Rodney the Revolutionary

Jun 13, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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On Friday 13th June, 1980 – exactly 30 years ago – in what has to be one of the most horrific acts that make us ever wary of “Black Fridays”, Dr Walter Rodney was brutally murdered. As to the plotters and perpetrators of that murder, we hope that now that Parliament has finally reviewed the Disciplined Forces Report tabled in 2004, it will insist that its 2005 Motion to establish an Inquiry into the death of Dr Rodney be finally implemented.
Last year, we discussed Dr Rodney’s approach to politics as a Marxist revolutionary and the pros and cons of that approach to our present moribund politics. We submit the following interview by Mr Carl Blackman, a senior journalist working with the state media, of Dr Rodney in March 1980, which explores the role of violence in the approach. It was originally published in, The Nation (Barbados) on Friday, June 20, 1980.

Q: Kester Alves (a PNC spokesperson) in a viewpoint some time ago quoted Hugh Shearer, then PM of Jamaica, as saying that you were stirring up the Rastafarians and criminal elements, to stir up trouble in Jamaica.
(Mr Alves was referring to the following statement of PM Shearer, reporting to the Jamaican Parliament on his government’s decision to ban Dr. Rodney:
“He (Rodney) lost little time in engaging in subversive activities on his return (to Jamaica in 1968). He quickly announced his intention of organising revolutionary groups for what he termed ‘the struggle ahead’ and then closely associated himself with groups of people who claimed to be part of the Rastafarian Movement and also with Claudius Henry, who was convicted in 1960 of Treason Felony as a result of activities which required the use of armed forces.
“He openly declared his belief that as Jamaica was predominantly a black country, all brown-skinned mulatto people and their assets should be destroyed. He consistently told the groups with whom he associated that this could be achieved by revolution and that no revolution had ever taken place without armed struggle and bloodshed. This resort to violence was the recurrent theme of all his discussions with these groups as was his condemnation of the democratic system of government in Jamaica.
“In recent months, Rodney stepped up the pace of his activities and was actively engaged in organising groups of semi-literates and unemployed for avowed revolutionary purposes. He constantly reiterated the necessity for the use of violence in attaining his ends; the procurement of firearms and training in their use was recently a major topic of discussion. Furthermore, at one meeting at the UWI campus at Mona, Rodney reportedly said, ‘Revolution must come. We must be prepared to see it through. We must stop talking and indulging in academic exercises and act. Who will be the first to come with me downtown and take up a machine gun?’
“In terms of tactics one of the things University students were urged by way of pamphlet to do was to: ‘Provoke the police, don’t argue with them; ridicule them; goad them; let them attack you’.” )
RODNEY: The modern development of the Jamaica Labour Party (Shearer’s party) seems to have accepted certain of my contentions, and their change of policy is a vindication of what I have always said: That the Jamaican working people demanded certain changes and their demands were not being met.
The Jamaican Labour Party’s presentation of the incidents of October 1968, as a case – to put it crudely – of foreigners stirring up trouble was nonsense. What I was saying was that subsequent events had shown that was far from the truth. The incidents showed that there were fundamental grievances which Jamaicans were trying to express.
Q: But the incidents tend to support that you support violence as part of your struggle?
RODNEY: Violence is always regrettable because people get hurt and lose their lives. But the responsibility for violence is always on the shoulders of those who create the conditions for such a situation.
Q: Could you be a little more precise than that?
RODNEY: Let me give you a precise answer. If a situation has become intolerable and if all avenues for peaceful change have become exhausted, then violence would be the logical result.
Q: What you seem to be saying is that you accept violence as inevitable in the Guyana situation?
RODNEY: Our first task is to exhaust all avenues of peaceful change, and that is what civil disobedience is all about. It is part of a programme of ensuring that the Guyanese people explore all political avenues, short of violence, so that one exercises one’s political and social responsibility. What happens after that is the responsibility of those who see fit to close off all avenues of peaceful change.
Q: Do you see any peaceful solution without any further violence?
RODNEY: Our remaining options are very slim. One option is mass mobilisation that is sufficiently broad; that it is strategic in the sense of affecting production, and that is resolute in the face of victimisation.
Q: Surely when you talk about affecting production, you are worsening the conditions of people who you claim you are dedicated to improving their lot?
RODNEY: I want it stressed that it is not a new question. Look at the sanctions against South Africa and Rhodesia. The whole debate of those issues had a lot to do with whether the African population would be adversely affected economically, but the liberation movements and their allies carried the day. If sanctions reduce production, that was a necessary evil on the road to liberation.
Q: The government has labelled the strikes last year as political, and you seem to be confirming this.
RODNEY: Debate about “political strikes” has gone on for a long time. All strikes in our context have a political implication, so that whether strikes are political or not, could be red herrings.
Q: Your party vowed last year, 1979 was “the Year of the Turn”, which meant that Burnham and the PNC government would be out of office. He is still there. What happened?
RODNEY: There was a turn in Guyana; our position is that the political life of Guyana has gone through a radical change in the last six months, and would never be the same again.
Q: What are the achievements you claim?
RODNEY: The WPA assisted in posing the key political questions: The removal of the PNC. We have identified the process of removal as being necessary extra-parliamentary in the light of the destruction of parliamentary democracy by the PNC.

And three months later he was dead. Even though the PNC was only removed from office some twelve years later (through peaceful free and fair elections) no one can deny Dr Rodney’s role in securing that eventuality.

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