African Revolutionary Writers, Part 8b
Huey P Newton
Reading the original works of
revolutionary writers means getting around and past all the commentators and
analysts and academic secondary writers who would want to tell their readers
what to think of the primary sources, usually without offering more than a few short
quotations from any primary source.
Consequently, reading the
original works is apt to result in a re-evaluation, either upwards, or
downwards.
In the case of Dr Huey P
Newton and The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense which Newton co-founded
with Bobby Seale in October
1966, and of which Newton was the main ideologue, the re-evaluation is
definitely upwards.
In the early days of the BPP,
Newton was the “Minister of Defense” while Eldridge Cleaver became the “Minister
of Information” for the party. This made sense insofar as the BPP was for Defence,
and so Defence was the senior position. But in practice, Newton was still the
thinker of the BPP. Cleaver was only interested in armed struggle. But Cleaver
was often seen as the mouthpiece, until he fled to Algeria in 1968. Cleaver
ended up as a supporter of the right wing of the US Republican Party.
The BPP was under constant
attack, mainly as a consequence of the activities of COINTELPRO, a part of the US Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), organised to "expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit, or otherwise neutralize" political targets of which most were
black or communist organisations.
‘COINTELPRO began in 1956 and was initially
designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win
defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA),’ says Wiikipedia.
In short, there were
political conflicts within the BPP, and between the BPP and other
organisations, which had a real basis; and there were other disagreements and
conflicts, even armed conflicts resulting in many deaths, that were the
consequence of US government action against a political party, the BPP.
This is the USA and how it
works. Some say it has changed. Some say it has not changed.
The attached document (also
linked for download) shows Huey Newton to have been a sophisticated political
thinker with theory, strategy and tactics that were fitted to the times and the
circumstances. He promoted a Ten-Point Plan that, as he said, was “not revolutionary in itself, nor is it
reformist. It is a survival program.” And he proposed a classless society
and a world that would be communist.
It seems clear that Huey
Newton was not a terrorist and that he had every intention of helping to organise
the oppressed black people of the USA into primary mass organisations for their
survival and self-defence. As such, he was going to be more effective than any
terrorist. The BPP was a serious political party. It is surprising to read
about such things existing in the USA, but of course it is possible, and it has
always been possible.
To download the Huey P. Newton Reader (55MB PDF), Click Here.
The Dr Huey P Newton
Foundation web site is at http://www.blackpanther.org/.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Huey P Newton, Speech at
Boston College, 1970.
