Into ag

Boo

* ip 9

(BRITISH)~

Guiana

yRE initials B..G. are the ab-
breviation for British Guiana.
ae they also mean, more accur-
ftely, something quite different
~Bookers’ Guiana.”
ve name British Guiana
wight mean a free, self-govern-
se Country in a community of
endly nations.
ae Bookers’ Guiana means a
,untry as big as Britain ruled
ie © Power — armed power
a necessary — of big busi-

Big business in this country
a Sugar. And sugar means
oKer Bros., McConnell & Co.
Sean mean Bookers. Hotels
oat Bookers. Transport, or a
: deal of it, means Bookers.
fields houses, stores, factories,
then E Bookers has enough of
a8 0 affect the life of nearly
in icone of the 437,000 people

mt this land,

British Guiana has 146,000 peo-
a aor, And of that num-
Dloyed €wer than 38,000 are em-
Ores m the Sugar estates,
enter PPing lines and other

7 'Prises of Bookers.
ce are 54 companies in this
Teach with connections that
itough the West Indies
to the ay pag the ar
estan’ are «21 «great sugar
prectes, Covering a total of 155,-
fee and 20 are owned by
estate Companies’ — Bookers (12
i and 11 factories), Sand-
is Parker and Company (5
€s and 3 factories), S. Dav-

sa

Son ang c
om
: * factory, Pany (3 estates and
cored of these companies
rilinte: Officially estimated at
legs th ton. And in a country of

Hep tount of property means

Pervading SAE ;

T sugar comes bauxite, the

Sentign wert of aluminum, es-
‘ . any arm _ program.

a ean

British at U.S. as well as

Alum; COmPany, owned by the
Which wa Company of. Canada,
iant a itself a subsidiary of the

Uuminum Company of Am-
And behind all this is the
f ellon, one of the
anciers of the United

‘ Ca,
house

0
: RTeatest
x States, ze
A ly saeed
ite hg two groups, the baux-
Tuling «> 22d the sugar men, the
has aed of British Guiana
Now 4 recently been centred.
The Deo ees is threatened by
ple and their People’s
SSive Party.

ot

of Britt iS life like for the*people
Nine th Guiana, the people who
the gyo ® bauxite and cultivate
he “ist cane?

etry, ao Report, on the sugar
{0 say.’ “SSued in 1949, had this
ANS omen
se Cross

L found
Net jump over
i ‘
in the gelag € when work
Aeartfelt sentence that
“4 Women penis by thousands
a mess lace Guiana, this
- do
felq Rot want to work in

an half a million people.

More. We want to

ker’s

An interview
given by
ROLLY SIMS
of Caribbean
Labor Congress
to PHILIP
BOLSOVER

stay at home and care for our
children and send them to school,
and also send hot breakfast for
our husbands in the field.”
What is their work? Most of
them weed the fields and help to
clear the canals. In British Gui-
ana each square mile of sugar
cane field involves 49 miles of
drainage canals and ditches and
16 miles of high-level waterways.
These ¢anals are dredged and
kept cleat by hand. So members
of the commission reported that
“men and women up to their
waists, or even higher, were
everywhere pulling out weeds
with their hands or removing
mud and debris in small bas-
kets.” The comission recommend-
ed that “the employment of wo-
men or girls in water” be made
illegal. :
The men who cut the suga
cane and tend the fields under
the hot tropical sun’ often walk
five or six miles to work. They

British
By ARTHUR CLEGG

ae British government’s White
Paper on British Guiana has
proved nothing except that the
elected ministers of the People’s
Progressive party wished to act
as legitimate ministers.

It makes clear, however, that
the scandalous reality is that the
British government has torn up
the Guiana constitution and for-
cibly overthrown the elected gov-
ernment to satisfy a group of
American, Canadian .and South
African investors. °* )

It declares that the, British
government suspended the con-
stitution because “the very live-
lihood of the people” was threat-
ened.

But under the section on “The
Economie Consequences” of the
policy of the elected government
this “livelihood of the people
turns out to be the profits of
various companies.

The White Paper asserts that
the ministers “undernained the
confidence of the busimess com-
munity.” ; ie

“There is ample evidence,” it

says, “that until private firms >

have more confidence in the fu-
ture of the colony they will make
no further investments there.”

It lists five companies which
since June have abandoned ex-
ploration or exploitation licences
in British Guiana.

Of these the chief is the Gulf

t

Georgetown, capital of British Guiana

are up before dawn and often
home after dark.

Fresh water is not supplied, so
they must drink from the foul
water of the canals into which
the excreta of the mules is drain-
ed. Nor, in most areas, is there
any shelter into which they can
creep when they stop briefly to
eat or when they need to escape
the torrential rain.

The commission, recommend-

ing provision of shelters and .

fresh water, referred to the
“dubious liquid’ in the canals
and to the fact that shelters
could easily be built.

*

- What kind of homes do they
live in? Consider these figures.
In 1945 a survey was made of
7,994 houses in Georgetown, cap-
ital of British Guiana.

Of these houses, 2,309 were
found unfit for human habita-
‘tion, 5,303 were beyond repair.

Of all the houses, only 382 were
structurally sound. These are
the homes in which the people—
but not the white people — of
Georgetown live.

What about the accommoda-
tion on the sugar estates?

On most estates each worker’s
family lives in one room — and
the average family has five chil-
dren. There are no _ cooking
facilities, no sanitation except
trench or pit latrines, no light
except coal oil lamps.

“Temporary sheets or awnings
had been fixed over the beds to
keep off rain,” reported the Venn
Commission, “mud floors .. .
were made slippery and danger-
aus?) :

Cooking is usually done on a
raised mud platform. The famliy
sleeps on sacks laid on the floor.
There is no privacy, not when
the largest rooms are 20 by 14
feet, the smallest only 10 by 14
feet.

The children go from over-
crowded homes to overcrowded
schools.. Classes average from
60 to 120 children. In Canada
a Class of 60 is considered a dis-
grace. In British Guiana it is an
idea¥ to be achieved.

The sugar companies are re-
sponding to public demands and
are beginning to improve hous-
ing conditions. But they have
only touched the fringe of the
problem. And the workers can-
not pay for the new homes.

*

What about wages and work-
ing conditions?

In a typical season, workers on
the sugar estates cut and carry
by hand to the waterways about
two million tons of sugar cane.
Fertilisers by the ten thousand
tons are applied; mud by the
hundred thousand tons is ex-
tracted from the canals.

Recording these facts, the
Venn Commission adds a reveal-
ing passage:

“All these, and the numerous
cultivational operations, are ne-
cessarily performed under condi-
tions of climate and temperature
which, it is generally agreed by
physiologists, must adversely af-
fect human endurance and there-
fore output. .. .

“As field workers, Indians are
considered to have passed their
best working days at 50 and to
be quite unfit for any form of
arduous labor after 55... it is
quite common in or around a
factory to see women, apparently
old but probably only in the mid-
forties. ...” cee

And for this labor that brings
them to premature old age the
workers get $7 a week in a ,coun-
try where the cost of food, cloth-
ing and other necessities is as
high as in Britain itself. Even the
wage demanded by the Guiana
Industrial Workers Union — $15
a week — would provide no
more than a bare subsistence.

The People’s Progressive
party, supported by the over-
whelming majority of the peo-
ple, promised’ to end these con-
ditions. This is the “plot” the
British government, prodded by
‘the Eisenhower administration,
sends troops to suppress—and to
maintain conditions which pro-
duce huge profits for Bookers
and Mellons but only misery for
the people.

White Paper fantasies

Oil Corporation, one of the lead-
ing American oil concerns.

The others are Kennametals
International of South Africa,
New York Alaska Gold Dredg-
ing Company, Panhandle Oil Can-
ada Ltd., and Ellis Associated
Companies.

The elected government has
been overthrown to make Guiana
yield super-profits for American
investors. The ridiculous charges
of a “Communist plot’ have only
been dragged in to cover this
ee imply amount

arges simp

ihe aa assertion that
it is improper for leaders of
political parties in the colonies
to attend international confer-
ences or communicate with ay
organization not approved oe e
British Conservative Party Con-
tral Office or the Committee on
unAmerican Activities.

All the charges about a Com-
munist plot” turn out to be oe
ply reports of visits to confer-
ences of the World eit
of Trade Unions or Je eae i
statements from the orl
Peace Council.
‘All this is only
of earlier British &
statements.
an i lists< tou

White Paper :
ies against the elected min-

isters.
What ,
amount to is tha

nly a stale re-hash
overnment

t all of them
a t the ministers

wanted to repeal especially re-
pressive colonial legislation, or
introduce mildly liberal legisla-
tion, or exercise proper control
as a government. * ;

For example, they removed,
or tried to remove, severe re-
strictions on the right of entry
of persons or books into British
Guiana. . :

They tried to introduce a mild
trade. union reform. bill which
would have given recognition to
any trade union “which obtained
the support of 52 percent of the
workers in an industry by bal-
lot.”

They tried to reform the
schools along secular lines, some-
thing British educationalists have
been crying out for for over a
century.

And the White Paper solemnly
records, like a criminal accusa-
tion, “they appointed four PPP
supporters, three of whom were
primary schoolteachers, to the
education committee.”

The ministers are charged with
trying to form a» “people’s. pol-
ice.” : ;

of British Guiana should not
want to have a demoeratic police
force instead of the repressive
colonial instrument of oppression
inherited from the old regime is
not made clear. :

But, in fact, apart from a
couple of sentences from a’speech

made by Dr. Jagan just after the
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 30, 1953 — PAGE 9

election, the only evidence of

this desire is an attempt by the —

elected minister of labor to get
the appointed colonial secretary

’ to stop using police to intimidate

strikers.
This the White Paper calls

“undermining the loyalty of the

police.”
Another charge is “Attempts

to gain control of the Public Ser-

-MACRR SS «3 :

Why ‘the elected government y

The evidence? That Dr. Jagan
once said: “We would like to
have power to appoint our own
people who would be able to do
our. work.” This is only the
legitimate hope of any colonial
government.

The accusation that they fo-

mented “Labor Unrest” rests

simply on the fact that some min- _

isters,as trade unionists, support-
ed the Guiana Industrial Work-
ers Union in its struggle for re-
cognition on the sugar estates.

This tissue ‘of nonsense will
not stand examination for a mo-
ment.

What stands out in, the White
Paper is that when, as it re-
cords, the Ellis Associated Com-
panies “refused to continue nego-
tiations with the then govern-
men we
sugar interests on the State Coun-
cil became restive, the’ British
government forcibly overthrew
the government. ;

and the nominees of the —