COLIN Palmer’s Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power – British Guiana’s Struggle for Independence, published a few weeks ago, is “an examination of the ways in which the colonial regime joined hands with the United States and local elites to destroy a political leader whom they distrusted and feared.” Colin Palmer is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University. His history begins in 1953 and ends in 1964 with an Epilogue encapsulating subsequent events.
Academic interest in Guyana’s modern political history has grown since the release by the C.I.A. of its records a few years ago . Professor Stephen Rabe’s “US Intervention in British Guiana – A Cold War Story,” published in 2005, was the first study after the release of the CIA’s records; Colin Palmer’s book is the second in what is likely to be continuing interest in the history of Guyana and an enduring fascination with Cheddi Jagan, whose international stature in colonial political history grows with each passing day or book.
Much of the story is already known, but Palmer adds new information and redefines what is already known adding tantalising new questions. Palmer convincingly demonstrates that the policies and postures adopted by the P.P.P. in 1953 were reformist in character and scope, “tone and emphasis,” although “stridently nationalist…..the notion that the Guianese leaders were Russian puppets was profoundly misguided and constituted a gross misunderstanding of their nationalist aspirations.” The Argosy reflected the fears of the ruling colonial elite and their “local enablers” by its reporting and opinions which created the hysteria of “communism.” It reflected the unexpected and traumatic impact on them of the election results which it attributed to the docile and illiterate masses being duped by communists. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere in the book used in a related context, the PPP’s victory produced in the colonial elite “fits of political apoplexy.”
Governor Sir Alfred Savage did not initially buy into the narrative and was prepared to work with the PPP leaders. Governors from Savage to Grey felt that Jagan and leaders were misguided or incompetent or were of a lesser breed for one reason or another, a common attitude to anti-colonial activists at that time. But something happened to Savage along the way. It could be that the continuing “stridency” of PPP leaders or their attendance at conferences of “communist” affiliated organizations, the unrelenting anti-PPP press, continuous pressure from the elites and a strike in the sugar industry which started on August 31, had their cumulative effect. Even though Savage’s dispatches continued to show understanding of PPP’s ministers’ attitudes to Britain, his posture changed and he went along with removal of the government. In the end his dispatches seemed to have played a major role in influencing the colonial office to intervene.
The US did not then agree with British policy. The American Consul General criticised the suspension of the constitution and blamed Savage for the misjudgment.
The Sugar Producers Association, with which Ashton Chase was negotiating as Minister of Labour, offered to recognize the Guyana Industrial Workers Union for field workers and the Man Power Citizens Association for factory workers. This was rejected. On hindsight, it is tempting to speculate what the political outcome would have been if the compromise had been accepted having regard to the crucial role that Bookers and Jock Campbell played in encouraging the British Government to suspend the Guiana Constitution. Janet Jagan, he declared, is “a proved communist” and should be deported, “possibly to a Soviet country.”
British Guiana was the victim of two coups. Palmer described the suspension of the constitution as,the first coup, and as “constitutional terrorism.” The hijacking by Burnham and his supporters of the 1955 special congress of the PPP in 1955, resulting in the split of the Party into two factions, and eventually the PPP and the PNC, was described as “the second coup d’etat that British Guiana had experienced in the commanding heights of its political system in two years.” 
Palmer quoted a Foreign office document for evidence of British involvement in the split. “The split in the PPP undoubtedly owed much to the patient work by the Special Branch who deserve the highest praise for this achievement.” It explains that the governor “has at his disposal an efficient Police Special Branch under confident and experienced leadership.” Palmer concludes that “this is an astounding admission of British complicity in the acrimonious divisions in the ranks of the PPP.” He explains that the nature of the interference is not known and suggests that “it may have taken the form of financial inducements to dissident PPP members to participate in the coup.”
The failure of the British to destroy the PPP, despite its sustained assault, was due to the popularity of the Jagans and the PPP. “The party identified with the needs of the people, thereby earning their support and loyalty, but never lost sight of its larger objectives: self-government and political independence.” While elitist politicians worried about the estate providing meals and sleeping accommodation when they went into the sugar estates to campaign, Jagan, “together with his wife, had spent years going into these same areas eating, sleeping, and talking with the people, and it was this that had won him the affection of the people.”  He said that they possessed that, “rare but indefinable quality to obtain and sustain the abiding trust of the people in whose name they spoke……The Jagans had kept faith with their admirers, a quality that meant the efforts by the colonial regime to discredit them failed because the wellspring of their support was deep and suffused by a passionate, religious-like fervor.” That “wellspring” of support was to continue for another fifty years.  (To be continued) (www.conversationtree.gy).