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 warfare campaign to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Eric Williams following the failed Black Power uprising and an unsuccessful mutiny in the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment.

NUFF formed out of the Western United Liberation Front (WOLF), a loose grouping of largely unemployed men in the western suburbs of Port of Spain. After the failed mutiny, members of WOLF decided to overthrow the government through armed rebellion. In 1971 they attempted to assassinate the lead prosecutor of the mutineers and a coast guard officer who helped suppress the army mutiny.

The group drew disaffected members of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), the country's leading Black Power organisation, and established a training camp in south Trinidad. 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 during the insurgency.

Ideologically NUFF was anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, 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. They were the only group to sustain a guerrilla insurgency in the modern English-speaking Caribbean over an extended period. Former members went on to play a role in the political process, while others were involved in the 1990 coup d'état attempt by the Jamaat al Muslimeen.

Background and formation

Trinidad and Tobago became independent from the United Kingdom in 1962 under the leadership of Eric Williams and the People's National Movement (PNM), whose political agenda was primarily nationalist and progressive. Working class Afro–Trinidadians and Tobagonians formed the base of support for Williams and the PNM. Society in Trinidad and Tobago at the time was stratified by a combination of class and skin colour that was typical in the larger islands of the English-speaking Caribbean. Traditionally, the upper class was white, the middle class coloured (mixed-race) and working-class Black. Social mobility in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries allowed Black people to move into the middle class and coloured people to move into both the upper and lower classes, but it had kept the general pyramid of social stratification intact. Whites lost their hold on political power in the run up to independence, but retained their social and economic power.—and smaller minorities lay outside this system of stratification. The power that these corporations exercised over the local economy was seen by the Afro–Trinidadians and Tobagonian working class as standing in the way of the economic, social and political advancement they had expected from a PNM government. The mutineers, led by Raffique Shah and Rex Lassalle, surrendered after 10 days of negotiation and the government re-asserted control.

The collapse of the army mutiny was the impetus for the formation of the organisation that would become NUFF. According to Malcolm "Jai" Kernahan, one of the surviving leaders of the group, there was coordination between members of WOLF and Shah and Lassalle. When the mutiny occurred Brian Jeffers and other members of WOLF "took up arms" and headed into the hills above Port of Spain to connect with the mutineers who were stationed west of the city. When the mutineers surrendered, Jeffers, the de facto leader of WOLF, decided to continue with the goal of overthrowing the government through armed rebellion. Inspired by the foco theory guerrilla warfare developed by Che Guevara and French philosopher Régis Debray, Jeffers, Kernahan, and others organised a new group along revolutionary lines. Although some members of the group recommended that they focus on expanding and consolidating their support, more militant members of the leadership dominated the decision-making process.

Guerrilla campaign

On 31 May 1972 Kernahan's group, newly named the National Union of Freedom Fighters, attacked an estate police station belonging to American oil company Texaco, seized six guns and over 1,000 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. and a security guard's revolver. Jamaican sociologist Brian Meeks described 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". and left a message for Burroughs "that if he wanted [them] to come in the bush for [them]". and the government offered large rewards for Jeffers, Harewood and Jacob. where they had retreated after the attack in Valencia.

Aftermath

thumb|[[Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, was critical in his assessment of NUFF.|alt=Grayscale portrait of a man in a suit and sunglasses]]

NUFF was only the second group in the modern English-speaking Caribbean to attempt a serious guerrilla uprising (the first being Henry's rebellion in Jamaica in 1960), and the only one able to create an insurgent campaign that was sustained over time. Historian Jan Knippers Black has argued that NUFF never posed a large threat to Eric Williams' government.

While Williams was only mildly critical in his retrospective analysis of the Black Power movement, his assessment of NUFF was "decidedly harsh", according to Samaroo. Other members of NUFF played a role in founding the United Labour Front in March 1976.

Historiography

Historian and women's studies scholar W. Chris Johnson calls NUFF "the progeny of the PNM", the children and grandchildren of the people who had brought the PNM to power in the 1950s.

NUFF grew out of the Black Power movement, but its members believed that that movement had failed to achieve its objectives. considered the main point of disagreement between NUFF and NJAC to be NUFF's belief that NJAC had lost its effectiveness and was "only talking" despite the levels of unemployment, continued foreign domination of the economy, and increased police brutality.

Historian Matthew Quest compares NUFF's activities of "robbing banks and striking back at brutal police" to those of the Black Liberation Army in the United States. Political scientist Perry Mars described NUFF's ideology as Maoist, and spoke of their "violent and suicidal extremism". According to historian Rita Pemberton and colleagues, NUFF believed that electoral systems were too flawed to produce true democracy, and that it could only be achieved through what they called "revolutionary democracy". They told their followers "you can either make it to liberation day or die trying".

Legacy

Political scientists have drawn connections between NUFF's insurgency and the 1990 coup d'état attempt by the Jamaat al Muslimeen. NUFF's use of violence in challenging 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. Jennifer Jones-Kernahan ( Jones) went on to serve as a United National Congress senator, government minister and ambassador to Cuba, while her husband Jai Kernahan contested the Laventille West constituency for the People's Partnership in the 2015 Trinidad and Tobago general election.

See also

  • History of Trinidad and Tobago
  • Trinidad and Tobago Police Service

Notes

References

  • National Union of Freedom Fighters manifesto October 1973. Internet Archive