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The WPA cannot be resurrected

Jul 03, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It is not ideas which are the basis of political mobilization. It is the causes which these ideas drive that are the motors of political action.
The WPA has tried to compensate for its lack of members by claiming that it has intellectual capital in the form of ideas. But these ideas have not created causes for political action. The only cause the WPA has been fighting for is the removal of the PPP. It has not been fighting corruption within APNU+AFC.
Numbers matter politically. A political party which cannot attract numbers has to examine its causes and the ideas behind these causes.
The WPA had its time. That time is over. It is not likely to return. The WPA has lost ground as a centre-party to the AFC. The WPA will find that the middle class, which is captive ground, will always go with APNU and no longer with the AFC.
This is the dilemma which the WPA faces. It cannot regain its former glory, because the conditions are quite different today to the situation which gave rise to the WPA.
The WPA was the product of the coming together of ASCRIA (African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa) and IPRA (Indian Political Revolution Associates). It had the great fortune that both Kwayana and Moses Bhagwan were around. Those conditions do not exist now.
ASCRIA had broken with Burnham over the treatment of women, and in particular, what it saw as Burnham’s own personal disrespect for women. IPRA was not aligned to the PPP.
In fact, the PPP was as far away from IPRA as the Earth is from the moon. The ethnic organizations today lack that independence and that distance from the dominant political parties.
The WPA emerged at a time of economic distress. Food was short. Over 30,000 workers in the state sector lost their jobs. The private sector could not find the foreign exchange to import raw materials and spares. Blackouts were born during the period when the WPA came to power. The society was highly militarized and the middle class was being affected by the policies of Burnham.
The problems of the working class today are not of the same gravity as they were when the WPA was established. The working class now has cars. In the heyday of the WPA, workers could barely afford a bicycle.
The trade union movement was divided, but there were strong independent unions which were part of the struggle for workers’ rights. Those conditions no longer exist. The trade union movement is dying today.
The WPA had a highly charismatic leader who could outmatch Burnham intellectually and in oratory. Walter Rodney turned Burnham into an object of public ridicule, nicknaming him “King Kong” and “Fatboy’. The WPA never recovered from Rodney’s death.
But what destroyed the WPA was not the assassination of Rodney. What killed the WPA was the US invasion of Grenada, which caused the party to move away from Marxism-Leninism and retreat into an ideological ambiguity known as Rodneyism. The WPA was established during an area of ascendency of the Left in the Caribbean. But that Left turned its back on the WPA, as declassified documents are now revealing. The WPA no longer has any ideological allies in the international community.
The WPA made political mistakes after 1985. It has admitted that mistakes were made. It aided and abetted in the destruction of the PCD (Patriotic Coalition for Democracy). Hoyte invited them to a meeting and the party got excited, just as it was willing to meet recently with the President over the lack of consultation.
The WPA made mistakes in the past and will continue to make mistakes. But its time has come and its time has gone. No amount of working class agitation is going to change that. The WPA leadership is aged and tired. The PNC/R knows this. The WPA is being used for window dressing.
The millennials have no idea about Walter Rodney and the WPA. The millennials constitute the largest voting bloc. The WPA cannot mobilize this constituency.  Time has passed. The seasons have changed. The tide has long turned.

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