Resisting Orthodoxy: Notes on the Origins and Ideology of the Working People’s Alliance

Introduction

On the wave of the popular response in the streets of Georgetown, the Working People's Alliance (WPA) was formally proclaimed a political party on 27 July 1979. At a public meeting held to launch the event, the WPA affirmed its broad political objectives on becoming a full-fledged political party. It stated that the decision was based on the continued deterioration in the political and economic life of the country and restated its intention to redress the racial-political equation through a third-party, multiracial force.¹ Walter Rodney and Rupert Roopnaraine were introduced as multiracial "symbols of the new politics," and with the entire WPA leadership present, the party celebrated the creation of its "political party phase." The announcement of the political party and the declaration of its principles did not emerge by accident. They were all tied in with the arrest of Rodney and others on 11 July after the office of the People's National Congress (PNC) general secretary had been burned down. The subsequent arrest, detention, and bailing of the historian and his colleagues, together with the civil "excitement" spawned by the events, attracted scores of young Guyanese from all races to the party and the movement.

At the public meeting the party announced its short-term and long-term objectives. Arguing the necessity of a government of National Unity and Reconstruction, the WPA advised that its immediate political tasks were the restoration of civil liberties, demilitarization, and the establishment of the foundations for a rapid return to free and fair elections under a new and secure political system.² Its long-term strategy was based on its program entitled Towards a Revolutionary Socialist Guyana—Principles and Programme of the Working People's Alliance. The program stated that the long-term objective of the party was to build "genuine socialism" on the basis of popular consent and on the subsequent creation of a classless society.³ Underlining these long-term and short-term goals was of course the assertion of multiracialism and the "new politics" that were defined in other documents. Hurriedly introduced to meet the needs of the moment, the program was never fully publicized after that instance.

On balance, however, given the stated goals of the program, the WPA fell short of its goals of racial and working-class unity and the political transformation of Guyana. Racial mobilization in Guyana's elections, even with free and fair elections by 1992, was a reality, and organizations mobilized on the basis of racial unity suffered. Thus, while one of the WPA's goals—fair elections—was belatedly realized, the party's hopes for the multiracial unity of the working class ended not with a bang but with the whimper of continued division in Guyana by the end of the last decade of the twentieth century. In the end, unable to influence and facilitate the social motion across class and race necessary for the national unity government that it championed, and ineffective at best in transcending its electoral weakness, the WPA was forced to retreat to its original "pressure politics" arrangement to confront political and social problems in the country. What accounts for this "failure" and what role did the party's philosophy play in its mixed fortunes?

In my view the most important documents in defining what the WPA ethos constituted and the nature of its interaction with the public include the WPA launching program, "Bread & Justice," by C. Y. Thomas, and Eusi Kwayana's speech-cum-document "Racial Insecurity in the Political System." The two documents were published in 1978, when the WPA was in its embryonic stage as a political participant. The cusp of their concerns and the nature of their content, however, had universal consequences and implications for the theory and practice of the WPA's activity over time. Each document represented a reaction to domestic and...