"GROUNDINGS": WALTER RODNEY, THE ACTIVIST; SCHOLAR AND REVOLUTIONARY IN JAMAICA AND GUYANA

guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com

Nigel Westmaas

Posted May 2005

"It is the supreme distinction of Walter Rodney that he had initiated in his personal and professional life a decisive break with the tradition he had been trained to serve...the reader is made to feel that his academic authority is always fused and humanized by a sense of personal involvement with the matters at hand. He lived to survive the distortions of his training and the crippling ambivalence of his class"
(George Lamming)

Who more than Walter Rodney fits the description of scholar-activist? Rodney was not only a scholar-activist par excellence, but coined his own term for the position. When Walter Rodney wrote "Groundings with my Brothers" in 1969, the Caribbean was in upsurge. The term 'Groundings' although not fully defined in Rodney's book is taken to mean political and social work in the gullies and shantytowns of Kingston. For Rodney 'Groundings' and the meeting with people could be in a "sports club, it might be in a school room, it might be in a church, it might be in a gully ..I have spoken in what people call "dungle", rubbish dumps… I have sat on a little oil drum, rusty and in the midst of garbage, and some Black Brothers and I have grounded together."

In this article I attempt an evaluation of the concept 'Groundings' through the work of Rodney in two countries…especially in light of the debate over scholar-activism which has been bubbling at the surface of university departments, in debates, and in ideological discussion. I will focus especially from the period of the 1960s, the time that Rodney became the embodiment of scholar activism, to the decade in Guyana until he was killed.

Origins of the scholar activist

From whence did Rodney receive his radicalism, and his relentless pursuit of social justice? From his natural ability to appeal to people? The early PPP meetings he attended with his parents? School? From later politics?

The activity of the early PPP in the 1950s certainly had an effect on the future development of Walter Rodney. Rodney himself has generally attributed his early political growth to the rise of the PPP, as seen in the quote below:

"My own position derived from two principal elements, first and foremost of which was the fact that I grew up in Guyana at a time when the PPP was organizing and mobilizing on the nationalist question."

No more precise clues to his scholar-activism could have been derived from the already 'radical' nature of Guyanese politics at the time Rodney was growing up. Indeed, taking into account the work and activity of the late Guyanese national poet Martin Carter one finds a similar connection between ideas and action, albeit in philosophy and poetry. And, for a long time Carter's activity in the political life of the country, and his tendency, like Rodney at a later stage to be constantly on the streets among the people - demonstrates his own "groundings", if one can link it to the field of poetry.

RODNEY THE SCHOLAR AND ACTIVIST

When Rodney left to take up a scholarship in the University College of the West Indies in the West Indies signs of his later scholarly activism or 'groundings' was already very prevalent according to new intelligence. Recently declassified Jamaican security reports spoke in great detail of Rodney's activities during his time in Jamaica

In 1966 Rodney received his PhD for his dissertation "A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800" later published in 1970. Later in 1966, Rodney took up an appointment as History lecturer in the University of Dar -es-Salaam, in Tanzania, on the East Coast of Africa.

He returned to Jamaica in 1968 to begin a course in African history at Mona campus. During this period he was very active in the social and political life of Jamaica. He worked closely with the poor people and with Rastafarians in Kingston and other sections of the country.

His view of the academic as a static parasitic creature was being formed even then. I quote at length what Rodney told Guyanese Gordon Rohlehr of his disgust with academic life at Mona:

"There is no continuity in my life in respect of old acquaintances. We meet; I try to be pleasant; and I move on. For our generation too is adding its quota to the frightening sterility of the society. Living off campus is a great boon, for it reduces my contact with rum-sipping soul selling intellectuals of Mona.. I do resort to such elements to play bridge and dominoes, those being the HCF of our respective ideologies, and in due course, I will actually change even that. Meanwhile I try to find some meaning among the mass of the population who are daily performing a miracle, they continue to survive! Kingston is meaner then when you left it, and when you left it you probably did not know how mean it is… Today, all that matters, is the question of action, determined, informed and scientific action against imperialism and its cohorts. Just as Leonardo Da Vinci is the archetype of Renaissance Man, so Che Guevara is the ideal of Revolutionary Man. All that is required is that one should extract the essence of his life's experiences, rather than attempt to embrace his numerous suggestions concerning guerrilla warfare. The latter course has the serious limitation of being irrelevant to many objective situations (as Che knew).. I doubt whether the situation is explosive, and I doubt whether I will be here long enough to witness the explosion; but as a matter of integrity I must address myself to that question so long as I am here. Otherwise, what will distinguish me from the Philistines?

The Jamaican government grew increasingly angry over his political work and described him as a "threat to national security". The Minister of Home Affairs was very blunt and direct on the nature of the 'threat' posed by Rodney: "In my term of office, and in reading the records of problems in this country. I have never come across a man who offers a greater threat to the security of this land than does Walter Rodney." The 'threat' posed by Rodney is even documented in recently declassified documents on Jamaican security reports on Rodney's early activity in Jamaica, one section of an Internal Security Review held that the Jamaican special Branch "received information that Rodney had been in touch with the Rastafarians in the Montego Bay area and was trying to incite them to attack the tourists in December which is the beginning of the peak of the tourist season."

When he left Jamaica to attend a conference in Canada Rodney was banned from re-entering. Buses were overturned and students and working people came on the streets to protest, the police came out to put down the disturbances.

By 1974, Rodney desire was to go back home to Guyana to work and teach. After serving in Tanzania for a while he returned to take up an offer to become Professor of History at the University of Guyana. But the government of Guyana refused to accept his appointment. Out of work, he was politically active for the next six years, holding meetings with Guyanese of all races. He became a leading member of the Working Peoples Alliance and was active in public meetings that party held all over the country. Even while he was engaged in politics he was writing and studying. He also held free history classes at his home in Georgetown during this period. His other well-researched book "A History of the Guyanese Working People 1881-1905" was published in 1981, a year after his death.

Every WPA activist and any other Guyanese who came into contact with Rodney in that heady period would have their own tales to recount about the combined scholar and activist in him. I can relate two personal memoirs of my own that may testify to Rodney's activism: the first was a trip to the bauxite belt sometime in 1979:

"I once accompanied Rodney and a pretty petit-bourgeois woman acting as cover for his trip to the bauxite proletarian town of Mackenzie…the idea was to 'psychologically' avoid a search or too close a look at the backseat occupant at the checkpoint to Linden. I was apparently part of the decoy operation as the woman's 'son', while Rodney took on the appearance of a 'carpenter' on his way assist with her furnishing of the home. We were stopped on one occasion but got past the toll gate/security checkpoint with ease. On arrival in Mackenzie, Rodney became himself, meeting about 10 'brothers' who appeared suddenly out of the darkness apparently by pre-arrangement. We sat in the middle of the night, in the open air, with Rodney acting and speaking in manner that made him, regardless of his persona, part of the crowd. I recall him telling the group, 'you have to hold strain', steel yourselves, things are going to happen...I saw the dialectic of scholar-activism writ live."

Likewise, in a review on tape of a political meeting in 1979 at the height of the so-called civil rebellion of 1979, I recounted to Professor Ed Ferguson (formerly of Smith College, USA) my 'run' with Walter Rodney through the streets of Georgetown to evade police batons. This was the point at which the 'civil rebellion' against the state was most intense.

"So they came with these batons, charging people and of course we had to run. Everybody started to run, including Walter Rodney himself. I remember running with Rodney and his bodyguard, running quite close to them. Moses Bhagwan(another WPA leader) ran elsewhere, he ran into someone's yard and the owners were obviously PNC supporters and they called attention that Moses was in the backyard, in a dog pen or a chicken pen or something like that, so they went in and beat him to the point where his hand was broken.

When Walter himself was running - he had on track boots or sneakers…we were joking as we ran, you know, as we were watching the progress of the police to see how far they were. We were just moving with the tide you know. We stopped awhile, they came closer, we moved. But after a while they charged with their batons again and we were forced to run. They were arresting people at random… Rodney eventually said, 'lets go behind this house'. So we turned into a yard and sat down on what we call the septic tank.

So we were there, about seven of us , and Rodney began to talk, made jokes and gaffed with us. ..So we were there, talking, I think we also played cards…someone had a pack of cards and we played cards while waiting on the police to leave the area, it was late afternoon. Then Rodney began to ask us questions and get some in return, I think it was about Rastafari or Africa or something else, but he started talking…very simple, without pretension. ..just talking very loosely about some historical incidents in Africa. Of course it was very profound to us and we were listening with a lot of interest…it was sort of unreal, here we were simultaneously hiding from the police and getting a history lesson from Rodney…"

Later, Prime Minister Forbes Burnham held a rally - and he presumably had reports about what was going on; because, while attacking the WPA in his speech (He said WPA personnel must make their wills) he went on to describe Rodney's run, sarcastically deeming him an Olympic athlete, because he ran from the police.

RODNEY AND SCHOLAR -ACTIVISM

Is there a downside to scholar/activism? Was Rodney reckless in pursuit of his goals? This is a very delicate issue, as they say, hindsight has 20-20 vision. It was a point that the WPA was accustomed to receiving from members of the public in the wake of his assassination.-"why yuh all ley he go do that"? Why didn't you let me go instead?

This ivory tower has become more elaborate in the contemporary period - now academics, with a gentle polemic outburst here and there against the 'system' find it convenient to reside in the calm but stifling bosom of tenure and tenure track, with the only deployment of activist scholar skills being the organizational and departmental skills required to squeeze and eke out another ticket here, another tenure elevation there…to attend another conference….and so it goes on. For them, no rocking of the boat, no participation for in any activity on or off campus that would invalidate their professorship or make them look rebellious in the eyes of their colleagues. No student's rally, very rare advice on how to struggle, no nexus betwixt activism and academia….in the event there is comfortable settling down. At the end of their lives they will resemble Ozymandias "with those great. ……legs of clay.

On the other hand it appears that from the moment that Rodney encountered the science of history he wished to utilise it to serve society and not to be led by it. In his own analytical approach he would go forth boldly to challenge assumptions that he thought required redefining if not destroyed, and all societies he touched felt his restless and relentless search for the laws of social motion in the specific location, together with the method and the organization to engage the motor for change.

Rodney's bustle in Guyana and elsewhere prompted his friend and academic colleague Clive Thomas (also an activist-scholar) to advance some useful reasons for Rodney's significant political activism while still a professional historian(one who could have lived well in any university system but chose instead to remain and fight in his native Guyana with the same passion with which he engaged the Shearer administration years earlier). For Thomas, Rodney's activities included the following:

1. that "history is the science of social development and as such must be used as an instrument to promote the development of humanity

2. that as a social scientist and academic one cannot exist either creatively or purposefully in isolation from the mass of humanity in which all must necessarily function.

3. that to live and function in any such pretended isolation that leads to the reinforcement of that inertia which exists in all human society and which favours the status quo.

While we are convinced about Rodney's successful linking of scholarship and activism we have to accept that there was still tension between the two. A little known encounter clearly demonstrates some of the tension in Rodney the academic in struggle with his own political passions. During the early 1980s, while preparing the draft of History of the Guyanese Working People, Rodney reportedly entered into a series of correspondence with the brilliant Guyanese historian Elsa Goviea over the nature of the 1905 riots in British Guiana. According to one eyewitness, Rodney kept insisting to Goviea that the 1905 events could and should be elevated to the status of a "revolution". Eventually, with the gentle admonishment of the 'elder' historian and mentor, Rodney allegedly tapered down the dimensions of the disturbances in 1905 to read one of a riot. There was never any inconsistency with these linkages between academic work and social and political concerns. Almost every scholar who spoke on Rodney's intellectual legacy would invariably comment on the fact that "he recognized no distinction between academic concerns and service to society, between science and social commitment..."

'GROUNDINGS' IN CONCLUSION

In conclusion, there are several active criteria that makes the concept of "grounding" especially as it relates to the activity of Rodney, come alive.

"Groundings' (taking into account context of course) are alive when the following exists :

- public and open critiques - at the level of the society in which he (or she)"currently" lives.

- Encountering danger on a daily basis; even unto death

- promoting scholarship that is qualitative, but 'relevant' to active life

- the practice of grounding tends to be polemical, resulting in a fascinating dance between the polemical and the academic without either suffering.

- An iconoclastic tearing down of the shibboleths in academic and political and social life

- network of colleagues and comrades beyond academia. Rodney's friends, as the famous quote, cited earlier in the essay suggests, ranged beyond academia to involve students and the poor…

- Free public teacher: there are free classes(classes and lecture without fees for the oppressed) and the classroom can be any in form - from rickety bottom house chairs to holding classes atop a big rock in a yard or on a hill.

In the final analysis it appears that scholarship that is enmeshed in activism has been historically beneficial and inspirational. In the case of Rodney this was established without any doubt. And what better way to end on in this 25th year of his assassination than with the poetic tribute of his fellow activist; the poetry of Martin Carter:

Assassins of conversation.
They bury the voice they
Assassinate in the beloved grave of the voice,
never to be silent.

(Editor's note): In June this year Guyana will be host to an international conference on Walter Rodney twenty-five years after his assassination in June 1980.