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THE PEOPLE'S PROGRESSIVE PARTY

suffrage the P.P.P. would be elected to power.1 When the

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Gommission took public evidence in Georgetown the P.P.P.
leaders informed them that they would not be satisfied with......
any Constitution which did not allow for a single-chamber
government, all its members elected, not nominated, for suf-
frage for all over eighteen, for the Governor's powers to be
reduced to an absolute minimum and with no other 'checks
and balances' to be permitted. The Commission told the P.P.P.
that they defined democracy as government by consent, by con-
sent even of the opposition, and insisted that constitutional
checks of some kind were necessary to protect the rights of
minorities and individual freedom. An opposition of some
kind must be allowed to operate. The P.P.P. refused to be con-
vinced, saying that if a party wins the majority of seats it has
the people's sanction to do whatever it pleases. One leader said,
The voice of the people is the voice of God', and when the
Commission replied that the voice of the people might change
from one election to another, and that a majority of seats in
government did not necessarily imply a majority of votes, a
man in the public gallery cried, 'Do you want to put a check
on God?'

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The Commission knew that it would not be morally possible to withhold self-government from a people because a political party disapproved of by the U.K. Government would certainly be elected. It was decided to give the Colony a Constitution in the hope that political responsibility would sober the P.P.P., just as it had sobered Dr. Nkrumah in the Gold Coast. In February, 1953, the P.P.P. won eighteen out of the twenty-four seats in the Legislative Council (though polling only 51 per cent of the votes).

I have outlined the policy of the P.P.P. towards Sugar in an

1 It has been pointed out to me that the Report of the Waddington Commission (para. 97) suggests that it did not envisage that the P.P.P. would be returned to power, rather that the Commission thought there would be a group of Ministers drawn from all parties. The authority for my statement is an article by Dr. Rita Hinden, who served on the Commission, in Encounter, January 1954, in which she says of the elections under the proposed new Constitution, "There was no coherent opposition, and it was more than likely that they (the P.P.P.) would win in any popular election.' Later she says, 'Here, then, was our dilemma. Should we, in fear of what one political group might do, withhold self-government from the people? In the end we knew this would be impossible.'

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224

earlier chapter. It is difficult to say precisely what legislation the P.P.P. intended to put in hand which would have been within any tolerated threshold. It came to power by means of a Constitution in which it did not believe and which it intended to overthrow as soon as it could, in order that it might do exactly as it pleased. It had no intention, from the beginning, of working the Constitution. Its avowed aim was complete independence. In a foreword to a pamphlet by Dr. Jagan a fellow extremist, Mr. Sidney King, wrote:

'Only the candidates of the People's Progressive Party are sufficiently advanced politically to be able to put up a persistent battle against all forms of obstruction and veto which will be used against all constructive measures and to detect the tactics of the imperialists and expose them to the people.... Only a Party with our record of preparation and of struggle on behalf of the working class and the masses is capable of making the necessary war.... On the lips of every loyal Guianese of every race and in the hearts of the oppressed, this name [Cheddi Jagan] has become a banner behind which tramp the revolutionary and progressive masses of our country-to battle and victory.'

It is against the background of this absolute refusal to work

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never the Constitution that the eventual suspension should be seen.

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complaining tone that the Governor had not once used-his veto during the Party's period of office; this, he said, supported his claim that the Party had committed nothing heinous. In fact it attempted little legislation of any kind because all its energies were being put into the creation of a constitutional crisis by which it might force the U.K. Government to give the Party an unlimited Constitution. Then its members would have passed the legislation intended to destroy British interests in the Colony. Cheddi Jagan claims that it was fear of this which brought about the crisis, and not a sense of moral responsibility towards the people of British Guiana. The issue cannot be so simplified. Today the British seem riddled with guilt about their investments in the colonies; exploitation in the past has made them half-feel that they have no natural right to protect the interests of their colonial concerns. Thus, in neither the White Paper on the Suspension nor the Robertson Report, is a word said about the vast value in sterling of Britishowned assets in the Colony, interests which it seems to me a Government should protect from destruction as much as it