Dear Editor,
I am deeply concerned by the title of a pamphlet reportedly prepared by Mr. James Anthony Bond for the 2026 Enmore Martyrs Day commemoration: Blood Upon the Cane Fields: The Enmore Martyrs of 1948 and the Kindling of Decolonisation in British Guiana. The Enmore Martyrs deserve to be remembered with dignity, historical accuracy, and a full account of what their deaths represented. However, describing their sacrifice as the “kindling” of decolonisation is, in my view, historically reckless because it suggests that the fire of resistance to colonial rule began in 1948.
It did not.
The five workers killed by colonial police at Enmore on 16th June, 1948, were involved in a labour struggle shaped by exploitative plantation conditions, wages, the “cut and load” system, and dissatisfaction with union representation. Their deaths had a profound political impact, strengthened working-class consciousness, and deeply influenced Cheddi Jagan’s commitment to the liberation of Guyanese workers. Even Jagan’s own later account described Enmore as an event that further strengthened an already developing belief that he had a role to play in freeing Guyanese people from exploitation.
That is significant, but significance is not the same as origin.
Long before 1948, enslaved Africans had resisted Dutch and British colonial authority, fought for their freedom, and challenged the plantation system. After emancipation, Africans purchased villages, pursued land ownership, established independent communities, and continued confronting economic and political exclusion. Organised labour resistance also predated Enmore. Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow traced the history of British Guiana’s trade-union movement to the 1905 waterfront strike, while the British Guiana Labour Union was established in 1919. The 1924 Ruimveldt labour uprising and the major labour rebellions of the 1930s further demonstrate that workers had already been confronting colonial power and racialised economic exploitation for decades before the Enmore killings.
Words such as “kindling” are not neutral. Kindling is what starts a fire. By 1948, the struggle against colonial domination in British Guiana had already been burning for generations. Enmore did not ignite that fire. It added fuel to it, intensified it, and became one of its most enduring symbols. That is more than sufficient historical importance. The martyrs do not need the earlier struggles of Africans, labour organisers, village builders, political reformers, and other workers to be diminished in order for their sacrifice to matter.
For someone who says he conducted research before producing this pamphlet, the title is especially troubling. Historical research should establish chronology, distinguish between labour struggle and formal decolonisation, and place events within the broader political development of the colony. It should not take one important episode and elevate it into the starting point of a centuries-long struggle. I have not seen the full contents of the pamphlet, so I will not claim to know everything written inside it. However, the title alone raises legitimate concerns about the historical framework being presented at a national commemoration.
This concern is not an attack on the Enmore Martyrs. Quite the opposite. We can honour them by explaining precisely what they fought against, why colonial police opened fire, how their deaths affected the labour movement, and how the tragedy influenced later political mobilisation. We do not honour them by assigning them a role that requires the compression or erasure of what came before.
It is also historically relevant that the Enmore Martyrs Monument was designed by Guyanese artist Dr. Denis Williams, constructed on behalf of the Government of Guyana in 1976, and unveiled by Prime Minister Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham on 16th June, 1977. Burnham’s government therefore helped institutionalise the martyrs’ remembrance as part of Guyana’s national heritage. Their sacrifice was recognised beyond one party and deserves to remain part of a national, rather than selectively partisan, historical account.
The Government of Guyana should be cautious about endorsing or distributing historical material under the banner of a national ceremony without ensuring that it meets acceptable standards of accuracy and balance. What will children attending or reading about the 2026 commemoration be taught? Will they learn that Enmore was one critical episode within a much longer struggle, or will they be left believing that decolonisation began in the cane fields in 1948?
We have already seen African-Guyanese history reduced, softened, or omitted during major national presentations. The Independence celebration at Fort Island emphasised flags, Dutch administration, and colonial governance without adequately confronting the suffering of enslaved Africans associated with that colonial space. African cultural representation was presented through a song from Disney’s The Lion King when Guyana possesses its own African-Guyanese drumming, music, dance, rituals, oral traditions, and historical memory.
These choices may appear separate, but together they reveal a troubling pattern in which African history is either sanitised, replaced with generic symbolism, or pushed aside to make another narrative appear more complete.
What makes this especially painful is when African-Guyanese people participate in that distortion. It creates a situation in which our history can be diminished while others later claim that Africans themselves approved the telling. That is why this is not a minor disagreement over wording. It concerns the historical record that will be passed to future generations.
The Enmore Martyrs were courageous workers whose deaths became an important catalyst in Guyana’s labour and political history. They deserve ceremony, scholarship, and national remembrance. But they do not need historical fiction. The truth of their sacrifice is already powerful enough.