Colonial Crisis

When the British quashed an allegedly planned Communist coup in Guiana by suspending the colony's constitution and dismissing its top government ministers, they presumably were acting on behalf of western democracy. They reasoned that even such repugnant measures were preferable to the formation of a Communist haven in the West.

But since they intervened, the British have handled the situation rather as the MVD or Gestapo might have. The Army has raided the homes of ousted officials and their friends, searching for incriminating documents. And although Cheddi Jagan, ex-prime minister, and his fellow ministers were fired for what amounts to treason, there have been no official charges against them. So, England has dissolved the legally elected Guianan government without formally accusing it of more than possessing an aura of Communism.

Rather than having adopted tactics usually associated with dictatorships rather than democracies, Britain should have prepared a case against the Jagan faction before moving. It is doubtful that the projected uprising was imminent. Certainly Jagan realized that neither Her Majesty's government nor our own would tolerate an armed Communist rebellion in South America. Besides, Communist sympathizers already had legal control of the government through the ballot. It was precisely because the Communists had so much actual power that Britain had to send in non-Guianan troops.

If the Jagan government was plotting a rebellion, the evidence to support such a charge in court should have been gathered before troops landed. And, when the British established martial law, they ought, simultaneously, to have arrested the leaders of the conspiracy and charged them with answerable crimes.

It is contrary to all traditions of Anglo-Saxon justice to punish a man for high crimes, never telling him what they are, and never allowing him to make a defense. Those who rail against this sort of thing in Congressional investigations must also condemn the hasty British action. But if the Guianan officials are liable to jail sentences, their former position should not keep them out.

On the other hand, if there was no evidence that Jagan planned to do more than legally entrench his power, England should also have kept the peace and law. When Communists win power while obeying the rules of democracy, they should only be turned out on a succeeding election day. Any system that arbitrarily crushes a legal colonial government does nothing to better the social and political atmosphere that made the colonists elect that government in the first place.