National Union of Freedom Fighters

The National Union of Freedom Fighters (NUFF) was an armed Marxist revolutionary group in Trinidad and Tobago. Active in the aftermath of the 1970 Black Power Revolution, the group fought a guerrilla campaign to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Eric Williams after the failed Black Power uprising.

National Union of Freedom Fighters
Leader	Guy Harewood, Brian Jeffers, Andrea Jacob, Malcolm "Jai" Kernahan[1][2]
Dates of operation	May 1972 – November 1974
Country	Trinidad and Tobago
Ideology	Marxism,[3] Maoism[4]^:83

In 1972 and 1973 NUFF attacked police posts to acquire weapons, robbed banks, and carried out an insurgent campaign against the government. With improved intelligence capabilities, the government was able to track the group and eventually killed or captured most of its leadership. Eighteen NUFF members and three policemen were killed over the course of the insurgency.

NUFF was anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist in its ideology, and opposed both the foreign investors who controlled much of the economy and the local economic elites. They were notable for the extent to which women played an active role in the organisation, and included women among its guerrilla fighters.

Background and formation

Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962 under the leadership of Eric Williams and the People's National Movement, but independence left much of the economy in the hands of foreign interests and was "a postponement of social, political and economic equality" for many of the working class Afro-Trinidadians and Tobagonians who formed the base of support for Williams and the PNM.[5]

In 1969, West Indian students at Sir George Williams University in Montreal staged a sit-in at the university's computer centre to protest discriminatory grading practices. The resulting arrests and trial of a group of students was a catalyst in the formation of the National Joint Action Committee at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. NJAC activists moved out of the university and worked to educate and mobilise the population, especially unemployed youth in Port of Spain and San Fernando.[6] In February 1970 Black Power demonstrations broke out in the major urban centres in Trinidad and Tobago. Over the course of March and April these demonstrations gained support, especially after Basil Davis, a young NJAC activist,[6] was killed by the police. On 21 April, the government declared a state of emergency and arrested the leaders of the protest movement. This triggered a mutiny by the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment.[2] After 10 days of negotiations with the government, the mutineers surrendered, and the government reasserted control.[7]

Prior to the uprising in 1970, a loose grouping known as the Western United Liberation Front (WOLF) had formed in the western Port of Spain suburb of St. James. The group, which consisted of largely unemployed young men, also included active members of the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment. According to Malcolm "Jai" Kernahan, one of the surviving members of the organisation, there was coordination between members of WOLF and Raffique Shah and Rex Lassalle, the leaders of the army mutiny, and that when the mutiny occurred Brian Jeffers and other members of WOLF "took up arms" and headed into the hills about Port of Spain to connect with the mutineers. When the mutineers surrendered, Jeffers, the de facto leader of WOLF, decided to continue with the goal of overthrowing the government through armed rebellion.[2]

In 1971, the as-yet unnamed revolutionary organisation shot Theodore Guerrra, the chief prosecutor in the court martial of the mutineers. Shortly after, Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard commander David Bloom was shot. Bloom had played an important role in the suppression of the mutiny. Both men survived the shootings. The shootings gave the militants credibility among NJAC members who were disenchanted with the state of the "virtual collapse" of the organisation after the arrest of its leadership. Guy Harewood, an NJAC activist from Woodbrook, joined the group, as did other NJAC activists from the Port of Spain area. These activists were able to expand the reach of the group by making connections with other disaffected NJAC members.[2]

In late 1971 Jai Kernahan left the group in St. James and returned to his hometown of Fyzabad. In the oilfields of south Trinidad, with its history of militant trade unionism, Kernahan found people receptive to the idea of engaging in guerrilla insurgency. He gathered a group of activists and established a training camp in the forest.[2]

Guerrilla campaign

On 31 May 1972 Kernahan's group, newly named the National Union of Freedom Fighters, attacked an Estate Police Station belonging to the American oil company Texaco, and seized six guns and over a thousand rounds of ammunition. The following day, armed NUFF members in north Trinidad robbed the Barclays Bank branch at the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.[2] The rough, forested terrain of the Northern Range provided safety for NUFF's roughly three dozen guerrilla fighters. Fidel Castro had compared the landscape to that of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, from which Castro had launched the Cuban Revolution.[6]

The rough, forested terrain of the Northern Range provided safety for NUFF's guerrilla fighters.

On 1 July, a group of guerrillas returning from the Northern Range were intercepted at a police roadblock and a gunfight occurred. One NUFF member, Hillary Valentine, was killed and three policemen were shot. Valentine's funeral attracted four thousand mourners. On 23 February 1973 Barclays Bank on Tragarete Road in Port of Spain was robbed. Acting on a tip, the police ambushed a group of NUFF members at a safe house in Laventille later than day. Three NUFF members were killed including John Beddoe.[2] Jamaican sociologist Brian Meeks considered Beddoe's death to be "a major blow to the movement as he is one of the people with genuine organizational capability and the leading advocate of the line for greater propaganda, education and consolidation".[2]

On 1 June NUFF guerrillas used gelignite to destroy a transformer at the Textel Earth Station, the satellite link connecting Trinidad and Tobago with the outside world, and left a message for Assistant Superintendent of Police Randolph Burroughs "that if he wanted [them] to come in the bush for [them]". The guerrillas ambushed policemen responding to the incident and injured four of them.[2][8] On 6 August, insurgents attacked a Trinidad-Tesoro Oil Company police station in south Trinidad, and three days later they attacked the Matelot Police Station. The insurgents left Matelot with twice as many guns as there were people to carry them.[2] These attacks prompted a joint operation by the army and police against the rebels,[9] and the government offered large rewards for Jeffers, Harewood and Andrea Jacob, a third member of the group's leadership.[2]

The possibility of rewards, coupled with the use of harder interrogation techniques, allowed the police to ambush the northern group at their camp in Valencia on 28 August. Although the guerrillas all escaped with only minor injuries, the attack showed the benefits of the shift in tactics by the police.[2] On 13 September, two hundred police and soldiers surprised the guerrillas in Caura,[5] where they had retreated after the attack in Valencia.[2] A sentry at the camp was killed and Jennifer Jones was captured. As they fled the attack on the camp, two insurgents Beverly Jones (sister of Jennifer Jones and British Black Panther leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe) and Kenneth Tenia, were killed by the police.[5] After this, NUFF was left on the defensive: "police were on our heels, people were selling us out and we just running from ambush to ambush" recounted former NUFF member Terrance Thornhill, in a 1996 interview with Meeks.[2]

After Guy Harewood was killed by the police in Curepe on 17 October 1973 NUFF was "effectively broken". Their last major activist, Clem Haynes, was captured by the police in Laventille in November 1974, marking the end of the movement.[2] Overall, 18 NUFF members and three policeman were killed over the course of the insurgency.[6]

Aftermath

Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, was critical in his assessment of NUFF.

NUFF was only the second group in the modern English-speaking Caribbean to attempt a serious guerrilla uprising, and the only one able to create an insurgent campaign that was sustained over time.[2] Their decision to engage in armed struggle resulted not only in the destruction of the organisation, but also prompted the government of Trinidad and Tobago to react more harshly to the non-violent organisations like NJAC and the leadership of the Oilfields Workers' Trade Union and the Transport and Industrial Workers Union.[10]

According to historian and former Black Power activist Brinsley Samaroo, Eric Williams, who remained Prime Minister until his death in 1981, was "decidedly harsh" in his assessment of NUFF in his final, unpublished book:

A group of young people generally well educated (reminiscent of the unrest among affluent students in United States) are taking to the hills and forests, robbing banks, holding up paymasters, attacking isolated police stations, shooting policemen, while their well-wishers declaim against ‘police brutality’ when a shoot-out occurs.[6]

Many surviving members of NUFF received lengthy prison sentences. Clem Haynes was imprisoned for eight years.[2] Andy Thomas (later Abdullah Omowale) and Kirkland Paul (Kirklon Paul according to some sources) were sentenced to death for the murder of Police Constable Austin Sankar in 1975 and remained on death row until 1987 when they were pardoned by President Noor Hassanali.[11][12]

Ideology

NUFF's ideology was anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and "seemingly anti-sexist". They opposed both foreign investors and the local economic elites, and strove the overthrow the Williams administration through violence.[5] NUFF was a product of the Black Power movement, but its members believed that that movement had failed to achieve its objectives.[6] David Millette, and attorney who "grew up around members of NUFF" and researched the movement[13] considered the main point of disagreement between NUFF and NJAC was NUFF's belief that NJAC had lost its effectiveness and was "only talking".[6] Meeks, similarly, says that NUFF attracted people who were unhappy with NJAC's ineffectiveness after the arrest of its leadership and its transition to a cultural nationalist ideology. NUFF, he says, attracted people who were drawn to the "armed revolution was the only solution" slogan which had become popular in 1970.[2]

Political scientist Perry Mars described NUFF's ideology as Maoist,[4]^:49 and spoke of their "violent and suicidal extremism".[4]^:83 Victoria Pasley described them as "Marxist-socialist", and that they differed from NJAC in seeing class, not race, as the dominant problem in society. Pasley also mentions the role that women played in the organisation, most notably Beverly Jones who was killed by the police in Caura. Women in NUFF fought on equal terms with men and were seen as having equal standing in the movement.[3] Meeks describes the movement as "extreme foquista" in their revolutionary ideology, embracing the foco theory of revolution of Régis Debray and Che Guevara.[2]

Legacy

Political scientists have drawn connections NUFF's insurgency and the 1990 coup d'état attempt by the Jamaat al Muslimeen. Their use of violence as a tactic to challenge the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy was seen by political scientist John La Guerre as an inspiration for the Jamaat al Muslimeen. The movements also shared a connection in the person of Abdullah Omowale (formerly Andy Thomas), who was a leading figure in both the 1990 coup attempt and in NUFF's insurgency.[14][15] Jennifer Jones-Kernahan (formerly Jennifer Jones) went on to serve as a United National Congress senator, government minister and ambassador to Cuba,[16] while her husband, Jai Kernahan contested the Laventille West constituency for the People's Partnership in the 2015 Trinidad and Tobago general election.[17]

References

1. Chamberlain, Greg (20 October 1973). "Trinidad guerilla leader killed". The Guardian. p. 4.
2. Meeks, Brian (2000). "NUFF at the Cusp of an Idea: Grassroots Guerrillas and the Politics of the Seventies in Trinidad and Tobago". Narratives of resistance: Jamaica, Trinidad, the Caribbean. Mona, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press. pp. 48–74. ISBN 976-640-093-8. OCLC 46438599.
3. Pasley, Victoria (17 January 2013). "The Black Power Movement in Trinidad: An Exploration of Gender and Cultural Changes and the Development of a Feminist Consciousness". Journal of International Women's Studies. 3 (1): 24–40. ISSN 1539-8706. Archived from the original on 3 March 2020. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
4. Mars, Perry (1998). Ideology and change : the transformation of the Caribbean left. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8143-3851-3. OCLC 849944732.
5. Johnson, W. Chris (2015). "Guerrilla Ganja Gun Girls: Policing Black Revolutionaries from Notting Hill to Laventille". In Miescher, Stephan F.; Mitchell, Michele; Shibusawa, Naoko (eds.). Gender, imperialism and global exchanges. Chichester, West Sussex. pp. 280–306. ISBN 978-1-119-05218-0. OCLC 905419566.
6. Samaroo, Brinsley (2014). "The February Revolution (1970) as a Catalyst for Change in Trinidad and Tobago". In Quinn, Kate (ed.). Black power in the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 97–116. ISBN 978-0-8130-4861-1. OCLC 870646730.
7. "Black Power: A much needed revolution". Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. 22 April 2015. Archived from the original on 13 April 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2020.
8. "Police Seek Terrorists". Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. 7 June 1973. p. 147. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
9. Phillips, Dion (1997). "The Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force: Origin, Structure, Training, Security and Other Roles". Caribbean Quarterly. 43 (3): 13–33. doi:10.1080/00086495.1997.11672099.
10. Meeks, Brian (2014). "Black Power Forty Years on (2014)". In Quinn, Kate (ed.). Black power in the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 261–274. ISBN 978-0-8130-4861-1. OCLC 870646730.
11. Achong, Derek (24 May 2013). "Man with two 'pardons' killed in car accident". Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
12. Paul, Cecil (24 May 2013). "WHO WAS KIRKLON PAUL?". National Workers Union. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
13. Lindo, Paula (23 February 2020). "70/50:Mas talk on 1970". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
14. La Guerre, John (1991). "The 1990 Violent Disturbance in Trinidad and Tobago". Caribbean Quarterly. 37: 53–62. doi:10.1080/00086495.1991.11671729.
15. Millette, James (1991). "Power in the Streets: The Muslimeen Uprising in Trinidad and Tobago". Caribbean Quarterly. 37 (2–3): 89–107. doi:10.1080/00086495.1991.11671732.
16. "Senator Dr. Jennifer Jones Kernahan". Trinidad and Tobago Parliament. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
17. "Laventille West". United National Congress. 7 August 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2020.