![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
The original People's Progressive Party was the first mass based, multi-racial and multi class political party in the history of Guyana. In 1956/57 the PPP experienced its second split in two years when the Ultra Left exited. The Ultra Left was a creative Marxist tendency inhabited by organic intellectuals who had become the intellectual and activist leaders of the party. They were all men, younger than Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the most senior politician in the party and indisputably the leader of the Guyanese nationalist anti colonial struggle. Their vision and tactics clashed with those of Dr. Jagan, who attacked them at the 1956 party congress held in the height of British repression which targeted them in particular. Their exit from the party within a year deprived both party and country of the chance of a secure future.
Notes
The country will be referred to as Guiana before independence in 1966 and as Guyana after that year.
From the poem “Looking at Your Hands,” Selected Poems (Demerara Publishers Limited, Georgetown, 1989), 11.
“Interview 8 Rory Westmaas,” in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 71.
The country was called British Guiana before independence in 1966 and Guyana after that date. British Guiana, Guiana or B.G. will be used to refer to it before 1966 and Guyana will be employed after that year.
Cheddi Jagan, The West on Trial: The Fight for Guyana's Freedom (Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers, 1975), 152–153.
“Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas conducted by Nigel Westmaas,” August 16, 2004.
Interview with Eusi Kwayana. Telephone. April 9, 2012; Wilson Harris, “Memoir,” Kyk-Over-Al. Nos. 49/50. June 2000, 181.
“Identity Statement” to donated papers of Lionel and Pansy Jeffrey. GB 0074 LMA/4462/P. London Metropolitan Archives.
“Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas …”; Rory Westmaas in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 69.
Eric Huntley in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 74. For reference to these classes see also “Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas … ”
Martin Carter as quoted in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 52.
Ibid.
These lyrics are reproduced in full by Fred Parris, “Foreword” in Eusi Kwayana, Guyana: No Guilty Race (Georgetown: Free Press, 1999), v–vi.
C.O. 1031/406. Savage to Secretary of State No. 527 of July 3, 1953; Vibert C. Cambridge, “Eusi Kwayana. The librettist of Guyana's Political Opera or The Political Musician,” in V. Cambridge, ed., Writings On Guyanese Music 2003–2004. Black Praxis. Special Edition (Athens, OH: Department of African American Studies, Ohio University, 2004), 87–90 and V. Cambridge, “Music Making Men and Women,” Emancipation. The African-Guyanese Magazine 2, no. 13 (2005): 35.
Cambridge, “Eusi Kwayana,” 90.
Interview with Eusi Kwayana. Telephone. April 9, 2012.
King [Kwayana], “Foreword to Poems of Resistance from British Guiana, 1954,” in Stewart Brown, ed., All Are Involved. The Art of Martin Carter (Leeds, UK: Peepal Tree Press, Ltd.), 97.
Jagan, The West on Trial, 68.
Ibid., 117.
Ibid., 137.
As far as is known the term was first used in Dr. Jagan's 1956 Congress Paper, entitled “On the Political Situation.” See also Jagan, The West on Trial, 175.
Brindley Benn as quoted in David Granger, “Obituary: Brindley Benn, CCH, January 24, 1923–December 11, 2009,” Stabroek News. December 27, 2009.
Jagan, The West on Trial, 175.
Ibid., 186.
Kwayana, Guyana: No Guilty Race (Georgetown, the Author, 1999), 25.
Baytoram Ramharack, Against the Grain: Balram Singh Rai and the Politics of Guyana (San Juan, Trinidad: Chakra Publishing House, 2005), 232–257.
Benn in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 64–65.
Ibid., 66.
Martin Carter, “Our Time,” in Gemma Robinson, ed., Martin Carter. University of Hunger: Collected Poems & Selected Prose (Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 2006), 145.
Neither of these two terms was used while these groups were active, either by members or anyone else. Both appellations were applied retrospectively.
Harris, “Memoir,” 180.
“Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas … ”
Correspondence with Stanley Greaves. April 1, 2013. Email.
A. J. Seymour, Studies in West Indian Poetry (Georgetown, the Author, 1981), 20; Gordon Rohlehr, “The Creative Writer and West Indian Society,” KAIE no. 11 (August 1973), 48–77, especially 53–56.
W. O. Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt (Bloomington, Indianapolis, and London: Indiana University Press and James Currey, 1998); T. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study (London: James Currey, 1985); David Lan, Guns and Rain: Guerillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985; Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press, 1985); and D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1981).
CO 1031/779. WIS 366/4/04. OAG Guiana to Secretary of State. No. 1256 of 24th December, 1952. Confidential. Enclosure.
Ibid., Confidential Telegram No. 476, June 12, 1953.
Ibid.
C.O. 1031/121. Savage to Sir Thomas Lloyd. 13 Sept. 1953. Top Secret and Personal.
Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Company and Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1987), 1.
Sydney King [Eusi Kwayana] to the Executive Committee [PPP], “Observations on Dr. Jagan's Congress Speech,” 1956. Reprinted, College of Social Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, January 21, 1957.
Ibid., 3.
Interview with Kwayana. April 9, 2012. See also King, “Observations on Dr. Jagan's Congress Speech,” 3.
Eusi Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone is to give only ‘one side of a historical narrative of guilt.'” Letter to the editor, Stabroek News (Georgetown). Friday, June 26, 2009.
“Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas … ”; Westmaas in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 69–70.
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone … ”. See also Kwayana, “We need a national conversation.” Posted September 11, 2004. www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. (accessed April 4, 2012).
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone … ”
Kwayana, “We need a national conversation.”
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone … ”
Ibid. See also King, “Observations on Dr. Jagan's Congress Speech,” 5.
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone … ”. See also King, “Dr. Jagan: the Real Turncoat—PPP Leading the People to Hell,” New Nation. November 22, 1957, 3 and 5, as quoted in Hugh W. L. Payne, “A Short Documentary History of the Development of the People's National Congress” (Georgetown: The National Archives Service, Georgetown, 1975), 28–29.
Rupert Roopnarine, “Martin Carter and Politics,” in Stewart Brown, ed., All are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter, 51.
“Excerpts from an Interview with Rory Westmaas … ”
Jagan, The West on Trial. For example, see 68 and 300; Ramharack, Against the Grain, 71–89, 116–119.
Rupert Roopnarine. Interview 21 in Birbalsingh, The People's Progressive Party of Guyana 1950–1992, 156.
Eric Huntley, “No Illusions,” in Brown, ed., All are Involved, 301.
Sydney King (Eusi Kwayana), Next Witness: An Appeal to World Opinion (Georgetown: Labour Advocate, 1962; Georgetown: Free Press, 1999), 9.
Carter, “You are Involved,” in Stewart Brown and Ian McDonald, eds., Poems by Martin Carter (Macmillan Education, Oxford, 2006), 10.
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources alone … ”
Ibid.
Sydney King, “Observations on Dr. Jagan's Congress Speech.”
Jagan, The West on Trial, 175–176.
King, “Observations …,” 4.
Ibid., 5.
Ibid., 7.
PAC Bulletin No. 13, Wednesday, July 23, 1947.
Thunder 1, no. 4 (April 1950), l; C.O. 1031/776 Minute of V D Barty-King to Vernon 2 Nov 1951 giving Barty-King's précis of Cheddi's answers at a press conference at the Indian students’ Bureau, Exeter St, London on 2 Nov 1951; and “Policy Statement” of the PPP, 1953 Elections in Thunder 4, no. 3 (March 1953).
“Report of the Fourth Congress of the PPP,” Thunder7, no. 14 (Saturday, April 7, 1956), 3; C. Jagan, The West on Trial, 176.
King, “Observations on Dr. Jagan's Congress Speech,” 7; Interview with Lionel Jeffrey. March 20, 1987; Spinner, 63.
Thomas Spinner, A Political and Social History of Guyana 1945–1983 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press Inc. 1984), 68; Ralph Ramkarran, “The PPP and Challenges Ahead,” Demerara Waves. December 2, 2012. www. Demerarawaves.com (accessed December 2, 2012); Kwayana, Next Witness, 14.
Forbes Burnham, “On the Struggle for National Independence,” PPP Thunder. February 26, 1955, as quoted in Payne, A Short Documentary History, 5–6.
For self criticism on this point see King, “Dr. Jagan: The Real Turncoat—PPP Leading the People to Hell,” New Nation November 22, 1957, as quoted in Payne, A Short Documentary History, 28; “Excerpts from an interview with Rory Westmaas … ”
Sir Henry Wynn Parry's Report of a Commission of Inquiry into Disturbances in British Guiana in February 1962.
Nikita Khrushchev, :Secret Speech” on the Cult of Personality, February 25, 1956. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1956khrushchev-secret1.html (accessed on October 21, 2012).
Birbalsingh, The PPP … An Oral History, 52.
Kwayana, “To rely on PPP sources … ” Stabroek News. June 26, 2009.
“Interview 5 Martin W. Carter,” Birbalsingh, The PPP … An Oral History, 55.
K. Nehusi, “Introduction,” in Richard Hart, Caribbean Workers’ Struggle (London: Socialist History Society and Bogle L'Ouverture Press, 2012), 4–5.