The APNU/AFC coalition seeks to draw some inspiration from the earlier attempt by Cheddi and Janet Jagan to establish a nationalist/socialist-orientated political organisation in the mid/late 1940s. The coming together of Jagan and Forbes Burnham was not an institutional alliance such as the present one, but undoubtedly it had at its root a similar understanding of the ethnic realities of politics in Guyana.
Preparing for a presentation on coalition politics in Guyana to the Rotary Club of Georgetown last week, it struck me that, with a mild stretch, if one is to take the Jagan/Burnham model as a starting place, Guyana’s political landscape is littered with various forms of individuals and groups attempting to work together for the common political end of removing regimes.
We know that as an alliance, the Burnham/Jagan effort failed, and if my story is correct, the purposes for which that relationship was initiated contained the seeds of its own destruction.
It is also election time and particularly to its traditional supporters, the PPP will be making much of its extremely partial historiography. I will take this opportunity to try to set the record straight by presenting another point of view.
Maybe the alliance formations that aroused most interest in the colonial period were the so-called “recall movements” intended to remove errant governors, which existed from the initiation of constitutional government right into the twentieth century. Incidentally, the first such “movement” was partly based on charges of corruption brought against the commander/governor of Essequibo.
In brief, Abraham Beekman became commander of the Essequibo property of the new West Indiana Company in about 1679. With him came his letter of instruction (considered by some the first constitution of Guyana), which gave him executive jurisdiction over the entire Essequibo property and its people.
Beekman’s experience was to set a long precedent that pitted the colonial governors against the plantocracy, and his nemesis was the planter Jacob Petersen De Jong. In 1686 the company allowed De Jong to reestablish the Pomeroon colony as its commander and almost immediately he began to compete with Beekman for settlers.
De Jong and his allies eventually reported, among other things, that contrary to the strictures of the company, the commander of Essequibo was “trading on his own account”, and Beekman was eventually recalled in 1690.
The experiment between Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan in the 1950s, even if bolder in intent, was essentially of this kind. It was an alliance in the era of party politics to rid the colony of the colonial masters themselves and to establish some kind of nationalist/socialist arrangement in which all would prosper.
If Peter Simms, writing at the time, was correct, it failed partly because of the personal ambitions of both men (Simms, Peter -1966 – “Trouble in Guyana,” Allen & Unwin, London). If Burnham was initially “victorious” it was because his educational and ideological experiences allowed him to view the world less dogmatically than Jagan at a time the West was determined to “contain” Soviet Marxism.
The details and implications of the conflict between the PPP and the West are now well enough known, so I will briefly recall the other side of the story as it is understood by me.
Marxist theory views the proletariat, largely the urban working class, as the vanguard of the socialist revolution. In Guyana, this class essentially comprised Africans who were allied to their middle class by way of various groups such as the League of Coloured People and the United Democratic Party.
Before 1948 and the brutal slaying of the Enmore Martyrs, the Jagans were not able to win substantial support among the African proletariat to legitimize their Marxist credentials. Indeed, they were not even politically dominant in the rural areas. By way of associates, they recruited Forbes Burnham, who was at university in London, with what he understood to be a promise that he would be the leader of the movement.
But the Enmore killings occurred before Burnham returned and these, together with their other working class interventions, made the Jagans into household names, even among many Africans. Burnham’s value was thus diminished as the Jagans became more ambitious: coming to view themselves as being able to lead the national movement. The seeds of disunity were sown: Burnham was made chairman with Cheddi Jagan as the leader of the new party.
Of course, Burnham, being similarly ambitious, was not amused. Once international capital and their local allies decided that the Jagans were not to be allowed to hold government on the American continent, Burnham, left seething by what he considered the Jagans’ sleight of hand, opportunistically became a part of the plan to remove the PPP from government.
As should be expected, this point of view is largely absent from the PPP’s historical account of the period, which presents Burnham as the villain totally responsible for the breakdown of the nationalist movement. And although I eschew any kind of deterministic formulation, I am tempted to say that with or without Burnham a way would have been found to remove the Jagans from power. If Burnham had not been there, there would have been another “Burnham”!
The PPP also likes to tell this story as if the national businesspeople who supported the movement against it were simply imperialist lackeys. This too is far from the truth. Like capitalists elsewhere, as a class, these people had long developed an antipathy towards communism, for which the Jagans and the PPP, in their quest for political power, failed to properly account.
Remember the threat of the indigenous bourgeoisie to Nathaniel Critchlow after he returned to Guyana in 1932 with a glowing report of what was taking place in communist Russia.
“We are very interested in the account Mr. Critchlow brought back to the West Indies of his activities in the Soviet Union. We believe all he said of his experiences and wish to assure him that if and when its suits him we will accommodate him in a cell” (Chase, Ashton (1964) “A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana,” New Guyana Company, Guyana).
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
