Guyana - Background to a Murder
Dr. Walter Rodney, interna- tionally renowned historian, author and political activist, was assassinated in Guyana on June 13, 1980 by the People's National Congress (PNC) government of Prime...
...Because of his anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist posture, important international voices remained silent when Burnham took his first serious steps toward absolute rule: *1966-The regime promulgates the National Security Act, providing for suspension of the right of habeas corpus and for detention without trial of any Guyanese for an indefinite period...
...Upon formation of the Jagan government, Burnham unleashed a war of subversion against all vestiges of working class solidarity...
...Walter Rodney, interna- tionally renowned historian, author and political activist, was assassinated in Guyana on June 13, 1980 by the People's National Congress (PNC) government of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham...
...Rodney was a founding member and part of the collective leader- ship of the Working People's Alliance (WPA...
...As promised, the Colonial Office conducted elections in 1957...
...The WPA Alternative The Burnham regime's "left" swing-to 80% state ownership of the economy and to absolute control of the state by the PNC-created tremendous disillusionment...
...It was upon Burnham then, that national leadership was conferred when independence was granted in 1966...
...The regime's decision to eliminate an opponent of Rodney's international stature reflects Guyana's present-day crisis, a crisis rooted in the country's postWorld War II political and economic development...
...Burnham opportunistically seized the chance for individual leadership and, together with the British, commenced a nakedly racist campaign against the "extremist" lndo-Guyanese elements in the PPP...
...But the legacy of racial suspicion provided fertile ground for British efforts to "divide and rule...
...1969-While the government declares Guyana a Cooperative Socialist Republic, it moves to nationalize the press and introduces a bill providing for compulsory arbitration and the banning of strikes...
...A principal weapon at his disposal was the reactionary new TUC which, by that time, functioned solely as an appendage of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD...
...The worldwide publicity surrounding the case led a group of international observers to attend the trial proceedings which began June 2, 1980...
...CIA financed, in 1962, an 83-day general strike against the PPP government, by a predominantly Afro-Guyanese Civil Service workforce...
...Toward realizing this program, the WPA has joined with the PPP and the Vanguard for Liberation and Democracy-a coalition of groups that span the political spectrum-in the Anti-Dictatorial Alliance...
...In light of this, the Party's tremendous popularity, particularly with the working class, was viewed by Anglo-American imperialism as a grave threat...
...But the PPP government of Cheddi Jagan, and the newly-enacted constitution granting Guyana internal self-government, lasted only 133 days...
...Having reestablished direct control of the state apparatus, the British, therefore, acted to undermine the Party's working class base...
...Despite the continuing occupational separation of the major racial groups, the PPP had succeeded, to some extent, in creating an organization that cut across race lines in both its membership and leadership...
...It was 27 years ago, in colonial Guyana's first universal adult suffrage elections, that a mass movement swept to victory the People's Progressive Party (PPP) under a banner of national independence and social liberation...
...In 1955, he split with Jagan and formed a separate Party faction, ultimately to become the PNC...
...The total destruction of all democratic institutions under the PNC regime necessitated not only the removal of the dictatorship, but a period of government during which all democratic organizations would be represented...
...In 1977, the PPP called for an end to one-party rule and proposed the formation of a National Patriotic Front Government...
...this recently formed political party openly advocated the removal of the PNC dictatorship as a necessary pre-condition for the creation of a culture of democracy...
...Walter Rodney among its most outstanding martyrs-the year 1953 marks a crucial turning point...
...Silencing the Alternative On July 10, 1979, the government arrested three executive members of the WPA-Omowale, Roopnavaint and Rodney-on the trumped-up charge of arson...
...37update * update . update * update Racial Politics Over 90% of Guyana's 800,000 people are constituted by two distinct racial groups...
...Thus, by the early 1970s, when the bankruptcy of the Burnham regime was readily apparent, the PPP could offer no solace to the Afro-Guyanese...
...The PNC's "Left" Swing Shortly after independence, the Burnham regime undertook an international public relations campaign, advertising itself as a revolutionary socialist force...
...The British rationale: the PPP had fallen victim to an international communist plot...
...Although the reforms introduced during its short-lived rule were quite limited, the PPP did, in fact, espouse socialism as its ultimate end...
...The racial violence, initiated by Burnham's well-armed provocateurs during the strike and which continued through 1964, afforded Burnham control of the overwhelmingly Afro-Guyanase police and local military...
...General elections are postponed again in 1979 in order to complete the drafting...
...1978-An October general election is postponed after a rigged July referendum affirmed JulylAugust 1980 the creation of a "Constituent Assembly" to "draft" a new constitution...
...1974-Burnham presents the Declaration of Sophia in which the paramountcy of the Party (PNC) is proclaimed...
...For disenchanted AfroGuyanese, however, what alternative existed...
...subsequently, it produced a program of national reconstruction, the central theme of which held that Guyana required the reestablishment of a culture of democracy...
...Although British maneuvers of the previous four years could not prevent a Jagan victory at the polls in 1957 and in 1961, the Party was 38 never again able to unify the working class under its leadership...
...It was through AIFLD that the U.S...
...On the one hand, the old Trade Union Council (TUC), to which the PPP was closely affiliated, was disbanded...
...This period of selforganization, particularly of the working class, would best create the foundation, in the Guyanese context, for the socialist transformation of the future...
...On the other hand, the Party, and the working class, became the victims of a racial split engineered by the Crown...
...During the racial campaigns launched by Burnham and his British benefactors in the decade preceding independence, the PPP had sought to guarantee its survival by consolidating its base along racial lines as well...
...The enemy had to be silenced...
...the new "free" TUC created in its place refused membership to any union affiliated to the left-wing World Federation of Labor or to the Caribbean Labor Congress...
...The possibility of new elections and of independence negotiations was tied to that demand...
...The new constitution gives sweeping powers to the Executive President-a position to be assumed by Burnham...
...Although the WPA, like most other Guyanese political organizations, endorsed the proposal, it raised certain reservations...
...on October 8, 1953, British troops occupied the country and the Governor suspended the constitution...
...In the elections of 1964, the defeat of the PPP was ensured by a new system of proportional representation...
...As a result, Burnham's chances of quietly locking away his enemies seemed very slim...
...The political context of the period-the liberation struggles of Vietnam, Angola and other parts of Africa as well as the emergence of new forms of Black struggle in the United States and the Caribbean-secured a welcome in disNACLA Reportupdate * update . update * update Prime Minister Forbes Burnham tant corners for Burnham's socialist rhetoricizing...
...In the post-war experience of the Guyanese national liberation struggle-the struggle which claims Dr...
...the Indo-Guyanese-the progeny of an indentured labor force recruited from India, following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire-form a majority with 55% of the population...
...As early as 1954, a Britishsponsored Commission of Inquiry called for Forbes Burnham, an Afro-Guyanese and a so-called moderate socialist in the PPP, to either assume leadership of the Party or to split from it...
...a coalition of the PNC and a small right-wing party formed the new government...
...An alternative organization was clearly necessary...
...It addressed itself publicly to the question of racial division in Guyana and, for the first time in 25 years, thousands of workers broke the racial barriers and flocked to the WPA platform...
...The WPA was born of a merger in 1974 of four working class organizations-African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), Indian People's Revolutionary Associates (IPRA), Working People's Vanguard Party (WPVP) and Ratoon...
...The AfroGuyanese-the descendants of African slaves forcibly imported to work the colonial plantations, compose 38% of the population...
Vol. 14 • July 1980 • No. 4
