Documents show details of how Britain staged coup in Guyana
Source: Agencies |
August 27, 2011, Saturday
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IT was a very British coup. The warship slipped into the harbor, the soldiers landed in darkness - and the diplomatic wives made sandwiches for the hungry troops.
Secret documents declassified yesterday by Britain's MI5 security service reveal in dramatic and everyday detail how the UK under Prime Minister Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of British Guiana - now Guyana - because he feared its left-wing leader and his American wife were leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
The documents reveal how British spies kept up intense scrutiny on Cheddi and Janet Jagan, who founded the People's Progressive Party to campaign for workers' rights and independence from British rule for the sugar-producing colony in northern South America.
Christopher Andrew, the spy agency's official historian, said that the files provide new details of the coup, and "further evidence that MI5 played a more important part in British decolonization than is often realized."
The Jagans, a US-educated former dentist and his Chicago-born wife, seem an unlikely threat. But the 39 folders of files released by Britain's National Archives are crammed full of tapped phone conversations, intercepted letters and accounts of physical surveillance over more than a decade.
To British authorities, the Jagans were a headache. To the Americans, they were a potential Communist threat on America's doorstep.
MI5 concluded that the party was "not receiving any financial support from any Communist organization outside the country."
Nonetheless, amid worsening strikes and unrest, Britain grew unhappy with the Jagans' "disruptive antics."
After the party won a huge majority in British Guiana's 1953 election, making Cheddi Jagan prime minister, Churchill decided to act.
Britain mounted a military operation code-named Windsor. Churchill sent a warship, HMS Superb, and brought hundreds of troops by air and sea to secure key sites. On October 9, Britain suspended Guyana's constitution, fired its legislators and arrested the Jagans.
The surprise military operation went according to plan. The Trinidad-based MI5 officer noted with satisfaction that "it was obvious that the PPP leaders had no idea that ... they might be arrested."
And the spy threw in a note of thanks for the women who helped the army march on its stomach.
"I might add in parenthesis that catering arrangements for the airborne troops during their halt in Trinidad were carried out by Mrs Beadon, wife of the Commissioner of Police, Mrs Rahr, my wife and Joyce Huggins ... and I understand that no less than 600 large sandwiches were cut by these ladies," he wrote.
Secret documents declassified yesterday by Britain's MI5 security service reveal in dramatic and everyday detail how the UK under Prime Minister Winston Churchill overthrew the elected government of British Guiana - now Guyana - because he feared its left-wing leader and his American wife were leading the British colony into the arms of the Soviet Union.
The documents reveal how British spies kept up intense scrutiny on Cheddi and Janet Jagan, who founded the People's Progressive Party to campaign for workers' rights and independence from British rule for the sugar-producing colony in northern South America.
Christopher Andrew, the spy agency's official historian, said that the files provide new details of the coup, and "further evidence that MI5 played a more important part in British decolonization than is often realized."
The Jagans, a US-educated former dentist and his Chicago-born wife, seem an unlikely threat. But the 39 folders of files released by Britain's National Archives are crammed full of tapped phone conversations, intercepted letters and accounts of physical surveillance over more than a decade.
To British authorities, the Jagans were a headache. To the Americans, they were a potential Communist threat on America's doorstep.
MI5 concluded that the party was "not receiving any financial support from any Communist organization outside the country."
Nonetheless, amid worsening strikes and unrest, Britain grew unhappy with the Jagans' "disruptive antics."
After the party won a huge majority in British Guiana's 1953 election, making Cheddi Jagan prime minister, Churchill decided to act.
Britain mounted a military operation code-named Windsor. Churchill sent a warship, HMS Superb, and brought hundreds of troops by air and sea to secure key sites. On October 9, Britain suspended Guyana's constitution, fired its legislators and arrested the Jagans.
The surprise military operation went according to plan. The Trinidad-based MI5 officer noted with satisfaction that "it was obvious that the PPP leaders had no idea that ... they might be arrested."
And the spy threw in a note of thanks for the women who helped the army march on its stomach.
"I might add in parenthesis that catering arrangements for the airborne troops during their halt in Trinidad were carried out by Mrs Beadon, wife of the Commissioner of Police, Mrs Rahr, my wife and Joyce Huggins ... and I understand that no less than 600 large sandwiches were cut by these ladies," he wrote.
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