NINE DAYS IN JULY 1979 

Some of us believe that history, and social development which is part of it, proceeds in uneven motion, often with slow additions of the same kind of occurrences, until these themselves are mature and ready for a leap to a new plateau, a new identity, having of course the marks of the old. This is to try and identify as closely as possible, if it can be done, the period which marked the leap in Walter Rodeny's political status in Guyana from that of a much admired and respected scholar and political figure to one chosen by the people, in spite of himself and his philosophy, to lead the struggle against the dictatorship. This transition took place in the few days between July 11, 1979 and July 20, 1979 and included the martyrdom of Fr Bernard Darke. The events of those few days also triggered the formation of the Committee Against Repression in Guyana (CARIG) and a similar body in Trinidad & Tobago and many other committees of protest 'and support around the world - Germany, Nigeria, USA, Canada, Jamaica, Barbados, Suriname. The London CARIG lost no time in mobilising for the defence of Guyanese combatants. On or about July 10, or between July 10 and 11, 1979, Guyanese organisations observed the anniversary of the great referendum fraud of July 10, 1978. These observations included a public meeting of the PPP at which Walter Rodeny was a guest speaker. In those days the two organisations often exchanged guest speakers on important issues. The same night, there was, among other observances, a vigil of anti‑dictatorial organisations at Parliament Building. The vigilers burnt bush torches until about 1 a.m. with much police interference. Overnight, Georgetown dwellers were by various means attracted to an unusually bright glare in the sky. A building in Camp Street which turned out to be the "Office of the General Secretary, People's National Congress and Ministry of National Development" was on fire. By the afternoon of July 11 several WPA members and associates had been arrested and held by the police. Within a day or two of the list of those arrested was Bonita Harris, Kwame Apata, Maurice Odle, Omawale, Rupert Roopnaraine, Karen, de Souza, Walter Rodney and Davo Nandlall. Although these arrests were made very swiftly, the regime hid from the people the fact of the arrests. As protest cables poured in to the regime from the rest of the world, WPA activists not arrested picketed and circulated leaflets to get the news to the public. By evening, the state‑owned radio admitted the arrests. All over the country, on the coastlands and the bauxite belt, knots of people grouped to discuss the events and denounce the arrests. A document of the period records: "It turned out later that Rupert Roopnaraine was isolated at Eve Leary. Omawale, Apata and Nandlall were at Camp House. The two women were at a section of Eve Leary police station. "Large groups of citizens kept noisy vigils outside the prisons on Wednesday night (La Penitence and Eve Leary), Thursday (La Penitence and Eve Leary up to midnight) and Friday night (Betet- verwagting Police Station). On Wednesday night under a heavy camouflage of armed guards Bonita Harris and Karen de Souza were removed from Eve Leary to La Penitence prison and Rodney was in turn removed from La Penitence Police Station to Camp House Prison. "On the same Wednesday night, Rupert Roopnaraine remained in isolation at Eve Leary.. The police theory was that if pressure was brought to bear on him he would 'break'. Roopnaraine was kept handcuffed with his hands behind his back and interrogated in that condition: He had one answer to all their questions, 'This regime is illegal'. To their threats of physical pain, he replied, 'Nobody likes to feel pain, but whatever pain you inflict, my answers will be the same. This is an illegal regime. It has no right to jail anybody.' "Attempts to interrogate Rodney separately brought a similar response, 'Do not question me. The regime is illegal."' Without any public appeal or advertisement, large pocket citizens were seeking out the places of imprisonment and keeping vigil outside the prisons helping party members with pickets. The details of the struggle for bail, the magistrate's resistance of orders to refuse bail to the accused, the pooling of bail by citizens and the middle class, the only ones with property qualificatidns, the laying of police charges of arson in response to writs of habeas corpus, need not detain us here. What was coming out of social importance was that by arresting Walter Rodney, the regime had definitely associated him, in the minds of all who needed proof or reassurance, with the struggle against their oppressors. With all the preconditions marking him out for the role of popular revolutionary hero, the regime did the rest or left very little to be done. This little, Rodney, with quite other purposes in mind from those of hero making, did on July 20, 1979. 

THE REFERENDUM FIVE THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL THE MURDER OF FR. DRAKE

 Though we shall miss the details of the court advocacy, the story of the mass struggle resumes with the release on bail of the "Referendum Five"  three of whom were charged with "arson with intent to injure". These charges had been laid, not because of evidence in hand, but in order to find an answer to the writs of habeas corpus and arrange for denial of bail so that the accused would be forced to remain in Camp Street prison until the ruling party consented to bail. The professionalism of a deviant magistrate upset these plans. He granted bail and was rewarded with a swift transfer into the interior of Guyana. Although the thousands who gathered outside the magistrate's court, Georgetown, on July 14, 1979, came there to see and support, as they did, the WPA accused; it contained militants of all the parties opposed to the dictatorship. It also contained a number of spies and agents, plainclothes police and House of Israel men trained by the regime in surveillance. The one defendant to be bailed on the spot, Karen de Souza, was lifted shoulder high by the crowd as she left the courtroom. They had never known her name. It was her baptism into mass political activity or any political activity. While bail for the others was being arranged, the police took the "precaution" of bundling them off to the Camp Street prison. The crowd moved behind the vehicle in a mass march in a celebratory and protective mood. All of this, with their chants and cries, in broad daylight, did not fit in with the regime's image of the party of the whole people. The rulers decided to act. The House of Israel, which was observing its Sabbath, was called out by the ruling party. It answered the call since apparently the master had an ox fallen into the ditch. The PNC's fear of cameras is well known. Armed with such a dangerous weapon, Fr Bernard Darke SJ, in the logic of his assailants, became responsible for his own assassination. Darke was their only fatal victim of that day, but they should have been charged with the attempted murder of Mike James, a courageous journalist, and Jomo Yearwood, a bauxite worker, both of whom were seriously wounded. The prisoners were spirited away to their prison, quite unaware of the impending tragedy. Nor was the day in other ways uneventful. The break up of the people's march, or its disruption by the House of Israel, was a 'brutal operation informed by a political culture close to fascism. Apart from their stabbing of Darke and Yearwood with military bayonets, they assaulted scores of persons, running some of them down in the streets with knives drawn. Several ran into the homes of unknown citizens who gladly rescued them. The House of Israel had reestablished itself as a force of hooligans, a name it had won for itself during the referendum campaign. It is perhaps in these circumstances that the spirit of the anti-dictatorial alliance was born. The persecution of Rodney, and now the murder of Drake and the vicious assaults on numerous workers by this thug arm of the ruling party defined what the regime saw as its enemies and no doubt galvanised the spirits of the masses of freedom-loving people and of broad patriotic interests in the Guyanese society: 

JULY 20, 1979 MASS MEETING AT THE MALL 

If we are to look for the moment which confirmed for the masses of working people the role they were to impose on Walter Rodney, it was July 20, six days after their release on bail. The arguments within the pre‑party WPA reflected the state of active thought that has always marked the Working People's Alliance. The air was thick with rumours about plans to liquidate Walter Rodney and Rupert Roopnaraine in particular. Now and then the reports included Omawale and others. A few of us had the responsibility of ensuring that the open‑air behaviour and movement of the WPA would pose problems for would-be assassins. The most certain shield was, however, the mass of the population at the meetings. This shield, though obvious, was discovered by Walter Rodney. Arguments raged within about whether or not to go to the streets, whether there was any way of fending off the House of Israel. As an old combatant on the ground, always surprising others with my, faith in the Guyanese masses as a political community, I am glad to say that no one understood the keeness and readiness of the urban masses in those times as well and as accurately as Rodney. So strong was the anti-dictatorial movement in the city and elsewhere at that time, but particularly in the city, that the police did not feel bold enough to refuse permission for the use of a noisy instrument, that is, a public address system. Our plan was to start at 4.30 p.m. in order to make it easy for workers an their way home to attend the meeting. The police at first granted approval for the use of the set at the 4.30 p.m. time, but at the last minute thought better of it and put the meeting for two hours later  hoping no doubt to frustrate it. Crowds turned out for 4.30 and hearing the explanation refused to leave the Mall until it was time for the meeting to begin. It was a vast and vibrant multiracial crowd with the working masses clearly dominant and with long lines of cars which pointed to the presence of administrative, professional and business groups. 

THOSE DAYS AND THESE DAYS 

Those who know social conditions in Guyana today will see those of 1979 as, princely by comparison. There are many who see a straight connection between the."price of bread" (in Guyana, the "price of rice") and the spirit of rebellion. Deprivation at the material level certainly fuels discontent in a society of people close to the poverty line or in most societies. This, however, also has to be related to the kind of acceptance enjoyed by the rulers. In Caribbean circumstances, it is very clear to me that a regime can lose moral authority even before material conditions become unbearable. Other factors are the morale of the struggling forces, their estimate of the span of struggle time, and their availability for the activities of struggle. The WPA is much more active now than then, in all the other political areas but mass mobilisation, yet, though its rallies may still be the best attended in all parts of the county, the surging of the thousands into the streets is not there as a factor today. It is not that the moral authority of the regime has, risen. It is aware of this and is increasingly relying on coercion or compliance which in Guyana is represented officially as political support. It is not out of place to explore the proposition that social relations in Guyana today have many parallels with those of serfdom. If we look at enforced behaviour, they have even more similarities to the double life lived by the slaves during slavery: a life for the most part of outward compliance with the spirit in open rebellion. There is one notable feature of present-day compliance: Large numbers of workers may turn up at a parade or meeting on a directive in order to keep their jobs. But after they have fulfilled the requirement they make it as uncomfortable as possible for the jailers, fully realising that they are making apolitical donation to the ruling party by their presence. Again, coday, material conditions are very bad. But the housewives who would comprise a good one-third of that surging into the streets are at the very hours engaged in the hunt for illicit foodstuffs, for kerosene, for water. Thousands more are kept at home because of the prevalence of violent housebreaking crimes, many directed against rural Indo‑Guyanese. House thefts are generally rampant even in the urban areas, and villagers anticipating blackouts and thinking of thefts and street violence may keep indoors and relatively few care to be absent from their homes. These interventions in the narrative are not meant as interruptions, but as a link between those events and our sense of the mass concerns of these times. 

WALTER’S JULY 20 DECLARATION THE PNC MUST GO 

The platform in those days comprised speakers such as Joshua Ramsammy, Tacuma Ogunseye, Kathy Wills, C Y Thomas, Bonita Harris, Andaiye with Rupert Roopnaraine and Walter Rodney as main speakers. When I had the honour to chair, I introduced the main speakers as symbols of the new 'politics. On the particular occasion there was a guest speaker from the PPP, Moses Nagamootoo, who declared that "reactionary violence should be answered with revolutionary violence". Rodney spoke last a full length, serious, simple and lively speech. At the climax he declared, ''The PNC must go and they must go by any means necessary!" This call did more to revolutionise the outlook of the Guyanese people towards the dictatorship and to place the removal of the dictatorship on the agenda than the millions of words spoken and written since 1968. Never before had the people heard such a direct call for the removal of the dictatorship. The people confirmed their original assessment of Walter Rodney and from that moment to this, despite himself and his commitment to self-emancipation,. they made him a champion or messiah. People will accept political directions, advice, calls for this kind of action as against that. What they will not accept, that is, in the Caribbean, is logical arguments from one they deem a messiah explaining why he is not. 

THE CIVIL REBELLION 

The rural meetings were equally earthshaking.. They took place in areas of Indo-Guyanese or Afro-Guyanese and wherever possible at the dam between their separate villages. Throughout the Demerara Berbice coast the reception was uniform. Thousands of people surged into the streets and took part in acts of rebellion. The typical slogan of the moment of the period was "People's Power! No Dictator!" We have called it the Civil Rebellion. The urban meetings and some of the rural often ended in unscheduled marches through the streets, shadowed very closely by tie armed police and the plainclothes death squad (the Special Branch of the CID) which seemed to regard the WPA as the highest crime of the times. Each time they were sprung as a surprise. This movement which we have called the Civil Rebellion, for the reason that it was a civilian movement and saw almost the whole society creeping out of the shadows into the .light of hope once more, standing in defiance of the power that was extracting submission of their very self-respect, and imposing economic and financial oppression and hardship, and for the reason that it embraced all of the coastlands, except the western part of Essequibo, and included the bauxite belt. It established links only with the Amerindian students in Georgetown and Amerindian peasants and workers who took the initiative while in Georgetown to visit the Centre of the WPA. However, one of its mayor weaknesses, not yet corrected to satisfaction, is that it embraces no Amerindian community. These are not only physically difficult of access, but there are political barriers: Even opposition MPs of the PPP are often excluded by denial of one form of permission or another. 

PEOPLE'S POWER 

The charge of populism has been laid at Rodney's door. If has bees laid by bookworm types who do not understand that each political situation at a given moment had its own tasks, that in political activity one is not in a confirmation class preparing for confirmation, having to know the catechism, and in the old days at least, recite it without a flaw. They run through a speech of a political activist, dealing perhaps with a gross abuse of the people at large: "Hm!" they mutter, "Hm! There, you see! He said nothing about class, not one word about class!" They never stop to think whether this was not an audience which could instruct the speaker about class! I am not suggesting that a bookworm is a worm, or even if it is, that a worm is a pig. In my view, a bookworm is a worm which knows only books, whereas a revolutionary should not know only books, but, as Lenin advised, should "live in the midst of the masses". You make a really serious speech, stressing the lack of democracy. The bookworm, who can only understand what is written, wants to know what on earth is democracy for. He never stops to ask himself what a hardpressed working people will do with democracy. If you do not spell it out, letter for letter, there is a fear that all you want is bourgeois democracy, as though bourgeois democracy is not the result of definite social formations and struggles and struggles and formations and as though in all cases it is not superior to dictatorship! In the same way they look at Rodney talking about the people and people's power arid they brand it populism as though any revolutionary doctrine worth the name in our time can be revolutionary without people's power. 

THE TRADE UNION STRUGGLE 

In Guyana, the organised working class by definition has long had its own trade unions. However, the majority of these unions are class organisations only in a very limited sense. From 1975, a majority of them fell victim to the PNC's campaign to have unions affiliated to it. Those which affiliated to the PNC fell, so to speak, under the PNC's whip. This whip relayed even to what candidates could be elected to their leadership. The whole programme of the union became the serving of the needs of the PNC which justified this by affirming its role as the vanguard of the proletariat. The spirit of these controls is manifest in a workshop report of the First Biennial Congress of. the PNC, distributed by the PNC itself to trade unions as part of the document "Report on the First Biennial Congress of the People's National Congress (1975)". Here are some of the recommendations at random: "vi) During this period Unions should make available funds annually for education of workers in programmes approved by the State; "vii) Punitive measures should be meted out to Party members who support trade unions whose aims and objectives are not, consistent with the revolutionary movement; "viii) Salaried unionists should be phased out because thisencourages such leaders in supporting any unjust demands by the workers; ... "x) Government must ensure that there are free and fair elections in trade unions: "2 (vi) Trade unions operating in the Public Sector must be affiliated to the Party since Unions not affiliated can undermine the aims and objectives of the Party and Government; "(vii) Because of the paramountcy of the Party it should seek to control unions in the major sectors of the economy, e.g. sugar, bauxite, rice, etc" (Pages 257-258). In view of the many revised definitions of Paramountcy which are given defensively these days by PNC leaders, it is fitting to quote the Leader himself who went into a workshop and made the following remarks in the course of a contribution: "We have an example at this Congress here of one Comrade who is a delegate and has decided to answer a harebrained strike call which merely came about because of a conflict between non-PNC leadership in a union for power. This particular comrade was on strike before he came to Congress and then he says he is a strong PNC member, even though he knows that the PNC's position is that this strike was certainly not justified and in fact, is contrary to the remarks appearing in the Leader's address". A little later on he said: "One other point I would like to suggest should be taken up in the workshop for deliberation is the paramountcy of the party with respect to trade unions. We talk about the paramountcy of .the party with respect to the Government. I suggest we ought to discuss the paramountcy of the party with respect to the trade unions. "(1) The party is the vanguard party, mobilising the people in execution and pursuance of the socialist revolution; "(2) By definition, the socialist revolution should involve the proletariat and other sections of the working-class which means the membership of the trade unions; "(3) Therefore, there cannot be another institution which lays down a line superior to the party in this respect, and "(4) Therefore, that your membership of a trade union, though obligatory, should not be subordinate to your membership of the party. If the party has a certain position on an important matter from whom then do you take the lead? The party or a union that may be led by persons who do not necessarily subscribe to the party's objectives, the party's strategies and the party's tactics?" (Same Report, pp 254-255) In 1977, the Head of Government declared at his party's Congress in the main address that political strikes would be met with political measures and there would be "no holds barred". He reserved the right to declare a strike political. As a result of these and other developments, trade unions in general became deformed. Those affiliated  the same Report boasted of ten - lost all self-determination. They became another division of the Special Branch, against militant workers. Union life became arid. Few workers would express their views within the union when they could not toe the line and in most cases there was little opportunity to express views. GAWU was challenged externally by the founding of a union by the PNC  the Agricultural & Allied Workers Union (AAWU), with the aim of winning recognition in the sugar industry. It was supported by the Labour Desk, a PNC device with much authority at workplaces and working closely with the Office of the General Secretary of the PNC and Ministry of National Development. Its efforts took different forms, but it failed dismally to win over anything like a significant body of workers. 

GAWU, however, as a consequence of all the pressures became highly defensive in order to preserve its integrity and has officially come out viciously against reform movements among its members assisted by WPA organisers, accusing them of wanting to undermine the major union and thus hurt the working class struggle, and the anti-imperialist movement. Before the September rebellion at the level of TUC delegates, leading to the 1984 George Daniels' victory over the PNC's candidate for the Presidency  with just one or two exceptions, union meetings were not the agreed forum of expression they are supposed to be. The union which appeared to me to practise the highest level of internal democracy was NAACIE, which, on a decision of the Executive appointed me on my application, to work at organising classes, taking my offer to work at the minimum wage. I left, full of respect for its democratic procedures and only when my presence there attracted all sorts of police surveillance, the photographing of all those entering the building, and a whole squadron of police measures which could not help an independent trade union to keep its integrity. NAACIE had existed as a dynamic, progressive and independent trade union for years before I ever worked in it. Yet, such is the disrespect of the regime for trade unions and other organisations that they felt my presence there had something to do with politicising the union, although I was not a member and did not enter its governing councils. 

In such an atmosphere the great accent in the revolutionary movement, as we saw it, was not to add to the agonies o£ workers by introducing into their organisations a partisan struggle, but to organise 'them as citizens of the working people and make the struggle for independent trade unions an important part of the democratic agenda. It is, however, true, that in the ranks of the trade unions there is considerable support for the WPA positions and that the struggle which anti-democratic unions had to face internally in those days and even at present is always denounced by defensive leaders as somehow connected with the WPA. Our only response has been to defend all workers fighting for their just demands against the convenient and diversionary accusation of doing the work of the WPA or any political party. It is perhaps better known that all strikes in the public sector are as a rule labelled political from the start. As an aside, it is almost certain that an examination of the Comrade Leader's relation to the class struggle in Guyana will provide many answers to the present structure of Guyanese institutions and of the state. When critics say that Walter Rodney was a mere populist, they are talking in ignorance of the particular situation in Guyana, then and now. The WPA is firmly rooted in the working people. It does not call itself a vanguard party. The country is already served by two of them: the PPP, the more senior, and the PNC. Yet it would be no exaggeration to say that support for the WPA, among the organised workers belonging to trade unions, which are affiliated or not affiliated to the PPP and the PNC, is not insignificant.