Sledge Hammer in Guiana

The House of Commons, ancient Mother of Parliaments, last week debated the government's right to take back the democratic rights it conferred only five months before on the South American colony of British Guiana.

Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton defended his action in rushing warships and troops to Guiana to prevent a Communist coup (TIME, Oct. 19). Lyttelton accused the Guiana People's Progressive Party of 1) seeking to establish a one-party Communist state, 2) spreading racial hatred. He cited evidence that Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the East Indian dentist whom Lyttelton deposed from his post as Prime Minister, had conspired to organize a Red "People's Police.'' Two of Jagan's Cabinet ministers and his American wife Janet, a former Young Communist who became the deputy speaker of the colony's Assembly, had been seen touring the sugar plantations, inciting workers to strike. Jagan's Minister of Works & Labor had urged party hooligans to storm the Parliament building. One P.P.P. speech, cited by Lyttelton: "We are going to sacrifice some warm blood, so these damn white bitches see we mean something . . ."

Day in Court. Not all of Lyttelton's charges were equally convincing. A few, e.g., that the P.P.P. had "sought to undermine the position of ... the Boy Scouts," left some Britons with an uneasy feeling that the government was trying too hard to establish its case. The misgivings vanished last week when the nation got a firsthand look at what its home-grown Reds were calling "the suffering victims of imperialism."

Beetle-browed Cheddi Jagan, 35. had flown to Britain, confidently expecting a bonanza of Socialist sympathy. With him, flashing the three-fingered salute of the P.P.P.. was his Minister of Education; an Oxford-educated Negro named Linden Forbes Burnham. The pair were met at London Airport by a bunch of British Communists, but before they could mount a soapbox, Scotland Yard whisked them away to a private office on the Opposition side of the House of Commons. Clement Attlee, whose government had prepared the way for self-government in Guiana, had urgent questions to ask. He had been disturbed by Lyttelton's handling of other colonial revolts (in Kenya and Nyasa-land), and wanted to make sure that the two Guianans got their day in court.

For close on three hours. Attlee, Nye Bevan, Herbert Morrison and ten others of Labor's top command grilled the pair, demanding clear-cut answers to Lyttelton's charges. Time & again, they put the direct question, "Are you Communists?", got only evasive replies. To a man. the Labor leaders were revolted by Burnham's doubletalk. "It's a tragedy." said one, "that such an opportunity should have been thrown away by such terrible men . . ." "Burnham is 20 times more astute than Jagan," said another. "His answers were so slick that sometimes you were almost caught by them . . ."

Limited Indictment. Next day, in the House of Commons, the Laborites disowned Jagan and all his works, stoutly endorsed Lyttelton's pronouncement: "Her Majesty's government are not prepared to tolerate the setting up of Communist states in the British Commonwealth." Attlee added his bit: "It is quite clear that [P.P.P.'s leaders] speak the language of Communists and feed on Communist literature." Attlee approved the sending of troops and the firing of Jagan, questioning only whether it had been necessary to suspend the colony's constitution.

The Opposition was worried that Lyttelton's "sledgehammer" tactics might give the Reds in other British colonies a new rallying cry. "Wouldn't it have been better," asked Attlee, "to charge Jagan & Co. in a court of law, or ... dissolve the Parliament and have fresh elections?" Attlee's conclusion: "We have no dispute whatever about the danger and about the need for action. Our indictment is that there were other methods."

The vote sustained Lyttelton, 294 to 256--"a highly satisfactory majority," commented one Tory. Jagan and Burnham, who had watched the performance from the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery, noisily stalked out. At a London rally, they told their Communist friends: "Bullets have replaced ballots."

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