Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Mrs. Janet Jagan

Guiana’s champion

. CHEDDI JAGAN, the elected

prime minister of British
Guiana, is not quite sure how or
when It all began.

It might have been when he
looked as a boy at the sugar
estate on which he was brought
up and saw the dreadful condi-
tions in which the workers lived.
“It could have been when he
picked up a book by Gandhi
which showed him what people
of his race were doing in India
against the same rule as he knew
in Guiana. Or when he read
Nehru’s autobiography.

It may have been through his
mieeting, at college in the United
States, Africans, Indians, Chinese
and white men who were all
against oppression. Or the simi-
lar friends he met at the YMCA.

But perhaps it was all these
things and more besides that turn-
ed this quiet-voiced, friendly In-
dian with the charming smile in-
to a political leader.

A British newspaper, noting the
way in which Dr. Jagan and his
equally ,courtecus and able com-
panion, L. F. S. Burnham, chair-
man of the People’s Progressive
party, faced a gathering of hard-
boiled newspaper reporters in
London the other day, remarked
that nobody could really believe
these two to be unscrupulous in-
cendiaries. And nobody could.

They were painstaking in their
replies to cross-questioning that
lasted two hours, but were able
frequently to set the world’s press
laughing with touches of quiet
satire. Their language was moder-
ate, but their confidence in the
justice of their case very obvious.

There was a remarkable con-
trast here with the attitude of

their five opponents of the United
Democratic party, who arrived in
London shortly afterwards in
haste from British Guiana and
also held a press conference. For
instance, one member of the
group, Lionel Luckhoo, referred
to Jagan and Burnham as “vile
wretches” and “knock-kneed yel-
 low-bellies.”

But for all their quietness, both
_ Jagan and Burnham have had
bitter experience of colonial op-
pression at its most ruthless.

a

Dr. Jagan was born 35 years
ago on a sugar plantation, the son

of a sugar-cane cutter. His father
was a highly expert cutter who
had been promoted, and the fami-
ly was better housed and gener-
ally better off than most, though
_ poor enough.
Cheddi Jagan could seé all
around him families that could
not exist on the wages they receiv-
ed, people condemned to illiter-
acy and ill-health, living in quar-
ters like stables.
- These living places—“ranges”
_ where a number of families live

together—were described in 1949
by a British commission of in-
-quiry, the Venn Commission:

~ “Tn quite a number the cor-
_ rugated iron roofs were leaking

4

and the fabric of the buildings

was in a general state of decay.

In numerous instances tempor-

ary sheets or awnings had been

fixed over the beds to keep off
rain. They had mud floors, and
consequently with the rain
dropping from the roofs these
were made slippery and dan-

Serhus. so”

With considerable effort, Dr.
Jagan’s parents saved enough
money to send him to college in
Georgetown.

But when he left college the

only job open to him after a
year’s unemployment was that of
an assistant schoolteacher at ap-
proximately $9 a month. That was
the value placed on education by
the government.

He found he could be trained
cheaply in the U.S. as a dentist.
So to the U.S. he went, working
his way through Howard Univer-
sity, Washington, and later Chica-
go University, as a tailor, a sales-
man and an elevator boy.

It was here that he began to
read the literature of India’s na-
tional struggle. And here, too,
that he had his first experience of
color bars:

“All my friends were color-
ed people; we all lived togeth-
er and we were all treated the
same.”

Here his thoughts and discus-
sions turned more and more on
freedom’s struggle not only for
Indians but for all colonial peo-
ples. And here he met his wife,
Janet, whose thoughts turned in
the same direction. Together they

One-woman peace crusade |

More than one tenth of the 15,-
000 British Columbia ballots cast

-in the National Peace Referen-

dum ‘have been collected by one
woman, B.C. Peace Council an-
nounced this week.

Mrs. Elizabeth McKitch, of
Vancouver, 53-year-old wife of a
badly injured logger, has collect-
ed 1,645 votes.

Every Saturday since the cam-
paign began two months ago has
found Mrs. McKitch, a small, shy
woman with the warmest of
smiles, on Hastings Street gath-
ering votes for peace. Cold, wet
weather that discouraged many a
younger canvasser from turning
out on two of the Saturdays, fail-
ed to deter Mrs. McKitch.

During the week, Mrs. McKitch
goes tirelessly from house to
house with the referendum bal-
lot. In six weeks she visited
every house in an area of 48
square blocks, a territory as
large as any covered by teams
of organized canvassers.

While looking after her own
neighborhood, Mrs. McKitch has
also participated in mass can-
vasses organized in Hastings
East by the B.C. Peace Council.
And she has. now _ selected

By PHILIP BOLSOVER

British troops march off the docks at Georget wn |

went back in 1943 to British
Guiana.

re ;
There was no workers’ political
organizations in the colony, but
Dr. Jagan later joined the Man-
power Citizens’ Association, a
union on the sugar estates, be-
came its treasurer—and, typically,
left it when he found it was not
prepared to fight the employers.

In 1946 a little group of four or
five people formed a _ political
committee—the forerunner of the
party that was seven years later
to win the first general election
in British Guiana and form the
first popular government. Says
Dr. Jagan: : :

“There were only five or six
of us but we worked very hard.

We called ourselves the Poli-

tical Affairs Committee, held

discussions, studied left wing

literature and brought out a

monthly bulletin.” ‘

Hard as they worked, audacious
as they were, they could not have
foreseen the immense success
they were to achieve in a few
years.

Nevertheless, Dr. Jagan was
elected to the Legislative Council
in 1947 and for five years he
stayed there, a vigorous, ener-
getic figure, perpetually using the,
council as a platform from which
he could speak to the people.

The political affairs committee
grew from strength to strength.
Its members went to the workers
in the sugar plantations and fac-
tories, in the towns and villages.

They argued, persuaded, circu-

a new area of 16 square
blocks to cover by herself.
There is no secret to her suc-
cess. She is driven by a passion-
ate hatred of war and a great
leve of people and peace. This

‘is why she is able to overcome

her deafness, the difficulty she

has with the English language ~

(which is not her mother tongue)
and the serious illness which
forces her to make _ periodic
visits to her doctor.
a

One cold, miserable Saturday
other peace workers, worried
about her health, pleaded with
her to do a little less work.

“No,” she said, “I must keep
going. While I can still walk, I
must keep working for peace.”

That same day a minister stop-
ped to. chat with her on the
street. “This is not the way to
get peace, lady,” he told her, in
a not unkindly way. -

‘Do you know of a _ better
way?” she asked him.

“Go home and pray to God,”
he told her.

“No,” she. said, “I must also
work for peace. God does not
like people who sit home all day

bothering Him.”
The minister had no way of

lated their bulletin. Always they
combined struggle on small local
issues with the large struggle
against imperialism.

They supported with all their
strength the strike of sugar
workers in 1948, when workers
were shot down by the police,
and after that they gained rapid-
ly increasing support.

But their greatest victory came
when they healed the racial split
between Africans and Indians and
drew the most progressive people
of both races into their new Peo-
ple’s Progressive party in 1950.

“T went on with my job as a

dentist, but most of my earnings
were spent on the party,” says
Dr. Jagan. “We all worked and
worked. We were out every week-
end. We.were in touch with the
people; we knew what they want-
ed and how they felt.

“And we believed in what we
were doing. We still believe.”

Today Jagan is not daunted.
Nor is Burnham. There is a quiet
and friendly confidence about
them—even though their govern-
ment has been unseated by force
of arms and an array of fictitious
charges made against them from
the British Colonial Office.

“There’s a lot to do—it isn’t
going to be easy,” says Dr. Jagan.
But he smiles. “The people are
with us.”

“A lot to do,” agrees Burnham
in his gentle voice. But he smiles
too.

They both smile because the
people are with them.

knowing, of course, but he spoke
to one who well knew the paci-
fist teachings of Christianity.

For Mrs. McKitch, born in
Veregin, Saskatchewan, is the
daughter of Doukhobor parents
whose Christian consciences fore-
ed them to oppose Tsarist militar-
ism in the old Russia and, final-
ly, led them to Canada in their
search for peace and _ brother-
hood.

“My father was a_ teacher,’
Mrs. McKitch recalls, “and I re-
member well his library, with
its wonderful books, and I learn-
ed about peace from him and
from them.”

@ *
Mrs. McKitch gives little
thought to her own misfortunes
as she devotes almost every wak-
ing moment to the struggle for
peace. Her husband, Alex, is
bed-ridden with a broken back
and their only income is $56 a
month in Workmen’s Compensa-
tion. Mr. McKitch was injured
several years ago, at Camp 6,
Youbou, when a tree fell on him.

Before coming to Vancouver
two years ago, Mrs. McKitch
functioned as a one-woman peace
movement in Camp 6, a settle-
ment of 80 houses. On several

- Alphabet

people

A is for Atom — but never for
Art — ' 4
B’s for the Bomb to tear thin
apart; - a]
C’s Coca-Cola, Curtain and Crime
D for Drugstore and Dollar (but
also for Dime); :
E was for Empire Expanding at
Ease, a
F's Filibuster, Face-saving and
Freeze; ad

’ G is for Gangster and Global 4

Gooey, a
H is for Hotcha, Hocus and Hooeyi
| is for Imports, Inflation and Ink
Expanded in gallons for f
chaps might think; hs
J is for Jitterbug, Jazz, Jive and
Jam, ‘ ‘
K is for Kinsey Kinks, L is f
Lam, : ial
And also for Lynching 3
Limey and Lush, ae
M’s Mink and Momma, Mascél#
and Mush; :
N for Neurosis, Nerves, Necking
and Nuts, ae
P Petting and Panic, but never
Price-cuts; fi
O is Old Glory that’s got Ovt ©
gear Me
(Even the alphabet’s gone
bit queer), the
Q is for Quizzes to keep Question?
Quiet, : nd
R for Race-hatred, Repression 4
Riot, ; oe
S for Sex, Sadism, Scaremonge””
Superman, as
T Tramps (or Tootsies) and TH
out of Tin-Pan; sie
U’s USA and its UN Committee
V Vice-squads, V Vitriol, V }
om, not pretty; oh
W for War and then War
more War.

But at the tail end there are thos?
that ask Why? AAS

X, Y and Z are not ready to dié

X, Y and Z are the factors ¥!
known,

You and me, who these 4¥°
sight wiser have grow? —

XYZ don’t go much on this dort
ABC, : s
They want it rewritten, and soit
shall be; “i
lt’s time to get weaving and
the old head x
On our own ABC, writ by 7 —
and Z. ligh
—Reprinted from DaY

occasions she canvassed eve
one of those 80 homes 25 :
as the men in the bunkhous®

She collected more that Ap
signatures to: the Stockholm ve
peal, a like number to the
Power Peace Pact Appeal nut
the fall of 1950, when Mac ©
threatened to spread the pe
China, she distributed “No
house a leaflet demandi
war with China.” cok

On other occasions shé oney
lected quite large sums on com
to send delegates to pear oro
ferences in Vancouver and
to. .

One of these delegates
Mrs. Myrtle Bergren, ° the NO
Cowichan, who attended "sce,
tional Assembly to Save —
in Toronto, in 1951. '
ren and Mrs. McKitch
Youbou , together. deri

“Mrs. Bergren is a WP ich
woman and I learned 5? gro
about working for peace ~
her,” says Mrs. McKiteh.

Mrs, McKitch has a simP
quite obviously, the
proach to those she © ole
All she says is, “Would voit
to vote for peace, or wal eqcil
knows. that the choice —)
people is, in fact, that simP

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 6, 1953 — PA‘