The Wood Commission Report
By James Rose
THIS article focuses on the Wood Commission which visited Guyana in February, 1922. Labour unrest, began in the early 1900s, continued into the 1920s and the economic crisis through which the colony was then passing, made the conditions of the working people even worse. Then, as always, the working people were expected to understand that wage reductions were a necessary condition for economic survival, but when times were better and they demanded increasing returns for their labour, they were informed that profit-sharing was not the working man's concern. A recession in the economy provided genuine grounds for the working class restiveness and protest. There had been a steep reduction in the colonial revenue due to a decline in the prosperity of sugar. Consequently, colonial budgets kept showing recurring deficits. This reversal in financial fortunes was aggravated by alternate droughts and floods. To make up for the short fall in colonial revenues, the working man was taxed beyond his limits. The system of taxation in the colony was both partial and oppressive. The bulk of the revenue was derived from Customs duties (ad valorem and specific) with only a comparatively small proportion (under six per cent) collected on exports. The duties were, as a rule, very high, another factor responsible for the widespread dissatisfaction and general tenor of disaffection. The burden of the taxes fell on certain specified items such as machinery, for industries other than sugar, spirits, ale, beer, kerosene, and gasolene, flour, salted beef and pork, cheese, crude fabrics and other necessaries of the labouring population and others. The very partial nature of the selection of items influenced the general cost of living in the colonies and thus doubly affect the distressed condition of the working man. His Majesty's Government responded to the general restiveness in the colony with a variety of commissions in attempts to acquire a better appreciation of the issues involved, to estimate the extent of the disaffection, to define the best approaches to amelioration and, of course, to buy time in which to manoeuvre. The first of the commissions was led by Major E. F. L. Wood, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Lord Halifax, Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India). The Wood Commission comprised, in addition to the Chairman, Major Ornesby Gore and Mr R. A. Wiseman of the Colonial Office. It visited the British West Indies between December, 1921 and February, 1922, investigating the effects of the prolonged recession in the economy and the possibility of conceding constitutional advance. The Commission arrived in the colony on February 2, 1922 and left around February 22 of the same year after taking oral and written evidence from several persons representative of some interests and sections of the colony. Wood argued that the West Indies, and particularly Guyana, were essentially heterogeneous societies, in which it was extremely dangerous for one group to be allowed to exercise the power to govern over others. He further argued that because there was not an acceptable group to govern, His Majesty's Government should continue to hold firmly to the reins of Imperial control, refusing to concede even marginal reforms. Wood also claimed that he was deeply concerned by the smallness of the electorate and considered it inadvisable that the status quo be maintained. He concluded that constitutional advance should be withheld until a responsible colonial elite had been produced. Wood observed widespread backwardness and appalling underdevelopment in which responsible government could not be conceded lest it hindered HMG from implementing colonial development in the future. He found "no general physical distress". There was "little or no unemployment" and he was impressed with the "cheapness of the cost of living in the tropics". Wood's assessment of the socio-economic conditions was, if anything, impregnated with a greater degree of unreality than his political and constitutional analyses. Throughout the Report, the Commissioners demonstrated how out of touch Europeans, even Colonial Office officials, could choose to be, while still assuming an air of superiority. In the light of what they "found" they were reluctant to recommend Imperial assistance. They believed that colonial development should be funded from the resources of the colony and so he recommended that the practice of balanced budgets and the accumulation of financial reserves be pursued in spite of the hardships which these imposed on the working people. As a Parliamentary Commission the Wood Commission cannot be accorded the same degree of seriousness reserved for the Wilson-Snell Report of 1927 or the West India Royal Commission of 1939 because of its lack of serious investigation and analysis. The Report reflected the outdated conservatism which informed His Majesty's Government's nineteenth century colonial policies. It was a rehashed version of the old trusteeship principles which were, in any case, never consistently applied in the West Indies. The colonial elite was, however, impressed with the Report and considered it the legitimising instrument in repulsing any demand for constitutional reforms. In these circumstances, the response of the working people was predictable. In 1924, sugar workers took to the streets. Unfortunately, the colonial response was singularly harsh, a factor which incensed popular disaffection and set the stage for the protests of the 1930s.
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