Scholar-Activist Walter Rodney Remembered in Toronto

By Neil Armstrong

Photo contributed    Alissa Trotz, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies, and Caribbean Studies at New College, University of Toronto

Fifty years after attending the Congress of Black Writers in Montreal and being banned from returning to Jamaica afterwards, the late scholar-activist Walter Rodney was celebrated in Toronto.

On October 16 – on the 50^th anniversary of the protests against the Jamaican government’s decision to declare Rodney persona non grata -- A Different Booklist Cultural Centre held a panel discussion entitled “A Tribute to Walter Rodney: 50 Years Later” on October 16 as a part of its Black and Caribbean Book Affair.

The panelists were Alissa Trotz, associate professor of Women and Gender Studies, and Caribbean Studies at New College, University of Toronto; Wazir Mohamed, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana; and Norman Otis Richmond, veteran journalist and founder of the Biko Rodney Malcolm Coalition.

Trotz said she had several conversations with Guyanese social activist, Andaiye, on what to say and she told her,  “It is not about asking ourselves what would Walter Rodney think or say? That is not the question. Rather we might ask what use we can make of his example and method today?”

“Andaiye noted that two things struck her about Walter, that he was both stubborn and open, and what he was stubborn on was the importance of class struggle, and what he was open to was the history that people were making, to the self-directed activity of the working people.”

She said being open to the history that people were making necessarily meant that one’s view of the working people was necessarily complex and difference was not something swept under a carpet or postponed only to be engaged later. 

“There is then a commitment to fighting oppression, beginning with those who have least countries and also against oppression of countries by other countries (anti-imperialist).”

Trotz, who is Guyanese, said this commitment was consistent across the spheres of Rodney’s life and one might say, “it organized his research, his speeches, his political activism.”

She said he moved fluently across several different kinds of communities, different kinds of audiences.

“It meant he wrote and spoke in different kinds of ways but always with the principles laid out above as his guide. He grounded with the Rastafari in Kingston. He gave bottom house classes at his home in Georgetown to the community, he gave classes to bauxite workers in the mining community of Linden.”

Professor Trotz noted that Rodney had written two children’s books, “Kofi Baadu out of Africa” and “Lakshmi out of India” (with plans to do at least three others on the indigenous peoples, Portuguese and Chinese) – which demonstrates that Rodney was thinking of the next generation.

He authored books such as “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” “A History of the Guyanese Working People 1881-1905,” and “A History of the Upper Guinea Coast.”

“He was an orator, as evidenced by his political speeches in the anti-dictatorial struggle in Guyana. Many of these – like “People’s Power, No Dictator”; and “In Defence of Arnold Rampersaud” – were later published by the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).”

Trotz said in his last speech, one week before he was assassinated on June 13,1980, Rodney summed up his view of history, his confidence in the people’s movement: “We feel more confident because of the demonstrated ability and capacity of the people as a whole.” “The revolution is made by ordinary people, not by angels, by people from all walks of life, but particularly by the working class who are in the majority.” 

Her charge at the end of her presentation was, “Today, as we remember his life’s work and the example he left, we should ask ourselves, how and where in the world we live in today, does one find the things that are to be done? And what parts will we play?”

Photo contributed   Wazir Mohamed, Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana

Mohamed said Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica has to be contextualized, noting that hi expulsion was connected with his vision.

“Walter was intimately concerned with the destiny of the poor. His activity off the campus at the University of the West Indies demonstrated the depth of his concern with the deprivation of the oppressed classes inside any given country, and also with the oppression of the subject peoples of the earth by oppressing nations. The lectures contained in and recognized as “Groundings with my Brothers” is testimony to his vision.”

He noted that Rodney was firm in his belief that only the people can free themselves from deprivation and oppression.

“This is why Eusi Kwayana calls him “a Prophet of Self-Emancipation.” As such with regards to the fate of the oppressed classes and working peoples in a given country, Walter was of the view and firmly believed that they must discover themselves by becoming class conscious, in order to understand their historic mission to free or emancipate themselves (in the words of Bob Marley) from their own oppression.”

Mohamed noted that this is why Rodney chose to ground with the oppressed in Jamaica, in Africa, in the USA, in Guyana, and other places.

He said Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica triggered the denial of a teaching job at the University of Guyana.

“In the wake of his expulsion from Jamaica, in October 1968 the board of governors at the University of Guyana rejected his application for a teaching appointment at UG. It must be recalled this his application was again denied in 1974 – he was thus twice denied a job at UG.”

Regarding why the ruling regime in Guyana was determined to prevent Rodney from working and hence living in Guyana, Mohamed said it was the “clarity of his stance against oppression, and his vision of Peoples Power through Self-Emancipation.”

“Rodney had already made the natural, or necessary, leap through black power to the science of the revolutionary working people, Marxism. He was a Marxist – he believed firmly in the unity of all working peoples regardless of race and ethnic origin.

“On the issue of oppression and response to oppression he was laser focused. He was a like a thunderbolt,” he said.

Mohamed said Guyana was not a blank slate and it was important “to be able to contextualize Rodney’s entry into Guyana in the mid-1970s, as an additive that emboldened the work already being done to build class and multi-racial consciousness.”

In the early 1970s IPRA (Indiana Political Revolutionary Associates-headed by Moses Bhagwan) and ASCRIA (African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa – headed by Eusi Kwayana) – were active – they had established a race commission, and were building multi-racial discussion across ethnic divides and ethnic communities.

Groups outside the two established ethnic based political parties – People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and People’s National Congress (PNC) -- such as Ratoon at the University of Guyana, MAO (Movement Against Oppression), WPVP (Working People’s Vanguard Party), and PDM (Peoples Democratic Movement) were active on political and social issues.

Mohamed said the space for active people’s mobilization was already present – hence the open public mobilization and struggle in defense of Rodney’s right to teach.

“The first public meeting in Georgetown on the denial of Rodney’s right to teach was described by some observers as "like 1953". It was "like 1953" in size and multiracial composition.

“Even before he had shifted residence back to Guyana, before he had spoken a single word in his home country, Guyana - Walter Rodney was a political issue and a threat in the eyes of the regime.”

Mohamed said when Rodney entered the Guyanese scene the society was in racial and political ferment.

He noted that an indo-Guyanese activist, Arnold Rampersaud of the PPP, was accused of trumped up charges of murdering a policeman at a toll station on the Corentyne – “Rodney chose to defend an Indian falsely accused.”

Mohamed also noted that the government “had just rigged the 1973 elections and were preparing to promulgate a constitution around which power could be consolidated.”

Workers and farmers were in active revolt for decent living wages and better working conditions, and for land to the tiller.

As a PPP activist, Mohamed said he was exposed for the first time to open discussion on race a multi-racial way out of the human crisis.

He was involved in the campaign to free Arnold Rampersaud, and witnessed first-hand the impact of multi-racial mobilization.

“Walter Rodney’s appeal affected people like myself directly, and propelled us into direct action. More than that though his vision impacted the way we saw each other – remember as a young Indo Guyanese I was socialized to view the Afro Guyanese as my enemy – exposure to Walter Rodney caused me to change my perception, ways of thinking, and helped me to become a more complete human being.”

In 1979, Mohamed became a member of the WPA, and by March 1980 became a full-time activist of the party.

Photo credit: Kathy Grant  Left to right: Norman 'Otis' Richmond, Lazo and Yvette Taylor

Richmond said he first met Rodney at the office of the groundbreaking Contrast newspaper in Toronto, which was founded by Al Hamilton in 1969 and was considered the voice of the Black community in Canada.

He noted that Rodney was a strong believer in African identity.

[A shorter version of this story has been published in the North American Weekly Gleaner, Nov. 8-14, 2018]