Working People's Vanguard Party (WPVP) was a small, Maoist

Maoism

Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...

 political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 in Guyana

Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

. It was formed in 1969 through a split in the People's Progressive Party

People's Progressive Party (Guyana)

The People's Progressive Party is a political party in Guyana led by Bharrat Jagdeo. The party has been in power since the 1992 elections and currently holds 36 of the 65 seats in the National Assembly.-History:...

 (PPP) in the 1960s. The party was led by Brindley Benn

Brindley Benn

Brindley Horatio Benn, CCH was a teacher, choirmaster, politician, and one of the key leaders of the Guyanese independence movement. He served as Deputy Prime Minister of the first elected government of Guyana....

 and Victor Downer. Initially the party advocated a violent overthrow of the People's National Congress

People's National Congress

The People's National Congress is a socialist political party in Guyana led by Robert Corbin. The party currently holds 22 of the 65 seats in the National Assembly.-History:...

 government, but later shifted to the right and entered into an alliance with pro-capitalist groups.

Council of Landless People

In 1973, the WPVP supported the Council of Landless People who had attempted to retake ancestral lands that were being encroached upon by the state and the sugar industry. Two thousand people had occupied 200 acres of land. The police evicted them and burned their shacks, triggering a large protest movement. This campaign, backed by a coalition that included the People's Progressive Party, later won a partial victory when the Sugar Producer's Association returned some of the land to the original residents.

Alliances and ideological shift

WPVP took part in the formation of the Working People's Alliance

Working People's Alliance

-History:The party was established in 1974, as an alliance of the Working People's Vanguard Party, the Association for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa, the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates and Ratoon, and became a political party in 1989. The party first contested national...

 in 1974. In 1976, the WPVP turned "full ideological circle" and withdrew from the Working People's Alliance in 1977. In 1980 WPVP joined forces with the "rightist" Liberator Party

Liberator Party

The Liberator Party was a political party in Guyana. It contested the 1973 general election in an alliance with the United Force, receiving 2.8% of the vote and won two seats. However, the Liberator Party decided to boycott the National Assembly in protest at fraud in the elections and both seats...

 led by Ganraj Kumar and the People's Democratic Movement to form the Vanguard for Liberation and Democracy. The new party "expressed strong support for a right-wing capitalist ideology".

People's Temple exposés

On 25 December 1977, a WPVP newspaper called The Beacon and edited by Brindley Benn published an expose of the People's Temple cult which had established a compound called Jonestown

Jonestown

Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby...

 in Guyana. The article repeated allegations by disaffected former members of the People's Temple which had been published in an American magazine called New West. A few days later, public relations people working for People's Temple founder Jim Jones

Jim Jones

James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...

 visited Benn and insisted that he retract his criticism, saying "they were surprised by an attack coming from a comrade in socialism." Benn refused, and wrote another story published on 22 January 1978 in another WPVP publication The Hammer, demanding that the police commissioner investigate the People's Temple. "Vanguard Publications believes that all is not above board with the People's Temple, although Rev. Jones appeared photographed with the Prime Minister. Vanguard is determined to secure every information, local and foreign, on the sect." On 17 November 1978, security staff of the People's Temple murdered American Congressman Leo Ryan

Leo Ryan

Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.After the Watts Riots...

 on the airstrip at Port Kaituma

Port Kaituma

Port Kaituma is a small town within the Barima-Waini administrative region of Guyana, located at .- History :Although an Amerindian settlement has existed along the Kaituma River for some time, it was only after the discovery of manganese at nearby Matthew's Ridge that Port Kaituma was developed...

. The following day, Jim Jones and his followers committed mass suicide. In all, 918 people died at Jonestown.