Django posted:Carib,
You on to something that have some merit,the Luckhoo-Noonan Scheme may have triggered the division,between the two major ethnic group of Guyana.
I haven't got time as yet to read up on the old documents during that period.
It did. The black and mixed people were trying to find some space for themselves within a hostile colonial environment and along comes the BGEIA to further complicate things. Had the BGEIA approached this as allies I bet that their assistance in battling colonial administrations and the planter class would have been welcomed. After all it was the 3 groups, coloreds, Africans and Indians who to varying degrees, were marginalized. So too were the power "creole whites" and the Portuguese and Chinese, even if to a lesser degree.
Do you know that the minimal amount of self rule that BG had was removed because the whites were terrified that they would lose dominance over the administration of the colony? So they vested enlarged powers away from the LegCo to the governor and those who he appointed. By the early 20th C over 40% of the electors were black or colored. In those days voting was based on male property ownership, not on universal adult suffrage.
It is to be noted that in T&T there is less black vs. Indian hostility than in Guyana. I suspect that this is because there wasn't as long lived tensions between the two groups as is true for Guyana. Even as their politics is dominated by ethnicity there is a large swing vote there (maybe as much as 20%). In Guyana the ethnic swing vote is probably no more than 5%.