Former President David Granger, recalling the violent ‘Disturbances’ of 1964 on his weekly programme — the Public Interest — explained that “violence is not a social necessity. It is a human invention aimed at the domination of one group by another.” He contended that it has taken generations to repair the damage caused by the campaign of civil violence in the ‘Disturbances’ of 1964.
Mr. Granger explained that the ‘Disturbances’ – called the ‘Hurricane of Protest’ by its author Dr. Cheddi Jagan – were organised by the People’s Progressive Party and should be examined at three levels. First, at the local level, violence was started by the PPP-affiliated Guiana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) which called a strike to demand recognition by the Sugar Producers’ Association for sugar workers, most of whom belonged to a rival union — the Man Power Citizens Association (MPCA).
When the GAWU strike started, many continued to work and they became victims of violence, the former president cited. “The first two persons to be murdered were Edgar Munroe, an African from Manchester village and later Ramraj Gunraj, an Indian — both sugar workers — accused of breaking the strike.”
The GAWU strike he said precipitated a period of unprecedented inter-ethnic hostility and lasted for 165 days. “Crimes including arson, battery, bombing, murder, mutilation, rape and sabotage became frequent. The worst massacres of the ‘Disturbances’ were the murders of 53 Africans at Hurudaia, of eight Portuguese, all members of the Abraham family, at Werk-en-Rust and seven Indians, all members of the Jaikarran family, at Mahaicony.”
The most alarming atrocity occurred at Wismar when three persons were murdered, he recalled, and the morning after the Abraham massacre, on 13 June, thirty-two PPP officials, including ministers, and three PNC members, were detained without trial, under emergency regulations.
“Second, at the ‘national’ level, the PPP opposed the replacement of the unbalanced ‘First-Past-the Post’ system with the Proportional Representation system of general elections. Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham and Peter d’Aguiar — the political leaders of the PPP, PNC, and UF parties agreed for the British Government to resolve their differences. The British introduced the ‘proportional representation’ electoral system based on the principle that representation in the Legislative Assembly should be in direct proportion to the votes cast for each contesting party.
“Third, at the international level, the PPP tried to depict its violent ‘Hurricane of Protest’ as an anti-colonial struggle, comparable to contemporary revolutionary movements in Cuba, Colombia by the National Liberation Army, Guatemala by the Rebel Armed Forces, Nicaragua by the Sandinista National Liberation Front and Venezuela, by the ‘Movement of the Revolutionary Left’. The PPP’s so-called British Guiana revolution was driven by the mobilization of trained terrorists and the supply of weapons and money from the USSR. Violence was organized, not random. The PPP’s youth arm — the Progressive Youth Organisation — sent more than 200 cadres for foreign military training. PYO defectors confessed that their training was aimed at inciting violent ‘revolution’ in Guyana.”
Former President Granger concluded that present-day Guyana is still suffering from the ‘secondary impact’ of the PPP-invented violence on the streets and villages during the ‘Disturbances’ in 1964. Civil violence has no place in this country today, he said.
