the WPA attracted a variety of groups, from the left, whose
politics were critical of the ruling party.
Formed by several separate organizations which did not
immediately dissolve into a single body, the WP A was founded in
November 1974 by the ASCRIA, the Indian Peoples' Revolutionary
Association (IPRA), the Ratoon Group and the Working Peoples'
Vanguard Party (WPVP). ASCRIA had severed its ties with the ruling
party and IPRA had emerged under the leadership of Moses
Bhagwan, a former president of the PPP youth arm, who had split
with the PPP over what he considered to be their betrayal of
principled politics in 1964. Although sharing similar aims to ASCRIA,
albeit directed towards the Indo-Guyanese population, there is no
evidence that IPRA ever developed the grassroots support among the
Indo-Guyanese working people that ASCRIA had achieved among
blacks. The third element in the WP A, the Ratoon Group, was made
up of Marxist intellectuals from the University of Guyana and other
left-wing professionals. Ratoon produced a newspaper which served
as the organ of the WP A until 1978, when it was replaced by
Dayclean. The Ratoon Group, which provided the intellectual
leadership of the WP A, sought to give itself a grassroots anchor by
forming the Movement Against Oppression (MAO) in the Tiger Bay
slum area of Georgetown. The attempted assassination of Dr Josh
Ramsammy and the attempted kidnapping of Dr Clive Thomas in
59
1972, two leading members of Ratoon and MAO, suggested that the
government was very sensitive to the possibilities of this multi-racial
alliance of intellectuals and working people. MAO later went into
decline as its members either became more active in general WP A
concerns or dropped out of the political arena. The final member of
the WP A, the WPVP, was a small left-oriented party led by a former
deputy premier in the PPP government, Brindly Benn. Its chief
distinguishing mark was its attachment to Chinese socialism, and the
party followed that country's lurch to the right after the death of Mao
Tse-tung. The WPVP left the WP A in 1976 to enter into talks with the
PPP and in 1978 it formed an alliance with the Liberator Party and
the Peoples' Democratic Movement, known as the Vanguard for
Liberation and Democracy (VLD).
Although the WP A was not formally constituted as a political party
until 1979, the groups that made up its constituent parts had been the
most consistent domestic critics of the government. The WP A's major
contention was the need to re-establish the multi-racial character of a
genuine socialist movement as the first step in transforming the facade
of socialism which the ruling party had constructed into a genuinely
worker-dominated process. The organization faced formidable
obstacles. Not least among these was the confusion it created by
presenting a third brand of socialism in opposition to the 'socialisms'
offered by the PNC and the PPP. In a society brainwashed against
communism since 1953 and disillusioned with the PNC version of
socialism, the uncompromisingly socialist posture that the early WPA
adopted, reflecting the heavily intellectual concerns of the leadership
during the early and mid-1970s, was an obstacle to its goal of creating
a national alliance of all ethnic groups to oppose the dictatorial
tendencies of the ruling party.
The main threat posed by the WP A was not its ideological position.
The ruling party has always felt capable of dealing with the WP A at
this level, given its success against the PPP. Of more concern to the
PNC was the WPA's multi-racial character, youthful energies and
popular appeal which attracted and incorporated a new generation of
Guyanese. Both Burnham and Jagan looked as old and
bureaucratized as their parties by comparison. That the WPA also
posed a significant threat to the PPP did not make relations with that
party especially comfortable. However, at the level of working people,
notably the young and educated, the multi-racial appeal of the WP A
has generated greater support than that which its ideological
orientation alone can account for.
Over the period 1970 to 1976 the PNC enjoyed its most successful
years. On the domestic scene the opposition was in disarray, the PNC
having established a series of controls which enabled it to undermine
60
the development of any organized dissent. Internationally, Guyana's
reputation as a progressive Third World nation appeared secure
among the non-aligned nations. At the same time, the PNC
government was the recipient of considerable amounts of aid from
Western industrialized nations which saw it as a bulwark against more
genuine brands of socialism. Sir Shridath Ramphal, knighted before
colonial honours were abandoned, moved on from foreign minister to
secretary of the Commonwealth, from which vantage point he could
continue to promote Burnham's interests. On the economic front,
1974 and 1975 were the two best years in living memory for world
sugar prices and a substantial wage increase was negotiated in the
sugar industry in 1974, creating an amicable industrial relations
climate. The prospects for the PNC and for Forbes Burnham, its
architect and leader, looked better than they had ever done.
61
5 The PNC and the IMF:
The Cost of the Fraud
The period in which the major nationalizations were taking place,

between 1970 and 1976, was one in which commodity prices
experienced a phenomenal boom. This was particularly true of sugar
prices, which quadrupled between 1973 and 1975, of rice prices, which
almost doubled in the same period, and of alumina, calcined and dried
bauxite prices, which also rose substantially. These high prices for
Guyana's major exports were reflected in a 5.3 per cent growth in the
country's gross national product (GNP) between 1973 and 1975 (see
table 1).
Table 1
RATE OF GROWTH OF SELECTED INDICATORS

(Compound Growth Rate, per cent per annum)
Indicator 1970-75 1975-80 1970-80 1981 (est.)

Gross National Income 7.9 - 4.2 1.7 - 8.0
GNP at Market Prices 5.2 - 0.6 2.3 - 3.1
GDP at Market Prices 3.9 - 0.5 1.7 - 7.9
Gross Domestic Investment 10.6 -11.0 -0.8 16.5
Consumption 5.1 - 1.3 1.9 - 4.2
Gross National Saving 19.1 -13.5 2.8 -80.3
Exports of Goods and
Non-Factor Services 3.3 - 7.1 -3.6 -11.7
Imports of Goods and
Non-Factor Services 3.1 - 7.2 -2.2 5.3
GNP Per Capita 6.1 - 4.7 0.6 - 8.4
Sources: Government of Guyana, IMF and World Bank Statistics.

62
By 1976 prices had begun to fall rapidly and the Guyanese economy
went into a crisis from which it has never recovered. It has not been a
'temporary interruption' or even a severe balance of payments crisis,
but rather an exposure of the fundamental deficiencies of the
government's economic strategy, which has affected the entire social
and economic life of the society. These deficiencies would have been
detected earlier, had not the high export prices disguised the true state
of affairs. This masking of critical developments in the economy took
three forms. In the first place, the heavy cost of servicing the foreign
debt that had been incurred in the nationalization process was offset
by the expanded export earnings. Secondly, these earnings masked the
inefficiencies caused by the unplanned manner in which state property
had expanded and the erratic way in which it was managed. For
example, although the country had a near monopoly of calcined
grade bauxite ores, the average revenue per ton which Guyana earned
for the period 1974-81 was US$3. 7, as compared to US$11. 5 per ton in
Jamaica and US$11.6 in Suriname. Thirdly, the rise in export prices
was due to worldwide inflation, which also caused the prices of
Guyana's imports to rise. The effects of inflation on domestic prices
was already under way in the 1970-75 period, with the cost-of-living
index rising by 50 per cent during this period (see table 2).
Table 2
CONSUMER PRICE INDICES, 1970-81 1
(1970= 100)
Year Index
1970 100
1971 101.7
1972 106.7
1973 117.2
1974 140.3
1975 148.7
1976 161.7
1977 179.1
1978 214.0
1979 247.4
1980 279.1
1981 340.8
Note I: Average during the period.
Source: Statistical Bureau.
63
After prices fell in 1976 and the fundamental weaknesses in the
economy were no longer mitigated by the external price levels,
Guyana's economic statistics became uninterruptedly dismal. By the
end of 1981, the country's per capita income was lower than in 1970
and 30 per cent lower than the 1975 figure. National income declined
steadily, falling by 8 per cent in 1981 alone, along with investments,
savings, exports and consumption, all of which contracted between
1975 and 1980. Despite falling imports, the balance of payments
deficit grew in the second half of the 1970s. By 1981, the deficit on the
current account of the balance of payments (which measures the trade
in goods and services) equalled a third of the country's Gross National
Product. International reserves declined markedly from their peak of
US$100.5m in 1975, which represented the value of 3.2 months'
imports, to US$6.9m in 1981, which represented less than one week's
imports.
These desperate economic circumstances have led to severe
restrictions on imports, widespread shortages and high black market
prices for all categories of goods. Food items such as milk, cheese,
wheat flour, chicken, salt, butter, split peas and coffee have all
become virtually unavailable to the average working class household.
Production has declined sharply as the lack of inputs has forced a
number of private and state firms to reduce their production, close
temporarily or shut down permanently. Measured in constant prices,
gross national income has declined every year since 1976, with the
exception of a small (1 per cent) increase in 1980. Out of this situation
an active unofficial, black or parallel economy in scarce items and
foreign exchange has developed. The price of foreign exchange on the
parallel market has been nearly double the official rate of
US$1 = G$3, while five-pound tins of powdered milk which have a
controlled price of G$21.25 cost over G$60 on the parallel market.
The official diagnosis of the crisis has put the blame for Guyana's
problems on imported inflation, the shock of external events such as
the rise in oil prices, droughts, floods and the world recession
affecting the industrialized capitalist economies. While all these
factors constitute elements of the crisis, the evidence suggests that its
roots lie in the collapse of the main productive sector of the economy
now under state control. This does not imply that it is the fact of state
control which has caused the production crisis, certainly not in the
simple or abstract sense of 'state versus private' control of production
in Third World economies. However, by locating the roots of the
crisis in the failure of the state-controlled production sector, it is
possible to make a clear analysis both of the responsibility of the state
in the development of the crisis and of its role in its solution.
The production crisis is reflected in the output figures for the
64
Table3
OUTPUT AND EXPORT OF PRINCIPAL COMMODITIES

('000 long tons)
Output 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981
Dried Bauxite 2,290 2,108 1,652 1,665 1,383 1,350 969 879 1,022 1,858 1,005 983
Calcined Bauxite 692 710 690 637 726 778 729 709 590 568 592 505
Alumina 312 305 262 234 311 294 265 273 236 160 212 167
Sugar 311 369 315 266 341 300 332 242 325 298 270 301
This content downloaded from 77.111.247.188 on Fri, 19 Jun 2020
Rice 142 120 94 110 153 160 110 212 182 143 166 163
Exports
Sugar 297 337 300 225 302 285 297 208 280 264 248 265
Rice 59 68 70 48 51 82 71 66 105 84 88 78
Note: Peak output is indicated by bold type.
Source: Government of Guyana Statistics.
o--
Vl
principal commodities produced in Guyana (see table 3). The peak
year for output in the case of dried bauxite and alumina was as far
back as 1970; in the case of calcined bauxite the year of peak
production was 1975. In the sugar industry 1971 was the peak year,
while for rice it was 1977. These three products together accounted for
38 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product between 1970 and 1974 and
34 per cent between 1976 and 1980. Between 1970 and 1980 the output
from the nationalized bauxite industry declined at an average annual
rate of 3.8 per cent. Estimates show a decline of 11 per cent in 1981.
During the first half of the decade, the sugar industry registered an
increase in production of 9 per cent. This was followed by falling
production in the second half of the 1970s. While rice production
increased during the decade, the rate of growth declined from 2.4 per
cent for the 1970-75 period to 0.9 per cent during 1975-80 (see table 4).
Table 4
REAL GROWTH OF MAIN PRODUCTIVE SECTORS
(Compound Growth Rate per cent per annum)
Sector 1970-75 1975-80 1970-80
Productive Sectors, 2.0 -1.6 0.2
of which:
Mining -2.3 -5.3 -3.8
Sugar 0.9 -1.3 -0.6
Rice 2.4 0.9 1.7
Sources: Government of Guyana, IMF and World Bank Statistics.

If foreign markets for Guyanese exports had been shrinking, the
production crisis revealed by this data would have been disguised. The
evidence however, is directly to the contrary, for the country has been
unable to satisfy available markets. In the case of rice exports to its
Caribbean neighbours, Guyana has been persistently unable to meet
demand, leaving the market to be filled by rice exports from the
United States. As there is an element of protection for Guyana's rice
in the Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM), this failure is of
particular note. In the case of bauxite, Guyana has traditionally been
the source of about 90 per cent of the world's supply of calcined ore.
Yet its inability to supply the quantities ordered and to meet delivery
schedules has caused it to lose part of its market share, and Guyanese
exports of calcined ore now represent only 60 per cent of the world
total. In the case of sugar, Guyana has had great difficulties in
meeting its own Lome Convention quotas, much less the shortfalls in
production by other Caribbean countries which it is entitled to make
up under the ACP-EEC Protocol of the Lome Convention.
66
The figures in table 3 illustrate the seriousness of Guyana's
production crisis. The causes of the crisis are to be found in the
fundamental weaknesses that exist in the state production sector:
• The state sector was acquired and expanded in an erratic and
unplanned manner. Apart from the major nationalizations, the
state invested in a wide range of industries, all of which proved to
be wasteful and unproductive. Remarkably, the 1972-76
development programme, which contained the plan to 'feed, house
and clothe' the nation by 1976, made no reference to the expanding
role of the state sector in achieving those goals.
• Frustration caused by mismanagement encouraged a flight of
Guyanese from all levels of society, but most notably among skilled
persons. Between 1976 and 1981, a total of 72,000 Guyanese
emigrated, leaving more than 25 per cent of senior positions in the
bauxite industry vacant as a result.
• The increased regulation of the economy has not been accompanied
by a similar increase in the number and competence of state
bureaucrats to administer the regulations, causing prolonged delays
and frustrations which are reflected in falling production.
• The unavailability of local counterpart funds for overseas-financed
projects has led to long delays, massive cost over-runs and the
cancellation of projects.
• Public utilities have been neglected as the production crisis has
deepened. Widespread and frequent electricity blackouts hinder
production. Sewerage and water supply systems are in danger of
collapse and public transport is so poor that some trade unions
estimate that the average worker takes four hours per day in travel
time to and from work.
e Allied with the collapse of the public utilities has been a similar
collapse of social services, especially education, health and
recreation, as public spending in these areas has been curtailed.
• Political discrimination and victimization of workers have become
routine, leading to a marked alienation of the workforce.
Thus, far from stimulating production, providing employment and
generating resources for new investments, Guyana's state production
sector has recorded falling output and growing redundancies as its
main achievements.
The IMF and World Bank
It should have been quite clear to the government by 1977 that its
policy to 'feed, house and clothe' the nation was being overtaken by a
67
production crisis, not a temporary financial or foreign exchange crisis.
However, maintaining its view that the crisis was financial and
externally generated, the government argued that the economy would
improve when commodity prices rose in the wake of the oil price rises.
Thus they suggested that the historic pattern of the terms of trade
would be reversed. With this optimistic analysis in mind, the
government opted for what appeared as an 'easy' short-term option,
monetary expansion. Thus in 1975 the money supply was expanded by
41 per cent and in 1976 and 1977 by 9 per cent and 23 per cent
respectively. Bank credit to the public sector also rose rapidly,
increasing by more than 250 per cent between 1975 and 1977. With net
international reserves at an all-time high of US$185m in 1975, the
boast was that 'we never had it so good'. This was despite the fact that
by 1976 the country was producing only eight ounces of poultry per
person per week, one egg per person every eight days, 2 ounces of
pork per person per week, 3 to 4 ounces of beef per person per week
and 0.8 pints of milk per person per week. ·
Monetary expansion failed to stimulate local production and
instead fuelled a rapid rise in consumer prices (see table 2). By 1977, it
was clear that deflationary brakes had to be applied. The budget of
that year sought to reduce inflation by cutting consumer demand and
to redistribute income so as to generate investable surpluses in the
state sector. Government expenditure was cut by 30 per cent in one
year. Subsidies on transport, poultry feed, flour, water and electricity
were removed and redundancies among state employees were
initiated. However, these measures had no effect on inflation and the
country's balance of payments deficit grew. In 1978, the government
was forced to call in the IMF.
The first IMF agreement, signed in mid-1978, was for 6.25m Special
Drawing Rights (SDRs, the monetary unit used by the IMF and valued
at about US$1.10 in 1983) and was to cover a one-year period. Under
the agreement, the main focus of government policy was to be on
demand management, the objective of which was to reduce the real
level of spending in order to reduce imports and to redistribute income
in favour of saving rather than consumption. This was to be achieved
mainly through reduction in state expenditure, the progressive
elimination of government subsidies, the introduction of a number of
revenue measures and an imposed policy of wage restraint. Thus,
although the government signed an agreement with the TUC to raise
minimum wages from G$5. 50 to G$8 .40 per day in 1977 and further to
G$11.0 and G$14.0 per day respectively in 1978 and 1979, this
agreement was frozen after 1978 and the G$14.0 wage has not been
implemented.
The result of this IMF policy was to reduce demand within the
68
economy by some 20 per cent in real terms. The government's
spending deficit was reduced from 26.1 per cent of GOP in 1977 to
10.1 per cent of GOP in 1978. As a result, the balance of payments
deficit was reduced from 22.4 per cent to 5.8 per cent of GOP in the
same period. These were the objectives that the IMF sought. They
were paid for, however, by the workforce. In real terms consumption
fell by 7 per cent and per capita Gross National Product fell by 8 per
cent in that one year, leading to a significant rise in unemployment to
a level, according to some estimates, of 40 per cent.
In August of 1979, in recognition of the fundamental nature of the
economic crisis and the time that would be needed to correct it, a
three-year loan from the IMF's Extended Fund Facility for 62. 75m
SORs was negotiated. As is normal in these circumstances, a long list
of policy criteria were demanded by the IMF. These included the
progressive elimination of subsidies and all forms of price control, the
adjustment of energy prices to bring them into line with international
oil price rises, the payment of overdue commercial debts to foreign
suppliers, an increase in interest rates to encourage saving, no
significant increase in wages in the public sector, increases in taxation
and a restraint in the growth of the public sector. These measures were
aimed at further reducing demand and cutting the role of the state in
regulating and controlling the economy. However, the shortcomings
of the new agreement were soon manifest in a further 4 per cent fall in
GOP in 1979 and the inability of Guyana to meet the IMF targets.
By the time of the demise of the 1979 agreement, the IMF had come
round to the view that demand management alone could not work in
Guyana. Something had to be done to stimulate the sagging
productive sector since the attacks on spending had left it further
weakened. Thus a new Extended Fund Facility loan was negotiated
which was complemented by a World Bank structural adjustment
loan, the object of which was to stimulate the supply side of the
economy. The new IMF loan was for three years and for the much
larger sum of lOOm SORs, a figure which was subsequently increased
to 150m SORs in mid-1981. This was very close to Guyana's IMF
borrowing limit. The World Bank loan was for US$22m. Of this total
US$8m was used to establish an export development fund; the
remainder was to be used to purchase equipment and spare parts for
the electricity, forestry and fishing industries as well as chemical
inputs and spare parts for the bauxite-alumina industry. The objective
was to increase production for export and thus reduce the balance of
payments deficit.
While the recognition of the supply problems by the IMF and the
government was an improvement over the crude 'excess demand'
approach of the earlier agreements, the view of what constituted the
69
supply problem was very limited indeed. It was not only a case of too
little too late, it was also that the demand adjustment pursued earlier
helped to exacerbate the crisis and widen it into other areas of social
life. The IMF insisted in its view that the main hindrance to increasing
export production and replacing imports with domestically produced
goods was the over-regulation of the economy, inefficient pricing
policies in the state sector, price subsidies and a lack of incentives for
managerial and technical employees. Their solution was the
privitization of the state sector, replacing state control by market
forces in the regulation of the economy. Such IMF policies have been
roundly criticised by a wide range of Third World opinion, which see
them as no more than a charter for the take-over of Third World
economies by transnational interests. In the case of Guyana the IMF
policies were doubly deficient as they cut across not only the country's
nationalist interests but also the government's supposed socialist
ideals contained in its 'co-operative socialism' policy.
Once again however, Guyana was unable to meet IMF targets and
was forced to withdraw from both the IMF and World Bank
programmes. This occurred in the third quarter of 1981, just months
after the agreements had been reached. Subsequently, a further
approach was made to the IMF on the basis of an 'action programme'
which brought to an end even the pretence of co-operative socialism.
As well as re-negotiating the US$35m debt servicing due to be paid in
1982/83 and proposing a new investment code to promote foreign and
local investors, the action programme sought to reduce the scope of
the state sector. This was to be achieved by entering into a partnership
agreement with a foreign company to manage the bauxite industry,
reducing the operations of the Guyana Rice Board, restricting public
sector activities in manufacturing and privatizing government assets in
fisheries, forestry, glass, pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs.
There is little doubt that this 'action programme' is based on the
IMF view that the three key constraints to supply growth are
weaknesses in the public sector, over-regulation of the economy and
the denial of a full role to the private sector. Although these
constraints were confronted in the structural adjustment programme,
from which the government had to withdraw because of the failure to
meet its targets, the government is prepared to make the overcoming
of these constraints central to any new agreement it makes with the
IMF. While it is true that dependent Third World economies have few
options when they are forced to accept IMF financing, the willingness
of the government to dismantle the state sector illustrates clearly the
hollowness of its beliefs in socialist or co-operative ideals. How could
co-operative socialism be presented as an 'alternative development' if
it was being built with the support of the IMF and the World Bank,
70
Employment
Bauxite workers at Linden, employed by the US company Greens, which

has leased part of the mineral workings.
71
institutions which are diametrically opposed to the creation of state
capitalism? Furthermore, why have these international financing
agencies been prepared repeatedly to agree new programmes when
previous programmes fail, in marked contrast to the way they have cut
off assistance to progressive regimes such as those in Jamaica under
Michael Manley and Nicaragua? The answer lies in the fact that the
IMF has not met any fundamental government opposition to its pro-
private sector policies, nor does it fear Guyanese co-operative
socialism, the rhetorical content of which far exceeds its real
achievements.
What is clear from the present crisis is that the constraints on
Guyanese production are in the first instance political in nature and
stem from the government's manipulation of the state sector for party
political ends. The resulting lack of democracy in the production
system has led to inefficiency and demoralization. Co-operative
socialism can be judged as little more than a political device to
maintain itself in power by a party that was neither co-operative nor
socialist. Yet if PNC-style state capitalism has failed to serve the
interests of the majority of the Guyanese people, the privatized
economy that is replacing it offers little prospect of improvement. It
will however clarify any lingering confusion that exists as to the true
political colours of the PNC government.
72
6 Paramountcy to
Executive Presidency:
The Fraud Disintergrates
Decline of the PPP and rise of the WP A
In 1977 the PPP, in an effort to reaffirm its role in Guyanese politics,

called a strike in the sugar industry which lasted for 135 days. In
industrial terms the stoppage challenged the TUC's passive acceptance
of the draconian budget of that year. More importantly, on the
political front, it was a serious show of PPP strength. The government
confronted the striking workers with a range of obstructions. The
national press disguised the extent of the movement and distorted its
industrial character, the courts accepted charges against the striking
workers of 'causing public terror' and levied thousands of dollars in
bail and 'volunteers' from the public service and the armed forces
along with the House of Israel (see appendix) were drafted in to
replace the striking cane-cutters. Thus, with a minimum of violence
the government was able to render the strike ineffective. No attempt
was made to meet the demands of the union, and the government
initiated in this strike what was to become a familiar ploy of deeming
any strike 'political', thereby claiming the right to use all means to
bring it to an end. Although the PPP could claim a moral victory in
having sustained such a long strike, its failure to achieve any tangible
results marked an irreversible decline in its fortunes. Its political
strength had always been calculated on the basis of its control of the
sugar industry, but the strike made clear that the ruling party was
prepared to go to any lengths to neutralize that strength.
The failure of the sugar strike coincided with a rash of defections
among senior PPP Central Committee members who joined the PNC
and were almost immediately given ministerial posts. The loss of
Vincent Teekah, former leader of the PYO, Ranji Chandisingh, the
leading pro-Moscow theoretician in the party and the senior GA WU
73
official Lallbaichan Lallbahadur was a serious setback for the PPP.
The loss of internal dynamism was aggravated by the tendency in the
party to discourage new faces and new ideas. A rigid party hierarchy
looked for conformity rather than initiative. By the end of the 1970s a
generation of Guyanese who had not experienced the paralyzing racial
violence of the early 1960s were unimpressed with the racial
underpinnings of the two main parties and were either migrating in
large numbers or looking for new political solutions. While control of
the state machinery allowed the PNC to substitute coercion for
popular support, no such levers were available to the PPP, which
responded to its declining popularity by reasserting its traditional
positions. In this situation of political and economic stagnation the
Working Peoples' Alliance, under the leadership of Walter Rodney,
took on a new importance.
Walter Rodney, an eminent Guyanese historian, returned to
Guyana in 1974 to take up a post at the University of Guyana. The
post was subsequently denied to him by the university council for
reasons that were never stated but which clearly related to the
potential threat which Rodney was seen to pose to the ruling party.
Rodney returned to Guyana with an international reputation as an
effective political activist and Marxist theoretician, respected among
African and Caribbean left-wing parties. He had been banned from
Jamaica and several other Caribbean islands where his presence was
perceived as a catalyst for the mass discontent which the existing
political and economic systems had created. Guyana, despite its
somewhat different path, had arrived at the same critical situation
when Rodney returned. He immediately became the prim us inter pares
of the WP A collective leadership, injecting a vigour and appeal into
the organization which it had previously lacked.
Rodney was not the only reason that the PNC felt threatened by the
emergent WP A. In 1976 the party organ Dayclean was sued under the
Newspaper Act for not having posted a bond. Since Dayclean was
produced on a single mimeographed sheet of paper, there was some
question as to whether it was a newspaper at all. However the legal
aspects of the trial were secondary to its political implications. Eusi
Kwayana, one of the defendants, demanded that the magistrate
declare his independence of the paramountcy doctrine. The WPA's
tactic of treating the issue for what it was, namely a directly political
use of the courts rather than a purely legal matter, was successful in so
far as the magistrate eventually postponed the case indefinitely on a
legal technicality. Similar tactics were then applied to a case in which a
PPP activist, Arnold Rampersaud, charged with shooting a
policeman, had narrowly escaped hanging after a trial conducted as a
straightforward legal issue in which one member of the jury held out
74
against conviction. This led to a second trial, which took place after
the formation of a defence committee, in which Rodney played a
leading role, and a team of Caribbean lawyers participated; it ended
ambiguously, requiring yet another trial. The political nature of the
charges had been so thoroughly exposed by the time the third trial
took place that it became a formality and ended with the accused
being acquitted. Apart from exposing the political character of the
courts, the political mobilization which the WP A spearheaded around
these trials also laid the groundwork for bringing civic and religious
bodies into open dissent with the ruling party.
The 1978 Referendum

The occasion for such a confrontation was provided by the decision of
the ruling party in April 1978 to introduce a referendum, the effect of
which would be ultimately to postpone the elections which were due to
be held in 1978. The referendum bill sought to change that provision
of the constitution which required that a referendum be held before
certain provisions of the constitution could be amended, and to vest
the power to change any provision of the constitution in a two-thirds
majority of the existing parliament. In view of the widespread
opposition to the bill voiced by civic, religious, professional and
political bodies, the original proposition was amended by Burnham to
one of establishing a constituent assembly following the referendum
with a view to preparing a new constitution. The Guyana Council of
Churches opposed the bill on the grounds that 'it places too much
power in the hands of this or any other parliament', and the majority
of the Bar Association endorsed a statement which stated that the bill
was an attempt to get the electorate to place 'a blank cheque and put
our future in the hands of a dying parliament' (see box).
Access to the media was denied to groups opposed to the bill, and
permission refused to publish statements as paid advertisements, a
denial of access justified by Prime Minister Burnham on the grounds
that 'paid advertisements are inconsistent with socialism as they give
the wealthier groups in the society an advantage the poorer ones do
not enjoy'. Prior to referendum day the campaign was marked by
violent attacks on opposition meetings, interference with the
opposition and church press and a flood of imported propaganda in
support of the proposal. Two committees, one comprising the
political parties and the other civic bodies, orchestrated the opposition
to the bill. In a report following the referendum, the Committee of
Concerned Citizens, which comprised a large number of Guyanese
civic bodies, denounced the 97.7 per cent 'yes' vote as a fraud.
Immediately after the elections the PNC amended the constitution and
75
The Constitutional Amendment
BILL 1978
Why The legal Profession Opposes lt.
The Constitution is the Suprell'le Law of the Land
Lawyers therefore have a special interest in it, as
does every citizen.
2. The referendum seel(:s to deprive the people of their

right to approve or disapprove any new Constitution
3. It takes away the people's right to have a say in

the changing of the supreme law of the land.
4. It will put abs•lute power t<:> lllter the Constitution

In the two-thirds majority in Parliament.
5. A new Constitution tha·t the ptoJ"le do not like

can be imposed on them.
6. The power in the two-thirds majority in Parliament

is enough, to enlarge it would be dangerou~.
7. Any n~w Constitution sho1:1ld be approved by the

people through national elections.
8. The Bill is an attempt to side track: national.

elections due this year.
9. The Life of Parliament, Elections, tha Constitution

itself and the Jurisdiction of the High Court in
certain matters would be left completely in the
hands of a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
I 0. The Bill is asking us to sign a blank cheque and

rut our future in the hands of a dying Parliament
II. The referendum will be a referendum to end all

referenda.
12. No Nation or People should ever surrender their
rights.
THE BILL AIMS TO DESTROY DEMOCRACY
AS WE KNOW IT.
THE LllGAL PROFESSION OPPOSES IT
IT INVITES YOU TO DO THE SAMit
76
prolonged the life of parliament.
The referendum campaign had been waged by the PNC around the
need for a new 'socialist' constitution, the existing one (which they
helped draw up) being disparaged as 'not being an effective vehicle for
restructuring the society and economy'. On the basis of one fraud, the
referendum, the ruling party was now constructing a second. The
constituent assembly, comprising members of the ruling party and the
United Force, received depositions from 139 organizations and
individuals during its 19-month life. The constitution which emerged
was an exact replica of the submission made to the assembly by the
PNC and included many of the slogans used in the referendum, such
as 'land to the tiller' and 'the right to work'. This remarkable display
of contempt for widespread opposition views was justified by the
speaker of the parliament, Sase Naraine, who stated that 'the draft
(constitution) reproduced exactly what was in the People's National
Congress memorandum because nobody objected during the taking of
oral evidence'.
The major changes introduced into the constitution related to the
creation of an executive presidency, to replace the Westminster-model
political system and the granting of extraordinary powers to the
president. Thus, the president cannot be charged for any legal offence
committed during or before his period of office and the machinery for
removing him from office, other than by election, effectively depends
upon his consent. Through his controls over public service
appointments the president has a determining influence over the
electoral machinery. When the presidency was introduced in 1980,
Forbes Burnham assumed the office.
Inaugurating the executive presidency marked the final step in a
process of constitutional change which was conceived after the
massive popular rejection of the PNC which took place in the 1973
elections. Party paramountcy, and what followed from it in terms of
state control, was the response to a need to build a political base
independent of electoral support. That a new constitution should be
written to enshrine in a legal framework the effective political power
wielded by Forbes Burnham, was an acknowledgement both of the
extent to which he dominated the PNC and of his personal penchant
for legal formality. He did not, in other words, wish to appear to be a
dictator.
Jonestown
After the referendum in July 1978 internal political developments

were temporarily diverted by the catastrophe of Jonestown in which
77
the meglomania of a tyrant was played out to its grim conclusion (see
appendix). One of the useful purposes served by the presence of
Jonestown for the Guyana government was that a settlement of US
citizens in territory disputed by Venezuela would prompt the US to
intervene in support of Guyana should any Venezuelan invasion of the
territory occur. However, this rationale played little part in
determining the real relationship between Jonestown officials and the
Guyana government. A number of senior government officials were
compromised either by money or Temple women into an attitude of
passive complicity with the legal violations which were taking place in
the settlement.
Although the Burnham government convincingly extricated itself
from any responsibility for the tragic events of Jones town as far as the
international media was concerned, the catalogue of violations of
local law, together with the collaboration of the Peoples' Temple with
the ruling party, ensured that domestic opinion remained convinced of
PNC collusion in allowing the tragic situation to develop. A one-man
commission of inquiry was officially announced six months after the
massacre under Chief Justice (now Chancellor) Victor Crane. One
year later he denied having been asked to perform such an inquiry.
Limits of Paramountcy
In response to the political problems created by PNC rule, the PPP in

1977 proposed the formation of a 'National Patriotic Front'
comprising all democratic, socialist-oriented and anti-dictatorial
forces in the society. The most significant feature of the initiative was
that for the first time the PPP intimated that it was prepared to
abandon the 'first-past-the-post' electoral system in favour of a
power-sharing arrangement. The PNC ridiculed the proposal. It was,
however, welcomed by the WPA, and the initiative gained momentum
in the following year when the referendum campaign brought together
all the opposition parties.
During the course of 1979 the WPA capitalized on the dissent
generated by the referendum campaign and drew crowds to public
meetings such as had not been seen for years. In July dissatisfaction
with the economic hardships led to a six-week strike in the bauxite
industry where an independent group, the Organization of Working
People, had challenged the PNC-dominated Mineworkers' Union.
Events took what could have been a decisive turn in August when the
CCWU, the largest urban union with members in many state
corporations and the private commercial sector, took the decision to
strike in solidarity with the bauxite workers. As events turned out, the
78
CCWU partially backed down, and called out the least important of
their affiliates in the private sector rather than initiate a total
confrontation. In the face of divisive action by the government in
breaking up a demonstration and sacking workers, the first concerted
attempt to confront the PNC petered out. The PPP was critical of the
whole bauxite strike initiative, calling it immature and comparing it
with the 'black power' riots in Trinidad in 1970.
By 1979 the executive council of the TUC had become a mere
cypher of the government. Since 1976, when the GA WU had been
recognized as the official union in the sugar belt and replaced the
MPCA, an even more unjust distribution of TUC delegates to unions
had been necessary to maintain PNC control of the organization.
Membership of the PNC-controlled unions was bolstered in an
inexplicable manner, raising the number of delegates assigned to
them. In 1980 this was particularly true for the National Union of
Public Service Employees (NUPSE) (1 ,990 members to 4,050 in one
year), the Union of Allied and Agricultural Workers (UAA W) (1 ,856
members to 4,023), and the Guyana Workers' Union (6,123 to 8,005).
The system of allocation of delegates created the anomalous situation
in which GA WU, with almost 25 per cent of the entire organized
labour force in its ranks, was represented by a ratio of one delegate for
every 442 members, while in the case of the GNCBSA it was one
delegate for every 13 members. The additional delegates picked up in
this manner by the PNC unions allowed them to send to the annual
conference delegates, whose prime function was to endorse PNC
policy. Furthermore, the PNC discouraged the unions it influenced
from maintaining their international links. It was argued that, given
Guyana's transition to socialism, unions should weaken their links
with bourgeois and capitalist organizations. The subsequent
debilitation of the unions which this produced was reflected at times
of confrontation with the employer state. For example, the bauxite
workers were not able to reinforce their demands and local strike
action with action at an international level during their July strike.
Later· in the year, when a formal conference was called to outline
the principles on which a government of national unity could function
and discuss manifesto proposals, the PPP frustrated the initiative. In
order to avoid the appearance of collaborating with the centre-right
Liberator Party, the PPP proposed unacceptable conditions as the
basis for its participation in any unified programme of action. The
ideological rigidity of the PPP was the undoing of the conference and
the national unity of initiative, which at one time appeared to have the
makings of a revival of the national movement of the 1950s, was
dissipated.
However, pressures on the ruling party still proved too strong for
79
the quasi-legal paramountcy methods to contain, and open violence
erupted. Following the arrest of Drs Rupert Roopnaraine, Rodney
and Omawale on charges of arson after the Office of the General
Secretary of the PNC had been razed to the ground by fire, Father
Bernard Darke, a Jesuit priest who was the photographer of the
Catholic Standard was stabbed to death by members of the House of
Israel on the streets outside the courts. His death was the most serious
event in a pattern of violence which the government directed mainly
against members of the WP A. Two activists were shot dead and others
imprisoned on spurious charges, while many of the sympathisers,
including senior management figures, lost their jobs in the state sector
on the grounds that they constituted security risks. This campaign of
violence culminated with the assassination of Walter Rodney in June
1980 (see box).
Walter Rodney
On the evening of 23 June 1980, Walter Rodney was buried at the age
of thirty-eight. It was a people's funeral. Earlier in the day,
thousands of Guyanese had walked over a distance of twelve miles
behind the murdered body of this young historian. He was not the
first victim of political murder in Guyana, but the radical nature of
his commitment as a teacher and activist, the startling promise that
his life symbolised, made of his death something of a novel tragedy.
Directions had gone out to government employees that they should
avoid this occasion; yet no-one could recall, in the entire history of
the country, so large and faithful a gathering assembled to reflect on
the horror that had been inflicted on the nation. For Guyana had
become a land of horrors. Democracy was no longer on trial here.
The question was whether it would survive this official crucifixion.
The Caribbean has been deprived of a great creative mind; but
Walter Rodney had achieved at an early age the special distinction of
being a permanent part of a unique tradition of intellectual
leadership among Africans and people of African descent in the
Americas. He belongs to the same order of importance as Marcus
Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois, George Padmore and C.L.R. James.
Products of various doctrines of imperialism, they had initiated
through the work, as writers and orators of distinction, a profound
reversal of values. It is not possible to have a comprehensive view of
all the ramifications of Africa's encounter with Europe without
reference to these men.
Source: Extract from the Foreword by George Lamming to A History of the
Guyanese Working People, 1891-1905 by Walter Rodney.
80
The conspiracy to kill Rodney involved the use of an explosive
device concealed in a two-way radio which Rodney had been given by
a government agent and was triggered near the Georgetown prison.
The government-controlled media had been primed to report that a
man had been killed when the explosive device he was carrying, with
the aim of releasing WP A activists from Georgetown prison, had
exploded prematurely. The force of the blast, the media reported,
rendered the body unrecognizable. They continued to carry this story
for some hours after the event despite the fact that the explosion
occurred a block away from the prison and Rodney's face was left
perfectly recognizable. The involvement of the government in the
conspiracy was beyond doubt. This was clearly underlined in the
attempted cover-up of Sergeant Gregory Smith, an electronics expert
in the GDF, who had given Rodney the device which killed him. The
GDF denied the existence of Smith despite a wealth of evidence of his
being on the army payroll until the time of the assassination and his
hurried departure from the country immediately after the event. No
inquest was held into the circumstances of Rodney's death and a
report by Home Office experts from the United Kingdom has never
been made public. Its contents were partly revealed to the prosecution
lawyers at the trial of Donald Rodney, Walter's brother, who had
been with him at the time of the explosion and who was charged with
possession of explosives. Defence lawyers were denied access to the
document.
Having removed what was seen as the main threat to its hold on the
country and destroyed, at least temporarily, the momentum of the
WP A, the PNC went ahead with the general elections which had been
postponed since 1978. The already tenuous opposition unity was dealt
another blow by the decision of the PPP to participate in the elections,
thus legitimizing what was certain to be another fraudulent vote.
Despite national and international denunciations, the government
awarded itself another two thirds majority, in an election which an
international observer team described as 'rigged massively and
flagrantly' (see box).
Jobs and Food Crisis

Since the general election attention has been focused on the person of
the executive president rather than on the ruling party. Paramountcy
of the party has been replaced by the paramountcy of the president.
The paramountcy of the (then) prime minister had been the effective
reality for some time, but the new office of the president and the
powers invested in it, which materialized in a new office building and
81
Election Fraud 1980
The observer team spent polling day in various parts of the country
(Georgetown, Kitty, Cummingslodge, Ogle, Plaisance, Better Hope,
Vryheid's Lust, Mon Repos, Lusignan, Buxton Enmore, New
Amsterdam, Lower and Upper Corentyne, Houston, Linden and
Wismar). We reached a unanimous view on the conduct of the
election, which may be summarised as follows:
I. We found a relatively high turnout of voters in some areas such
as Corentyne, Cummingslodge, Better Hope and Enmore, and a
relatively low turnout in others such as Georgetown, New
Amsterdam and Linden.
2. We collected considerable evidence that voters in many
instances were intimidated and physically prevented from voting
for opposition parties.
3. The staff of the whole polling process appeared to be supporters
of the PNC.
4. We have massive evidence that large numbers of eligible voters
were denied their right to vote. The following are examples:
Deletion of names from the electoral Jist.
u Abuse of proxy voting.
m Abuse of postal voting.
iv People were told that they were dead.
v PNC agents outside the polls gave people slips of paper
bearing wrong ID numbers, or told them their names were
not on the Jist, although they were.
vi Voters were disenfranchised because of minor technical or
clerical errors in the list.
vii Fraudulent votes has already been cast in the voters'
name.
These abuses were primarily directed against supporters of the
opposition parties.
5. Evidence was supplied to us of double registration.
6. Ballot boxes arrived late at many stations. In some areas:
The hours of polling were arbitrarily extended.
ii The processing of votes was deliberately stalled.
m Polling agents were not allowed to inspect ballot boxes
before polling started.
IV Incapacitated voters were not always helped and were
sometimes instructed to vote for the PNC.
v Persons who had not voted claimed that they had their
fingers inked forcibly by PNC agents. Conversely, PNC
supporters who fingers were inked were allowed to vote
and some PNC supporters did not have their fingers inked
•
after voting.
82
vt There were also complaints that the Presiding Officers
had written voters' numbers on the ballot papers.
vn Unlisted PNC supporters were allowed to vote, but in
PPP areas Returning Officers invariably refused to
exercise their discretion in favour of unlisted persons
voting.
7. In some areas there were many polling stations adjacent to, or
very near, PNC offices. Some polling stations were in the
private residences of PNC activists and candidates. Some were
in police stations, one at least with an armed guard on a locked
gate.
8. The military presence in some areas was intimidating. The boxes
were collected by military personnel who prevented accredited
officials of the opposition, sometimes by force or the threat of
force, from accompanying or following the boxes. Military
personnel refused accredited representatives of opposition
parties access to the count at gunpoint in some cases.
9. The forcible expulsion of the opposition's agents from all the
places where ballot boxes were held, and the delay of at least
fifteen hours in the announcing of first returns of the count
undermines the credibility of this process.
Conclusion
We came to Guyana aware of the serious doubts expressed about
the conduct of previous elections there, but determined to judge
these elections on their own merit and hoping that we should be able
to say that the result was fair.
We deeply regret that, on the contrary, we were obliged to
conclude, on the basis of abundant and clear evidence, that the
election was rigged massively and flagrantly. Fortunately, however,
the scale of the fraud made it impossible to conceal either from the
Guyanese public or the outside world. Far from legitimizing
President Burnham's assumption of his office, the events we
witnessed confirm all the fears of Guyanese and foreign observers
about the state of democracy in that country.
Source: 'Something to Remember'. The Report of the International Team of

Observers at the Elections in Guyana. December I 980.
numerous presidential advisers, brought this reality into the public

eye. The office was bolstered by a personality cult which had much in
common with the North Korean deification of Kim II Sung, a
comparison given greater point by the new practice of the executive
83
president of dispensing 'advice' to all and sundry on a variety of
topics, organizing adulatory mass games in which schoolchildren,
under the guidance of North Korean technicians, produced composite
pictures of the president's face and the sycophantic treatment of the
president in the Chronicle fashioned apparently on the Pyongyang
Times.
The 1980 elections instilled in most Guyanese a sense of futility and
indignation. Among the remaining hard-core supporters of the ruling
party these elections were a turning point. Unlike rigging in previous
elections, when they had felt they were adding 'more' votes to the
PNC's honestly obtained votes, in 1980 they knew that the rigging was
virtually all there was. This realization, together with the fact that they
were receiving no economic benefits to justify such massive rigging,
brought a sense of disillusion. This rapidly turned to indignation
when, in the massive redundancies which took place in the public
service, many party workers lost their jobs. The haughty and speedy
manner in which this exercise was implemented rubbed salt into a
wound already made raw by the marching, 'voluntary' work, and
attendance at rallies which many had accepted as an insurance policy
for their jobs (see box). It created another category of persons who
now had nothing to lose by venting the anti-PNC feeling which had
been repressed for a number of years. For the traditional PPP
supporter the 1980 elections provoked a similar response. The PPP
used the presence of the international observer team at the elections to
persuade the rural Indians that the team's presence would ensure free
and fair elections. This PPP argument was used to overcome the
people's natural inclination to boycott the election (given the success
of this tactic in 1978). It was intended to encourage a large turnout
and ensure a PPP majority. The subsequent fraud created hostility to
the PPP among rural voters when it was realized that they were the
only section of the population which had gone to the polls, thereby
frustrating what would have been a resounding boycott.
The post-election indignation was compounded by the
disappearance of many basic food items from the shops, giving rise to
long queues as a familiar feature of city life after 1981. The extent of
the food shortages can be gleaned from the Ministry of Trade's price
control lists. In 1978 the list of price-controlled food items numbered
271. By 1981 the list had been reduced to 106 items, import of the rest
having been suspended. By August 1982 only three of these 106 items
were available in shops, and a year later, all three - sugar, rice and
chicken - were in short supply. Since 1981 the only continuously
available foodstuffs have been vegetables, fruit and root crops. In
mid-1982 the import of wheat flour was suspended due to lack of
foreign exchange, immediately driving the black-market price up and
84
Job Security?
GUY ANA ELECTRICITY CORPORATION

From: Personnel Director
To: All Staff
Subject: Attendance at National Rally on Sunday 26 October 1980 at
the 1763 Monument
On Sunday 26 October, between the hours of 6.30pm and 10.30pm

there will be held a massive rally on the ground of the 1763
Monument and will be addressed by The Cde. Leader and Executive
President of the Nation, His Excellency Cde. L.F.S. Burnham.
During the feature address, it is expected that the Cde. Leader will
made pronouncements and announcements affecting the future of all
of us Guyanese.
The importance of our attendance at this historic rally cannot be
under-estimated. Your future and indeed the future of your children
will be discussed and therefore you must attend.
Heads of Departments, Supervisory and Controlling Officers are
requested to discuss firstly, with staff immediately under their
control, their participation in the rally and compute a register of all
those who have indicated their intention to attend and, secondly,
with the Personnel Officer and agree on a suitable place where those
participating will assemble prior to marching under the
Corporation's banner to the 1763 Monument.
We are all involved. We should all attend.
W.N. James
Personnel Director
Personnel Department
22 October 1980
making bread extremely scarce. In attempting to disguise its complete

loss of control over the economy, the government initiated a campaign
to promote the sale of rice flour. The arguments used, that rice was
the 'food of revolutionaries' and that bread was 'imperialist' food,
were met with uniform cynicism and contempt by the working
population. This was the first time that the PNC propaganda machine
had failed to generate even a minimum acceptance of its policy.
By mid-1983 discontent with the food shortages triggered a series of
one-day strikes in the bauxite industry which spread shortly to the
sugar belt. In retaliation, the state-owned bauxite company
unilaterally placed almost the entire work-force on a three-day week,
thereby provoking a seven-week strike in the industry. Solidarity for
85
the bauxite workers came from the sugar belt, in terms of food
supplies and go-slow actions, which, together with protest actions
called by the WPA, considerably strengthened the bauxite workers'
cause. A unity committee of bauxite and sugar workers was
established to give coherence and structure to the developing relations
between the two groups of workers.
The PNC Elite
In a population as small as Guyana's it may be an exaggeration to use

the word 'class' to describe the small number of people who have
enriched themselves under the auspices of the government. Yet,
however small they may be in number, their influence should not be
under-estimated. A series of PNC-controlled enterprises and firms run
by staunch supporters of the ruling party have been given preference
and, in some cases, monopoly control of areas of economic activity.
One law firm, for example, in which the president was a leading
figure, benefits from much of the legal work generated by the state
corporations and the ruling party; the bulk of public sector
construction and architectural work is channelled to two construction
firms; the distribution of many foodstuffs is handled by the curiously
named and PNC-owned Knowledge Sharing Institute (KSI); the PNC-
controlled company, the National Guard Service, is contracted to
supply guards to and owns a number of enterprises which operate
dredges in the goldfields; the PNC-supporting House of Israel has a
variety of businesses. More recently the ruling party has moved into
the cinema business by acquiring the rights to the film Ghandi for a
sum reputedly in the region of US$50,000. By competing from a
position of massively unequal power these and other enterprises have
been the source of considerable profits for a very reduced group of
people.
There is little reason why this pattern of profit accumulation should
change even if the government accepts the IMF and World Bank
pressures to expand the private sector and accommodate foreign
private capital. A good example of how the government is capable of
meeting such demands is illustrated by the case of the airline GUY-
AMERICA. The majority of the shares in the company were held by
US interests, allowing it to be designated as the flag airline of the US
on Guyana flights. The rest of the shares were widely believed to be
held by a few prominent supporters of the ruling party, although no
official in formation has been published. The airline benefited from
promotion by Guyanese diplomatic personnel in the US and from
government contracts in Guyana, despite being in direct competition
86
with the Guyana national airline, Guyana Airways. This government
support for a private airline is contradictory to its supposed policy of
promoting 'co-operative socialism'. The mere expansion of the private
sector within the existing political framework will stimulate more
party-related private business of this nature with the state providing
the necessary infrastructure and administrative back-up to ensure
success.
The refusal by the government to make foreign exchange available
for food and drug imports in 1982 occurred simultaneously with the
flaunting of the fruits of private profit-making. A flood of expensive,
modern cars have appeared on the streets of Georgetown in the last
year, the first imported cars in a decade. Luxury housing is the only
domestic construction taking place, and the children Of the new class
are routinely educated abroad rather than exposed to the tatters of the
state system. Lavish presidential trips abroad accompanied by an
enlarged entourage have occurred on four occasions in 18 months. At
the same time the government prosecutes people in possession of
bread and flour and destroys black market foodstuffs, which clearly
does nothing to improve the country's balance of payments deficit,
the rational for such policies. The government's argument that the
people must eat what Guyana produces can only be regarded as a
cynical rationalization of policies that have produced serious food
shortages. Nor has opposition to the food shortages been reduced by
government propaganda. Token strikes for food, which began on a
one-day per week basis among bauxite workers, have now spread to
other sectors of the workforce, and the major bauxite and sugar union
leadership is having to give official sanction to protest action initiated
by the rank and file.
Given that the tension generated by the present crisis is affecting
every section of the population, including numbers of the ruling party
itself, there is no longer any consensus at any level that what is taking
place in Guyana has anything to do with a transition to socialism.
Those on the right of the political spectrum are convinced that the
collapse is an inevitable consequence of socialist experiments, while
those on the left argue that it is precisely the fact that the PNC
government has never been a genuinely socialist party that is
responsible for the deep economic and social crises. The forces within
the ruling party which would prefer to see some, even token,
allegiance to co-operative socialism retained are weak and declining.
They are over-shadowed by those who point to the fact that the
economy is virtually being run by the IMF and the World Bank and
that the trend towards privatization must be accelerated. This course
of action is supported by the US embassy, which since mid-1982 has
made no bones of its irritation with Forbes Burnham and its
87
preference for someone more predictable. Politically the PNC is
bereft of support from left or right on both the national and
international level. The prestige enjoyed by Guyana among Third
World countries withered away after the murder of Walter Rodney, a
fact which weakened international support for Guyana in relation to
the Venezuelan border dispute, especially since Venezuela has
emerged from the 1970s as one of the few democracies in the continent
and a leading international power (see appendix).
The ability of the PNC to weather this loss of national and
international support depends in part on the capacity of the Burnham
security apparatus to retain control, and in part on the ability of the
opposition parties to take advantage of the crisis. To what extent the
controls built up by the ruling party, especially the support of the
armed forces, are capable of withstanding the internal divisions and
shrinking size of the ruling party is not easy to assess. The armed
forces have largely kept to themselves, although their loyalty to the
PNC has never been in question. Furthermore, the ruling party has
never depended for power on being a mass party, as the party
organization is essentially an extension of Burnham's personality. As
far as opposition parties are concerned, the current dynamism of the
WP A, and the inroads it is making into the traditional strongholds of
both the traditional parties, is an important development.
Nevertheless, the lack of unity among opposition parties and the
unwillingness of the PPP to confront the government creates serious
difficulties.
Guyanese politics over the past three decades has revolved around
the rise and consolidation in power of Forbes Burnham. The
beneficiary of constitutional irregularities and political frauds, of
inept opposition and timely international support, Burnham has
turned all to his advantage. By adopting the most convenient
ideological posture of the moment, he has managed to leave the
majority of Guyanese thoroughly confused as to where he or his party
stands, and survived a series of crises. His pragmatism has been
guided by the needs of a minority party bent, not only on governing,
but on governing absolutely. The ambitions of Forbes Burnham and
those around him could not be contained within the framework of a
democratic constitution, so they took the ultimate step of writing a
constitution around their ambitions. It is safe to predict that when
Burnham falls, their constitution will be rendered unworkable. Thus,
post-Burnham politics, whenever they materialize, will not be a
question of replacing a man but of replacing a system. At present,
there appear to be only two forces in the society which are capable of
inaugurating a new era of Guyanese politics. These are the Working
Peoples' Alliance, which plans to win increasing popular support, and
88
Consumption
The informal market for ground provisions.
Empty supermarket freezers at Linden illustrate the critical food situation .
89
the Guyanese Defence Force, which may yet prove capable of
following the PNC and Burnham himself in suppressing popular
discontent and imposing both IMF policies and 'public order' by
force.
90
Appendices
Appendix One
The Essequibo Border Dispute
The claim by the neighboring republic of Venezuela to 53,000 square
miles of Guyanese territory (amounting to five-eighths of the total
Guyanese land area) is one which has dogged the course of events in
Guyana from the time that the United Kingdom signalled its intention
of granting independence to its colony. Commentators even then
remarked on the coincidence of Venezuelan timing in reopening the
question of its boundary with Guyana and have pointed out that
during the years following the settlement of the border issue in 1899
(and while sovereignty over Guyana was exercised by the United
Kingdom) Venezuela had never voiced any substantive interest in
having the issue re-opened.
Prior to 1962 the boundary between the two countries, a boundary
that had been settled by formal treaty and international arbitration in
the closing years of the last century, had been consistently recognized
by successive Venezuelan governments. However, in 1961 the left-
wing government of Cheddi Jagan was re-elected in Guyana and
before the year was out the Venezuelans had resuscitated their claim.
The position of Jagan's PPP government, and subsequently of the
PPP in opposition, was that there was and could be no frontier
dispute since the boundary with Venezuela had been laid down
pursuant to an award given in 1899 in Paris by an International
Arbitration Tribunal, whose judgment Venezuela had solemnly
agreed by Treaty to regard as 'full, perfect and final settlement' of the
91
border issue. This too, was the stand taken initially by the PNC-UF
coalition headed by Forbes Burnham when it came to power in 1964.
Of course, during the PPP's tenure in office, it was the United
Kingdom that had responsibility for the colony's external relations.
While, at least publicly, the British rejected the Venezuelan contention
respecting the border, nevertheless it was agreed that experts from
each of the three countries involved would meet to examine the
documents relating to the question in order to remove any Venezuelan
doubts as to the circumstances in which the 1899 Award was decreed.
The basis of the Venezuelan contention, and successive governments
have maintained a devotion to the claim that runs deep within the
military and bureaucracy, was that the decision of the arbitration
tribunal was null and void because of alleged fraud and pressure.
Although this examination of the relevant documentation in
London led to no definitive conclusion, Venezuelan agitation
continued up to the eve of Guyanese independence and begs the
question of why President Betancourt of Venezuela opened the border
issue in 1962. One persistent view is that Betancourt perceived Jagan's
visit to Cuba in 1961 and his avowed espousal of socialism as a
vexation to US policy makers. And while it has never been possible for
the PPP to substantiate their allegation that there has always been a
link between Venezuela's manoeuvres and US interests, it is probable
that even a 'socialist' Guyana would not have been viable, if deprived
of two thirds of its territory. Furthermore, the well-known history of
US covert activities in British Guiana in the early 1960s serves as a
warning that such a charge cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Other actions by the United States towards British Guiana at the
time merit some mention. At the United Nations in 1962, when the
draft resolution on British Guiana's independence was being debated,
the Venezuelan delegation had pressed for the inclusion of a provision
in the resolution stating that British Guiana was gaining its
independence with a boundary dispute hanging over its head. As it
turned out, Venezuela failed to persuade most of the world's nations
that the inclusion of such a clause was necessary, but the United
States, along with 12 Latin American nations, abstained from voting
in favour of the resolution. While it is fair to note that, in contrast to
the 12 Latin American states, the US made no reference to the non-
inclusion of the Venezuelan clause as an explanation of their votes,
nevertheless their abstention assumes all the more significance when it
is recalled that Venezuela was represented on the arbitration tribunal
in 1899 by two US justices, one of whom was freely chosen by the
Venezuelan president himself. In other words the unquestioned
legality of the 1899 award ought to be consistently upheld by any US
administration.
92
Following the inconclusive re-examination of the 1899 documents
during various periods from 30 July 1963 through to 1964, there were
further discussions between 1965 and 1966 which led directly to the
setting up of the Geneva conference to settle the 'controversy'. This
first period, 1962 to 1966, could be summarised therefore as one of a
low level of conflict between the protagonists. Only through
discussions and negotiation, often at a ministerial level, did Venezuela
try to advance its point of view and, indeed, the agreement to hold the
Geneva conference marked in itself a considerable advance for
Venezuela in winning recognition of its case.
The Geneva conference of 1966 marks the turning point in the
border issue. Indeed, beginning from that date, the charge had been
levelled at the PNC government that it had deliberately chosen to
handle the border issue as a party affair rather than as a matter of the
gravest national importance. Critics have pointed out that Venezuela's
'spurious claim' ought never to have been raised to the status of an
internal 'controversy'. This had occurred because the opposition
PPP, for example, were unhappy with the agenda for the Geneva
talks, arguing that it appeared to give the Venezuelan claim a status it
did not deserve. More important was the exclusion of any opposition
members from the delegation to Geneva in spite of the specific request
that the team represent a national consensus. However, the
Venezuelan coup de grace was yet to come. After referring to the need
to resolve 'any outstanding controversy' in the Preamble, Article 1 of
the Geneva Agreement, signed by the PNC government, declared that
'A Mixed Commission shall be established with the task of seeking
satisfactory solutions for the practical settlement of the controversy
between Venezuela and the United Kingdom which has arisen as the
result of the Venezuelan contention that the Arbitral Award of 1899
about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela is null and
void.'
Since then the Venezuelans have insisted on making the Geneva
agreement the central focus of all discussions between themselves and
Guyana, claiming that the recognition by the UK and Guyana of a
'controversy' had, by reason of point 2 of the agenda and article 1 of
the agreement, admitted grounds for the invalidity of the 1899 award.
A counter-refusal by the UK and Guyana to recognize controversy
over the border as such has not led to anything more than deadlock.
The PNC government has never felt obliged to issue a public
explanation of the reasons for its signing of the Geneva agreement. No
doubt PNC awareness that an agreement at Geneva had become a
requisite for independence encouraged Burnham to sign the
agreement, the implications of which were not fully considered until it
was much too late. Nevertheless, the issue has become a sensitive one
93
to the regime as indicated by Burnham's ongoing libel case against Dr
Makepeace Richmond over a letter published in the Catholic Standard
of 30 May 1982 referring to Burnham's role in the Geneva
negotiations.
The Geneva agreement opened the way to what the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Guyana in 1968 described as 'a shameful catalogue
of acts of pressure, of intimidation, of economic blackmail directed at
thwarting Guyana's development, of physical occupation of Guyana's
territory and of blatant interference in Guyana's internal affairs.'
Indeed, the period 1966 to 1970 was marked by an increasing level of
conflict while the mixed commission talks between the two sides were
deadlocked from the start. By mid-1968 Venezuela had unilaterally
withdrawn from the sub-commission on joint development projects in
the disputed region, in addition to having brought territorial and
economic pressures to bear on Guyana.
Yet each move by Venezuela- the occupation of the Guyana half
of Ankoko island in 1966, the paid advertisement in the London
Times in 1968 warning companies against investing in the Essequibo;
the Leoni Decree of 1968 declaring sovereignty over coastal waters
within three miles of the Essequibo - led to corresponding diplomatic
manoeuvres by Guyana to win friends at an international level. Within
the United Nations and other international forums Guyana was seen
as being strongly anti-colonialist, anti-racist and supportive of
national liberation movements, so that Guyana was able to publicize
its case before a sympathetic audience. For example, Guyana's
exclusion from signing the Treaty of Tlatclolco in 1967 because of
Venezuelan objections drew a widely acclaimed impassioned speech
from the Guyanese delegation to the UN General Assembly in that
year. Conversely Guyana signed the Vienna Convention on Law of
Treaties in 1969 while Venezuela did not. Moreover, although
Venezuelan complicity in the Rupununi uprising of 1969 was never
proved, it became clear by then that Venezuela's image as being a
Third World leader was becoming tarnished through Guyana's efforts
at the UN. Nor would Venezuela ignore the existence of a tacit
agreement on Britain's part to assist Guyana militarily in case of
Venezuelan aggression.
The US took an ambiguous position in the dispute. Its unstated line
appeared to offer Burnham sufficient support to prevent Jagan
gaining ground out of the dispute, but insufficient support to deflate
the Venezuelan claim.
Finally, there was the Brazilian position, a constant source of
difficulty for Venezuela. Brazil had issued a declaration of diplomatic
support for Guyana following the Leoni decree. Given the conflict
between Brazil and Venezuela over regional zones of influence,
94
Venezuela no doubt considered it diplomatically astute to restrain its
actions.
By 1970, therefore, with the Geneva Agreement about to expire and
the failure of the mixed commission talks, Venezuela was reluctant to
take its case to the UN, being only too well aware of Afro-Asian
support for Guyana. By this time, too, both parties were interested in
minimizing conflict. Guyana was anxious to reduce tensions with
Venezuela and to proceed with the social and economic development
of the disputed areas. Venezuela, for its part, had a more important
border problem with Colombia on its hands, and at the same time was
anxious to refurbish its image within the region as a champion of anti-
colonialism and non-intervention. These factors led to the signing of
the protocol of Port of Spain in June 1970 which froze the controversy
for twelve years. The express aim was to promote mutual confidence
around positive and friendly intercourse between Guyana and
Venezuela. The protocol was seen in Georgetown as a diplomatic
triumph for Guyana and represented the high point of Guyana's
diplomatic manoeuverings.
This protocol to the Geneva agreement did not cause the problem to
go away, much as Guyana may have wished. In fact, it was never
ratified by the Venezuelan congress, all of the political parties
rejecting it on the grounds of non-consultation. The view within
Venezuela was that while the government may have been forced into
accepting the protocol because of Guyana's successful diplomatic
offensive, in no way could it be regarded as a logical extension of the
Geneva agreement. On the other hand, in spite of the obvious
limitations (it dealt neither with the main issue of the controversy nor
with Ankoko and the Leoni decree), it was still in Guyana's interest to
ensure that the protocol be renewed in 1982. Given its internal
difficulties and lack of military power, Guyana could only rely on
world opinion and international law to ensure its territorial survival. It
was therefore incumbent upon Guyana to ensure by co-operation and
diplomacy that the protocol be extended.
However, in the decade that followed the signing of the protocol,
Guyana's international reputation deteriorated considerably. Nor did
Guyana make any efforts in its bilateral relations with Venezuela nor
in developing joint development projects in the disputed area. In fact,
if the border issue was kept alive in Guyana, it was mostly because it
provided a cover for the steady militarization of Guyanese society.
But whereas Guyana was no longer a leader of the developing world,
Venezuela's position had strengthened internationally. Its oil wealth
helped in the pursuit of good relations with Caribbean and other states
and this was complemented by the prestige that accrued from its
successful adherence to democratic traditions. These factors ought to
95
have forewarned Guyana that there would be little chance of
Venezuela agreeing to a renewal of the protocol. By 1980, the
Venezuelan mass media had begun to reflect a renewed interest in the
disputed area, and the government took steps to preclude the
disbursement of international aid or loans for the development of the
area. In April 1981, shortly after a state visit by Burnham, Venezuela
indicated its intention not to extend the life of the protocol.
Although there was much hue and cry within the PNC
administration at this turn of events, the border issue gave to the
regime its only excuse to mobilize support internally. Parades of
schoolchildren and workers were mounted to denounce the
Venezuelan position and distract from the regime's domestic
problems. Indeed Eusi Kwayana, well-known critic of the regime,
pointed out that the Venezuelans had given Burnham a golden
opportunity to improve his internal political standing. Internationally,
Cuba's support for Guyana early in 1981 caused great alarm to the
US, and led to the subsequent White House authorization for the sale
of F16 fighter planes to Venezuela. But Guyana's support for the
British position during the Malvinas war (after New Zealand, Guyana
was the second country to offer Britain its support) has lost regional
sympathy for Guyana, especially in the light of Venezuela's aggressive
support for Argentina.
With the expiration of the protocol of Port of Spain, there followed
a period of stalemate over the choice of mechanism to be used to
resolve the dispute. Recently, however, Guyana acquiesced to
Venezuela's demand to refer the decision as to how the controversy
should be settled to the secretary general of the United Nations. No
doubt both sides will now settle down to long, protracted and fruitless
negotiations which will, in turn, serve as a useful distraction from
more pressing internal problems on each side.
Appendix two
Cultivating Violence: Jonestown and the House of Israel
There has been no dearth of commentators, both local and foreign,

who point out that in spite of Guyana's chequered political history
over the last generation, it took the tumultuous events of Jonestown in
November 1978 to place the country effectively on the map for
millions of people all over the world. Prior to that catastrophic
96
occurrence, the Guyana government had not been averse to openly
championing the cause of the cult leader, Jim Jones. His ostensibly
agricultural commune was held up as a model to be emulated by the
Guyanese people. And its strategic significance on account of its
location in the disputed Essequibo region was not lost on the PNC.
In his book Black and White, Shiva Naipaul described the growing
relationship between the Jonestown People's Temple and the PNC.
'Gradually, the Temple insinuated itself into Guyana's political fabric. Linda
Amos, who was in charge of the Temple's Georgetown office, was a member
of Viola Burnham's Women's Revolutionary Socialist Movement. In August
1978 a WRSM delegation had spent three days in Jonestown. The People's
Temple marched on behalf of the PNC, flaunting their banners. They were
part of the May Day celebrations committee; they mounted agricultural
exhibitions; they played basketball matches against police and army teams;
their pop music band gave concerts and became a conspicuous element in the
cultural life of the capital. Jim Jones and the Guyana of Forbes Burnham
appeared to have a thorough understanding of each other's needs.'
However, when news of the mass murders broke first
internationally and then later in the state-controlled media, the PNC
government acted quickly to dissociate itself from any connection
with Jonestown. What had taken place at Jonestown was deemed by
the PNC to be an American problem which therefore had to be
handled by the United States authorities. Not even the dead bodies of
the 114 cultists were allowed to rest in the Guyanese soil and the airlift
out of Guyana of the rotting corpses was expedited.
But whatever credence may have been given to this version of events
by the outside world and however momentarily the Guyanese people
may have been arrested by the sheer magnitude of the disaster, it did
not take long before voices were calling the government of Guyana to
account for its own part in such a macabre event. As more and more
information was disseminated in the days and weeks following the
events, proof emerged that there had been more complicity on the part
of the regime with the Jonestown cult than Burnham cared to admit in
its aftermath.
The Human Rights Report published by the Guyana Human Rights
Association (January 1980-June 1981) states:
'Collusion by the Guyana government, of at least a passive nature, with the
Jonestown leadership requires that they accept part of the responsibility for
what occurred. Violations of currency and weapons laws, of regulations
governing health and education, and of customs laws had been the subject of
complaint to the government. Interference with the Guyanese judiciary,
threats of mass suicide and constant allegations by relatives that persons were
forcibly detained at Jonestown, furnished numerous occasions for the
government to investigate what was taking place there.'
97
But Jim Jones was not the only cult figure allowed to parade with
impunity before the Guyanese people. A rather more resilient figure,
whose entrance on to the Guyanese stage pre-dates that of Jim Jones,
is the Rabbi Washington, also known as David Hill, who fled
Cleveland, USA, in 1971 while appealing conviction for corporate
blackmail. The Rabbi's House of Israel organization, the
overwhelming majority of whose members are Guyanese, is unlike
Jones' following, which was exclusively American. Both cults,
however, were given a free rein to operate as they pleased and were
extended privileges denied to ordinary citizens.
The implication of the House of Israel in the murder of Fr Darke
generated repeated calls for justice and for a full investigation into the
cult, but the latter continued to operate. Indeed, on 22 July 1979,
within a week of the killing, a minister of the government, Kit
Nascimento, was reported in the Toronto Star as describing the House
of Israel as a 'small ... religious group that lives in a cloistered,
communal atmosphere. The members have declared their support for
the government and they haven't committed any crimes. There is no
reason why we should be concerned.'
Although the People's Temple described itself as an ethnic rainbow,
its membership was largely black. Two thirds of the Temple following
in Guyana were either young or very poor, and were thus easily
manipulated into supporting their leader's ambition. Being generally
uneducated, economically deprived and lacking resources to break out
of the poverty cycle, they invariably succumbed to the alternate
threats and blandishments of the 'father' (Jones) and of the 'master'
(Washington), submitting sheep-like to indoctrination and subsequent
manipulation.
Another important ingredient in the exercise of control was the
manipulation of secret fears and prejudices in the cult following. The
Rabbi is quoted as saying that his followers must be ready to defend
themselves and fight the 'battle of Armageddon' which he sees as a
race war beginning in Guyana in the next two years. Widespread
protests against the offensive racist message disseminated daily by the
Rabbi over the national state-controlled radio have not succeeded in
getting his programme off the air. It seems plausible to conclude that
the open and racially provocative message of the House of Israel
reflects precisely the relationship Burnham would like to see re-created
within Guyanese society. This no doubt explains why the Rabbi is
useful since the PNC party cannot spell out a racist message quite so
crudely. The Jonestown commune, also, had been allowed radio time
in order to broadcast their message whereas even the mildest opponent
of the government is consistently denied access to a national audience.
All essential controls relating to his followers' lives are exclusively
98
in the hands of the Rabbi. As in the case of Jonestown, members do
not have control over their own children, no male and female
relationship is allowed without the Rabbi's approval and the House
marriages form an important area of control. While no member can
own a bank book, he or she must at the same time contribute
exhaustively towards the House's food supply. According to the
Caribbean Contact expose on the Rabbi (June 1982), no-one protests
because all are afraid of the Rabbi's power:
'The votaries of the House of Israel who keep the rules lose their family links,
often for problematic ones ordered by the Rabbi. They lose all they have here,
as they try to keep up with the tithing and pledging, sometimes selling all they
have. They get more and more lonely, poorer and poorer and more loyal and
afraid to part with the cult. Some drop out. None at all ever raise their voices
in public against their former associates.'
This article dismisses the Rabbi's claim to a membership of 8,000

but concedes that 'what he does have is a much smaller band of
fanatics who will obey Elijah's command whatever the cost, when the
Master receives his command from the political arm, the PNC. Thus
there was hardly any surprise in May 1982 when the Rabbi openly
boasted that his House also considered itself a 'military organization'
as reported in the state-controlled daily newspaper. The Rabbi
declared that his organization had been involved in military training
over the past six years as there was 'need to be prepared'. The WPA's
assertion in 1979 that a batch of weapons, including G3 rifles,
bayonets, and small arms, had been transferred from the army to the
House of Israel seemed then to be vindicated.
Jim Jones and David Hill were only two such fringe elements to be
welcomed officially in Guyana. It was to Guyana also that Michael X
fled after the gruesome killings in Trinidad; initially at least, he was
given the red carpet treatment by top government functionaries. Then
there was a New York Post report quoted in the Catholic Standard of
24 December 1978 stating that the United States FBI had issued arrest
warrants for four Americans living in Guyana. The article in the
Standard further mentioned that a newspaper, the Cleveland Plain
Dealer, which had sent a correspondent to Georgetown, reported that
in an interview with David Hill, he himself estimated that at least 10
fugitives from the Cleveland area alone were living in Guyana.
Any similarity between the rules that prevailed in the People's
Temple and the House of Israel and those that prevail within
Guyanese society in general should not be exaggerated. However,
similarities existed in terms of severe living conditions, food
shortages, a heavy dependence on rice in the diet and heavy-handed
discipline against those who opposed the status quo. In fact, the
99
argument that the cults and society may have more in common than
meets the eye is provided by Burnham himself: In a 12 October 1982
New York Times interview, he declared, 'But we will survive. And
even if we all perish, since we are only about one million people, we
wouldn't create a public nuisance.'
Appendix Three
The Role of the Christian Churches in Guyana
In colonial Guyana the mission of the Christian churches was to the

slave and subsequently ex-slave population and had a specific purpose
in mind, to inculcate in them Christian virtues of thrift, sobriety and
obedience. This was particularly true of the established Anglican
church and to a lesser extent of the Methodist and Presbyterian
churches. A more progressive stamp could be discerned in the Non-
conformist Congregational and London Missionary Society church
activities. In the latter case, ideas of emancipation of the slave
communities in a social and political sense informed their work and
frequently brought them into conflict with the colonial authorities.
The planter class quickly perceived the value of missionary work as a
form of pacification and approved grants from the public treasury to
promote the Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and later Catholic
churches' activities, particularly in education. The Guyanese historian
Robert Moore summarized the plantocracy support for the churches
as an attempt to 'imbue the negro with bourgeois values but not with
bourgeois ambitions', in other words to work hard and know their
place.
Acceptance of this role by the churches was reinforced by the arrival
of Catholic missionaries on the coast in the 1830s after the influx of
Portuguese immigrants, which consolidated the ties of the Christian
churches with the colonial power structure. The churches, in other
words, became channels for integrating the black and coloured
majority of the population into acceptance of the prevailing values of
the European elite and, for a minority, avenues of upward mobility. A
further effect of the Christian mission to the black and creole society
was to identify this group as the primary recipients of the Christian
message, in contrast to the indentured Indian immigrants who arrived
afterwards, whose customs and culture were considered 'pagan'. As a
100
consequence of this strategy the majority of the Guyanese population
today is either Muslim or Hindu, with the Anglican community being
the largest of the Christian denominations, followed in size by Roman
Catholics.
Although the Canadian Presbyterian and Lutheran churches in
particular made a specific effort to spread the Christian message
among the lndo-Guyanese community, the mainstream churches
continued to be identified with the creole majority of the population
and, in the case of the Catholic church, with the Portuguese. This
emphasis had geographic implications given the preponderantly Afro-
Guyanese concentration in urban areas. Thus, in ministering to a
predominantly urban following, the churches did not establish day-to-
day contacts with the predominantly rural Indo-Guyanese population.
While this obstacle should not be over-emphasized, it contributed to
the inability and unwillingness of the churches to play an intermediary
role between the races and parties when the political polarizations
began to occur in the country after 1955.
Throughout the decade of the 1950s and early 1960s the Christian
churches waged an incessant campaign against the evils of
communism; in reflecting the 'cold war' hostility which dominated
international politics, they revealed the strength of metropolitan
influences on the established churches' outlook in Guyana. This was
particularly true of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches,
whose leaders, respectively Bishop Guilly and Archbishop Alan
Knight, led the onslaught against the supposed communism of the
PPP. The Catholic Standard, a quarterly publication until the
mid-1960s, distributed propaganda leaflets called Soviet Life Series
which quoted the worst excesses of communist governments. One
stated that it was a 'crime to laugh' in the Soviet Union, and the tone
was summed up in an issue which stated that 'experience shows that
men and women degenerate morally in the communist ranks'. Long
stories of the lurid treatment meted out to priests imprisoned under
communist regimes were frequently carried. A good deal of effort was
put into disseminating the social teachings of the church, particularly
those aspects of it which dealt with the state. The subsidiary role
assigned to the state was underlined in one article which cited public
gardens as an example of appropriate state property. The Anglican
church pursued a similar line of hostility to the governments of the
PPP, although the Archbishop was more moderate in his attacks; to
his credit he expressed relief at the revoking of the Undesirable
Publications Ordinance, which he had supported when it was first
introduced by Lionel Luckhoo. The editor of the Catholic Standard,
by contrast, took the PPP to task for suggesting that the ordinance
was an infringement of human rights.
101
Given its close association with the Portuguese community and the
influence which the United Force exercised over the clerical leadership
of the Catholic church, together with the presence of a number of
priests who were confident of their grasp of the church's social
doctrine, the Catholic church was by far the most vigorous opponent
of the PPP government and what it perceived as its intentions to
enslave the society. The chief instrument for mobilizing Christian
support on issues such as the government control of state schools was
the Christian Social Council, which produced the largest crowd on
record at Bourda Green (20,000 people estimated) in 1961 to oppose
the government on the schools issue. The PPP for its part handled the
situation badly. It did nothing to raise the level of debate above
ideological wranglings nor to assuage the fears of the urban
population by showing that such fears were unfounded.
Benefit of hindsight has demonstrated the degree to which the
established churches, especially the Catholic church, allowed
themselves to be manipulated by the powerful elite with which they
associated. It also demonstrates the extent to which their metropolitan
structures, origins, personnel and directives isolated them from
understanding what was taking place within Guyana. The PPP was
perceived not only as communist, and therefore ungodly, it was also
seen as an alien force with its roots in a sector of the society the church
understood least, namely the rural Indian masses.
By the mid-1960s the Catholic church was reverberating internally
from a series of internal reforms generated by the Second Vatican
Council, which had set the scene for far-reaching changes. Similar
reforms were renovating the rest of the Christian churches. Although
once again metropolitan-induced, these changes in emphasis and
direction opened the way for a variety of initiatives in the Guyanese
Christian churches. The tone of Vatican II and the World Council of
Churches Assemblies was more respectful of the non-Christian faiths
and of socialism. At the regional level the formation of the Caribbean
Conference of Churches in 1972, following the 'Consultation for
Development' at Chaguaramas in 1971, created a framework and a
mandate for the churches to become 'partners' in the development of
the Caribbean.
Within the Guyanese Catholic church the internal renewal was
wedded to a sense of nationalism to which political independence and
the declaration of a republic in 1970 had given an impetus. This was
reflected in policy terms in an attempt to 'Guyanize' the church
personnel by promoting local young men to the priesthood and by
encouraging the predominantly British-born clergy to take out
Guyanese nationality. In 1970 also Bishop Guilly stepped down to
allow Benedict Singh to become the first Guyanese-born bishop in the
102
Catholic church. Guyanization of church personnel led to a church
agreement with the government on a specific number of future
clergymen to be allowed to enter to work in the church in Guyana
from Britain and India, following which no further permissions would
be asked or granted. While the policy of encouraging Guyanese
clergymen has not been as successful as originally predicted, the
agreement has been maintained.
The high schools which the Catholic church had built and staffed
were 'creolized' during this period, so that the almost exclusively
Portuguese and near-white clientele which they had traditionally
served was broadened to incorporate black, Indian and coloured
children. This openness was also reflected in the personnel who came
to the fore in the local churches, most notably in the arrival in Guyana
in 1967 of Fr Michael Campbell-Johnston, a Jesuit priest whose
background was more suited to developing in the Guyanese church the
flexibility which the reforms had made possible.
Unlike his predecessors, who were essentially Christian Democrats
by conviction, arising out of the European-oriented teachings of the
church which promoted a modified version of capitalism as the most
appropriate form of social organization, Campbell-Johnston had
been educated at the London School of Economics in the 1950s and
spent several years working in Mexico and Brazil before coming to
work in Guyana. The Guyana Institute for Social Research and
Action (GISRA), which he established under the auspices of the
churches, provided a channel for more direct social action on the part
of the churches, forcing them to address the Guyanese reality and
attempt to understand it more seriously than they had had occasion to
previously. The Social Action Committee of the Guyana Council of
Churches, under the chairmanship of Fr Campbell-Johnston, put this
concern into practical effect by establishing the David Rose Training
Centre in Ruimveldt, a working-class area of Georgetown with a high
rate of unemployment, and also by establishing the Guyana Legal Aid
Centre in collaboration with a group of socially-minded lawyers.
The effect of the GISRA made itself felt, especially in terms of
the church's reactions to the growing national crisis. The take-over
of all schools by the state in 1975 forced the church to reassess its role
and its involvement in the society. The first sign of the direction it was
to choose was a public disagreement by a number of priests at the
announcement by the Superior of the Jesuit community that the
involvement of Fr Malcolm Rodrigues in the 'Friends of the Sugar
Workers' Committee' (which assisted families of striking GAWU
workers) was personal and not to be taken as representative of the
church. The priests, in contrast, associated themselves with Fr
Rodrigues' action as a genuine concern of the church.
103
A somewhat similar situation confronted the Catholic Standard.
Following the removal of Fr Harold Wong from the editorship of the
paper, the Standard had moved away from social involvement. By
1976, when Fr Andrew Morrison took over the editorship, assisted by
Mike James, the decision had to be taken whether the Standard would
continue to serve the limited church community or attempt to fill the
void created by the nationalization of the media by providing an
independent comment on national events. Perhaps more than any
other factor the sustained revelation by the Catholic Standard of facts
and opinions embarrassing to the government has contributed to the
current confrontational church-state relations which exist. The cost to
the church of using the Standard to promote social justice has been
heavy: its photographer, Fr Bernard Darke, SJ, was killed on the
street, and its sub-editor, Mike James, almost suffered the same fate.
Fr Morrison is subjected to almost continuous slander, and threats
have been made on his life. Libel suits from the government have piled
up, and the paper's printing problems are legion.
During the same period the multi-racial character of both the clergy
and the church membership was emerging as a result, on the one hand
of the 'Guyanization' policy, and on the other by the mass exodus of
Portuguese, largely to Canada. Without giving the impression that the
Catholic church had completely thrown off the features of race and
class which had made it a useful tool of the colonial power a
generation previously, it would be reasonable to conclude that in
terms of the composition of the clergy, openness of membership and
general policy that the church was on more secure ground to challenge
the abuses of the government.
In contrast to what had prevailed in earlier times, the larger
churches were now searching for a more socially responsible role while
the smaller, predominantly black churches were having a difficult time
dealing with the smothering embrace of the PNC. These churches had
allowed themselves to be identified with the new power structure and
were unwilling to confront it on issues of principles. This problem was
exacerbated by the fact that many of these churches had their
governing boards in the United States and had come out of an
historical milieu which saw the disenfranchisement of US blacks as the
major social obstacle with which they had to deal. These boards had
somewhat unquestioningly accepted a black government in Guyana as
automatically contributing to the liberation of the society and
encouraged their missionary wings to support it.
The Burnham government perceived this trend very accurately and
encouraged it by appointing senior clerics from these churches to
diplomatic and ministerial posts. Dr Fred Talbot, Bishop of the
African Methodist Episcopalian Zion church, was appointed as
104
Guyana's ambassador to the United Nations and his wife Sylvia
Talbot was made minister of health. PNC politicians frequently
climbed the pulpits of these churches and through them were able
successfully to restrain the more progressive churches on the Guyana
Council of Churches. The council was able to resist the more flagrant
initiatives of the ruling party to control it, such as an application from
the People's Temple for membership, but the basic problem remained
and continues to frustrate forthright action by the Guyana Council of
Churches.
Despite the attempts at manipulation, the Guyana Council of
Churches has retained a certain measure of independence, as
witnessed by its position on the referendum in 1978 and its
sponsorship of the National Crisis Council in response to the food
shortages and retrenchment in 1982. The Catholic church has not been
a significant force in the council since Fr Campbell-Johnston's
departure in 1975, which partly explains its weakness. Rather than a
concerted ecumenical stand on questions of social justice, individual
churchmen, notably Bishop Randolph George and Fr Malcolm
Rodrigues, SJ, have expressed their concern at a personal level; both
of them have as a result incurred the hostility of the government
because of their forthright criticism.
Catholic priests are subjected to restrictions and harassment,
especially in the interior of the country, and many of them have been
peremptorily moved out of these areas. The government invariably
responds to criticism by persistently attacking the church on the
grounds of its historical association with the small Portuguese
community and its reactionary anti-communist posture of the 1950s.
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Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Adamson, Alan H., Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of
British Guiana, 1838-1904, Yale University Press, New Haven
1972.
Chase, Ashton, A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana 1900-1961,
New Guyana Co. Ltd., Guyana 1965.
Citizens' Committee, Referendum: A Question of Human Rights,
Cedar Press, Barbados, 1978
DeCaires, David (Ed), New World (fortnightly) No.1-46, 1961-1966.
DeCaires, D. and Fitzpatrick, Miles, Twenty Years of Politics in Our
Land, Carribbean Development and the Future of the Church',
GISRA, Georgetown, 1969.
GHRA, Human Rights Report: January 1980-June 1981. Guyana
Human Rights Report: July 1981-August 1982.
Des Voeux, Experiences of a Demerara Magistrate 1865-1870,
reprinted Daily Chronicle Ltd., Georgetown, 1948.
Jagan, Cheddi, The West On Trial, Michael Joseph, London, 1966.
Lutchman, Harold, From Colony to Co-operative Republic, Institute
of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico, 1976.
Rodney, Walter, A History of the Guyanese Working People
1881-1905, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1981.
Thomas, C.Y., Guyana: The Political Economy of Co-operative
Socialism, mimeo, University of Guyana, 1982.
Thomas, C.Y., The Rise of the Authoritarian State (forthcoming),
Heinemann, London.
Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian
Labour Overseas 1830-1920, OUP London, 1974.
UK Parliamentary Human Rights Group, Something to Remember,
Guyana 1980 Elections, London, 1981.
106
GRENADA
WHOSE FREEDOM?
The US invasion of Grenada in October 1983 was a flagrant and
direct violation of international law. The Reagan government's
determination to suppress the Grenadian people's right to
sovereignty and the shallowness of its justification for this position
indicate a preparedness to escalate further the violence with which
its mandate is imposed in the Caribbean and Central America.
Grenada threatened the US because it remained stubbornly
independent and sought to develop its tiny society on its own terms.
The tragic collapse of the government of the New Jewel Movement
simply provided the pretext for an invasion that had been prepared
and rehearsed long before.
Grenada: Whose Freedom? gives the background to and
outlines the substantial advances of the 1979 'Peaceful Revolution'
and shows why it was repugnant to both Washington and the
Thatcher government. It discusses the debate inside the New Jewel
Movement, the fall of Maurice Bishop and the events surrounding
the invasion itself .
:
•
latin America
Bureau
-
- ~0-=--:_~--:-~-
Available from Latin America Bureau. 1 Amwell Street, London

EC1R 1UL
£2.95 plus £0.75 postage and packing
US$6.00 plus US$2.00 postage and packing
ISBN 0 906156 25 4 Publication April 1984
THE POVERTY
The IMF and Latin America
The international debt crisis which hit the headlines in S<>nt••ml-.<>r

1982 has underlined the power that is wielded by the International
Monetary Fund. As the ultimate source of credit for heavily
endebted Third World countries, it can impose onerous conditions
on those nations that need its assistance. The burden of such
conditions always falls most heavily on the poorest sectors of the
population.
The Poverty Brokers rejects the IMF claim that these conditions
are based purely on technical considerations. The IMF subscribes to
a particular political and economic view of the world which reflects
the priorities of the few Western nations that control it. This view
favours those who stand to gain most from the unhindered
operation of market forces, notably the transnational corporations
and the international banks. By imposing such views on Third World
debtor nations, the IMF in fact perpetuates the structures which
sustain underdevelopment and poverty.
The Poverty Brokers explains the role of the IMF, examines how
it works, who benefits from its operations and shows why it is crucial
to the efforts of Western nations to resolve the present debt crisis. It
analyses, through case studies of Peru, Jamaica and Chile, how
previous IMF interventions have affected the poor and under-
privileged of the Third World. Finally, it examines proposals for
reform of the IMF and the international financial system.
Available from Latin America Bureau, 1 Amwell Street, London

EC1R 1UL
£3.25 plus £0.75 postage and packing
US$7.00 plus US$2.50 postage and packing
ISBN 0 906156 17 3 Published October 1983

Guyana - Fraudulent Revolution

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The causes of the present tragic situation in Guyana are complex in

Population 803,000 (1982)

People East Indians 51 OJo

Religion Christian 460Jo

Health Life Expectancy (1975-80) 69.1 years

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Principal towns Georgetown (capital) 183,000

Government Executive Presidency since 1980

1621 Dutch West India Company takes control of Essequibo

1651 Berbice under Dutch control.

1665 British attempts to drive out Dutch fail.

1678 Shipment of African slaves to British Guiana to work on

1708 French fail to drive out Dutch.

1814 Territory ceded to Britain by Treaty of Utrecht 1814.

1831 Three counties. of Essequibo, Berbice and Demerara

1838 Abolition of slavery in British territories.

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1851 Indentured Indian labourers brought in to replace slaves.

1853 Chinese immigrants arrive.

1917 End of indentured immigration.

1919 British Guiana Labour Union formed - the first trade

1939 Moyne Commission established to investigate social unrest

1950 PPP formed under leadership of Dr Cheddi Jagan.

1953 First elections under universal adult suffrage.

1955 PNC formed from split in PPP led by Forbes Burnham.

1957 PPP wins general election.

1961 PPP wins general election.

1963 80-day general strike led by civil service, financed by the

1963-64 Racial violence, murder, arson, hundreds killed as PNC

1964 Elections under new proportional representation system.

1966 Independence from Britain. Name changed from British

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1970 Guyana declared a 'Co-operative Republic'. Governor

1970-76 Nationalization of all major foreign economic assets

1972 Diplomatic relations estabished with Cuba.

1973 Elections massively rigged. Ballot boxes seized at close of

1975 Doctrine of the 'paramountcy of the party' enunciated in

1978 Referendum to allow a two-thirds majority to change any

1979 Formation of WP A: multi-racial independent Marxist

1980 Assassination of Dr Walter Rodney, leader of WP A, by

1980 New constitution promulgated. Executive presidency

1981 Government spending cuts cause major redundancies in

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1982 Food shortages broaden, flour imports stopped,

1983 Bauxite industry in crisis, strikes in sugar and bauxite

The first party formed in Guyana, under the leadership of Dr Cheddi

2. People's National Congress {PNC)

Originaliy formed as a result of a split in the PPP, the PNC came to

3. Working Peoples' Alliance (WPA)

Originally a group of small left-wing interests, the WP A formally

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Formed in 1979 by a coalition of three small parties, the Vanguard,

5. United Force (UF)

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Creating a Country and a Population

In the late eighteenth century, sugar was the most lucrative

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