The talk explores the role of ethnic (Indian, African, Portuguese), ideological and religious factors in the shaping of the anti-communist crusade in the colony. It also looks at the role of the British and Americans in subverting Jagan, in the context of the rise of Fidel Castro and Kennedy’s obsession with the ‘red scare’, exacerbated by the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961.
Clem Seecharan is Emeritus Professor of History at London Metropolitan University. He is the author of several books on colonial Guyana. His ‘Sweetening Bitter Sugar: Jock Campbell, the Booker Reformer in British Guiana, 1934-66’, was awarded the Elsa Goveia Prize by the Association of Caribbean Historians in 2005. He is working on a book on the cold war and Cheddi Jagan in the early 1960s.