Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The 1970s communist Left in Jamaica formally came to an end with the folding up of the activities of the Workers' Party of Jamaica (WPJ) in 1992, the year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.The party had been launched in 1978 out of the Workers' Liberation League, which itself had been founded in 1974 in the wake of the breakup of the Abeng project and the dispersal of its participants in divergent Left directions.Its former leadership, largely professionals, many of whom were academics at the University of the West Indies, Mona, were reabsorbed into middle-class respectability and conformity, under whose complacent security they tried as best as they could to put their wayward past behind them.All well and good, but in the process of realignment, few thought to offer a diligent and forthright account of their erstwhile commitments and the reasons for abandoning them. 1 I believe, as I have said before, that this is a betrayal of an elementary moral responsibility to those (the so-called rank and file of the party) who were urged to make huge sacrifices in the name of a cause that they were given to believe was right and just.I also believe that this astonishing neglect deprives a younger generation of the intellectual bases on which to find a genealogical foothold in the historical-political landscape of Jamaican radicalism. 2 My hope is that 1 See Trevor Munroe, The Cold War and the Jamaican Left, 1950-55: Re-opening the Files (Kingston: Kingston Publishers, 1992).And for a useful brief reflection on the WPJ, see Rupert Lewis, "Which Way for the Jamaican Left?," Black Agenda Report, 12 June 2024, www.blackagendareport.com/essay-which-way-jamaican-left-rupert-lewis-1993;originally pub-
Author: David Scott
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4416199304
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