– President at inaugural Cheddi Jagan Working Class Forum
THE story of the Enmore martyrs was reviewed ysterday at the first ever Cheddi Jagan Working Class Forum where President Bharrat Jagdeo shared the view that the late president’s struggle for the working class was reinvigorated by the June 16, 1948 atrocity.
Yesterday’s forum came two days before the 63rd anniversary of the death of the Enmore martyrs, and featured reflections on the life and work of the late president by President Jagdeo, Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Donald Ramotar, President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union (GAWU) Komal Chand, and Chairman of the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre, Navin Chandarpal.
Among the highlights was a presentation by Deputy Vice Chancellor (retd) of the University of Guyana Tota Mangar on the contribution of the Enmore Martyrs to the advancement of working class struggle in Guyana.”
On June 16, 1948, Rambarran, Lalabajee, Surujballi, Harry and Pooran were gunned down by the colonial police while joining several sugar workers in protest against the inhumane conditions on the estate and called for decent wages and salaries.
The five sugar workers had joined labourers from Enmore, Non Pariel, Lusignan, Mon Repos, La Bonne Intention, Vryheid’s Lust and Ogle in a mass protest against social conditions of 1948.
They were subsequently honoured in 1972 as the Enmore Martyrs and a monument was constructed in their honour and unveiled in 1977.

Speaking at yesterday’s event, President Jagdeo explained that the struggles of the martyrs went beyond championing the cause for working class rights, and had struck a blow against the tyranny that dominated the colonial era.
“It was not just a struggle between worker and employer as in so many instances that we are accustomed to. That struggle took on an additional character because the planter class personified colonialism, the group that took our rights and dignities and held us in a position of second class citizens in our own country,” President Jagdeo said.
It was the same struggle that President Jagdeo said was fuelled and fortified across the country by the PPP through the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and the activism of its members, including Dr Jagan.
“Cheddi Jagan is central to our focus because he is the founder member of the party; he has led the struggle for independence and political awakening in Guyana… and as we think of every struggle for the enhancement of rights in the 1940s to the time he died, he has been central to that struggle,” President Jagdeo said.
The struggle led to Guyana breaking ties with the British in 1966 and charting its own course as a sovereign nation.
President Jagdeo said Guyana is now in an era where the government holds a pro-worker philosophy and is constantly seeking to meet the challenges of creating wealth for workers, while struggling to bridge the gap between the developed and the developing world. (GINA)