Tapped phones, a warship in the night and dramatic details of the upending of the Cheddi Jagan government here in 1953 are revealed in secret documents declassified on Friday by Britain’s MI5 security service.
Cables, letters, reports, records of surveillance and telephone conversations were among the dozens of documents released by the UK’s National Archives that reveal in detail how the UK under Prime Minister Winston Churchill constitutionally threw out Cheddi Jagan’s government here in 1953. The documents revealed how British spies kept up intense scrutiny on Cheddi and Janet Jagan, who founded the People’s Progressive Party to campaign for independence from British rule. Other members of the party including LFS Burnham also came under scrutiny in what were tense times for the British.
Churchill’s government and the USA had feared that the fervently-communist Jagan and his American wife Janet would lead then
