by Mark Curtis
The coup may have had important repercussions beyond its impact on ordinary Chileans. As well as showing the world the US willingness to crush a government that had improved the lot of many of its poorer people, it also signalled that the peaceful, democratic path to improving the position of the poor would be met by violence. Ambassador Seconde commented in a despatch after the coup that 'the final seal of failure has now been put on this experiment by the Chilean armed forces'. 'This has some obvious advantages', he wrote, but also disadvantages, one of which was that 'it will be widely concluded that violent revolution is the only effective way to communism'. Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home similarly suggested that 'the overthrow of Allende has ruined prospects for social change to be achieved democratically in Latin America'.34
Pinochet in power
On the first anniversary of the coup, a large advertisement appeared in the conservative Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, congratulating the 'honourable junta' on completing its first year in power. The advert had been placed by the British Chamber of Commerce, whose chair was Reginald Seconde, Britain's ambassador.35
Britain's support for the junta was only mildly affected by Labour's election victory in February 1974. The Wilson government announced that no new arms export licences would be granted but, defying parliamentary and public pressure, decided to honour existing contracts to deliver two frigates, two submarines and a consignment of Rolls-Royce engines for the Chileans' Hunter aircraft – thus breaking Labour's pre-election commitment not to supply arms.
When a British doctor, Sheila Cassidy, was arrested and tortured by the Chilean secret police in 1975, a public outcry forced the government to break off ambassadorial relations. However, a diplomatic staff of 13 remained, trade relations were not directly affected and the Chilean ambassador to Britain was not expelled. In 1976, it was also revealed that two years previously the Labour government had allowed 270 Chilean navy personnel to undergo training courses in Britain, followed by 24 in 1975, again as a result of contracts signed under the Heath government.36
The Thatcher government backed Pinochet to the hilt. It restored full export credit cover for Chile in June 1979, restored ambassadorial relations in January 1980 and arms exports in July 1980, while claiming that the human-rights situation had improved. The opposite was the case: Britain's decision to resume normal arms sales to Chile in July 1980 coincided with a period in which, according to Amnesty International, 'there has been a steady increase in the abuse of human rights in Chile' with 2,000 people arrested, many of whom were tortured, that year alone. In November 1979, 600 unmarked graves had been discovered in a Santiago cemetery. The extreme right-wing Foreign Office minister Nicholas Ridley argued that 'we don't mix up the two questions of trade and views of the political situation', which was at least honest.37
Following the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in 1982, the Chileans provided a base for the SAS to conduct raids into Argentina; and Chilean naval intelligence passed on intercepts of Argentinian navy radio signals. From the outset of this cooperation, classified telegrams sent from the British embassy in Santiago to the Foreign Office showed that in return for Chilean cooperation, Britain would provide military equipment, cease any lingering criticism of human-rights abuses and help undermine UN investigations into these by opposing the reappointment of the UN's special rapporteur.38
Thus Britain abstained on several UN votes criticising Chile's human-rights violations. The Chilean Committee for Human Rights pointed out that in the early 1980s, Britain had been indifferent when it came to concrete action and encouragement for those in Chile defending human rights or intervention in individual cases. Human rights-leaders in Chile complained that, unlike other embassies, the British embassy maintained irregular contact and would not make enquiries when serious human-rights abuses arose.
Britain under Thatcher acted as a major apologist for the Pinochet regime, describing it as 'a moderate and stabilising force' in the region, with which Britain ought to be 'deepening and strengthening political relations', in the words of Trade Minister Peter Rees in 1982.39
Military relations remained strong throughout the 1980s. The bulk of Chile's navy was supplied by Britain, which provided around a dozen warships, including frigates, destroyers and submarines. In 1982–1983, Britain sold a dozen Hawker Hunters, fighter jets and bombers to Chile, held talks in London with the head of Chile's navy and invited the head of the air force to the Farnborough air show (the invitation provoked so much opposition that it was withdrawn). Britain continued to use military facilities in Chile and RAF pilots were secretly sent to provide training to the Chilean air force.40
Foreign Office documents leaked in 1985 stated that an arms embargo on Chile would be a 'striking political gesture on our behalf against human-rights abuses. However, such an embargo would also lead to a scaling down of military cooperation and relations more generally. Little agonising was needed over the ordering of these priorities.41
Pinochet's economic strategy closely followed monetarist doctrine, espousing 'free markets' and cuts in public spending and taxes, while providing favourable conditions for foreign investment. Many of Allende's reforms were reversed and a substantial redistribution of income from poor to rich took place. The real incomes of the poorest 20 per cent of Chilean families fell by 30 per cent between 1969 and 1978, while those of the richest 20 per cent increased by 15 per cent. By 1978, the top 20 per cent of households accounted for more than half of all consumption (having risen from 43 per cent in 1969) with the bottom 40 per cent accounting for a mere 14 per cent (down from 20 per cent in 1969).42
Political repression and economic strategy went hand in hand: the latter depended on the absence of trade-union pressure and the lack of political opposition. The dictatorship's economic strategy impressed the Thatcher government. Trade Minister Cecil Parkinson noted in 1980 that 'the Chilean economic experience is very similar to what we are developing here'.43
By the mid-1980s it was clear that the Chilean experiment had failed in achieving significant economic growth and thus in maintaining a more favourable climate for investors generally. It was at this point that the Reagan and Thatcher governments suddenly discovered the Pinochet regime's human-rights abuses. In December 1984 Britain voted at the UN to condemn Chile for human-rights abuses, and the US later followed by sponsoring a draft UN resolution critical of violations.
The Pinochet dictatorship lasted a long 17 years, until 1990. Currently, some 350 military and police officials implicated in human-rights atrocities in Chile after the military coup of 1973 are facing criminal charges. Among them are 22 generals and 40 colonels. Some might well have had direct dealings with the British governments who armed them. But British ministers continue to evade responsibility for having conferred legitimacy on, and given their backing to, this nasty regime for so long.
15
GUYANANS: A
CONSTITUTIONAL COUP
In 1953 Britain overthrew the democratically elected government in British Guiana, which was then a British colony with an element of self-government. The April 1953 elections had resulted in victory for the People's Progressive Party (PPP) under Cheddi Jagan, a popular, nationalist government committed to a redistributive economic programme intended to reduce poverty. The PPP's plans threatened the British multinational Bookers, which controlled British Guiana's main export, sugar. Britain despatched warships and 700 troops to overthrow the government, under the pretext that they were acting against 'part of the international communist conspiracy' represented by Jagan's policies. With many of the elected PPP leaders jailed, the Colonial Secretary ruled out elections since 'the same party would have been elected again'.1
Almost exactly ten years later, British Guiana was faced with the same threat in the eyes of British planners. By 1963, Cheddi Jagan's PPP was again the ruling party in government, having won the 1961 elections. Britain, however, did not want to grant independence to British Guiana if Jagan were to become the first post-indep
endence leader.
There were two differences from 1953. The first was the means: instead of a military intervention, the British effected a 'constitutional coup' to ensure that Jagan would not be reelected. The second was the context: by 1963, Britain simply wanted to get out of Guiana and hand it over to the US. It was no longer acting primarily to protect its own business interests, but as the lieutenant of the US, which successfully lobbied London to promote a coup on its behalf.
'The sooner we get these people out of our hair the better', Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys told Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in January 1962. Macmillan's adviser, Burke Trend, agreed: 'we are sick of trying to hold the balance between these quarrelsome people and want to wash our hands of them as rapidly as we can'.2
US files show that British officials 'assert in private that British Guiana is in the US, not the UK, sphere of interest and they probably consider that its future is not properly their problem but one for the US'. Britain still had substantial commercial interests in the territory – most importantly a $400–500 million investment in the sugar industry – yet it was concern about placating the Americans that was uppermost in British minds.3
Background to a coup
British Guiana was a desperately poor country with a population of just over half a million people, half of whom were of Indian origin and around a third of African origin. The economy was dependent on sugar and bauxite with the sugar estates and mining industry 'owned by outside capital', the Joint Intelligence Committee noted. The sugar industry was in the hands of two British companies, Bookers and the Demerara Company, both of which 'have extensive interests in other sections of the economy including importing, general stores and real estate'.4 These companies made handsome profits while the overwhelming majority of the population endured grinding poverty.
The US files vary between describing Jagan's PPP programme as 'communist' and 'nationalist'. A US intelligence report from March 1961 notes that it was unlikely that Jagan was seeking to establish a communist regime; but rather 'we consider it more likely that an independent Jagan government would seek to portray itself as an instrument of reformist nationalism which would gradually move in the direction of Castro's Cuba'. It would be 'assertively nationalistic, sympathetic to Cuba, and prepared to enter into economic and diplomatic relations with the [Soviet] bloc, although such a government would probably still be influenced by the desire to obtain economic help from the UK and the US'.5
In October 1961, the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department, Roger Hilsman – the architect of the brutal 'strategic hamlets' programme in Vietnam – noted that US government thinking at the time was that Jagan was not a 'controlled instrument of Moscow' but 'a radical nationalist who may play both sides of the street but will not lead British Guiana into satellite status'. After independence, Jagan's PPP would 'follow a policy on non-alignment in international affairs, but would probably lean in the Soviet direction', according to another US intelligence report.6
The British believed, according to the US files, that 'Jagan is not a communist' but 'a naïve, London School of Economics Marxist filled with charm, personal honesty and juvenile nationalism'. A Whitehall brief of June 1963 noted that under Jagan there was the danger of a 'Castro/communist regime in British Guiana', though this would be a threat 'for political and psychological rather than military reasons'.7
Therefore, the threat posed by Jagan's PPP was essentially a radical nationalist one, replicated on numerous occasions throughout the post-war era, but invariably described as purely 'communist' for public relations. This threat was compounded by the recognition in internal State Department files that Jagan 'leads the largest and most cohesive party in the country. He is the ablest leader in British Guiana'.8
Before the August 1961 elections, the US feared that, if Jagan won, he would 'make a more determined effort to improve economic conditions' by accepting a loan from Cuba, whose regime was providing a model for others in Latin America, and may threaten 'nationalisation or confiscation of foreign and local businesses'. The PPP drew its support from the Indian community 'including not only poverty-stricken rural and urban workers, but also a considerable number of small businessmen in Georgetown and other centres', a US intelligence report from March 1961 read.9
In April 1961, at meetings in Washington, the US had proposed to Britain 'ways and means of ensuring that an independent British Guiana was not dominated by communists'. Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home said that Britain was 'anxious to do everything possible to make sure that British Guiana developed on the right lines'. A group was set up in which US and British officials looked into 'the possibilities of taking action to influence the results of the election' scheduled for August 1961, Douglas-Home noted. But despite US pleas, Britain refused to cooperate in the US plan actively to prevent Jagan winning the election, arguing that it was better to work with him and steer him away from unacceptable policies through financial and economic aid.10
The PPP won 20 of the 35 seats in the assembly in the 1961 elections – 45 per cent of the vote – against 11 seats won by the People's National Party, the principal opposition party, under Forbes Burnham.
After the election, the US State Department recommended a programme that combined offering Jagan technical and economic assistance with a covert operation 'to expose and destroy communists in British Guiana' and to find 'a substitute for Jagan himself, who could command East Indian support'. Noting that these two goals were in conflict, President Kennedy's Special Assistant, Arthur Schlesinger, wrote that 'this means that the covert program must be handled with the utmost discretion'. The US policy of assisting Jagan had been agreed with the British, who were still rejecting covert action to oust him. But by October 1961 the files show that US planners were questioning its strategy and wanted to review it with the British. No US aid was, in fact, ever provided.11
In February 1962 US Secretary of State Dean Rusk told Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home: 'I have reached the conclusion that it is not possible for us to put up with an independent British Guiana under Jagan'. Jagan had 'grandiose expectations of economic aid', too many 'communist connections' and was professing a stance which 'parallels that of Castro':
The continuation of Jagan in power is leading us to disaster in terms of the colony itself, strains on Anglo-American relations and difficulties for the Inter-American system . . . I hope we can agree that Jagan should not accede to power again. Cordially yours, Dean Rusk.12
This was too much even for the British. Macmillan wrote that he read Rusk's letter with 'amazement', telling Douglas-Home: 'How can the Americans continue to attack us in the United Nations on colonialism and then use expressions like these which are not colonialism but pure Machiavellianism?'
Douglas-Home replied to Rusk and, referring to his view that 'Jagan should not accede to power again', countered: 'How would you suggest that this can be done in a democracy?' Britain, he said, could also not go back on its promise to grant independence.13
However, the British government soon acquiesced. At a constitutional conference in March 1960 the principle of independence had been conceded and a new constitution agreed. It was envisaged that independence would take place in August 1963, two years after the introduction of the new constitution.
In March 1962, Colonial Minister Hugh Fraser visited Washington. After meetings with Kennedy and others, Fraser came back talking of an alternative constitution involving proportional representation rather than the present first-past-the-post system. But any proposal on this, he wrote, 'must not flow from us but from the demands of the British Guianese themselves'.
A change in the constitution was necessary since, as a US intelligence report in April recognised, new elections held on the same basis as in August 1961 'would probably return a Jagan government again'.14
In May Macmillan told Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook that 'it is surely to our interests [sic] to be as cooperative and forthcoming as we can' towards the
US desire for 'a satisfactory solution' in British Guiana. His note to Brook asked him to set up a committee to consider the future of the territory – presumably to work on the fixing of the constitution following Fraser's meetings with the Americans – and also stated that this note was not being copied to any of the ministers concerned.15