(The emergence of a working-class struggle for Rights, Justice & Freedom)

By Tommy Payne
THE lead story on page 6 of the May 20, 1947 Daily Chronicle, captioned ‘Enmore Looks Straight Ahead to Progress: Something now being accomplished’ reported the decision by the Sugar Producers Association to establish a resettlement housing Scheme for sugar estate workers on the East Coast of Demerara.A year later, the Chronicle of June, 6, 1848 provide an updated report in the Page 6 story, captioned, ‘Land Settlement Placed before the Legislature’ painted a positive picture of the state of the sugar industry.
But that idyllic fabrication was brutally bludgeoned when the June 9 1948 Chronicle had to report on Page 6, the previous day’s protest, at the Parade Ground in Georgetown, by some 800 sugar workers from the East Coast of Demerara. The demand by those workers from Enmore, Non Pariel, LBI, Mon Repos, Vryheid’s Lust and Ogle for the Governor’s immediate enquiry into the seven-week work stoppage proved to be the first newspaper acknowledgement of an industrial dispute that had begun on April 22, 1948.
Significantly, that newspaper omitted to mention a major cause of the strike action which was the issue of cut-and-drop as against cut-and-load.
Rather, it focused on the charge by Dr. J.P Lacchmansingh, President of the Guiana Industrial Workers Union [GIWU], that the Governor had refused to intervene, because the Commissioner of Labour had portrayed the strike as a struggle by the GWU to oust the Manpower Citizen’s Association [MPCA].
It also reported on the statement by Legislative Council member, Dr. Cheddi Jagan that his solicitations for the Governor’s intervention had proven equally unsuccessful, and in addition that he had been refused permission to hold meetings on the sugar estates.
And in addition, the newspaper focused on Lacchmansingh’s report that his efforts as President of the British Guiana East Indian Association [BGEIA] to obtain the intervention of the Sugar Producers’ Association [SPA] had proven unsuccessful.
A blackout by the Chronicle on sugar-related news followed. It was finally broken on June 14 when the Page 5 story, ‘Welfare of families decided Government’s settlement Scheme’ sought to portray sugar as a compassionate and beneficent employer.
But that brazen attempt was totally disrupted the next day when the Chronicle, in an article squeezed at the bottom of Page 1, Column 2 in its June 15 edition, was forced to report that the BGEIA had petitioned the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on behalf of the grossly exploited sugar workers.
The rest is well known national history. The workers who died at Enmore on June 16 are revered as the Enmore Martyrs, and the defiant march from Enmore to Georgetown, which the workers staged on June 17, became the beacon of working- class solidarity in the sustained mass-based struggle for human rights, justice and political freedom.