Examining the secret surveillance of Jagan and Burnham during 1953...
They were photographed and filmed wherever they went, underlining the success of the purpose of their visit. Far from holding secretive meetings with the Communist Party or others deemed of interest to British security services. The documents show that the leaders were in fact very much in the public eye, and attended high profile venues, such as the London School of Economics (Extract 3).
This visit also informs of the presence of black students in Britain during this period, and their level of interest in, and knowledge of the activities of Britain in its colonies. They turned out in large numbers to hear the British Guiana leaders speak. Extract 3 describes the arrival of the two leaders to speak at the London School of Economics ‘where they were greeted by a large number of coloured students’. As people who were not white were described as ‘coloured’ during this period, there is no detail of the ethnic background of these students, but it does suggest the extent of interest and support for the British Guiana leaders from Caribbean people abroad.
The security services tried to anticipate the leaders’ movements in order to maintain what appears have been desperate and sometime unsuccessful pursuit of them. They simultaneously covered potential venues, including the hotel and the House of Commons. The British Guiana debate, to determine whether Britain had been justified in suspending the Constitution, was held in the Commons on 22 October 1953 and the security services operated a surveillance exercise in the public gallery but found it a ‘hopeless’ effort to identify whether the leaders were there due to the gallery being packed by ‘many coloured men’ (Extract 6). On the same date, Jagan and Burnham appeared at Holborn Hall, a public venue. The flyer for this event shown in Extract 7, states, ‘Frequent reports of the Parliamentary debate taking place simultaneously will be given’. It is of interest that the British security services sent spies to the Commons to observe for the presence of Burnham and Jagan there when they were at an advertised public forum in Holborn. This shows the failure of the security services on this aspect of the surveillance. The crisis in Guiana generated so much interest in Britain among the black population, presumably the Caribbean student population, but perhaps the migrant community as well. This description also provides a picture of the pre-dominance of black men in the political activism in Britain at this time with an invisibility of women, either in actual numbers or failure to acknowledge the presence of black women in the Commons’ gallery.
During the leaders’ stay in Britain, the security services also conducted enquiries about their involvement and affiliation with earlier trade union activism in Eastern European communist states. The World Federation of Trades Union held a conference in Berlin in 1951 with a delegate from British Guiana and the security services were trying to ascertain whether this was Jagan, to provide evidence of his dangerous communist affiliation, and justification for the repression, and to use this information for ‘publicity purposes’, indicating the great pressure to discredit the political reputation of Jagan (Extract 5).
The records of the British security services form a valuable part of the history of colonial activity in the Caribbean, and documentary evidence of forms of resistance.