Georgetown: The republication and launch of Eusi Kwayana book “The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics” take place at Moray House on Friday February 8 at 5.30 PM.
A panel discussion featuring Ms. Estherine Adams whose post-graduate work was on the early years of Kwayana, Sharma Solomon and Lincoln Lewis. There will also an audio interview with Eusi Kwayana and historian Dr. Nigel Westmaas moderated by Dr. David Hinds.
First published in 1972, the book gives a first-hand account of the events beginning with the retirement income life assurance fund (RILA) through the useful reproduction of newspaper editorials, articles, and pamphlets by the strikers’ organisation and ASCRIA whose local Chapter in Linden joined the workers in their struggle to secure and defend their rights.
The book is a real time documentation of the cataclysmic events in 1971, the year in which the National Assembly passed the Bauxite Nationalisation Act with three MPS voting against nationalisation. “The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics” recounts the role of foreign exploiters of the country’s natural, non-renewable resources; the transformation and conduct of the PNC government once it assumed the role of employer; the beating and jailing of workers by soldiers and their teargasing by police; the part played by then Leader of the Opposition Dr. Cheddi Jagan; and the plight of ordinary workers betrayed by their own trade union.
But more than anything the book captures in vivid and inspiring detail the power of self-organisation and the fearlessness of the workers,who were not prepared to accept a status quo in which they were at best second-class butwere ready to take on the power elite of Georgetown as they struggled for their emancipation.
“The Bauxite Strike and the Old Politics” sheds light on the roots of the post-colonial crisis of governance across the world and is a lesson against which to frame a response to recent developments in the bauxite town. As Kwayana has written recently, the story of the bauxite workers struggle in the 1970s is a challenge to those who choose to forget that 2012 was not the first time that Linden rose up against injustice from the state.
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