UG Launches Dr. Harold Drayton’s Memoir
Dr. Vonna Drayton on the right, presenting copies of the book to Ms Gwyneth George.
The Turkeyen Campus of the University of Guyana (UG) was the venue on August 24 for the launch of Dr. Harold Drayton’s memoir titled “An Accidental Life”.
In 1962, Guyanese-born Harold Drayton, who was a lecturer in zoology at the Kwame Nkrumah University in Ghana, was invited by Dr Cheddi Jagan, then Premier of Guyana, to work on the “university project”. From January to September 1963, Drayton worked tirelessly to get the UG started with its first batch of students in October 1963. Continue reading
Mr. Forbes Burnham dealt with the harsh tax measures introduced by what was known as the Kaldor Budget and ended his speech by working on the emotions of his audience in the manner of Mark Anthony. “Comrades,” he exclaimed, “the fight starts now. Tomorrow at 2 o’clock in the afternoon there is a demonstration organized by the Trade Union Congress, a demonstration against the harsh proposals of the budget, which make life unbearable.
BBC Radio British Guiana politics in the 1960’s – radio documentary
BBC Radio British Guiana politics in the 1960’s
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tj74v/Document_30_08_2010/
Mike Thomson investigates how Britain undermined British Guiana’s democratic process as the colony inched towards independence in the early 1960s. BBC Radio
In the last of the current series Mike Thomson investigates how Britain covertly manipulated the democratic process in its South American colony, then known as British Guiana in the run up to its independence in 1966. Mike discovers new documents which show that they deliberately scuppered the outcome of their own conference organised to determine the country’s future.
On the face of it the conference, held in London in October 1963, was designed to confirm the constitutional future for what was then British Guiana. Publicly Britain encouraged the country’s Prime Minister Dr Cheddi Jagan – who had been fairly elected in 1961 – and the leader of the opposition Linden Forbes Burnham to agree terms for independence. However, behind the scenes, the documents reveal that the British were working to a different outcome – to ensure that agreement was never reached. Continue reading →
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