The Rupununi Rebellion in 1969 attempted to violate the territorial integrity of the country. The Civil Rebellion deri years later in 1979 attempted to violate the constitutional integrity of the country. Both rebellions were aimed at permanently destroying the governmental authority of the People’s National Congress administration.
The Civil Rebellion which occurred fifty-five years ago started after a leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) declared, at a public rally on 2oth July 1979, “The [People’s National Congress] PNC must go and they must go by any means necessary!” This declaration came the week following the total destruction of the Ministry of National Development offices by arson on 11th July 1979.
Former President David Granger, in examining the roots of the Rebellion on the programme – The Public Interest – recalled that the political situation in the 1970s had been aggravated by protests over the cost of living, crime, unemployment, the results of the General Elections in July 1973, the Guyana Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) 135-day strike in the sugar industry and the trials of a suspect in the murder of a policeman in the East Berbice-Corentyne Region in 1973. Dissent deepened, further, after the PNC promulgated the ‘Declaration of Sophia’ in December 1974 and conducted a Referendum in July 1978 to amend the Constitution and postpone the elections due that year.
Mr. Granger pointed out that the Working People’s Alliance had been formed through an accord among the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa led by a former PNC general secretary; the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates led by a former PYO chairman and the Working People’s Vanguard Party led by a former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) chairman, and the Ratoon group. Other pressure groups – such as the Civil Liberties Action Council, Committee in Defense of Democracy and the Concerned Citizens’ Committee – collaborated to oppose the PNC administration.
It was Granger’s opinion that the WPA had been especially encouraged by anti-government protests in the 1970s in Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and Trinidad. The WPA communicated with Grenada’s insurrectionists who overthrew the government in March 1979 and might have believed that Guyana’s Civil Rebellion would lead to a similar outcome.
Efforts to form a Council of National Safety to foment agitation and to stage public marches ended soon after the PPP Central Committee cancelled its participation on account of the presence of “right wing forces” and its assessment that the opposition parties did not have the resources for insurrection. The PPP’s withdrawal was a serious setback.
The former president expressed the view that the Civil Rebellion collapsed as a result of the alienation of civil society, the threat of violence and the prospects of mob rule in the wake of the dangerous declaration of July 1979 to remove the PNC “by any means necessary.” The Rebellion fell, also, because its masterminds failed to construct a country-wide, mass-based movement; to consolidate an alliance of popular parties and to convince the public that it had a credible policy for poverty alleviation and economic recovery that could guarantee a good life for everyone.