Walter Rodney was betrayed by his own party

Jun 13, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The WPA stands indicted for betraying Walter Rodney. It has betrayed its former co-leader no less than 6 times.
The first betrayal took place soon after his death. Walter had expected to die and had urged the party to use his body as a barricade for people’s power. Instead, the then leaders of the WPA used it to retreat inwardly and backwardly.
The second betrayal took place after the Grenada Revolution. The WPA announced that the Americans would no longer tolerate a leftist government in the Caribbean and it took the decision to distance itself from the ideology of Walter Rodney. Ironically, it said it was now a Rodneyite party.
The third betrayal took place when the WPA sold its political soul in return for a place at the table of A Partnership for National Unity. While the party is still holding to the line that Rodney was the victim of an assassination plot orchestrated by the then PNC government, it must be recalled that the WPA itself objected to the wording of a motion in the National Assembly in which the word “assassination” was used. It may have then had a fair basis for such an objection since the language of the motion could have been deemed prejudicial.
But it was not that motion that halted the promised inquiry. It was the failure of the WPA to develop the terms of reference for the inquiry that eventually brought an end to a process that was initiated during the 25th anniversary of the historian’s assassination. At that event, the wife of the slain WPA leader called for closure to be brought to his death. The Bharrat Jagdeo administration agreed to bring closure by having an inquiry.
The government asked the WPA to develop the terms of reference, no doubt because of the historical attitude of that party which claims Rodney for itself and which has always behaved as if Rodney belonged to the WPA and the WPA alone. But the WPA was not keen at all, despite the promises made to the Rodney family, to go ahead with the inquiry.
And the reason was clear. The 25th anniversary of Rodney’s assassination was in 2005. It was then that the promise was made for an inquiry into his death. The next year was however an election year and the WPA, which by then had become miniaturized as a political party was interested in the leech politics. It wanted to suck political nectar from the PNCR as part of a Big Tent arrangement.
If the WPA had moved ahead with the development of the terms of reference of the “Inquiry”, it would have jeopardized its chances of being part of the Big Tent and so it simply forgot about the request of the family for closure to be brought to Rodney’s death. This WPA therefore sacrificed the Inquiry in order to safeguard the WPA linking up with the PNCR under the Big Tent.
The fourth betrayal of Walter Rodney occurred when the one WPA leader ‘confessed’ that the party had been stockpiling arms just prior to Rodney’s death. It was a most shameless betrayal because it supported the twisted narrative of the PNCR that Rodney got what was coming to him.
The leaders of the party know fully well that hours before Rodney was assassinated that a decision was taken to prepare for some of its activists to go into hiding because of the fear of repression. In fact, one of the leaders of the WPA was mandated to undertake this task.
Burnham was therefore gunning for the WPA and Rodney’s death was a direct result of Burnham declaring war on Rodney.
Rodney probably could never have imagined what his party would have come to, that it would pay such a price to jump into bed with the PNCR. Even the WPA perhaps could not have predicted the level of opportunism to which it eventually descended when it made its infamous confession about stockpiling arms.
The fifth betrayal was the WPA joining with the PNCR and other parties to form A Partnership for National Unity. It was evident even before the marriage was announced that the WPA was being sidelined in the discussions. At one point, it did not even know that a list of candidates had been announced for the 2011 elections.
The sixth betrayal was when the PNCR stopped the Commission of Inquiry into the death of Rodney. The WPA shamelessly remained within the Coalition. It should have left.
The WPA continues to betray the memory of Walter Rodney. He would have been ashamed of the party that he helped to establish.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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