Abstract
This chapter charts the New Beginning Movement (NBM) (1971–1978) in Trinidad and its function as a voice of direct democracy and workers self-management through popular assemblies and a global coordinating council of a Pan-Caribbean International with linkages across the region, in Britain, the United States and Canada. A crucial philosophical and strategic leaven in the 1970 Black Power Revolt led by Geddes Granger’s and Dave Darbeau’s National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and the 1975 United Labour Front (ULF) in Trinidad, NBM aspired to interpret Afro-Trinidadians and Indo-Trinidadians equally, and on their own autonomous terms, lead them toward self-directed emancipation. Led by Bukka Rennie, Wally Look Lai, and Franklyn Harvey, NBM was inspired by C.L.R. James’s intellectual legacies.
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Bibliography
Personal Papers
Martin Glaberman Collection, Walter Reuther Labor Archive, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.
Books
Documents of the Caribbean Revolution. New York: NBM, 1974.
Farber, Samuel. Cuba Since The Revolution of 1959. Chicago: Haymarket, 2011.
Harvey, Franklyn. The Rise and Fall of Party Politics in Trinidad and Tobago. Toronto: NBM, 1974.
James, CLR. Party Politics in the West Indies. San Juan, Trinidad: Vedic, 1962.
James, CLR. The Caribbean Revolution. Washington, DC: Caribbean Unity Conference, 1973.
James, CLR. (1963) Beyond A Boundary. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992.
James, CLR. (1956) Every Cook Can Govern. Detroit: Bewick, 1992.
James, CLR. (1936) Minty Alley. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.
Look Lai, Wally. The Present Stage of the Trinidad Revolution. Tunapuna, Trinidad: NBM, 1974.
Look Lai, Wally. Race, Class & Revolution in Trinidad-Tobago. Tunapuna: New Beginning Movement, 1972.
Rennie, Bukka. History of the Working Class in the 20 th Century (1919–1956): The Trinidad and Tobago Experience. Tunapuna, Trinidad: NBM, 1973.
Rennie, Bukka. Revolution and Social Development: A Direct Address to the Unemployeds of Trinidad & Tobago. Tunapuna, Trinidad: NBM, 1975.
Journals
Look Lai, Wally. “The Crowning of the New Jewels.” Everybody’s. April/May (1979)‚ 30–32.
Meeks, Brian. “NUFF at the Cusp of an Idea: Grassroots Guerillas and the Politics of the 1970s in Trinidad and Tobago,” Social Identities. 5.4 (1999), 415–439.
Quest, Matthew. “CLR James’s Political Thought on India & Peoples of Indian Descent,” The CLR James Journal. 9.1 (2002/2003), 191–218.
Quest, Matthew. “Direct Democracy and the Search for Identity of Colonized People: the contemporary meanings of C.L.R. James’s classical Athens.” Classical Receptions Journal. 9.2 (2017)‚ 237–267.
Rennie, Bukka. “The Conflicting Tendencies in the Caribbean Revolution,” Pan African Journal. 8.2 (Summer 1975), 153–176.
Chapters in Edited Books
Austin, David. “An Embarrassment of Omissions, or Re-Writing the Sixties: The Case of the Caribbean Conference Committee,” in Karen Dubinsky et. al. eds New World Coming. Montreal, Canada: Between The Lines, 2009, 368–378.
Brown, Deryck R. “The Coup That Failed: The Jamesian Connection,” in Selwyn Ryan and Taimoon Stewart eds. The Black Power Revolution 1970: A Retrospective. Trinidad: I.S.E.R.-U.W.I, 1995, 543–577.
James, C.L.R. (1964) “Parties, Politics and Economics in the Caribbean,” in Spheres of Existence: Selected Writings. By CLR James. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co. 1980, 151–156.
James, C.L.R. “Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the Caribbean,” in David Austin ed. You Don’t Play With Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James. Oakland: AK Press, 2009,121–140.
Kadalie, Modibo. “Introduction: From One Generation to the Next: The Enduring Legacies of Kimathi Mohammed,” in Organization and Spontaneity By Kimathi Mohammed. Second Updated Edition. Atlanta: OOOA, 2012, 11–32.
Look Lai, Walton. “C.L.R. James and Trinidad Nationalism,” in Paget Henry and Paul Buhle eds. C.L.R. James’s Caribbean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. 174–209.
Meeks, Brian. “Lloyd Best, the People, and the Road Not Taken in 1970,” in Selwyn Ryan ed. Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom: Essays in Honor of Lloyd Best. St. Augustine Trinidad: Arthur Lewis Institute, 2003, 71–86.
Quest, Matthew. “Afterword: CLR James and the Kimathi Mohammed Circle of Black Power Activists in Michigan,” in Organization and Spontaneity By Kimathi Mohammed. Second Updated Edition. Atlanta: OOOA, 2012, 105–134.
Quest, Matthew. “Workers Self-Management in a Rasta Idiom: The Political Thought of Joseph Edwards,” editor’s introduction to Workers Self-Management in the Caribbean. By Joseph Edwards. Atlanta: OOOA Books, 2014.
Dissertations
N/A.
Newspapers
Caribbean Dialogue.
Moko.
New Beginning.
The Vanguard.
Interviews
Bukka Rennie (interview by Cannute Parris), 6 July 1973.
Bukka Rennie (interview by Matthew Quest), February 1 2007, August 1, 2012.
Alfie Roberts (interview by Modibo Kadalie), June 6, 1974.
Walton Look Lai (interview by Matthew Quest), February 11 2007.
Raffique Shah (interview by Matthew Quest), August 12, 2012.
Unpublished Papers
Rennie, Bukka. “Workers Control.” Unpublished Manuscript. Bukka Rennie Collection – Privately Held.
Rennie, Bukka. “Manifesto for the New Beginning Movement: Strategy for Working Class Power.” Unpublished Manuscript. 1978. Bukka Rennie Collection – Privately Held.
Websites
Henry, Paget. “The Place of Indo-Caribbean Philosophy in the Caribbean Academy.” Paper presented at University of West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. N.D. 2008. Online: http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/fhe/histphil/chips/archives/2008/docs/henry2008.aspx.
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Quest, M. (2017). New Beginning Movement: Coordinating Council of Revolutionary Alternatives for Trinidad and the Caribbean. In: Pantin, S., Teelucksingh, J. (eds) Ideology, Regionalism, and Society in Caribbean History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61418-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61418-2_6
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