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FREEDOMWAYS                          FIRST QUARTER 1968

And Burnham, to work on these fears, joined up, after his defeat at the 1957 general election, with the conservative and reactionary United Democratic Party led by John Carter (now Guyana's Ambassador to Washington) and Rudy Kendall (now Minister of Health), who headed the racist League of Coloured People. (Carter, Kendall, Lionel Lunckhoo, now Guyana's High Commissioner to London, and Businessmen John Fernandes and John Dare prior to 1957 were dubbed traitors by Burnham for leading a delegation to London in October 1953 to praise the British government for suspending our constitution and removing us from the government.)
  Burnham's alliances with conservative and racist elements resulted in the class struggle appearing not, as previously in the 1920's, as Coloured (Indians, Negroes, Mixed) against White, but as Indian against Negro and Mixed. Fears of one kind or another, whether real or imagined, were generated against the PPP and expressed in racial and anti-communist terms.
  The people's Progressive Party and the PPP governments were dubbed as Indian. Our 1960-64 development program, which was heavily weighted towards agriculture and drainage and irrigation, was deemed to be essentially designed to help Indians.
  But the Commonwealth Commission of 1962 saw through this and commented:
  "The political professions of the PNG were somewhat vague and amorphous. There was a tendency to give a racial tinge to its policy. Mr. Burnham expressed the opinion that it was Dr. Jagan who was responsible for this unfortunate development.
  "We do not, however, think that there is much substance in the contention of MR. Burnham and it seems to us that whatever racial differences existed were brought about by political propaganda."

U.S. intervention
Political propaganda and racial strife became necessary if Guyana was not to become independent with a PPP government. (The 1960 London Constitutional Conference had clearly stated that independence would follow the 1961 general election, which we had won despite some gerrymandering by a British government-appointed Electoral Boundary Commissioner.) This was largely achieved by U.S. intervention under the Kennedy Administration. Obessed by developments in Cuba, Washington conspired with Burnham to bring down the PPP government.

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