In Guyana, the question of an equitable distribution of economic goods has always loomed large in the minds of the populace. This should not be surprising in light of Guyana’s origin as a colony founded on slave and indentured labour.
As a non-settler European colony, the Guyanese economy was structured to produce primary products in agriculture and mining at the cheapest possible labour cost, for export to the metropolis countries. There, the goods would be manufactured for resale to the very same labourers in the colonies, at a huge profit by the designated agents of the Imperial power. In a word, we were “underdeveloped” – a structural condition – rather than undeveloped which suggests, at worst, a benign neglect.
The movement for the abolition of slavery and the agitation (in Guyana and in India) for humane working conditions for the indentured labourers left a legacy of sensitivity to the exploitation – economic and otherwise – of labour. In fact, the trade union movement, conceptualised to agitate for economic justice on behalf of workers was launched by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow in Guyana as far back as 1919, long before political parties appeared on the scene.
The ethnic organisations formed not long after by mostly middle-class elements, were also concerned about the economic status and progress of their members. The nascent Indian middle-class had a greater number of members from the world of business than the more established African/Mulatto Middle-class that had sought improvement of their lot through education for jobs in government services and the professions.
The historical development of the colony, by and large, led to ethnic economic specialisation and this was to have far-reaching consequences. Within a decade of the abolition of slavery, the majority of Africans left the plantation and were channelled into becoming an urbanised workforce of lower civil service clerks, messengers, transport workers, dock workers, shop assistants, artisans, masons etc. The unbroken wave of internal migration, continuing to the present, soon created a large African urban underclass that could be used to depress urban wages. Many Africans went into the hinterland to prospect for gold and opened up a new industry. Those Africans who remained on the sugar plantations constituted the major of factory workers who were then locationally separated from the mostly Indian field workers.
When the bauxite industry was developed following WWI, the workers recruited were primarily Africans. The Portuguese and Chinese, small in numbers, also gravitated to the urban centres directly after serving their indenture contracts, with some remaining as shopkeepers in the newly formed villages. The majority of Indians, even after Indentureship, remained on the plantations or formed rural settlements near the plantations – focusing primarily on rice and vegetable cultivation and cattle rearing.
Economic competition was sustained with the rural-to-migration continuing as a constant feature of the colony’s development, since the towns were promoted as the centre of “civilised” life and higher standards of living. This rural African migration precipitated severe contradictions in Georgetown as the newer arrivals depressed wages – producing an African underclass that grew sharply as economic opportunities stagnated. The early success of the Portuguese migrants in business, which squeezed out many Coloured/African entrepreneurs, led to several African–Portuguese riots, notably in 1848, 1856 and 1888.
On the sugar plantations, the interminable flood of new immigrants depressed plantation wages. Contrary to what some ideologues in the present are preaching, there was no significant economic competition between Indians and Africans in the 19th Century.
It was the beginning of the movement of Indians into the elite, urban-centred occupations after the end of Indentureship in 1917 however, that precipitated the greatest stresses in the society – some of which are still to be resolved.
The Indians, building on their successes in rice, cattle rearing and petty retailing began to open businesses in Georgetown by the 1920s and also to enter the independent professions of medicine and law. These were very highly prized occupations in colonial society that helped to define status and when some Indians began to percolate into the Civil Service by the 1930s, the Coloured/African elite began to feel threatened.
