As they trudge back from a morning spent clearing irrigation ditches on the banks of the Demerara River, the exhausted workers from La Bonne Intention, a government-owned sugar estate in Guyana, look like a defeated army. A few miles away in Georgetown, the down-at-heel capital of the poorest country in what was once known as the British West Indies, trade union leaders talk of treachery.

Two months ago, the European Union announced its intention to cut the price it pays for the sugar produced in Guyana and 17 other poor countries from the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific by 39 per cent over the next five years, plunging the depressed industry into even deeper uncertainty.