Origins of Contemporary Racial Insecurity in Guyana: 1953 British Invasion, Attack on the Movement for Colonial Freedom, and the Break Up of the Early Multi-Racial Politics
This larger essay was edited into a letter to the editor to The Guardian (UK) in response to a recent series posted online August 19, 2023 highlighting the Demerara slave revolt of 1823, the brutal and burdensome conditions of African enslaved and later Indian indentured servants, the family of the famous British politician William Gladstone benefiting from his father John Gladstone’s ownership of slaves in Guyana and the Caribbean, and their descendants’ (among them Charlie Gladstone’s) desire to support reparations and offer charitable contributions toward high education in Guyana and Britain to clarify the horrors of slavery.
What the series did not highlight, and it played its intended role, was the Anglo-American invasion of Guyana in 1953; its attack on the movement for colonial freedom in that country. This created conditions that led to race riots between Africans and Indians in 1961–1964, and delayed official independence, as “the cooperative republic,” to 1966. Kwayana argues this, and not historical slavery, is the main cause of contemporary racial insecurity in Guyana. He has written with Tchaiko Kwayana a history called Scars of Bondage: a first study of the slave colonial experience in Guyana (2002).
The essay below has been updated to share additional historical facts, particularly about Amerindians, since its original publication.
I come from Guyana, where the month of August used to be called “Freedom Month” by politically active people of my ancient generation. And this was so because of two events. One was the abolition of chattel slavery by an act of parliament which came into effect on the 1st of August 1834, after the enslaved had made it clear that the system was unsustainable. The second event encouraging us to deem August “Freedom Month” had nothing to do directly with Guyana. But it was the coming to India of Swaraj, or Home Rule after about a century of struggle. It is therefore interesting that the series of articles in The Guardian (8/19/23) treat the questions of human bondage from various angles. All of their highlights of great human interest are now the semi-official theme of reparations and in particular compensation to the Gladstone family and other slave owners for the loss of their valuable property, namely their slaves are talking tools.
Beyond the Semi-Official Theme of Slavery Reparations
There is little to contend with in the series as published. Yet the information about the Gladstone family’s earnings makes the point without making it that although indentured servants (from Asia, Africa, and Madeira) endured working conditions very similar to those endured by the enslaved, there was an essential difference between the systems. Due to the intervention of industrial changes and conceptions of humanity, indentured servants escaped the status of property which could be sold.
It is historically documented but yet not widely known that communities of indigenous people had endured enslavement. Dr. Noel Menezes gives the year in which that bondage ended. Recently, I received direct oral evidence from a descendant of indigenous people who had been enslaved in balata plantations in the North West District. I mention this so that historians may explore it further.
One of the themes arising out of the emancipation discussion is resistance. Yet we cannot leap too quickly from slave revolts without highlighting Guyana’s movement for colonial freedom in the twentieth century. This is one of the factors often omitted when considering lingering racial insecurity in contemporary Guyana.
Remember the Movement for Colonial Freedom in Guyana
I want to let the world remember that in Guyana, beginning in the late 1940s, a year before I myself became active, a small band established the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) which after years of effort matured into Guyana’s second but longer lasting mass political party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), the first being the short-lived Popular Party of the late 1920s. The PPP executive committee defeated a motion that it should not seek to win the 1953 elections but seek to increase its representation and use the national forum, as Dr. Cheddi Jagan had done between 1947–1953, to reawaken the freedom spirit of Guyanese of all classes and ethnicities.
Government Repressed, Some Detained as Subversive Threat
The entire colonial world was uplifted, one might say too much uplifted, by this peaceful insurgency, and the USA and its client partner the UK decided that such examples could not be encouraged. Acting through the British colonial office and parliament, they issued the famous White Paper and sent warships and troops to the Caribbean-South American colony, ”with the utmost dispatch.” It was the end of the PPP as a party in the Executive Council of the colony. The Legislative Council elected by the people was shut down and before it had lived one year of the five years allotted to it by the Constitution received from England.
Striking Terror in the Hearts of Colonized People Trying to Exercise Democracy
The Constitution under which the election of 1953 had been held was suspended by the British parliament and several organizations were outlawed. And while the PPP was allowed to exist, two youth organizations friendly to it were outlawed. Scores of homes along the coast were raided by the police under the guardianship of the British soldiers, who tried to strike terror into their hearts of the small population. To make an example to others, five activists, two Indian-Guyanese and three African-Guyanese including this writer were detained at the U.S. wartime airbase, Atkinson Field.
State of Emergency Declared
A state of emergency was declared in October 8–9, 1953. The Governor of the country, Sir Alfred Savage read on radio to the nation the British White Paper which said bluntly that the elected ministers were “planning to turn the country into a communist state subordinate to Moscow.” The rest is history. And it is unnecessary to repeat what can be found on the internet. However, let it be said that Dr. Jagan and Mr. Burnham had gone to India, Egypt and then England to win support against the suspension. They were in the House of Commons as spectators when that body approved the Order in Council of the cabinet imposing the repressive measures.
Savage Interim Government
Here was a leader of world democracy, the UK, a founder of the UN, empowering a small population to vote for its government, and then after 133 days overturning its own empowerment. And leaving the population disempowered. Her majesty’s government appointed the Robertson Commission to examine the circumstances leading to the suspension of the Constitution by said government. The Commission did what was expected of it, and recommended for the country “a period of marking time” under an interim government made up of members handpicked by his excellency Sir Alfred Savage.
Remember Damon: Slave Rebel, First Martyr of Unfinished Emancipation
There is one historical fact that the series of articles may have included but did not. It is the role of Damon, a slave, who in Essequibo became the symbol of a movement opposing an exposing the falsity of an emancipation which ordered those just emancipated to work by compulsion without pay for up to seven-and-a-half hours in any one day for their old plantation owners. This revolt took the form of passive resistance on the even of 1st August in the Church Yard at LaBelle Alliance, Essequibo. As an example of passive resistance, not a word was spoken by the demonstrators and no one complained of being hurt. Ultimately, Damon was tried under the governorship of Governess Carmichael Smith and executed. He was the first martyr of the unfinished emancipation. This story of Damon is best told in Ten Days that Changed the World by Hugh Payne.
Search for Reparations and Contrition for Slavery Should Not Obscure Politics of the Anti-Colonial Era and Its Legacies for Today
I have noted from the articles read to me the concerns of the Gladstone family and other eminent persons about apologies, reparations, and other forms and shows of contrition for wrongs done to human beings. All of this is very commendable. There is another kind of wrong that is seldom admitted by the offender and yet can have consequences or mass disillusionment. It is a form of injury affecting whole societies. In this connection it should be noted that communal violence effecting ethnic groups was an only fleeting occurrence in Guyana before the 1960s. And that it established itself 9 years after the PPP of 1950 had split in 1955 during the State of Emergency and the repression.
Unknown Consequences of early 1950s Subversion, Detention, and Split
Because of the restrictions imposed on many of us, I was unaware of what sparked the split in the PPP. There is one written version of it in Democracy Betrayed by Jai Narine Singh, one of the six ministers of 1953. I can claim that after the Emergency in 1957, although I had withdrawn from the PPP on the issue of Caribbean Federation, my first act was to hold a public meeting in Georgetown and appeal for a federation between the PPP led by Dr. Jagan, and the People’s National Congress (PNC) led by Mr. Burnham. The appeal failed significantly. In 1976, however, it is said under pressure from Cuba and other of the units of the non-aligned movement, the PPP and the PNC were discussing in secret sessions a form of union between them. There is one small book by Halim Mageed on the course of these discussions in which he was a note-taker. It is hard to dismiss the idea or the argument that despite all that is known about rivalry for office and especially for leadership, that the split in the national movement in Guyana was not unrelated to the consequences of the repression of 1953.
Remember Racial Insecurity Among Guyanese That the Colonizer Sowed
The role of the groups and people outside of the center of the PPP was diminished because of the repression. This transformed what were collegial exchanges on ways of solving problems within a multi-racial party to increasing racial insecurity where activists felt uncertain and retreated from principled discussion.
Emancipation remains unfinished business.
