The WPA has let half a cat out of the bag. As we reported two weeks ago, Co-Leader of the party, Dr Rupert Roopnaraine, admitted in an interview that long before Dr Walter Rodney’s death the Working People’s Alliance had been accumulating weapons and equipment of various kinds, some of which had come from the military. The interview was done in the context of a documentary entitled W.A.R.Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney, made by Mr Clairmont Chung, which was shown publicly for the first time in this country at the Theatre Guild on September 11. When contacted by this newspaper, Dr Roopnaraine himself confirmed his statements, going on to say that he would not retract anything that he had said in the film.
This revelation will not come as a complete surprise to some of those who lived through the turbulent events which characterized the high point of the WPA challenge to Burnham’s regime. After all, the period began with the burning down of the PNC headquarters in Camp Street, which was widely believed to have been carried out by members of the WPA. Certainly, Mr Burnham himself considered that the party was responsible for this act of arson, and Drs Rodney and Roopnaraine along with two others were in fact charged with the offence. This does not mean to say that it involved violence against any person; quite the contrary in fact, since the perpetrators went to some lengths to ensure no one was hurt.
However, it must have been apparent at some stage that non-violent methods of a kind which perhaps anticipated the Orange Revolution in certain respects, were really not going to produce results, and in such a situation most groups of a revolutionary inclination would at least have discussed possible other options, whether or not they intended to follow through on them in the short term.
There is the little detail too, of course, that according to the testimony of Donald Rodney who was in the car when Dr Rodney died, he was testing a walkie-talkie which he had obtained from acting sergeant Gregory Smith of the GDF. It made the public aware, if nothing else, that Walter Rodney had been pursuing links with personnel in the military at some level, and that he was interested in equipment at that time associated with the security forces. At the very least it raised the question firstly, as to whether Mr Smith was the only member of the military the party had made contact with or whether there had been others, and secondly, what the reason for such contacts would have been.
Dr Roopnaraine made clear to this newspaper that these were activities the WPA was engaged in well before June 13, 1980, the day that Dr Rodney was assassinated. However, in terms of the culpability of his killers, it makes no difference whatsoever whether arms were being accumulated immediately before Walter Rodney was killed, or a long time before. In fact, it makes absolutely no difference in terms of the culpability of his killers exactly what the WPA was doing prior to his death. If at some point the party had been engaged in planning a violent challenge to the state, for example, there were legal avenues available for dealing with that, and assassination certainly wasn’t one of them.
So why was the WPA accumulating weapons? If it was for their own protection in an extreme situation, how many did they actually acquire and in what circumstances did they envisage using them? And what kinds of weapons were they? Or did they toy with the notion of overthrowing the PNC at some stage, and then abandon the idea? Alternatively, did they start off with non-violent intentions and then came to the conclusion they would have to move to a coup – perhaps with the help of military elements – after all other methods had failed? Exactly what was their thinking at different stages during the period they faced down the state?
Since Dr Roopnaraine has got this far with the revelation of the accumulation of weapons, there is now no reason not to fill in the blanks in the rest of the story – at least in its larger aspects. In the past the impression has been given that should there be some kind of truth commission-style setting, the WPA would be disposed to disclose everything. Certainly at the time when it was thought that there would be a serious inquiry into Walter Rodney’s killing, the party let it be known that it would be prepared to be completely open about its past activities. However, the inquiry never materialized, and neither did a trial of Gregory Smith – despite the fact he had been charged in absentia – ostensibly because there was (among other things) no extradition treaty with France, and he had taken refuge in French Guiana.
It seems unlikely at this time there will be anything like a truth commission covering the events of the1970s and early 1980s. As for an inquiry, that would only have some hope of materializing if a government other than the PPP were in office. Even if there were a change of administration at the end of next year, there still would be no guarantee it would be amenable to an inquiry.
The WPA has always set great store by the truth, and thirty years after Dr Rodney’s death on June 13, 1980, what is the point of not revealing the whole truth now – at least its substance, even if persons are not named – when already a portion of that truth is in the public arena? Waiting for the PNC to agree to a sharing of information even by creating a context where no consequences will follow, is like waiting for Godot. In any case, one rather suspects that the number of persons who are actually privy to the full story behind Dr Rodney’s death is probably very limited, otherwise the secret would not have been so well kept for all these years. That being said the PNC as a party still has to take moral responsibility for what happened; whatever the identity of those who planned the assassination, there can be little doubt that Walter Rodney died at the hands of the state at some level and they were the party in government at the time.
Gregory Smith, who carried out the assassination died of natural causes some years ago, so he is now beyond earthly interrogation. Nevertheless, his army status at the time raised questions about the level of involvement of the military, more especially as he was able to leave the country so quickly afterwards. However, even if it were the case that Smith received his order from within the military rather than outside it, it still would not mean that an unknown person (or persons) in the army were the ultimate intellectual authors of the killing; that person or persons had to come from the political sphere.
In the meantime, as time passes and the ranks of those who lived through the relevant eras thin out, the specific memories of the time become sparser too. As we approach the next election season, let the WPA set an example to the other parties – including the PNC.