Ken Lawrence interviewed Darcus Howe in London last October.

DH: We are having an 80th birthday series of lectures by Nello here in London in early January — three lectures sponsored by Race Today and supported by the Black Parents Movement and the Black Youth Movement. The titles of the lectures are: Lecture 1 — Socialism or Barbarism; Lecture 2 — Britain and America: Two English-Speaking Democracies; Lecture 3 — Immigrants to Britain: Formerly Colonial Peoples. Those are the three we are sponsoring and we are having a birthday party for him. He will be 80 on the 4th of January and we will pay his passage over from Trinidad, charging for the lectures so we can recoup our costs.

KL: By the time this interview gets into print, that will have already taken place. I think you should tell me what C. L. R. James means to you and to the movements that you have been part of.

DH: First of all, I think we have to identify the period in Nello's work that we are talking about. The theoretical work he did in the United States on his way out of the Trotskyist movement forms the basic pillar on which our political activity rests. I think the first one, the most important one that has influenced us, particularly myself, is that in political activity, revolutionary political activity, it is not what the working class ought to be doing, but what it is doing at any given point, and to keep one's eyes firmly fixed on what workers are thinking and doing. That is for us the primary consideration, the self-activity of the working class, and where it is at any given stage as the basis for what has to be done, as opposed to where it ought to be and the guess work that follows, the adventurism which flows from that.

Secondly, many of us have come from the Caribbean, a colonial situation. And in making the break with colonialism, one always looks for models as to what kind of society one ought to build. And Nello was I think pretty instrumental, even key, in debunking the myth that Russian society is the model through which we should develop. The Russian model has adherents in the Caribbean, particularly with the rise of Cuba as the revolutionary, or imagined revolutionary society. One finds in the Caribbean, among leftists, the tendency to fall under the hegemony of the Moscow/Cuban axis. The only alternative to that presented in the development of Caribbean politics at all is the work Nello has done in the United States, on his way out of Trotskyism. This illustrates the second position, on state capitalism, worked out by the Johnson/Forest tendency.

The third position arises from the first two: what kind of revolutionary political organization do you build in an advanced capitalist society? And the question of the vanguard party arises, which is the third plank in Nello's work which assists us. And let me give you an example as to how that is practiced insofar as we are concerned. We have organized ourselves at Race Today in a collective around a journal. We have influenced a lot of Black and white people throughout the United Kingdom. And the question would have arisen whether or not you build a vanguard party to lead Blacks to some emancipation. In rejecting this course, we have relied heavily on Nello's analysis. So those are the basic pillars of his theoretical work which we find of great value in facing the struggles in which we are involved here and inside of the Caribbean.

KL: The next thing I'd like to ask you is, it seems to me that the most revolutionary situations arising today in the English-speaking Caribbean would have to be listed as Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada.

DH: And Trinidad and Tobago.

KL: . . . OK. And there are obviously very sharp differences in each of these places. And particularly along the lines of each of the things that you just itemized as his contribution. Would it be too much to ask you to say how you think his contribution has played a role, or will play a role, in each of those situations, and to what extent they've departed, organizationally or politically, from the direction in which he's pointed?

DH: I do not think that there could be a revolutionary movement in a Caribbean country without reference to Nello's work. You either have to reject it, accept it or modify it. But the one thing you cannot do is ignore it. Many of the present crop of revolutionaries would have to face his work at some time or another and come to terms with it. He has informed our tendency. There are several tendencies inside of the Caribbean. Maoism and Stalinism are predominant and the Trotskyists are the least important. They figure in the French colonies, Martinique and Guadeloupe. The Moscow tendency draws its strength from Cuba. Nello's position in regard to underdeveloped countries is stated in Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, in particular the chapter titled "Lenin and the Problem."

Among leftists and intellectuals there has been and will continue to be a lot of debates, a lot of polemics, a lot of discussions, a lot of hostility and so on, but that is not crucial. What is crucial is what workers think about him and how they express what they think. Here is an example. The major revolutionary force in the entire Caribbean is the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, because of its organization of the workers who are employed in the oil industry in Trinidad and because of the strategic position of oil production in the international economy. The productive capacity of these workers has placed Trinidad and Tobago in a powerful position in regard to her Caribbean neighbors. She lends them a lot of money and passes off all kinds of deficient goods on them. And the Oilfield Workers Trade Union is independent, self-organized, perhaps representing all Nello's confidence in working class self-activity and the ability of the working class to take power on its own. The Oilfield Workers Trade Union, under the revolutionary leadership of George Weekes, represents that. And truth to tell, Nello is presently living at their premises in Trinidad under their care and attention. Nello lives in one of their properties which is in walking distance from their headquarters and he walks pretty slowly there and they look after him. So I suspect he'll be spending his last years in the ambience of mass independent working class organization. So there is no better example of the acceptance of his work than the fact that workers themselves, having built their own organization, are now able to see him through the last years of his life. They provide people to look after him, they see to it that he gets to and from the airport when he is travelling. They see that he gets three meals a day and so on in order that he writes his autobiography free from the hassles of life.

Here in Race Today we are for workers' and peasants' power inside the Caribbean, and we are for the complete destruction, without trace, of the colonial state. We hold the view that the Caribbean working class is advanced enough for a selforganized workers' and peasants' state. I believe that was to some degree Walter Rodney's view. And if you are talking about the Caribbean now, in terms of the ideology of the left, one would always have to look at what Walter Rodney was saying, because he was the major exponent of Marxist and leftist political theory in the Caribbean. I suspect that was his view; we are not too sure about that. Or perhaps he might have been moving from one position to the other, that other position being Nello 's position.

KL: Back to the differences.

DH: My interpretation of the major difference translates the position of several left tendencies as follows: that the political struggle for working class emancipation would be led by a political party of intellectuals drawn from the middle classes with a handful of advanced workers in tow. Once in government the leadership would provide proper welfare, organize the workers to produce more in order to meet the costs, the workers to be motivated either by incentives, the moral whip or Siberia. The surplus goes towards projects sanctioned by the leadership and the massive bureaucracy which hangs over to corrupt the new. Surplus for guns, travelling expenses for bureaucrats to beg loans abroad. From time to time, with less regularity as the years go by, the working class would be called to large gatherings then sent home after being told of the latest in the development plan to which they must shout their assent. All this is spiced with revolutionary slogans. All independent attempts at working class and peasant organization are to be squashed with a ferocity which surpasses that meted out by previous colonial masters. Mind you, I do not believe this tendency will hold power for any length of time in Caribbean politics, vulnerable as they are to imperialism on the one hand and working class and peasant revolt on the other. As I understand Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, what is called for is the break up of the old colonial state and the institutionalizing of a workers' and peasants' state. This process involves the self-organized masses deciding on, implementing, and administering a national economic plan. Nello holds the view that because of the size of those islands and the advanced maturation of Caribbean peoples that this historical stage is on the order of the day.

KL: There are also other political tendencies that I perceive as more reactionary than those you described as the alternatives, like Seaga, for example, who seems to me to be just a surrogate of the United States.

DH: Do you mean you are more reactionary if you are a surrogate of the United States than if you are a surrogate of Moscow?

KL: In that it's certainly, if nothing else, a lot closer, and that makes it militarily more dangerous.

DH: I am not sure about that. In fact, I don't agree with that. Now on the question of Seaga and Manley in Jamaica, I have this to say. It is the complete state of insurrection that the Caribbean working class has been in since the late 1960's in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Grenada, etc., which informs the politics of both leaders and their parties. That insurrection pushed Manley from a right-wing trade unionist to what he calls democratic socialism, which is neither democratic nor socialist. It has pushed Seaga from a liberal democrat to a rightist position. I believe both of them are preoccupied with how to contain this insurrection and how to use this energy and force for the full development of the middle classes. You see, it is not only the working classes who are in rebellion in the Caribbean. The middle classes, particularly the professional middle classes, are in rebellion as well. They feel pretty stunted in the colonial Caribbean. Most of them have been to America, have been to Britain, those who have not been are equally influenced by the fact that in those societies the way is open for the full development of the middle classes. You can become a barrister and blossom within a fairly well organized legal system. You can get your cars without the limitation of the shortage of>spare parts. You can get your houses built without a shortage of cement. You can get the artifacts of civilized culture without any problems. You can make fine films without having to face a shortage of celluloid. And so on. So that when all these difficulties appear inside the social crisis in Caribbean society, the middle classes rebel in their own interests. Large areas of the Jamaican economy, sugar in particular, has collapsed and therefore the crisis is acute. From the middle class standpoint the rebellion of the working classes provides the energy for the former's full -emancipation. They have behaved this way for more than sixty years. For them Manley was the perfect leader until he offered too many crumbs to the workers and peasants. Seaga is a much more complete representative of that class. Not much choice between both.

KL: Let me say this. I recall four or five years ago Nello had very warm words of praise for Manley. DH: I disagree with him and I have told him so. At one point Nello did say that his support rested among other things on the fact that Manley had reduced imports in relation to exports, or something like that.

KL: But you don't believe Manley is following his direction.

DH: Nello's direction? Absolutely not. I don't even think Nello believes that. I think Nello is sympathetic that he's trying to do something. But Nello has never come down anywhere that I have seen to say Manley's position is his position. He says Manley is looking for a new orientation and democratic socialism is more or less what he (Manley) sees as this new orientation. And to the extent that Manley is looking for a new orientation is to that extent that Nello is sympathetic. But I have neither sympathy nor support for Manley. I disagree with Nello on his sympathetic approach.

KL: What about Maurice Bishop?

DH: What took place in Grenada on March 13th, 1979 was a revolutionary seizure of power in that previous changes in power in the English-speaking Caribbean have been through electoral means. Since then the material condition of the Grenadian masses has improved to a great degree. They have won enormous welfare benefits. But our strict analysis on class divisions in Caribbean society must apply. Our position on the break up of the colonial state must apply. Is it the case that the old colonial state in Grenada has been destroyed without trace? The answer must be no. Is it the case that the middle class has been in rebellion against Gairy and in its own interest? The answer must be yes.

Any retreat from both positions is bound to cause enormous social and political problems sooner or later. Let me tell you what I have come across recently in the Free West Indian, the national Grenadian weekly. It was reported that the Grenadian government recently passed an antiterrorist law, a law which would have imprisoned them all had it been passed 18 months previously. Secondly, they quote as justification for passing that law the fact that the British government discovered that in dealing with the evil terrorists in Northern Ireland you have to do away with juries. The British created new courts, the Diplock courts. I don't know if you have heard about those. Therefore, the Free West Indian reported, the government of Grenada was instituting the identical law, the identical courts as the British state had done to repress the Irish liberation struggle. For me that is an astounding development, because the struggle in Northern Ireland is perhaps one of the most courageous anti-colonial struggles of our time. They have their problems as each revolutionary struggle experiences but, by and large, one supports the Catholic section of the Irish working class in their struggle to break up that Irish state and to establish a new society. When the Grenada government takes a page out of the repressive end of the Irish struggle, one has to begin to ask some questions. Now why is it that the Grenadian government finds itself in the position in which it believes it cannot rely on the democratic form of jury trial to secure the regime against counter-revolutionaries? Revolutionary development means more democracy, not less. And the reason in my view is that they have not destroyed the colonial state and instituted an extreme democracy on the overthrow of Gairy. Such a regime is the most powerful and potent force in the struggle against imperialism. Now if you don't do that, you do something else. You govern by proclamation. You believe that the leadership knows best and could justify what it is doing by pointing to the amount of welfare they provide. That does not alter, in my view, the basic colonial production relations in that society. In fact it makes it much worse. It sharpens the contradictions even further because on the overthrow of Gairy the working class would be that much further on the road to emancipation within a Caribbean context. The Gairy regime did two things in Grenada. The reactionary that he was, he stifled and strangled the working class and the peasantry. That is the first thing. Secondly, he created no room for middle class development inside Grenada. Once he was overthrown, both these classes would be contesting each other for supremacy. It is out of this struggle that the new society is born. The Grenadian government is hovering precariously above this conflict, which is bound to accelerate in the coming months.

KL: It's my recollection — I am not absolutely certain of it, but it's my best recollection — that back in the sixties Maurice Bishop was quite fond of Nello and his ideas.

DH: We published in the May 1974 issue of Race Today an interview by Maurice in which he outlined the basis of the workers' and peasants' state which would replace Gairy's colonial dictatorship. He talked about the organization of workers' and peasants' assemblies which would form the basis of a constituent assembly from where the country would be governed. We republished the interview in the February/March 1979 issue of Race Today shortly after they seized power. We agreed with that position. Things have not developed in that direction.

KL: Let me shift a little now and ask you what role Nello and his ideas have played within the West Indian community in England.DH: The 1948 resolution on the Black question which identified the Black struggle as having an independence, validity and vitality of its own, which resolution preceded Black Power, served to develop and strengthen the Black movement here in Britain. Much more than that, one must be able to grasp the importance of his political ideas in relation not only to Blacks in Britain but in the society as a whole. Presently, the British working class is feeling its way and will have to discover what to do about the Labor Party, what is socialism, and so on. And there is no one on the horizon who knows and understands British society, the British working class in particular, politically, socially and culturally, and who is revolutionary, to give them some sense of themselves in order that they be fortified to transcend the Labor Party. We are living in a society in which the whites are pretty lost, drifting hither and thither, preferring the haven of religious sects like the Moonies or some Asian sect led by a Maharishi. There is this bankruptcy of direction. Nello came here a few months ago and suddenly they discovered that here is a man who knows them. He knows them more than they know themselves. Again, here is this man with a wide range of intellectual and political pursuits. So that regularly in the newspapers, on radio and television, you read, hear, and see something about C. L. R. James. He asked me, "Why is there all this interest?" He was taken aback by this surge of interest. And I told him that it was because they need him, they needed some clarification of their past and direction for the future urgently. And he provides it. And one can remember those days when it could be quite difficult to get him on the screen. Now, lots of people want to speak to him, to hear what he has to say. And that's his influence here, right across the board, in both the Black and the white community.

KL: What is the political aim, or strategy, of the independent, autonomous Black movement here?