Genesis of Modern Politics, 1931-54
The Great Depression shattered the colony’s economy, and unemployment increased rapidly. On top of this economic disaster, the worst hurricane in the country’s recent history demolished Belize Town on September 10, 1931, killing more than 1,000 people. The British relief response was tardy and inadequate.
The British government seized the opportunity to impose tighter control on the colony and endowed the governor with the power to enact laws in emergency situations. The Belize Estate and Produce Company survived the depression years because of its special connections in British Honduras and London.
Meanwhile, workers in mahogany camps were treated almost like slaves. The law governing labor contracts, the Masters and Servants Act of 1883, made it a criminal offense for a laborer to breach a contract. In 1931 the governor, Sir John Burdon, rejected proposals to legalize trade unions and to introduce a minimum wage and sickness insurance. The poor responded in 1934 with a series of demonstrations, strikes, petitions, and riots that marked the beginning of modern politics and the independence movement.
Riots, strikes, and rebellions had occurred before, but the events of the 1930s were modern labor disturbances in the sense that they gave rise to organizations with articulate industrial and political goals. Antonio Soberanis Gómez and his colleagues of the Labourers and Unemployed Association (LUA) attacked the governor and his officials, the rich merchants, and the Belize Estate and Produce Company, couching their demands in broad moral and political terms that began to define and develop a new nationalistic and democratic political culture.
The labor agitation’s most immediate success was the creation of relief work by a governor who saw it as a way to avoid civil disturbances. The movement’s greatest achievements, however, were the labor reforms passed between 1941 and 1943.
Trade unions were legalized in 1941, and a 1943 law removed breach-of-labor-contract from the criminal code. The General Workers’ Union (GWU), registered in 1943, quickly expanded into a nationwide organization and provided crucial support for the nationalist movement that took off with the formation of the People’s United Party (PUP) in 1950. The 1930s were therefore the crucible of modern Belizean politics.
It was a decade during which the old phenomena of exploitative labor conditions and authoritarian colonial and industrial relations began to give way to new labor and political processes and institutions. The same period saw an expansion in voter eligibility. In 1945 only 822 voters were registered in a population of over 63,000, but by 1954 British Honduras achieved suffrage for all literate adults.
In December 1949, the governor devalued the British Honduras dollar in defiance of the Legislative Council, an act that precipitated Belize’s independence movemtn. The governor’s action angered the nationalists because it reflected the limits of the legislature and revealed the extent of the colonial administration’s power.
The devaluation enraged labor because it protected the interests of the big transnationals while subjecting the working class to higher prices for goods. Devaluation thus united labor, nationalists, and the Creole middle classes in opposition to the colonial administration. On the night that the governor declared the devaluation, the People’s Committee was formed and the nascent independence movement suddenly matured.
Between 1950 and 1954, the PUP, formed upon the dissolution of the People’s Committee on September 29, 1950, consolidated its organization, established its popular base, and articulated its primary demands. By January 1950, the GWU and the People’s Committee were holding joint public meetings and discussing issues such as devaluation, labor legislation, the proposed West Indies Federation, and constitutional reform. As political leaders took control of the union in the 1950s to use its strength, however, the union movement declined.
The PUP concentrated on agitating for constitutional reforms, including universal adult suffrage without a literacy test, an all- elected Legislative Council, an Executive Council chosen by the leader of the majority party in the legislature, the introduction of a ministerial system, and the abolition of the governor’s reserve powers. In short, PUP pushed for representative and responsible government.
The colonial administration, alarmed by the growing support for the PUP, retaliated by attacking two of the party’s chief public platforms, the Belize City Council and the PUP. In 1952 he comfortably topped the polls in Belize City Council elections. Within just two years, despite persecution and division, the PUP had become a powerful political force, and George Price had clearly become the party’s leader.
The colonial administration and the National Party, which consisted of loyalist members of the Legislative Council, portrayed the PUP as pro-Guatemalan and even communist. The leaders of the PUP, however, perceived British Honduras as belonging to neither Britain nor Guatemala.
The governor and the National Party failed in their attempts to discredit the PUP on the issue of its contacts with Guatemala, which was then ruled by the democratic, reformist government of President Jacobo Arbenz. When voters went to the polls on April 28, 1954, in the first election under universal literate adult suffrage, the main issue was clearly colonialism — a vote for the PUP was a vote in favor of self-government. Almost 70 percent of the electorate voted.
The PUP gained 66.3 percent of the vote and won eight of the nine elected seats in the new Legislative Assembly. Further constitutional reform was unequivocally on the agenda.
Decolonization and the Border Dispute with Guatemala
British Honduras faced two obstacles to independence: British reluctance until the early 1960s to allow citizens to govern themselves, and Guatemala’s complete intransigence over its long-standing claim to the entire territory (Guatemala had repeatedly threatened to use force to take over British Honduras). By 1961, Britain was willing to let the colony become independent.
Negotiations between Britain and Guatemala began again in 1961, but the elected representatives of British Honduras had no voice in these talks. George Price refused an invitation to make British Honduras an “associated state” of Guatemala, reiterating his goal of leading the colony to independence.
In 1963 Guatemala broke off talks and ended diplomatic relations with Britain. Talks between Guatemala and British Honduras started and stopped abruptly during the late 1960s and early 1970s. From 1964 Britain controlled only British Honduran defense, foreign affairs, internal security, and the terms and conditions of the public service, and in 1973 the colony’s name was changed to Belize in anticipation of independence.
By 1975, the Belizean and British governments, frustrated at dealing with the military-dominated regimes in Guatemala, agreed on a new strategy that would take the case for self-determination to various international forums. The Belize government felt that by gaining international support, it could strengthen its position, weaken Guatemala’s claims, and make it harder for Britain to make any concessions.
Belize argued that Guatemala frustrated the country’s legitimate aspirations to independence and that Guatemala was pushing an irrelevant claim and disguising its own colonial ambitions by trying to present the dispute as an effort to recover territory lost to a colonial power. Between 1975 and 1981, Belizean leaders stated their case for self-determination at a meeting of the heads of Commonwealth of Nations governments, the conference of ministers of the Nonaligned Movement, and at meetings of the United Nations (UN).
Latin American governments initially supported Guatemala. Between 1975 and 1979, however, Belize won the support of Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua. Finally, in November 1980, with Guatemala completely isolated, the UN passed a resolution that demanded the independence of Belize.
A last attempt was made to reach an agreement with Guatemala prior to the independence of Belize. The Belizean representatives to the talks made no concessions, and a proposal, called the Heads of Agreement, was initialed on March 11, 1981. However, when ultraright political forces in Guatemala labeled the proponents as sellouts, the Guatemalan government refused to ratify the agreement and withdrew from the negotiations. Meanwhile, the opposition in Belize engaged in violent demonstrations against the Heads of Agreement.
A state of emergency was declared. However, the opposition could offer no real alternatives. With the prospect of independence celebrations in the offing, the opposition’s morale fell. Independence came to Belize on September 21, 1981 after the Belize Act 1981, without reaching an agreement with Guatemala.