Why Don’t We Say Her Name? The Police Murder of Beverly Jones in Trinidad — 50 Years Later
The year 2023 tallies a half-century since the formalization of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) by the founding signatories to the Treaty of Chaguaramas: Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago. CARICOM claims to represent the vanguard of Caribbean regionalism after the breakup of the West Indies Federation and the transition from British colonial rule to political independence.
CARICOM was not the only movement for Caribbean unity on the march in 1973. Forty-three days after the Treaty of Chaguaramas took effect, Beverly Jones was martyred at the hands of Trinbagonian police under the orders of Prime Minister Eric Williams. The pregnant, seventeen-year-old Jones, one of the young women insurgents in the National United Freedom Fighters (NUFF), perished in a rifle war with police on the hills of the Northern Range.
As historian Chris Johnson demonstrates, young Black women guerillas like Beverly Jones preached armed struggle as a basis for the transformation of society in which they “battled patriarchy, poverty and police violence” in the post-independence Caribbean.
This legacy of Black Caribbean women against the police state is not granted formal recognition or commemoration. Jones, NUFF, and other Caribbean radical formations such as the New Beginning Movement in Trinidad, New Jewel Movement in Grenada, Working People’s Alliance in Guyana, Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement, and the Unemployed Workers Council in Jamaica advocated for regional unity grounded in principles of direct democracy, popular assemblies, and workers’ self-management.
Eric Williams, one of the four vanguard statesmen of CARICOM, derided the NUFF guerillas for their “vague phrases as power to the people” while deploying a secret police force, the Flying Squad, to eliminate dissidents. The very same “progressive” forces that led to the formation of CARICOM served as guardians of police violence and repression in the Caribbean.
As CARICOM turns fifty, we must remember Beverly Jones and the dissenting politics she espoused at the moment of its founding. Fifty years after the murder of Beverly Jones, we must say her name. But we must also accurately represent what she stood for. In her memory, Beverly Jones is a reminder that no compromise can be made between the radical traditions of Black feminism and the police states of North America and the Caribbean.
September 13, 2023 is the fiftieth anniversary of the police murder of Beverly Jones. To mark this somber occasion, we are republishing the eulogy delivered by her mother, Viola Jones, in its entirety.
Her eulogy is short, but it is a rich example of Caribbean revolutionary theory in its own right. Viola asks us, “What is the meaning of all this suffering?”
She supplies a magnificent answer. For Viola, the political independence achieved a decade prior does not guarantee freedom for the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Despite their participation in civic life as members of Williams’s People’s National Movement (PNM), the Joneses are “exploited by capitalists, foreign and local.” Viola is compelled to migrate in search of dignified work, much to the chagrin of her daughters.
Rather than freedom from exploitation, independence provides a false guarantee in which one daughter, Beverly, is murdered by the state and another, Jennifer, is denied her constitutional right to legal representation.
Viola concludes that freedom cannot coexist with the “presence of guns, pointing at our people.” A progressive head-of-state did not save Beverly from death on the battlefield in the hills of Lopinot. Nothing less than the abolition of the police state can guarantee the freedom denied to Viola’s daughters.
On September 13, let us hold vigils in memoriam of Beverly Jones. Let us read the elegiac words of Viola Jones aloud as a foundation for the new society in Beverly’s name.
MOTHER OF BEVERLY AND JENNIFER JONES SPEAKS [1973]
Transcribed by Ryan Cecil Jobson from Documents of the Caribbean Revolution (Tunapuna: New Beginning Movement, 1974)
I am the mother of Beverly Jones and Jennifer Jones. Beverly was killed by the Regiment and Jennifer is in the hands of the police.
The papers, radio and television say that this took place on Thursday 13th September, and up to now, Monday 17th September we, the parents, have not been officially informed of Beverly’s death, nor have we been asked to identify her body. We were sent on a dance since Thursday between police headquarters in town and Tunapuna police station. We were refused permission to see Jennifer. She was even denied her rights, under our constitution, of seeing a lawyer while in detention.
To-day, I ask myself why did Beverly and others like her die? What is the meaning of all this suffering? As a mother I wanted the best for my children. I worked hard, and like so many of us in this country I found I could not make my way here, I went to America. I wrote to Jen and Bev and begged them to come to America and they asked me one question: Mummy, why is it that we have a country that is so rich in natural resources and talent and we always have to go “away” to make a living or develop our abilities as human beings? I could not answer them and still cannot answer them.
Because they, above all, know that we were active members of the PNM, we marched in the rain and in the sun, we wanted freedom and Independence. The lives of my children were also closely involved in that movement. We used to get them to go over the hills in Gonzales giving out notices for party group meetings.
Our aspirations which we struggled to achieve at that time are still not achieved. We wanted to be free, free to stay in our own country, and build it without always having to go away, free to have a job without it being regarded as a privilege, free for all the masses of people to live in decent homes without the fear of always being in debt. We wanted to be free from the exploitation of our people by capitalists, foreign and local. Most of all we wanted, not just a change in the quantity of things available to us, but a change in the quality of our lives.
The presence of guns, pointing at our people, will not solve the problem. Poor people all over the world are clamouring for a change. The people of Trinidad and Tobago are also part of that call for change. Shooting us, the people, will not be that change. Only a serious look at the economic and political structure of our country will bring it about.
