Tell the US to stay out of Guyana politics

Jan 16, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
In December your paper carried an article: “Is there a rekindling of the Cold War?” and I would like to reply to it.
In October 1962 I arrived in, what was then, British Guiana, as a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) attached to the Coldstream Guards and during this time I was in Georgetown, Atkinson Field and New Amsterdam.
Unlike most of the guardsmen, I and my colleagues of the RAMC along with members of the Royal Signals, sought out the reasons for our being in British Guiana, apart from the obvious one ‘We were told to go’ which, in the case of the RAMC lads was not quite correct, because we volunteered. We were very concerned about 13 days in October now known as the Cuban Missile crisis, otherwise known as “13 days to save the world” which the US would like us to believe.
We were able to see the US hand in labour relations at that time and the absence of truth in reports that were circulated among the guardsmen that told that Dr Cheddi Jagan’s administration had received a grant of about £500,000 ($2,400,000BG at that time) and that, when security forces had stopped his car, and that of his wife, they found thousands of Communist pamphlets and that PPP had funded travel and study in Cuba for a large number of young people.
We had a good relationship with members of the US forces at that time based at Atkinson Field and some of them would tell us things that they were told to tell people but they added, “there is no point in reporting them because our bosses will simply deny them and put the blame on the Brits instead.
More recently, here in the UK we have had problems with the US. Certain political groups have expressed their intention to pull Britain out of the European Union. Other groups that are PRO-Europe were quickly and quietly, provided with extra funds in order to fight the Anti-Europe groups and this money came from the US. There have been several reports from the US that tried to insist that Britain stays as part of the European Union and some of these have even hinted that if they don’t, then Britain will lose a lot of US trade business and US funding for various projects and companies.
We had George W. Bush dragging British troops into war in Iraq and the Afghanistan with the interesting phrase “Those who are not with us are against us!” And Prime Minister Tony Blair immediately said “Yes. Yes .Yes” He was seen here as Bush’s poodle and some even referred to him as the Deputy Vice President of the US.
Even President Obama has been trying to influence UK politics by calling for all UK political parties to unite in supporting the EU and also a united Europe with its own Defence Forces overruling those of individual countries. This has not gone down at all well with many of the older population who can still remember having to fight the Germans in two World Wars and several football matches, and most of these would cheerfully go on the streets in protest against any political party trying to bring this about.
Some of our political parties have written to Obama to tell him to pull his neck in and stay out of UK and out of UK politics, and some of the workers who discovered that their companies had been bought out by the US, as several have been, promptly left that work and went to other companies. Something not very easy, since, in the last fifteen years, some of Britain’s biggest companies have been bought out by the US.
Let us not forget the US involvement in Caribbean agriculture, such as their company Chiquita going around Central America and the Caribbean and offering contracts to take a producer’s entire crop of bananas, and some other fruits, but at a price far lower than the grower could usually get on the open market but, there we have Chiquita buying at low prices then selling on the world market at highly inflated prices that were also subsidised by the US government, making a very nice profit for Chiccita.
If the Guyana Government is working on behalf of the people of Guyana then the best thing they can do is to tell the US to stay out of Guyana politics and business unless they are asked for help.
Don Johnson
Wallasey, UK

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