Dear Editor,
In Guyana, the month of August used to be called “Freedom Month” by politically active people of my ancient generation 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 was the coming to India of Swaraj, or Home Rule after about a century of struggle which the descendants of indentured workers transported from India to Guyana celebrated in 1947.
Statements made in the press treat the questions of human bondage from various angles. All of their highlights are now the semi-official theme of reparations, called compensation, to the Gladstone family and other slave owners for the loss of their valuable property, namely their enslaved. 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 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 on 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 enslaved revolts without highlighting Guyana’s movement for colonial freedom in the twentieth century. 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 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. The 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 after 133 days, far short of the five years it was elected for according to the Constitution received from England. That constitution 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 British soldiers, who tried to strike terror into the hearts of the 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. A state of emergency was declared in October 8-9, 1953. The Main Secretary, the Governor’s man, 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. 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. There is one historical fact that the series of articles may have included but did not. The role of Damon, an enslaved man, who in Essequibo became the symbol of a movement opposing and 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 eve 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 Governer 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.)
Thus the story of slavery is still to be told and emancipation remains unfinished business. The descendants of slave owners are apologizing for too little, too late.
Sincerely,
Eusi Kwayana
