British Guiana: A Nearness to Civil War

A general strike has been raging in British Guiana for eleven weeks against the regime of Marxist Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan. The bitter division of the colony between the Negroes and the East Indians (still loyal to their countryman Jagan) is worsening. Violence is spreading from the Georgetown capital to the countryside, where en raged mobs of anti-Jagan Negroes battle with the East Indian farmers.

As the fighting continued, Jagan appointed his wife, Chicago-born Janet Rosenberg, a onetime Young Communist Leaguer and the colony’s most controversial woman, to be Minister of Home Affairs, making her, in effect, British Guiana’s top cop. Neither Janet nor her police have been able to quiet things. All that prevents outright racist civil war is the presence of 500 British troops that Jagan called upon to protect his tottering regime.

In London Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys rejected any suggestion that Britain suspend British Guiana’s self-governing constitution and take charge, but another 145 troops were airlifted to British Guiana “because of a deterioration in the situation.” At week’s end, the efforts of a British negotiator finally brought a truce between Jagan’s government and the striking unions. But the racial differences have cut so deep that no easy end to the violence was expected.