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Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's struggle for independence Colin A. Palmer. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
There is a consistent trait of all the main texts that venture to interpret British Guiana's (Guyana) nationalist movement in the Cold War, the fracture of the nationalist movement, the ethnic differences and the role of Cheddi Jagan, one of the principal Guyanese leaders in the twentieth century. These studies tend to employ, from the comfort of hindsight, rather simplistic and flawed analyses of the respective roles and impact of the central political actors and organizations in the same period.
Consisting of eight chapters and important appendices Colin Palmer's Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power: British Guiana's struggle for independence concentrates primarily on the unveiling of British colonial intrigue in Guyana mainly via through old and new British colonial documents and primary sources. As a result the spread and organization of the content resembles a kind of early "wiki leaks"-where the full panoply of British (and American) actions and goals toward the nascent nationalist movement and the "subversive figure" of Cheddi Jagan are unveiled.
The author begins with the story of the torture by the colonial state of Emanuel Fairbairn, an opposition Peoples National Congress (PNC) supporter and one of the victims on all sides of the ethnic violence of the nineteen sixties in Guyana. The choice of opening is intriguing. The Fairbairn case has never been given this published type of agency before. It is even more significant given the fact that Fairbairn was both alleged perpetrator (accused of fire-bombing the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) headquarters) and victim. This opening then connects with Palmer's overarching theme that "there are no heroes in this story." (11)
Chapter one of Cheddi Jagan and the Politics of Power addresses the dramatic arrival of British troops in October 1953 in what the author deems the "imperial coup d'etat" (13) engineered to confront the threat of alleged "communist conspiracy" (47) in British Guiana. Chapter two examines the crafting and execution of the repression against the PPP in the wake of the suspension of the constitution and the emergent contradictions and differences between the colonial office and the local British governor who presided over...