Cheddi should have done better in relation to GPSU

The most important problem in the present relationship between the public servants and the government is not whether the former should be paid a 5%, 10% or 100% increase; it is about the government following established collective bargaining procedures; meeting the union at the negotiation table and if that fails proceeding to binding arbitration. In the medium and long run, this is the only way that public servants can be assured that their interests will be reasonably protected.

Since the 1950s, our history has been brutally propagandised, and today it has become a heavy burden upon which all manner of dubious and costly policies are based. This is nowhere more true than in the account of the relationship between the public service and the PPP. We need now to attempt to clarify this, if only because it is one of the major reasons given to PPP supporters for their government and party’s extremely shabby treatment of public servants.

20131218henrySince PPP historiography was intended to obfuscate the major reason why it was turfed out of government in the 1960s, ethnicity is usually presented as the major cause and not essentially as a consequence of its extremely poor policy choice, which placed it under heavy pressure to find other, more dubious, means to maintain its support. And make no mistake; a self-interested and undifferentiated historical approach has resulted in much of the blame for the PPP’s fall being placed on the present public servants and their organisation!

“Twenty-nine years later, when the People’s Progressive Party returned to office (October 1992), a letter of congratulations from the GPSU to President Dr. C.B. Jagan, extending ‘warmest congratulations’ and assuring the just elected President of the Union’s full ‘commitment to a healthy and peaceful industrial clime in pursuance of the best interest of both our membership and the country’ remained unacknowledged for five months and only after the omission was brought to President Jagan’s attention by the TUC at a meeting with the President.” (Country Report to the International Labour Organisation:  “Employment and Collective Bargaining in the Civil Service,” 2003).

Cheddi Jagan should have done better for he was in a possession of a more holistic picture of events. He told us in “The West on Trial” that when in 1963 he heard that the Civil Service Association (CSA: forerunner of the Guyana Public Service Union – GPSU) was about to join the national strike against his government, he met its executive in his office and enquired if what he heard was true and what possible grievance led them to its wanting to join the strike. “Speaking for the CSA Dr. Balwant Singh, the president said that the CSA as an affiliate of the TUC was joining the strike in solidarity.  …. ‘It is not our duty to go into the merits and demerits of the Bill; that is the job of the TUC which has called the strike.’”

It must have also been particularly galling to Premier Jagan when his Permanent Secretary, Clifton Low-a-Chee, the immediate past president of the CSA, not only joined but played a major role during the strike. Indeed, so significant were his activities that the general secretary of the TUC, reporting to Congress after the strike, singled him and no one else out for “working zealously and courageously to make a success of the representations” and called upon the Congress to give Low-a-Chee a standing ovation (Country Report).

The above suggest what we now all accept; that the rebellion against the PPP was essentially ideological not racial.  This is reinforced when we take account of who were some of the actors in the wider social context. People like Peter D’Aguiar and the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, R B Gajraj, were not racist and Jagan himself pointed to their concerns. He noted, again in “The  West on Trial,” that in a speech to the Muslim Youth Organisation in mid 1962, Gajraj urged them to unite against “communism.”

Whether the PPP was indeed communist or not and what implications such a perception of it held for democracy will not detain us. The fact remains that notwithstanding our geographical location, the PPP was not properly seized of its implications for their Marxist/Leninist orientation. Senior PPP members like Brindley Benn proclaimed to all and sundry that communism was inevitable, and if we needed further proof, it is provided by the letter by Martin Carter to the powers that be, recently published in Stabroek News (“Martin Carter’s lost prison letter:” SN: 13/12/2013).

The 1950s/60s rebellion against the PPP was ideological and the African-dominated PNC was only one of the players, but matters became more complicated. The necessity to acquire mass support if the rebellion was to be successful, and the fact that the African-supported PNC was not only a major player but the one who benefitted most from the fall of the PPP, gave race an added poignancy. Secondly, with a few notable exceptions, during the autocratic PNC rule, trade union virulence, so evident during the PPP reign, dissipated and the movement became almost quisling.

Of course, in mitigation of this quietist position, we need to recognise that since the original struggle was against PPP’s communism and that in the aftermath of its loss of office the party became more and not less attached to Soviet Marxism, there was no incentive for those who fought Jagan’s ‘communism’ to take on the Burnham regime. Indeed, as if to make this point, the PPP/C came to government in 1992 almost on the heels of the collapse of world communism: when it was no longer viewed as a threat to international capital.

True, in the racial cauldron which Guyana had become and which was the making of both of the major political parties, the essentially African public service did support the PNC. However, the public service the PPP/C met in 1992 was essentially manufactured in the Burnham era, and not only was its leadership different in nature from that which caused the demise of the PPP in the 1960s, but the international environment had been transformed.

But as the quotation above indicates, Cheddi Jagan came to office very watchful of the GPSU and immediately sent a shot above its bows! In retrospect, this was not what was needed, but decades of propaganda tend to affect even its purveyors and this initial action must have placed the antenna of the union on full alert, bringing back old memories that were best left buried.

Nonetheless, as we shall see next week, during his tenure, Cheddi Jagan exhibited patience, honesty and savvy that appeared to belie his original signal and promised a united future. Unfortunately, he left us: his successors were simply not up to the task and here we are again today!

henryjeffrey@yahoo.com