British Honduras & Guiana

on the World Today

THROUGHOUT 1952 and first half of 1953, the British House of Commons, when it dealt with colonial affairs, was preoccupied with the armed struggles in Malaya and Kenya, and the difficulties of hammering out new constitutions in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and the Rhodesias.

Suddenly, however, the two almost forgotten Colonies on the American mainland, British Guiana and British Honduras, separated from one another by 2000 miles, took the center of the stage. In both B.G. and B.H. — as they are usually called new constitutions, providing for universal adult suffrage, came into effect. In B.G., the Peoples Progressive Party, led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, won a clear majority in the election. Its leaders became Ministers. Within a few months, Parliament in London was astounded to be told that troops had been moved in and the new constitution had been suspended. The new Ministers were accused of fomenting disorder and of close association with international Communism.

Hardly had the fierce debate on these events been concluded, when it was learned that in B.H. the People’s United Party had gained a sweeping victory in the elections, on a program of complete independence and radical economic development. At least two of its leaders had recently been imprisoned for sedition; and they were said to be in close touch with the allegedly Communist government of neighboring Guatemala. Was the experience of B.G. to be repeated?

The House of Commons cheered with relief when Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary, announced that the new constitution would be implemented and that he had invited the Governor and the P.U.P. leaders to come to see him in London as soon as they had settled down to their new responsibilities.

In both these territories the World Health Organization has played a powerful role. Endemic yellow fever and malaria have been almost eliminated; a mass attack is being made on tuberculosis; antibiotics are increasingly available for the treatment of yaws and venereal diseases.

The populations are far less debilitated than they were and children are surviving as they never did before. In B.H., with a crude birth rate of 40 per 1000 and a death rate of only 10, the population is increasing every year by 3 per cent. In B.G., the annual rate of growth increased between 1945 and 1951 from 1.5 to 2.8 per cent. Everywhere in both countries schools are thronged with children. Parents are anxiously wondering not only how to feed and clothe them now, but what their future is to be. So there is a demand for better wages and conditions, but above all for a purposeful plan of economic development.

These young populations, filled with a new vigor, have thrown up young leaders. They have the qualities and the defects of youthful naïveté. Can their energies be channelized into the constructive and responsible tasks of economic development? Is it too risky to give them their head? Are they so steeped in the doctrines and disciplines of Russian Communism that they cannot be tolerated or trusted? If so, what constructive alternative can be found for the energies of active and rapidly growing populations?

The Catholic background

No man of experience and balanced judgment who has met the P.U.P. leaders in B.H can believe that they are Communists. They are the intelligentsia of a Latin-American nation — part Amerindian, part Creole, part Carib — which is predominantly Roman Catholic in religion. Their party is based, as most political parties in the British West Indies are based, on a trade union, but their General Workers’ Union — the only union in the territory which has mass support — is well organized and led by workers rather than lawyers.

The three young leaders of the party, Messrs. Richardson, Price, and Goldson, were all educated at St. John’s College, a Jesuit school. Almost all of its teachers come from the United States and $250,000 has been collected there for the fine new buildings which are being erected on the outskirts of Belize. The influence of these American Jesuits spreads far beyond the college throughout two thirds of the child education of the Colony and into extramural classes which learn the principles of coöperation and trade unionism.

Man against the jungle

British Honduras is just about as large as New Hampshire but has a population only one-seventh as large as that state’s. Its mahogany and other hardwoods, brought with great difficulty to the river, are shipped from Belize to the markets of Britain and the United States, Its sawmills are the only industry of any size in the capital city, which resembles many other towns to which men bring money earned after weeks at sea or in the forest. In the evenings its streets are gay with the bright lights of well-filled shops, the brilliant dresses of strolling dark-skinned girls, and the joyous music of several dance halls.

But as its population expands, Belize is forced back from the tiny patch of land barely above sea level upon which it was originally built into the vast mangrove swamp which surrounds it. Houses are built upon stilts to avoid the swamps, but sewage is collected in buckets and flung into the rivers and canals. Malaria has been conquered, but gastro-intestinal disorders still account for eight hundred deaths every year.

Twenty minutes away by airplane, but more than four hours by road or eight by sea, is Stann Creek, the only other town of real size. It is the port of outlet for a new citrus industry, operated by a very enterprising Jamaican firm and by the British Colonial Development Corporation, but able to give little more than seasonal employment. In other parts of the territory, agriculture and fisheries are scarcely above subsistence level; and to a great extent the town populations live upon food imported from America and Britain.

The market for mahogany is not what it used to be; much of the forest land has been carelessly exploited in the past and needs planned regeneration, which will be costly. If the rapidly expanding population is to be adequately fed and housed it must be settled upon the land — but that requires the clearing of bush, the building of roads and towns. Such tasks are formidable in the still primeval forests of British Honduras, where tropical sun and rain cause the jungle to grow again almost as fast as men can clear it.

To give one example — only three months after its opening, the new Humming Bird highway, cut through the forest at a cost of $700,000 provided by the United Kingdom taxpayers, already showed serious signs of erosion by continual rains. Yet the total potential working force of the Colony cannot be more than 15,000, of whom 8000 are already employed. Among them skilled men are so scarce that there is only one fully qualified architect and one plumber in the whole Colony.

Honduras’s ten-vear plain

Like all British colonies, B.H. has a ten-year development plan, instituted and approved by the Labor Government. The government of the Colony thinks that the plan provides for a rate of investment which is the maximum, or perhaps more than the maximum, that the present labor force can undertake and the Colony’s resources can maintain during the period of the plan. It points out that the allocation of United Kingdom development funds in the last eight years is 30.8 pounds per head of the population in B.H. as compared with an average of 1.5 pounds for the whole of the British Colonies, and that this expenditure is due to rise rapidly during the next few years.

The P.U.P. would like to double the expenditure, and would welcome the introduction of more capital from non-British countries. Many Britons sympathize fully with their indignation against the careless exploitation of forest reserves and the lack of planned social or economic, development in the past. They would applaud, too, the P.U.P. demand that the ordinary folk of the Colony be given a share in framing and operating the plan.

But all who consider the problem are bound to ask: How can this territory be more rapidly developed without more manpower?

Though it has agreed to remain a member of the Regional Economic Labor and Air Transport Organizations, the P.U.P. has declared itself forcefully against joining the proposed West Indian Federation and has strongly denounced unrestricted immigration. Yet its leaders deny emphatically the suggestion that they may intend to join their country to Guatemala, and the recent shift in the regime in that country is likely to have made them change their minds if indeed they ever did think of such a union. It is probable that the greater experience and knowledge which they have gained since they entered the legislature may be making them revise their policy on the subject of immigration.

British Guianu’s leftists

In B.G., the economic problem is comparatively easier, the political far more serious. The rash behavior of P.P.P. leaders while they were Ministers may well have shaken the confidence of some who voted for them — and it must be remembered that, though they won 18 out of 24 seats in the Assembly, their total majority of votes was very small. But the suspension of the constitution has made it easier for the P.P.P. to persuade the masses that the British are not to be trusted and that, despite what they say, they will never allow power to go to a party which stands for full selfgovernment and for limiting the power of the sugar companies which dominate the country’s economy. It is said that, thanks to the great ability of American-born Mrs. Janet Jagan, the P.P.P. is the best organized political party in Central or South America.

The party’s previous actions and its easy access to apparently ample funds make it clear that its leaders are Communist. The bulk of the party members are not so; still less are the masses who voted for them. The P.P.P. achieved its electoral success mainly because of the anxiety of the people about the slow improvement in their conditions and their fears for the future of their children. Their opponents were divided into many groups, some liberal and willing to coöperate with the Governor in a forward program, some reactionary who felt that the Governor was weak and that “firm” action was the only remedy for discontent.

It is obvious that a peaceful solution of the present impasse, with a renewed advance toward democracy, can be achieved only if a new “ middle of the road” party can emerge which rejects the extremists both of the left and of ihe right. Can leaders be found for such a party? How will it raise its funds? How long will it take to build it? Can the government meanwhile push ahead with economic development so as to give the people proof that it is possible for them to have an assured future if they reject P.P.P. leadership?

Time alone can answer those questions, but a Commission of Inquiry, headed by Sir James Robertson, formerly Chief Secretary of the Sudan, has recommended that time be given. It believes that interim government must continue long enough to permit the emergence of conditions which will make for stable self-government. Undoubtedly the two forces which are most likely to create such conditions are the trade unions and the coöperatives. So far, the National Democratic Party, the only alternative to the P.P.P., has made comparatively little headway. To hand power to it at present would be disastrous. But in trade unions and cooperatives, men and woman practice self-government and learn to take responsibility.

Coastal population

There are nine people per acre in B.G. and only five per acre in B.H., but the basic economic facts are similar. Immense areas of forest are totally uninhabited, and the overwhelming majority of the population is concentrated in a coastal strip varying in width from eight to two miles, much of which is actually below sea level. The main industry is the production of sugar, which is grown on large estates owned by British-controlled companies.

In recent years there has been a fair development of rice farming by about 21,000 small farmers. Rice and sugar are exported and so are bauxite, lumber, and small quantities of gold and diamonds. Some of the workers on the sugar estates, like the rice farmers, grow foodstuffs on their own plots. Underemployment and shockingly bad housing have bred resentment and unrest among the sugar workers, and a continual unsuccessful fight against flooding has caused frustration among farmers. Plans for draining the coastal strip have been available for years, but have not been carried out because of their great expense.

The World Bank experts estimated that in fifteen years the area of the coastal zone now under cultivation could be increased from 7.5 to 15 per cent, and perhaps doubled again after that.

There will be no shortage of manpower, as in B.H., but if catastrophe is to be avoided, drainage and clearance of land will have somehow to be completed at a faster rate than is now envisaged. If success is achieved, then immense possibilities for the future seem to lie ahead in the vast territories of the interior.

The hum of activty

The United Kingdom Government, after the suspension of the constitution, provided additional funds for the acceleration of the Colony’s tenyear development plan. Ignoring the sneer of the P.P.P. that Britain acted only after their victory at the polls, Sir Alfred Savage, the liberal-minded Governor, and his officials, willingly accepting help from an expert team from the American Foreign Operations Adminisration, are pressing forward with local development committees to explain the plan to the people and get them to help.

Credits are being provided for farmers, and coöperatives are being encouraged. The University College of the West Indies has conducted seminars to instruct the development committees and to foster the growth of reliable and worker-led trade unions. There is a hum of activity in the air, and, in particular, new houses are going up rapidly everywhere.

The P.P.P. have retaliated by calling for “non-coöperation,” a phrase likely to awaken a response in the minds of the Indian-descended majority of the people. Their leaders appear to be seeking martyrs’ crowns by courting imprisonment for offenses against ordinances restricting their movements and the circulation of Communist-inspired literature. The Governor responds to these tactics by inviting the people to help him to get things done. They will respond to the full only if alternative leaders emerge who are willing to coöperate. They may yet come from the trade unions and the coöperatives.