British Guiana: Admission of Failure

Cheddi Jagan, British Guiana’s Marxist Premier, finally gave in—at least for the time being. Last week East Indian members of lagan’s agricultural workers’ union were going back to work after the longest and bloodiest strike in the little South American colony’s turbulent history. Even with the six-month strike officially over, peace is returning slowly.

Jagan ordered the walkout last February to force recognition of his union by sugar growers, and create enough disturbance to make Britain postpone this autumn’s election, which he would most probably lose. He failed on both counts. All he accomplished was to weaken the country’s economy and touch off a vicious racial war between his 295,000 East Indian supporters and the colony’s 190,000 determinedly anti-Jagan Negroes.

To enforce Jagan’s demands for his union over an older, bigger union, East Indians started harassing nonstriking Negroes in the sugar fields. Before long, any real issue was forgotten in the racial hatred. Houses were bombed, plantations burned, men, women and children on both sides set upon without mercy. A month ago, terrorists planted a time bomb on a river ferry carrying 69 Negroes; at least 40 were killed. Negroes retaliated by blowing up Jagan’s party headquarters in Georgetown, killing a Negro worker and narrowly missing the Premier’s Chicago-born Communist wife and party secretary, Janet Rosenberg.

Citing “the callous disregard for human life that has been shown by terrorists up and down the country,” British Governor Sir Richard Luyt called in 5,000 Tommies to quell the riots and assumed emergency rule—in effect stripping Jagan of power. He also ordered Guianese to turn in all private firearms except licensed pistols, under pain of life imprisonment plus flogging. Through it all, the Colonial Office in London stood firm by the election schedule, while the sugar companies stuck with the established union.

By the time Jagan finally called a halt to the strike, in the interests of “national unity and harmony,” the deaths totaled 173, with uncounted thousands injured. Moreover, many workers are still idle because cane growers are between spring and fall crops. The beatings and killings continue, and four or five houses go up in flames every night.