Race was a significant factor in the formation of the Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950, as it was in Guyanese life and society. The party chairman was Forbes Burnham. Its leadership consisted of a wide, ethnic and class cross-section of Guyanese.
But the dominant issue in 1950 was not race but the struggle against colonialism. The immediate objective was the attainment of universal adult suffrage. The struggle for ethno-political dominance dates from the split in the PPP in 1955 and gathered momentum as Independence for Guyana began to draw close in the early 1960s. The ethnic violence in that period was attributed by the PNC to the PPP. The latter allegedly instigated the ethnic violence that followed opposition to the Kaldor budget in 1962, the Labour Relations Bill in 1963 and the GAWU strike in 1964.
