David Dabydeen
I never met Walter Rodney in life. I left Guyana as a boy, in 1969, and Guyanese politics did not figure in the dynamics of migrant existence in Britain. The hostile natives branded you a ‘paki’ or called you ‘black,’ not respecting the subtleties of geography or cultural difference. I only re-connected with Guyana when I met Joe Harte in London in 1983. We became instant friends. Joe had spent a few years with Rodney when the latter was a student at SOAS. Joe told me many stories about Rodney’s lectures at Hyde Park Corner, or seminars with fellow West Indian scholars like Stuart Hall. Joe conveyed the excitement of the time: gatherings in London of young West Indian students eager to analyze the consequences of Empire, colonization and imperialism; to discuss Marxist and socialist philosophies; to actively confront and wage battle against the racism prevalent in 1960’s London. Joe felt they were in the midst of historical change, and they were among the agents of change. It was a time of national and international ferment: the Black Power Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam War Movement, the Women’s Movement. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven!”
Joe confirmed what I had known before: Rodney’s intellectual genius. In 1981, as an English Literature PhD student I read Rodney’s A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 – 1800. It became clear from the opening pages that the book would not be relevant to my literary thesis, but I read it to the end, overwhelmed by the shining scholarship, the meticulous research, and what seemed to me to be a highly original ‘ class’ perspective on the slave trade. Later, I was to read Rodney’s other works, notably How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881 – 1905 which were like meteorites impacting on the mind, leaving permanent craters.
As soon as I was appointed to my first academic job, at Warwick University, in 1984, the authorities were persuaded to establish an annual Walter Rodney Memorial Lecture, which continues to this day. Lectures have been given on Caribbean affairs by a range of scholars and thinkers, including Ken Ramchand, Clive Thomas, Harold Goulbourne, Carolyn Cooper, Valerie Amos, Stuart Hall, Michael Gilkes, Clem Seecharan, Miguel Barnet, Hilary Beckles and Eddie Baugh. I dedicated my first academic publication, a book called The Black Presence in English Literature (1985) to Walter Rodney. These were modest actions to thank and honor an outstanding scholar and activist whose work and life changed many of ours forever.
In time, I have collected anecdotes and stories about Rodney (including his visit to my grandmother’s house in No. 36 Village, Berbice: my uncle Stephen read history at UWI at the same time as Rodney), which I will happily convey to any biographer. Let me share one of the most memorable, by Wilson Harris, our distinguished novelist. Harris told me he had given a Mittelholzer Lecture at University of Guyana around 1979 and, afterwards, was fielding questions from the audience. After four or five questions had been dealt with, a young man sitting at the very back of the lecture room raised his hand and asked Harris something, in a meek voice and manner, about Marxist perspectives on literary works (Harris couldn’t recall the exact question) to which Harris, having responded to the ‘young man’ about the limitations of social realism in fiction, ended up by asking, in a serious and concerned tone of voice, “Young man, have you actually read Karl Marx or is your knowledge second-hand?” The ‘young man’ replied, “Yes, Mr. Harris, I have,” thanked him for answering his query and sat down with the same gentleness as he had risen. Later, Harris was told that the ‘young man’ was Walter Rodney. “What I remember of the incident,” Harris said, “was how modest a figure Rodney was; a man of international acclaim who had achieved such significant things, yet had such a quiet presence.” When I stood before Rodney’s grave in Georgetown, in 1993, Harris’ words boomed in my mind.
David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010 and the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board, elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO.