Articles by Cheddi Jagan 1964-1992
U.S. ON TRIAL IN GUIANA (1965)
By Cheddi Jagan
How sincere is the West, particularly the United States on its pronouncements about democracy and freedom? Is the U.S. sincerely interested in world peace? Those who have, followed events in my small country have expressed grave reservations.
In early 1962 , after his interview with the Editor of 'Izvestia' President Kennedy attacked the communists for subversion and condemned Dr, Fidel Castro for denying freedom and not holding elections, In the same interview he said: "…. the United States supports the idea that ever people should have the right to make a free choice of the kind of Government they want. Mr. Jagan who was recently elected Prime Minister in British Guiana is a Marxist, but the United States doesn’t object because that choice was made by honest election, which he won."
Despite these oft-expressed sentiments, the United States has twice, in a little more than a decade, sabotaged democracy in British Guiana. Somehow deeds do not square up with words.
In 1953, my popularly elected Government became one of the early victims of the Cold War. Since 1962 U.S. agencies and top-ranking officials, by words and deeds, deliberately worked to remove my Government from office. President Kennedy, according to U.S. columnist Drew Pearson put pressure on the British Government to withhold Independence. A top-ranking State Department official, Mr. William Tyler, speaking before a Congressional sub-Committee, said that the U.S. Government was out of sympathy with my Government and would like to see it out of office. Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was reported to have urged the Macmillan Government to suspend our constitution or to hold a referendum on a new system of voting demanded by the opposition.
The imposition of proportional representation, deemed by Mr. Harold Wilson in July 1964, when, he was Leader of the Opposition, as a "fiddled constitutional arrangement", led to the removal of my party from the Government, nearly a year before the expiry of my constitutional term of office. The December 7 elections, conducted by the British Government with the aid of a hostile local administrative machine, were far from free and fair. Electoral procedures and irregularities aimed at helping the opposition were indulged in. U.S. money, advisers and propagandists poured in. Yet my party, the People's Progressive Party, topped the polls with 46% of the votes, increased its total by 3.3% as compared with a drop of .4% for the People's National Congress (P.N.C,) and 4% for the United Force (U. F.).
The election results were a clear indication of a vote of confidence in my party and Government. Despite this, the British Labour Government amended the constitution to force my Government out of office and to install the P.N.C., which polled only 40°% of the votes, This procedure was in marked contrast with recent events in Canada, Venezuela and the United Kingdom.
In the recent Venezuelan election, the Accion Democratica, in spite of the fact that its total percentage of votes dropped from 49% in 1958 to 32% in 1964, formed the Government. Its poll was the highest for any single party.
In Canada, Prime Minister Lester Pearson's Liberal Party failed to get an absolute majority. Yet it formed a minority Government, having won the largest number of seats for any single party.
In the United Kingdom, the Labour Government was formed in spite of the fact that the Labour Party polled only 44% of the total vote.
It would appear that yardsticks principles and conventions applied elsewhere are not to be applicable to this colonial outpost on the South American inland. Western democracy is not for export here. In 1962, the late President Kennedy could write President Betaneourt and say that "the preservation and strengthening of freely effected constitutional Government is the aspiration of all the people of the Americas" and give support to his regime. But in British Guiana, my democratic regime was sabotaged and ejected from office,.
As regards the peaceful intentions of the United States of America, President Johnson recently said :
"We live in a turbulent world. But amid conflict and confusion, the United States holds firm to its primary goal .. a world of stability, freedom and peace where independent nations can enjoy the benefits of modern knowledge. Here is our difference with the Communists - and our strength. They would use their skills to forge new chains of tyranny. We would use ours to free men from the bonds of the past."
In similar vein the late President Kennedy, in his remarkable address at Washington University, remarked that "World peace like community peace does no require that each man love his neighbour - it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance submitting their disputes to just and peaceful settlement."
But what was our experience? Here in this small colonial outpost, the microcosm of today's world problems, U.S. Citizens and agencies had been busily engaged in undermining parliamentary democracy, by the use of force and violence. The Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), the Washington-based Institute for Free Labour Development, the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade fomented disturbances, which gave the British Government the excuse for withholding independence and imposing the rigged electoral system of proportional representation, long rejected by both the U.S./ British Governments. Despite what the policy makers may say, the "big stick" seems to be still the major instrument of U.S. foreign policy. And there can be no genuine and lasting peace so long as force and fraud are used to store up puppets and a decaying Old Order.
Some have seen U.S. accommodation with the U.S.S.R. as evidence of its peaceful intentions. But it must not be forgotten that in seeking this accommodation the U.S. was facing reality. After all, the policy of cordon sanitaire (encirclement of Communism) and liberation of captive States (Eastern Europe) had failed. Besides, it was necessary to carry out a policy of appeasement at home - to calm jittery nerves frayed by threat of a thermo- nuclear holocaust and of cancer from nuclear fallout.
It is perhaps more realistic to observe that behind the silken glove of accommodation was the iron hand of ruthlessness. One sees evidence of this everywhere in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and Asia. In the name of anti-communism, democratic regimes are being undermined and removed from office by force and fraud.
In the Caribbean and Latin America, Pan-Americanism and the Monroe doctrine are invoked to maintain the status quo. Using its traditional anti-colonialism as a shield, the U.S. employed the Monroe doctrine in the early period of its expansionism to keep European colonial powers away from its special preserve in the Western hemisphere. Today anti-communism is made a bogey and the triarchy - the high church, the landlords and the military - are kept in power by whatever means available. And the Monroe doctrine is so used as to be a shield against any new ideas. Those like Quodros, Arosomena, Bosch and Goulart, who attempt to solve growing problems and difficulties - balance of payments, falling prices, loss of markets, declining economic growth rate, inflation, lowered living standards, etc., by exploring new ways and by seeking new contacts with non-traditional sources, are forcibly removed from office.
U.S. philosophy seems to be "if you are not with us, you are against us." Those whom the State Department does not like are uprooted. Some are not allowed to take their seats even after winning at elections. Announced elections are cancelled as in Guatemala, when it is feared that left-wing candidates will win. And those who manage to win are pressed not to fulfil their electoral promises.
It is in this context and against this background that the British Guiana situation must be viewed and understood. My party won in spite of gerrymandering of constituencies and other manoeuvres at three consecutive general elections since 1953. My first Government, elected on an overwhelmingly popular vote, lasted in 1953 for only 133 days when British gun boats removed it from office. An engineered split in my party failed to defeat it at the 1957 elections. Despite promises made and commitments given by the British Government and local opposition, independence was denied after our 1961 electoral victory. Even though I was prepared to make all the concessions necessary to allay deliberately engineered fears and apprehension at home and abroad, all my proposals - consultative machinery, civil United Nations presence, guarantees of fundamental rights, independent judiciary, treaty of neutrality as in Austria - were cast aside. Even my offer of a coalition Government of the P. P. P. and the P.N.C. based on parity in the Council of Ministers and a negotiated settlement on the premiership, was rejected. The latter would have had the effect not only of uniting the working class but also of healing the communal breach between the two major ethnic groups in the country.
It is common knowledge here that the P.N.C. rejected my offer of a coalition because of U.S. pressure, This, of course, is understandable. U.S. policy has not materially changed since the start of the Cold War when united front governments embracing socialists, communists and resistance fighters were destroyed in Belgium, France and Italy as a pre-condition to the receipt of Marshall Aid. The last thing the U.S. wants is a strong government which will pursue a policy of non-alignment, anti-imperialism and friendship with Cuba in foreign affairs and pro-working class socialist-oriented democratic reforms in its domestic policy. No wonder a U.P.I. dispatch of December 6, reported that: "in London and Washington the idea of Jagan leading the colony to independence is anathema."
Although the vast majority (86% - P. P. P.= 46% ; P.N.C. = 40%) of the Guianese people voted for democracy and socialism, (the P.N.C, leadership demagogically claimed that its policies will be democratic, socialist and non-aligned) they now have foisted upon them a P.N.C- U.F,. coalition Government, the policy of which will be the policy of the ultra reactionary United Force (U.F.). This party of big business is the main beneficiary of the P.R. elections, and will be the real power behind the throne.
The P.N.C - U.F, alliance is a sell-out to colonialism and imperialism; a betrayal of the interest of the Guianese people. In 1962, when a Commonwealth Commission in the disturbances of February, 1962, came to this country, they wrote that the P.N.C.'s policy was "vague and amorphous", while "the policy of the U.F is more clear and categoric. Mr. d’Aguiar was espousing the cause of businessman and the upper middle class. He himself had an important stake in the country and his politics were therefore not quite free from personal motives."
Already it is becoming clear that the policy of the alliance will be the policy of Big Business. Mr., d’Aguiar, the new Finance Minister has converted a previous compulsory savings scheme into a voluntary one, at the same time doubling the rate of interest and making it tax free! He has warned that it is not his conception of Government that it should compete with private enterprise in business and industry. And the P.N.C leader, no doubt at the behest of his U.S. backers, has dropped reference to democratic socialism, which he demagogically used before and during the election campaign. He now uses glib Madison Avenue slick phrases, like consultative democracy, peace, freedom and equality of opportunity.
There is genuine fear that this country is heading for a Latin American Caudillo-type of rightwing dictatorship. The new regime, having been installed by force and fraud, is likely to perpetuate itself by the same means, especially when disillusionment and disenchantment, particularly of the supporters of the P.N.C, come about. Already the U.S. - financed press is calling for rule by the iron hand and ruthless suppression of those who may oppose this puppet regime. Fearing the denial of the civil liberties and the abrogation of constitutional guarantees, the P. P. P. , at mass rallies held throughout the country put forward the following five-point demands:
(1) End of rule by emergency and release of all detainees.
(2) Correction of ethnic imbalance in Police and Security Forces, so that they reflect a broad cross –section of the country.
(3) New constitutional arrangements.
(4) New elections under changed electoral system:
(5) Voting at 18.
(6) Removal of the Governor.
Americans who cherish freedom and love democracy cannot but be alarmed at the trend of events at home and abroad where principle is being sacrificed at the altar of expediency. That their country is abandoning its traditional policy of anti-colonialism is increasingly being recognised far and wide. Even a former Tory Secretary of State for the Colonies Mr. Iain McLeod in a recent debate in the House of Commons could say that "there is an irony we all recognise in the fact of America urging us all over the world towards colonial freedom except where it approaches their own doorstep. I believe their fears are exaggerated. I do not think Dr. Jagan is a Communist. The American attitude seems dangerous because in my experience if you put off independence because you fear you may get a left-wing government, the most likely thing to happen is that you will get a government even further to the left". And the famous historians Mr. Arnold Toynbee could remark that, "today America is no longer the inspirer and leader of the World revolution ... by contrast America is today the leader of the world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in defence of vested interests. She now stands for what Rome stood for".
British Guiana is the acid test. As the late Anourin Bevan put it in 1953 after the gunboat removal of my Government from office, Western democracy and freedom mean "you are free to have the government you want so long as it is the kind of government we like". There will be no freedom, there will be no peace, until the U.S. abandons the ‘big stick’ as the instrument of its foreign policy.
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2000
Speech by Cheddi Jagan at Freedom House Reception (December 18, 1987)
Permit me to thank you for joining me on this special celebration marking my 40th Anniversary as a parliamentarian.
This aspect of my life was both challenging and exhilarating. During these years, at all times, I never lost sight of the fact that my presence in Parliament was due to the Guyanese people who reposed confidence in me and the Party I head – the People’s Progressive Party. In successive elections since 1947, they elected me to serve in Parliament and for this I want to sincerely thank them. In turn, I feel satisfied that at no time did I even contemplate betraying that confidence or do anything contrary to their interests and well-being.
The past four decades can truly be said to have been the best period of my life. It is one filled with significant successes and, of course, not without setbacks. In my opinion, this was a period of trials and upheavals as well as of major changes which had an impact, in one way or another, on our people and country.
In these 40 years, whatever I have achieved can be credited firstly to my parents and my wife, secondly to all those selfless and heroic comrades of my Party who stood and still stand by me; thirdly to our heroes, named and unnamed; and fourthly to the American and Russian revolutions and to those outstanding world figures Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
My parents made the necessary sacrifices for my formal education. My wife insisted that though bread was important, man does not live by bread alone, that life is not just two cars in every garage and two chicken in every pot. Karl Marx made me understand what makes the world go round. And our heroes and Lenin, Gandhi and King taught me how to change Guyana and inspired me to struggle. My comrades’ steadfastness gave me the strength to continue, especially in times of adversity.
Other factors: Country and town; East and West; US education which is more democratic as compared with British. I feel particularly pleased with the knowledge that I have contributed to uniting the working people, winning adult suffrage and independence, eliminating some of the inequalities brought about by the divide-and-rule tactics and wiping out some of the vestiges of colonialism. May I also take the opportunity of this occasion to underline the singular importance of the formation of the PPP which in a myriad of positive ways have been playing a major role in our nation life. In government; In opposition.
I want to assure you that I will continue to work as a Guyanese and as a member of the PPP for working class and racial unity, for national and social liberation, for economic justice and social progress and prosperity for our people and country.
In this task I am strengthened by the fact that what I stand for is winning out. During the past forty years socialism has become a world system, the communist and working class and national liberation movements have become a powerful force, colonialism has been virtually obliterated, the peace movement has grown, disarmament for development is on the current agenda, and democratisation of international political life is gaining momentum.
All of these developments serve to strengthen my resolve, raise my hopes and sustain my optimism that successes and final victory in our struggles in Guyana may not be too distant. My confidence is as strong as every that our people will unite and will carry out united struggles to put Guyana in the mainstream of world history.
I will continue to make my contributions to such ends and, I believe, if we all act together, we will see that new day dawn, sooner, rather than later.
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2000
How Washington interfered and the Labour leaders changed their minds about Guyana.
A FOREIGN anthropologist familiar with Guyana in a letter to me said that he welcomed the recent exposure of the CIA plot to overthrow the People's Progressive Party regime. He did so "because several American anthropologists have harped on our `under-emphasizing' the `hostility' between the Indians and Negroes".
It is understandable why many American anthropologists overemphasized the so-called racial problem. No doubt many who came here were CIA agents and were anxious to present a distorted view of the real struggle in which this country has been engaged particularly for the past two decades.
It should be noted that Professor Ralph L. Beals at the annual anthropologists' meeting last November reported that: "Agents of the intelligence branches of the US Government, particularly the CIA, have posed as Anthropologists" and that "Anthropologists . . . have been full or part-time employees of the US intelligence agencies, including the CIA especially, either directly, or through grants from certain foundations with questionable source of income".
Anthropologists are not the only people who distort facts and "manage" news. Congressmen Armistead Seldon and William S. Milliard, two members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee visited Guyana last November as part of a Latin American study mission. In their recently published Congressional Report they say that "Guyana's ability to pursue development scheme and attract international private and public capital will depend in large measure upon resolution of the racial issue which plagues the country", and that Guyana's political problems stemmed from "the manoeuvres of professed Marxist Cheddi Jagan and his wife".
From this report, one would come to the conclusion that we were the fomenters of racialism and were the stumbling blocks to development and progress. The fact is that racism and anti-communism have been the main weapons used by Anglo-American imperialism to "contain" and destroy the Guyana liberation movement.
In 1953, our Constitution was suspended and the PPP government was forcibly expelled from office on the excuse that it was setting up a one-Party, Communist state. Nearly a decade later, at the October 1963 independence conference, Duncan Sandys refused to fix a date for independence and changed our electoral system. He charged that "racialism was the curse to British Guiana today" and attributed blame for the turmoil to "the development of Party politics along racial lines. In the present acute form, this (racialism) can be traced to the split in the country's main political Party in 1955. It was then that the People's Progressive Party, which had previously drawn its support from both the main races, broke into two bitterly opposed political groups, the one predominantly Indian led by Dr. Jagan, and the other, predominantly Africa, led by Mr. Burnham".
Anglo-US Conspiracy
What Sandys failed to mention was that the Burnham split of 1955 was engineered by the Churchill-led British Government. And it was the same Burnham who was backed by the US Government after our success at the 1961 elections, which after the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco in Cuba resulted in near hysteria in Washington. Arthur Schlesinger, Jnr., admits in his book A Thousand Days that after a conversation with Burnham in Washington in May 1962, he recommended to the late President Kennedy that the United States should back Burnham and the way to destroy the PPP Government was by the introduction of proportional representation. And Drew Pearson, the American columnist, reported on March 22nd, 1964, that Kennedy made a special trip to London in the summer of 1963 to see Harold Macmillan to pursuade him not to grant independence to Guyana. According to Drew Pearson, the 1963 "strike was secretly inspired by a combination of United States CIA money and British Intelligence" and gave "London the excuse it wanted" for withholding independence and changing our electoral system.
The root cause of our present racial and other problems is thus the Anglo-American cold war conspiracy to destroy the PPP. Today, US-dictated trade, fiscal and economic policies obediently carried out by our puppet government, are the main reasons for the present stagnation, dissatisfaction and unrest.
Labour Party leaders, when in opposition, had taken a strong position. Harold Wilson had declared that the decision to change our electoral system was "a fiddled constitutional arrangement". Arthur Bottomley had described the Sandys proportional representation formula as "riddled with disadvantages . . . quite unknown in any other Commonwealth Colony .... Those who supported him (Sandys) have done so not because they think that it will reduce racial problems but because they think that it will put some one whom they prefer to 'Dr. Jagan".
When I saw Anthony Greenwood at his desk at the Colonial Office I put in his hands the "Research Paper on the PNC (Burnham's Party-Editor) Terrorist Organisation" and gave him a separate memorandum on the conspiracy of the CIA, the political opposition and the Guiana TUC. I suggested that the elections fixed for December 7th be deferred, and that the Commonwealth team suggested by Harold Wilson in the House of Commons in June 1964 be set up to work out a solution. Neither Greenwood nor Wilson agreed with my suggestions.
Why Labour changed
This reversal of Labour's stand was clearly due to pressure from Washington. On October 31st,. 1964 (the same week I conferred with Greenwood and Wilson) the New York Times reported that the British Government "bowing to the US wishes had ruled out early independence for British Guiana" and was going ahead with the PR elections fixed for December 7th. "This development, reported by senior officials tonight" said the newspaper, "came after high level British-American exchanges on how to check the spread of Castroism in the Western Hemisphere .... Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, and Secretary of State. Dean Rusk examined the situation in their talks in Washington this week. Informants said that Mr. Rusk had left Mr. Gordon Walker in no doubt that the United States would resist a rise of British Guiana as an independent Castro-type state".
CIA pays out
In the 1964 elections, the CIA intervened with money. According to the New York Times of April 28th, 1966, the CIA "has poured money into Latin American election campaigns in support of moderate candidates and against leftist leaders such as Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana".
The Sunday Times story of April 23rd, stated that the CIA resorted to corrupt means to split my party. It took out an insurance policy for "one ex-Jagan supporter for 30,000 dollars in 1964". This is in line with a number of trade unionists who received money from the American Institute of Free Labour Development, another CIA backed organisation, which is today in charge of the Critchlow Institute for trade union education.
Little wonder that Guyana is today a land of bribery, corruption, nepotism "squandermania" and racial discrimination. The main motivation is selfishness and get-rich-quick. Anyone willing to maintain the old order no matter how corrupt can climb to the top.
As regards the economic situation, Guyana is in a state of stagnation and near bankruptcy. The Government cannot meet its day-to-day financial obligations. Teachers' salaries are in some cases two months in arrears. One big foreign company has stopped its credit facilities to the Government. And the big business-dominated Georgetown Chamber of Commerce has, a fortnight ago, asked to see the Prime Minister about the non-payment of accounts long overdue. The Government openly admitted that it owed the commercial banks $15 million which should have been paid by December 31st, 1966.
Meanwhile, concessions are made to the rich. Our timber, bauxite and oil resources have been turned over to foreign monopolies. Capital taxes introduced by the PPP Government in 1962 were abolished or drastically modified in 1965 but consumer taxes were imposed in 1966 and 1967.
There has been a general decline in the standard of living. The cost-of-living index figure has jumped by 8 points in 1965 and 1966. This leap is in sharp contrast to the 10 points increase in the previous 8-year period, 1956-1964. This year the increase will be staggering when the full impact is realised of the 1967 Government taxes, which aimed at raising twice as much money as the 1966 taxes. Increased rents have also added to the misery caused by rising prices, growing unemployment and under-employment.
While the cost of living continues to rise, wages and salaries for the - middle and lower categories either remained stagnant or rose moderately. Sawmill, forest and quarry workers, for instance, received during the PPP regime the same minimum wage as Government unskilled workers. Now the Government has fixed only $3.50 and $3.52 per day as compared with $4.00 for Government workers.
Government's trading policies have also contributed to the worsened position of the people. Pressed by the US Government, the coalition has placed restrictions on cheaper imported goods from the socialist countries. This has
led to higher prices. By abandoning trade with Cuba, Guyana has lost a valuable and profitable market for our exports of rice and timber. This has in turn affected the position of. rice farmers, loggers, forest, and sawmill workers.
Social Service cuts
Faced with budgetary problems, the Government has also slashed social services - education, health, pensions - and reduced spending for crop purchases, crop bonuses and other form of help to farmers. Farmers have suffered a drop in income as a result of the fall in prices or their crops - rice, plantains, milk, coffee, citrus. The fall in incomes has meant less money in the hands of farmers and workers which has affected business turnover, estimated in 1966 to be 30 per cent less than the average for 1964 and 1965.
That the economy is stagnant has been well summed up in the words of a strong Government supporter, businessman John Fernandes, when he recently lamented: "economically we are in a bad way and no one seems to care".
So long as we are tied to Washington with its bankrupt financial and economic policies, our conditions will inevitably worsen. In 1965, there were over 120 strikes; in 1966, the total was 172 and for this year already 57. The puppet Government's answer to the wave of industrial strikes and political unrest is threats and intimidation. It has already passed a National Security Act, under which anyone can be restricted or detained indefinitely without trial. Now it is proposing to enact anti-strike legislation in the, form of compulsory arbitration.
The British people are today gravely concerned about the army take-over and destruction of democracy in Greece. Similar concern must be demonstrated for Guyana, the Dominican Republic, Aden, Vietnam and other trouble spots. Developments in these countries are not isolated events. They are all rooted in the Truman Doctrine of "containment" of socialism, communism and national liberation, and the Johnson Doctrine of "intervention".
Meanwhile, US Presidents, Cabinet members and Congressmen glibly talk of freedom, democracy an progress, while CIA anthropologists "discover" racial and tribal differences, and economists "see" population explosions and lack of skills as causes for poverty, illiteracy and disease in "third world" countries.
For more information on CIA involvement - read the US Declassified Files on British Guiana.
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2000
