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Br. Guiana is moving ahead

Below are excerpts of an exclusive interview with Dr: Cheddi Jagan,
leader of the People’s Progressive Party and Premier of British Guiana.
The interview was taped recently by Surrey résident William Phillips,

while on a visit to that country.
T he cause of disturbances here
was basically the fact that this
country ismoving forward to in-
dependence. The opposition in
British Guiana is thoroughly
frustrated. It has lost three suc-
cessive elections—1953, 1957 and
1961—and sees no prospects for
winning free and fair elections
in the future.

The aim of these disturbances
is to suspend the constitution, to
delay independence indefinitely,
and give the British government
an excuse to arrive at some for-
mula which will not allow the
People’s. Progressive Party to
remain in the government.

It is true there have been ra-
cial disturbances. But one of the
main reasons is because the
situation was allowed to get out
of hand. The police commission-
er did not use his police force
effectively and firmly, Inasense,
the opposition was allowed to get
away with murder.

They broke the ban on assem-
bly of more than five persons,

People were beaten up, stores
looted, and disturbances could
no longer be contained. East In-

' dians felt they were being beaten
up without police protection, and
they took retaliatory steps. This
made the situation appear to be
racial conflict.

But basically, the situation
here is not racial. If anything,
one could say it is class con-
flict, class struggle.

You have in the countryside
farmers and peasants who have
basic problemsagainst landlords.
In the sugar industry, the largest
in the country, workers, whether
they’re Indians or Africans, have
always been battling against the
absente: sugar planters.

What is necessary is to solve
as quickly as possible the un-
employment problem. When we
took office in 1957, an Inter-
national Labor Organization offi-
cer disclosed that the unemploy-
ment rate was 80 percent andthe
under-employment rate was
about nine percent.

With a high population increase
of 25 percent per annum, we

- have a grave problem.

In this
situation it is easy for people

_ to generate racialism as the op-

position has been doing.

With independence, my govern-
ment will have more room to
manoeuvre, It will have power to
negotiate freely and we will be
able to solve problems more
quickly.

This will help us electorally,
and the opposition now feels it
must do everything possible to
frustrate our attempts to achieve
independence.

The People’ s Progressive
Party has the most advanced
and progressive ideology. The
youth gravitate toward it. It is
socialist orientated, and is fight-
ing for basic changes in the
economy, for diversification of
agriculture, a balanced agricul-
tural an industrial development.

We not only pay lip service to
this, but carry out general re-
form so the country can move
forward.

Last year we introduced a bud-
get which included recommenda-
tions by Mr. Nichols Calder, the
Cambridge University professor
well-known for his economic abi-
lities. This is the kinc of thing
President Kennedy asked for—
tax reform, fiscal reform, mone-
tary reform— before aid could
be forthcoming.

We have done this. But Cald-
er’s proposals, incorporated into
the budget, were the basis for
strikes and disturbances. They
were used by the opposition and
people outside, particularly the
Americans, to try to destroy the
government.

After our elections in !961 I
WENT TO Canada and the U.S.
and asked not only for aid, but
trade. We are looking for loans at
favorable rates of interest, at
conditions of repayment which
will allow us a breathing space.
We wanted a_ sort of morator-
ium on repayment—perhaps five
or 10 years,

Although aid was promised,
particularly by the Kennedy ad-
ministration, now the pronounce-

British Guiana is a beautiful, rich country, but its people have a longa way to go before they achieve
even a modest standard of living. The first objective is casting off the yoke of colonialism and gain-

ing full independence.

ment is that no aid will be giy-
en to British Guiana.

I pointed out that British Gui-
ana needs to diversify its agri-
culture, and asked whether Can-
ada or the U.S. would be pre-
pared to take any agricultural
products from this country.

The answer was no. . . that
they can give no guarantees about
increased purchases of products
we now produce or products we
are capable of producing. This
holds not only in agriculture,
but in the industrial field and
even in mining.

This is a fundamental problem
not only for British Guiana, but
for the whole of Latin America,
In Latin America you have alop-
sided economy where the country
depends on one or two crops
or one or two minerals.

Bolivia depends almost exclus-
ively on tin for its export in-
come, Coffee accounts for almost
all the export income of several
countries—Colombia, Haiti, Bra-
zil, Nicaragua, El Salvador and

Guatemala, These may be called
**coffee republics.’’

There are the so-called ‘‘ban-
ana republics’’ — Ecuador, Hon-
duras, Uruguay, Costa Rica.

Sugar—before the revolution
sugar accounted for 85 percent of
Cuba’s exports and 50 percent of
the Dominican Republic.

Oil accounts for 94 percent of
Venezuela’s export income, But

‘oil employs only about three

percent of the Venezuelan work-
ers.

We want markets for goods
we presently produce. We want
stable prices over long periods

for the products we now produce —

and we need markets for new
products which we must produce
because the tracitional markets
are changing—qualitatively.

Synthetic rubber is taking the
place of natural rubber. Man-
made fibres are taking the place
of cotton. I am told they are
even planning to prodice ersatz
coffee.

The underdeveloped countries

need additional markets, guaran-
teed prices, loans of low interest
with long-term repayment fac-
ilities, so they can diversify theil
economies and have a balance of
agricultural and_ industrial
growth,

Giving aid to these people, as
the Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro
recently said, is like putting
water into the ocean—it doesn’t
seep down to the bottom; But we
in British Guiana who have car- —
ried out all the prerequisites of
the Alliance for Progress have

“been told: ‘‘You cannot get aid.”

This is the dilemma of people
in the U. S. and elsewhere. They
want to be world leaders; at the —
same time they don’t want any
basic changes to take place.

Our feeling is that unless basic
changes take place, unless there
is a planned economy, unless sO-
cialist thinking is includedinthis
planning, then nothing of mater-
ial value will come out of all
this.

Study finds 1949 expulsions'damaged 'C1O

By GEORGE MORRIS

The expulsion of unions with a
million members by the CIO in
1949 for alleged ‘‘Communist
control’? was a serious mistake
and very ‘‘damaging’’ to the lab-
or movement, was’ the view
strongly emphasized in a round
table discussion of 10 officials
of the United Auto Workers at
the Centre for the Study of Demo-
cratic Institutions of the Fund
for the Republic.

The discussion between the
unnamed officials, identified only
by numbers, and W. H. Ferry,
vice-president of the center anc
Paul Jacobs, staff director ofthe
Center’s Study of the Trade
Union, is reported in a pamphlet
published by the center. The
pamphlet “Labor Looks at
Labor’’ is the latest of a series

by the Center in which the
trade unions’ were critically
examined.

Paul Jacobs provoked the dis-
cussion by giving the unionists
some of the conclusions to which

the center has arrived in its

studies, including the view that
unions having accomplished the
goals they projected in earlier
days and in the struggles of the

thirties, ‘“‘may well disappear
unless ‘‘new functions are found’’
forthem. ,

After certain of the UAW men
described the difficulties of the
“fight for the loyalty’? of the
members to unions and laid the
obstacles chiefly the ‘‘drive to
conform’’ that America has lived
through, Jacobs said:

“‘T suggest that the basic fault
is one of the things that you
indicated, the drive to conform.
I submit that we made a great
mistake when we _ kicked the
Communists out of the ClO—and,
as you know, I was one of those
who fought most belligerently
to throw them out. I think now
that the way the UAW leader-
ship behaved towards its minority
was a mistake. We ran scared.
That’s really why we kicked out
the opposition. And when we
did it, we really threw the baby
out with the bath, because we
set up a pattern of conformity:

“we set up a pattern of refusing

to break with traditional ways of
thinking. We weren’t willing to
run the risks of having the Com-
munist Party guys inside the
CIO and inside our own unions.
We should have been willing to
run that risk because when we
gave in we became part of the

general movement of ‘accepta
bility.’

“That s why, for example, you
can’t dignify what goes on at
a UAW convention today by call
ing it ‘debate’. Policy questions
are not being debated ut UAW
conventions. What is being
argued about is administrative
jazz and union legislative prob-
lems. There are no arguments
about foreign policy questions or
even about domestic policy ques-
tions. The ability to brea’ with
traditional patterns is one reason
why Hoffa is successful. ~He
thumbs his nose at the estab
lishment. If unions are going to
survive and grow in this com-
ing period, they have to break
with their ol’ patterns.’

On the expulsions, one said:

“They say that there is much
joy in heaven for a sinner wtio
repenteth and I couldnt help
having that run through my mind
when Jacobs mentioned the purge
of the left-wing in the trade
union movement. I have felt this
for a long time.’

While opposing the Communist
Party, the UAW man said he op-
posed the expulsions and added:

“If we grant the hypothesis
that they had to be removed
from the scene, it seems to be

incumbent upon the victorious
forces to put something in there
to fill the vacuum that was cre-
ated. This was never done. I say
this is still incumbent upon
them.’’ i
' The same speaker recalled
that ‘‘our teachers were trade-
unionists with class struggle
backgroun«'s of one kind or an-
other.’’ He recalled the stimu-
lating significance of ‘‘great de-
bates among the Socialists, Trot
skyites and the Communists’’
during the thirties, the period
that brought up these UAW
leaders.

“These were the people who
were carrying the ideological ball

at that time’’, continued the UAW
man. ‘‘But now we are in a
time when we go to a trade
union educational class and we
talk about which wing of tie
Democratic Party we are going
to support. This carriesno spark
back to the plant. They can get

October 4, 1963—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 8

this kind of information out of
the Los Angeles Times. There
is nothing here to capture the
imagination of the young people’
who are going to take our place.”
The same speaker also gave @
picture of the way bureaucratiC_
domination goes hand in-hand
with conformism, and is now 4
handicap to development of neW
leaders. ‘
“It used to be in the trade
union movement,’’ he continued,
*‘that when you held a position,
you were always looking behin©
you: there was somebody com-
ing along. I remember when 1
was one of the guys that was
coming along. Thaét doesn’t seem
to happen any more. All too
often, even in the local unions,
if some young guy rears up his
head, somebody lops it off. And
what eventually occurs in this
vacu.m is that young people
turn to the corporation. :

‘Some place along the way, it
is going to be necessary for us
to recapture the spark. Maybe it
is archaic of me, but I can’t see
what it is going to be except
to get back to a class struggle |
concept, even though it may not
be along the classic pattern that —

See: STUDY, Page 12