In the sugar belt of colonial Guyana, the Man Power Citizens’ Association (MPCA) was formed under the leadership of Ayube Edun, a goldsmith and publisher of the Guiana Review newspaper, and Mr C.R. Jacob, a successful merchant and member of the existing Legislative Council. Its general secretary was Harri Barron. All three of these people had certain prominence in the struggle for greater political rights for East Indians, and Jacob was not only a merchant but also president of the East Indian Association.
The MPCA was officially registered on November 5, 1937, and it concentrated its energies on organizing primarily among workers in the sugar industry. At the same time, the British Guiana Workers League also solicited members within the industry with emphasis on factory and clerical workers.
The sugar strikes of the early and middle 1930s occurred without there being in existence any organized union to direct them. Although, as we have seen, the British Guiana Labour Union had some influence, it had little formal organization outside the city of Georgetown.
Not until 1936 was the Man Power Citizens’ Association (MPCA), which concentrated its principal attention, at least in the beginning, on organizing the sugar workers, established. The MPCA grew rapidly. By 1939, it claimed 10,000 members and 20,000 by 1943. When a new wave of strikes broke out in 1938, the MPCA became involved in negotiating an end to them, although it had not formally called any of the walkouts. The Sugar Producers’ Association denounced the MPCA for making the workers “more and more truculent.”58
Ashton Chase wrote of the MPCA: “The brilliant start was due to the absolute confidence which the sugar workers reposed in the inspiring leadership of Mr. Ayube M. Edun, the founder/president. . . . Previous to its formation, Mr. Edun had established himself as an undoubted champion of the rights of sugar workers by pungent articles in the ‘Guyana Review’ and later in the ‘Labour Advocate’ of which he was the editor and pro¬prietor.”59
Chase also noted:
The Sugar Workers saw in the MPCA their long awaited saviour. … In comparison with the other Unions it was a giant among pygmies. . . . Two contributing factors to this were firstly, the fact that it was operating in an industry that then and even now is the mainstay of the economy. . . .
Secondly, the rate of subscription was nominal. . . . This reflected a poor financial status and the Union’s inability to even make a pretense at servicing branches. With all its large membership it was not until 1953 that its bank balance reached the $ 1,000 mark and then only after overseas assistance had been received.60
The Turbulent History of Organized Labor in Guyana—Part I
The most important strike in this period was that on Plantation Leonora, which broke out in February 1939. Although the MPCA leaders sought to intervene, the plantation management refused to allow them to come on-to the plantation grounds. Police who were called to “protect” the plantation ended up firing on the crowd, killing four and wounding several others. Finally, Ayube Edun was able to talk with the strikers at a nearby Hindu temple, and the following day the workers returned to their jobs.
The tragic results of the Leonora strike perhaps helped convince the Sugar Producers’ Association to change its strategy. On May 2, 1939, the SPA agreed to recognize the MPCA “for purposes of collective bargain-ing, giving it the right to negotiate in any case of dispute, and to hold meetings on the plantations.” After this decision, the Man Power Citizens’ Association grew rapidly and for several years was the genuine representative of the country’s sugar workers.
Ashton Chase observed. “The MPCA started off on the same plane as its predecessors. Its first objects showed that it was established to represent the cause of its members and endeavour to obtain their just, equitable, economic, political and social rights from the state and their employers.”62
Although the membership of the MPCA was concentrated to a large degree among the East Indian sugar workers, in its early years it also organized a number of other groups. By 1949 it had collective contracts with both the Demerara and Berbice bauxite firms, most of whose employees were of African descent—and had a virtually closed shop arrangement with the former. It also had a collective agreement with the Board of Control of the Mahaicony Abery Development Scheme, a semiofficial government rice growing enterprise. It like-wise had union members in the government’s Public Works Department, although those workers had recently established their own un-ion, and the MPCA members had been transferred to a new Sawmill Workers Union, headed by Theophilus Lee.63
The MPCA’s penetration of the two bauxite companies came as the culmination of a struggle of the workers in the Demerara Company to establish a union. Starting in 1942, the British Guiana Labour Union had sought to establish a branch there but faced strong resistance from the employer, and. as a result of a strike in 1944, its local there had disappeared.
The bauxite workers then turned to the Man Power Citizens’ Association to help them establish a local union. It also met strong employer resistance, but after a partial strike in December 1946 and the intervention of the government Labour Department, an agreement was signed between the Demerara Company and the MPCA in December 1946.
However, this did not end company resistance to the union. Several local union leaders were dismissed by the company, precipitating a further strike in April 1947, which was not finally settled until October of that year, when a new collective agreement was signed between the MPCA and the company, providing for a wage increase and improvements in working conditions.
Subsequently, without any major conflict, the second bauxite company, the Berbice Bauxite Company, also recognized the MPCA as the bargaining agent for its employees. Some time later, through a friendly arrangement with the national leadership of the MPCA, its bauxite miners’ locals broke away to form their own independent union.
As the country’s largest union, the MPCA in its early years won the friendly attention of many middle-class people who had sympathy for organized labor. These included Cheddi Jagan, who joined the union soon after returning home from studying in the United States and who in 1945 became treasurer of the MPCA. However, he was removed from that post within a year, for reasons that we shall note subsequently. ( Excerpts from A History of Organized Labor in the English-speaking West IndiesBy Robert J. Alexander, Eldon M. Parker, The Leonora Incident of 1939 by Tota Mangar) (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
