From Emancipation to Independence: An outline of riots...

The turbulent thirties

One account set the scene:

“In early October, 1935 various organizations met in Georgetown Guyana and petitioned King George V to be allowed to fight on behalf of Ethiopia. ‘Twenty years ago Negroes fought to save white civilization’, declared the president of one organization, ‘surely they cannot now be refused permission to fight for what they regard as the symbol of their own civilisation.’ So much concern over the Ethiopian tragedy was manifested in Guyana that the censors banned a Paul Robeson film, ‘Emperor Jones’ fearing that it would precipitate racial strife. When a rumour was spread that Italian spies distributed poisoned candy to Georgetown school children it actually led to a panic. Several schools were closed. Frantic mothers kept their youngsters indoors and a white school inspector was almost killed by an enraged mob which took him for an Italian.”

Of course, throughout the region in the 1930s any protest, such as the rally for Ethiopia, would have interlocking causation, including the economic depression extant in the region and the world in that decade.

The “1960s” From 7A

The 1930s, like elsewhere in the region saw worker protests, strikes and estate rebellions like at Leonora in 1939 and also the lesser known ‘Church Army’ discord.

The leader of the ‘Church Army,’ CN Smith, also known as the ‘Bourda Green Bishop’ was another activist in the vein of Angel Gabriel of 1856 fame. Given the significance of his actions in the 1920s and 1930s, it appears strange that he is not well known as one of the pre-independence agitators and ‘disturber of the peace’. The Rev Smith carried, for a few years, a campaign on behalf of the working people that appeared to be thoroughly confusing to the colonial authorities. For one thing, the factors of “madness’ and religious fervor were cited as factors that made him a threat. For a while, Georgetown was fascinated with the activities of Rev Smith and his followers. While his congregation of men and women idolized him, one can gather from the newspaper reports that this adulation was not only centred on his religious zeal and authority over his followers (which included a strong component of market women) but fed by his activism against unemployment on behalf of the city poor.

In 1935, there was another, little-reported protest generated by the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia. About five hundred Guyanese, including black veterans from the First World War, gathered to protest the Italian invasion and to call for their right to enlist to fight on behalf of the Ethiopians.

On the cusp of independence came the racial riots or inter-ethnic conflict, customarily identified as “the 1960s”. The period tends to be identified as one collective event over the three years when there were in fact three separate riots (1962, 1963, and 1964) arising out of different political and labour issues albeit under the consistency of politcal and social division its concurrent partners, race and ethnic violence.

The list makes for grim reading. While the definitive history of the riots and disturbances of more than a hundred years duration is yet to be written, it demonstrates that there was almost no period (or year) in the country’s history as a colony that the plantation/colonial system went unchallenged by the people of Guyana.

A Listing of Riots and Disturbances from Emancipation to Independence

1846: Disturbances at Leguan

1847: 14-week general strike, described by Walter Rodney as the longest strike in Guyanese history until the 1977 135-day strike

1848: Labour strikes (Plantation Palmyra fires)

1856: Angel Gabriel riots (1 constable died; looting, damage to buildings, shops burnt)

1862: Anti-taxation and dispossession disturbance at Friendship

1869: Leonora riot and strike

1872: Meten-Meer-Zorg disturbances (inter-ethnic violence)

1872: Devonshire Castle riots (5 killed, 7 wounded)

1873: Skeldon, Uitvlugt, Eliza & Mary – inspired by price paid for shovel ploughing, 25 rioters arrested

1879: Skeldon riots – fighting between “East Indians and creoles”; 16 admitted to hospital; 30 arrested

1888: Enmore and Versailles disturbances

1889: Cent Bread riots (violence, burnings)

1894: Disturbances at La Bonne Mere, Success, Leguan and Farm

1896: Non Pariel Riot, (5 killed)

1899: Golden Fleece, Mon Repos, Blairmont, and De Kinderen

1903: Strike at Friends (8 killed, 5 wounded)

1905: 8 killed; 15 wounded; 105 convicted for rioting.

1912: Friends (1 killed)

1912: Lusignan (1 killed)

1913: Rose Hall (16 killed)

1924: Ruimveldt (13 killed, 24 wounded, 147 charged)

1920s 1930s: Church Army protests – Georgetown (Rev CN Smith, leader of the rebellion detained and jailed in 1933)

1935: Outbreak of strikes; violence and destruction of property on the East Bank and East coast; Veterans assembled to press support for Ethiopia and to volunteer to fight the Italians

1936: strikes on estates, minor disorders

1938: labour unrest in Berbice and East Coast Demerara, (163 charged)

1939: Leonora riot (5 killed)

1947: Strike at Mackenzie of 1,300 workers, some unrest & sabotage

1948: Enmore – eponymously referred to as the ‘Enmore martyrs’ (5 killed, 9 injured)

1957: Skeldon disturbances (13 workers wounded)

1962: Kaldor budget; anti- government – trade unions, church, UF, PNC (ethnic riots: 6 killed, 80 wounded)

1963: Labour Relations Bill; general strike (ethnic riots 13 killed, 730 injured) 1964: GAWU strike (ethnic riots, 176 killed, 920 injured)

Nigel Westmaas is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College in the United States.