Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's Struggle for Independence

2. Containing Cheddi and Scapegoating Savage

(  ) Containing Cheddi and Scapegoating Savage Prime Minister Winston Churchill was intrigued by a news report he had just read in the London Times. Dated August 11, 1954, the article said that Dr. J. Lachmansingh, the minister of health and housing in the deposed PPP government, had chosen to go to jail following his conviction for having “subversive ” literature in his possession. Lachmansingh had declined to pay the fine of $150 on the grounds that the freedom to read whatever one wanted was an untrammeled right. After reading the report, Churchill wrote to the new colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, requesting a copy of the offending book and the basis for the law that the former minister had violated.1 The prime minister received a rapid response. On August 12, L. B. Johnson of the Colonial Office told him that Lachmansingh had transgressed the British Guiana Undesirable Publications Ordinance, which made it illegal to possess written material banned by the governor. Lachmansingh had had two such publications in his possession. The first was the World Trade Union Movement, published by the Communist World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) with headquarters in London. The second was Information Bulletin , a periodical printed in Bucharest also by the WFTU. Perhaps anticipating additional questions from the prime minister, Johnson explained that the legislation banning possession of these and other “subversive” works was Containing Cheddi and Scapegoating Savage (  ) based on a model ordinance that the Colonial Office sent to the colonies in 1938. Johnson informed Churchill that “colonial governments,” “with their responsibilities for backward and unsophisticated peoples,” feared the impact of communist-inspired literature on their subjects. They thus “make it their policy to prevent so faras is possible the importation and circulation of Communist literature in their territories and almost all have lists of publications which are banned.”2 The prime minister was unimpressed by Johnson’s explanation . “I am not at all convinced by this,” he asserted, “that this was a wise use of existing legal powers.” To Churchill, “circulating is one thing, having in your possession another.”3 Winston Churchill was questioning the efficacyof one of his government’s major ploys to contain Cheddi Jagan and the PPP in the wake of the 1953 coup. Determined to prevent Jagan’s return to office, the Colonial Office expended its energies in constructing various strategies to achieve that objective . This included the introduction of an economic development program to win the support of the people, and blocking Jagan’s attempts, when he returned to office, to obtain economic assistance from all sources, irrespective of ideological orientation. Under the circumstances, Churchill’s skepticism had no resonance in the Colonial Office. Although the United Kingdom did not restrict its citizens’ access to the written or spoken word, the Colonial Office wanted to protect the colonized peoples from virus inherent in the freedom to read. It feared their exposure to ideas that not only challenged the legitimacy of colonial rule but also promoted other ideological constructs such as communism. These “backward and unsophisticated” peoples, as L. B. Johnson described them, lacked the intellectual capacity to make sound decisions based on the ideas to which they were exposed. The entire ideological arsenal of colonialism had been grounded in the self-proclaimed superiority of the colonizers over the peoples they controlled.The time had passed when colonial officials and British intellectuals could publicly invoke overt racist claims to justify the subjugation of black and brown peoples, but those ideas had a more stubborn longevity in private discourse and policymaking. Colonial officials were convinced that Cheddi Jagan and other PPP leaders had been seduced by the deceptive wiles of communist ideology. To prevent further contamination of the colony, the officials had, by March 1954, prepared a long list of “undesirable” and prohibited publications. The ideological content of these writings cannot now be determined given their unavailability . Some of their titles seem innocuous enough, and their presence on the (  ) Containing Cheddi and Scapegoating Savage list reveals a great deal about the anxieties of a colonial power under ideological assault. The list included: i. “British Guiana Workers Fight against Poverty for Independence.” ii. “Terror in Kenya.” iii. “Egypt and the Sudan—the People on the March.” iv. “The Housing Crisis in Capitalist and Colonial Countries.” v. “W.F.T.U. Campaigns for Social Security.” vi. “Towards the Third World Trade Union Congress.” vii. “Motor Car Industry Faces Growing Crisis.” viii. “Press...