The West on Trial: My fight for Guyana’s Freedom
By Cheddi Jagan
International Publishers £25

DECOLONISATION is such a topical issue, with so many implications for racial justice today. So this reprint could scarcely be more timely.

Writing on the eve of British Guiana’s independence – as Guyana – in 1966, Cheddi Jagan tells the story of his own involvement in the struggle – and the duplicitous shenanigans of successive British governments and their US allies.  

The British state was more sophisticated, in Jagan’s view, using divide and rule tactics to undermine progressive forces in their colonies. But the US was not short on determination when it came to dealing with the threat of socialist advance in the Caribbean.

This was a story set during the Cold War. But the contemporary parallels are only too striking.

Cheddi Jagan himself was born into a family that had originally come to British Guiana as indentured labourers; Indians who had been brought to work on the sugar plantations in conditions of near slavery. Indians were among the most disadvantaged in the colony in fact, although a minority, like Jagan, succeeded in getting an education and so aspiring to wider opportunities.

He qualified as a dentist in the US, returning to British Guiana to set up in practice in 1943 – accompanied by his American wife Janet, who went on to play a leading role in the struggle for independence as well.  

At this time the legislative assembly was effectively dominated by the interests of the sugar planters, along with the interests of the bauxite industry. The opposition was divided along racial lines, between those of black African heritage and those of Indian heritage, differences that were a continuing feature of the politics of the period.

The British were only too adept at fanning these divisions. This was the background to the subsequent formation of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950, based initially at Jagan’s dental surgery.

Both he and his wife Janet took leading roles, aiming to build a united working-class party, active within the current (although limited) constitutional framework, working for a fully independent socialist future.

Cheddi Jagan was a Marxist and an internationalist. But he strongly denied the allegation that the PPP was getting funding from the USSR, described as the “red gold” fantasy. But these allegations were used to foment opposition to the PPP, compounding the allegation that the PPP was dominated by Indian interests.

The British government was clearly concerned about the PPP, as was the US government, reflecting their anxieties about communism in general and the future of the bauxite and manganese industries more specifically. Hence the use of divide and rule tactics to undermine the possibility of such unacceptable eventualities.
 
Subsequent chapters describe the reactions of the British state when faced with PPP’s reforms, even the moderate reforms that the PPP was able to initiate within the existing constitution.

This constitution was then suspended in 1953 and troops were brought in, on the spurious grounds that there was a plot to turn British Guiana into a communist state. Jagan quotes Nye Bevan as commenting: “He, that is my Right Honourable friend the prime minister (Winston Churchill), made a decision about British Guiana and laid down new principles for the British Commonwealth – You are free to have whatever government you like as long as it is the kind of government we like” – a view shared by too many on the opposition benches, including Labour leader Clement Attlee.

Jagan was imprisoned for five months during the “emergency” that followed the suspension of the constitution. Meanwhile, the British were busy trying to undermine the PPP in his absence, isolating the communists from the social democrats and the more opportunist elements.

Forbes Burnham led the split in the PPP that followed in 1955, using racist claims (that it was time for the blacks to get rid of “the coolies,”) going on to form the rival People’s National Congress (PNC).

Despite these problems, however, the PPP still managed to win a majority in the 1957 elections, going on to achieve improvements in fields such as housing and health. But overall, Jagan described this period as being in office but not in power, effectively.

Full independence was agreed in principle, but this was only finally achieved in 1966. By that time, the British state had engineered changes to the voting system, introducing proportional representation rather than the first past the post system that had been previously agreed.  

The Economist described this as a device for “ensuring the defeat of Dr Jagan’s government rather than providing for a fairly based alternative and likely to lead to more directly racial voting.” In the 1964 elections, the PPP won the popular vote but not an overall majority of seats.

Jagan’s account ends in 1966, on the eve of independence, and it was not until 1992 that the PPP won elections again and Cheddi Jagan finally became president. He died five years later, succeeded as president by his wife, Janet.
 
This is both a history and an autobiography — Morning Star readers might question some of his judgements but his scathing criticisms of Labour’s complicity with British colonialism are only too well supported by the evidence.

The West on Trial provides a highly relevant account of decolonisation and its limitations, detailing the ways in which British and US governments promoted neocolonial outcomes for the future. This is a book for our times.