Cheddi Jagan and PPP stand vindicated, says Ramotar
GENERAL Secretary of the governing People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Mr. Donald Ramotar said revelations by the British MI5 security service about the details of a British-backed and orchestrated coup that overthrew the Government of Dr. Cheddi Jagan in 1953 vindicates a position held by Dr. Jagan and, despite all that has happened, the PPP remains loyal to the working class people. “Whenever you have an intervention to remove democratically elected leaders and that of the will of the people, experience has shown that the results are always negative,” said Ramotar in a comment to this newspaper yesterday. “The most important thing for us is lifting people’s quality of life,” he said. The PPP General Secretary and Presidential Candidate said that, to this day, some Governments seem not to have learnt anything regarding interventions and what they may mean for the people of that country.
Secret documents declassified on Friday by Britain’s MI5 reveal in detail how, in 1953, the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Winston Churchill constitutionally overthrew the elected government of British Guiana, fearing the leftwing leader – Cheddi Jagan – and his American wife Janet Jagan would lead the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
This newspaper reported that the documents reveal how British spies kept up intense scrutiny on Cheddi Jagan and his wife Janet, who together founded the People’s Progressive party (PPP) to campaign for workers’ rights and independence from British rule for the country.
According to the declassified documents, the UK had agreed to a new constitution in the early 1950s which allowed British Guiana’s political parties to participate in national elections and form a government, but maintained power in the hands of the British-appointed governor.
In 1951, the year after the Jagans founded their party, an MI5 agent based in Trinidad described them as “something new in British Guiana politics”.
The files revealed that to the British authorities, the Jagans were a headache, and to the Americans, they were a potential communist threat on America’s doorstep.
MI5 concluded that their party was “not receiving any financial support from any communist organisation outside the country”.
Nonetheless, amid worsening strikes and unrest, Britain grew unhappy with the Jagans’ “disruptive antics”.
The reports said that after the PPP won a huge majority in British Guiana’s 1953 election, making Cheddi Jagan prime minister, Churchill decided to act.
While it was revealed that the British sought the help of the Americans to “break the communist teeth in British Guiana”, in the end, Britain acted alone, mounting a military operation codenamed Operation Windsor.
It was disclosed that in the years that followed, MI5 softened somewhat towards Cheddi Jagan, acknowledging that he was an astute and popular politician – though the agent based in Trinidad at the time strongly disliked Janet Jagan, whom he described as a committed communist “uncompromising in her hatreds”.
By the 1960s, Britain’s spies were worried that the Jagans would turn to newly communist Cuba, possibly making their country a base for Latin American revolutionaries.
The reports stated it was clear from previously released official documents, that successive British governments gave in to pressure from the White House to allow the CIA to use subterranean means to ensure that the first leader of independent Guyana in 1966 was not Cheddi Jagan.
Ramotar yesterday said that the party will be making a more studied and detailed statement on the details that have been revealed.