Nesbitt Chhanghur, a native of the East Berbice-Corentyne Region, memorialised the atrocities of the 1964 Disturbances in his doleful dirge – ‘A Guyanese Lament’ – about the murders of Edgar Munroe, an African and Ramraj Gunraj, an Indian, who became the first two victims of violence. Both were sugar workers from Manchester village who were accused of breaking the Guiana Agriculture Workers Union’s strike when terrorists bombed the lorry in which they were travelling at Tain Village.
Former President David Granger, speaking on his weekly programme, The Public Interest, cited the dirge while examining the massacres committed during GAWU’s 165-day strike which accompanied the People’s Progressive Party’s Hurricane of protest. Massacres – the indiscriminate killing of a large number of unresisting victims in a single event – became frighteningly frequent during the Disturbances. The PPP-affiliated GAWU ignited violence in the sugar industry aiming, ostensibly, at gaining the right to represent sugar workers from the British Guiana Sugar Producers Association. The strike’s real objective was to mobilise storm troops to reinforce the Party’s Hurricane of Protest.
Mr. Granger explained that murders started from ‘day-one’ of the strike and soon escalated to massacres. Many mass killings occurred but three were the most vicious. Eight members of the Abraham family were killed in the ‘Werk-en-Rust massacre’ when their home was fire-bombed on 12th June. This attack was ‘in retaliation’ for the allegedly leaked evidence by a family member that the PPP had received money from the USSR through the Barclay’s Bank and after the official attempt to prosecute her for ‘sedition’ failed.
The next month, fifty-three passengers were killed in the ‘Hurudaia massacre’ when the ‘Son Chapman’ launch was bombed on its journey from Georgetown to Mackenzie on the Demerara River on 6th July. This barbarity was executed ‘in retaliation’ for the Wismar atrocity on 24th May in Mackenzie which, itself, occurred ‘in retaliation’ for the heinous mutilation and murder of an African couple in Buxton. The next month, seven members of the Jaikarran family were killed at Chance in the ‘Mahaicony massacre’ on 28th August ‘in retaliation’ for many earlier murders including the ‘Mortice atrocity’ and the killing of a Christian pastor in the district.
The former president suggested that the massacres could be explained by the theory of the ‘cycle of retaliation’ which posits that anger over one murder could trigger another which in turn could trigger anger which then could trigger murder and so on, ‘in retaliation’. The consequence of one act, thereby, could became the cause of a subsequent act. He suggested, further, that a crisis of credibility arose because GAWU’s violent campaign targeted ‘unresisting’ victims who had nothing to do with the strike in the sugar industry. GAWU’s violence was aimed at poor villagers and not at British colonial officials, British troops or British sugar planters.
Granger lamented the PPP Government’s abandonment of its responsibility to protect the population from violence. The British Governor was obliged to seize executive authority for public security, declare a state of emergency, deploy troops and detain the masterminds of violence, including 32 PPP members, in order to curb the killings. Massacres do matter. Despite failing to prevent elections being held they did set off ceaseless cycles of retaliation.
The former president reminded that this year, 2024, marks the 60th anniversary of the worst massacres in this country’s history. The ‘Disturbances’ should remind generations of Guyanese of the deep-rooted damage to social cohesion and national unity caused by the PPP’s campaign of terrorist violence.
