THE trimming of the locks of that young Rastafarian woman at Four Paths Police Station allegedly by a police officer is indeed a tragedy. Although we have yet to receive incontrovertible proof that the young woman’s locks were, in fact, shorn by the officer, there is much that needs to be examined regarding the police force and its historically oppressive attitude to those who espouse the precepts of Rastafari.

These repressive tendencies in the police force are grounded in the anti-Rastafari doctrine developed by the colonial leadership of the force from the early 1930s when the police supported and protected mob attacks on Leonard Howell’s King of Kings Headquarters on Harbour Head Road, Port Morant. The police made several raids on Pinnacle during the 1940s and 1950s, and increased aggression towards adherents of the movement during the 1960s.

It was the early years of the 1970s that birthed support, tolerance, and acceptance of the Rastafari idea and movement in Jamaica. One retired educator, in his reflections on Rastafari in the 1960s and 1970s, declared Rastafari as “Jamaica’s gift to the world.”

The first encounter

It was during a mid-April night in 1933 that Howell, one of the first preachers of the Rastafari movement, journeyed into the deep hills and valleys of St Thomas to the square in Trinityville. He revealed himself as a messenger of His Imperial Majesty of Ethiopia. He presented to the meeting a new king and messiah for black people and conducted himself as a man of prophetic proportion sent to open the eyes of the formerly enslaved black masses.

In his ‘lectures’ he castigated the white people, the Church, and the colonial Government; declared to the black people that they were Ethiopians and not British; told them to reject the British monarchy and embrace a new king and messiah; and said that they were living in conditions worse than that which obtained in the days of slavery.

The crowd of over 200 cheering blacks frightened the planter class, who summoned the police to the meeting, thus establishing the contentious relationship between Rastafari and the police.

Details of the meeting were recorded in letters that were sent to the inspector at the Morant Bay Police Station.

Defender of the Queen

It is important to note the genesis of the Jamaican police force. It was created from a paramilitary security force from Northern Ireland. Its responsibility was to defend the territory of The Queen. It was this paramilitary force that was imported into Jamaica after the 1865 Paul Bogle-led black nationalist uprising to defend crown colony governance.

You may have noted that the buttons on the police uniform have the crown on it. In news conferences convened by the commissioner of police there is a big picture of the crown in the background. And, the picture of the Queen is hanging on a wall at every police station.

The conflict in 1933 between the anti-British monarchy and the pro-emperor of Ethiopia began in those days when the police leadership was dominated by white men, while the rank-and-file were black. Some of the leadership were Englishmen and so, too, were the senior civil servants and government leaders – the governor, the colonial secretary, the attorney general among others.

The letters reporting details of that April 1933 meeting at Trinityville were used as the basis for the order to arrest Howell for sedition after his very first meeting.

Declared subversive

The inspector of police at Morant Bay became the chief agitator for the arrest of Howell and for the destruction of the Rastafari movement in its earliest months of launching. By June 1933 the head of the police force sent circulars to parishes calling on officers to look out for Howell. They were instructed to watch his every movement and to record his speeches.

After three months of preaching of Rastafari as the new king and messiah, as well as new doctrine grounded in anti-British monarchy sentiments, the police declared him a national subversive. It was the leadership of the colonial police force, planters, and church leaders from St Thomas that caused the development of the anti-police doctrine.

The early founder of Rastafari declared England to be modern-day Babylon. He prophesied that it would fall as predicted in Daniel and the book of Revelation. Babylon in Howell’s time was now a system that was defended by brutal gatekeepers in the form of the police force. As a result, the Rastafarians gave the name Babylon to the police — agents of both repression and oppression.

The function of the police was to keep Rastas down by unjust force. The colonial police leadership trampled on early Rastas with unjust authority, and in the 1930s it tried to inhibit and to keep the new Ethiopian doctrine from being revealed.

Port Morant: The crucible for the rise of early Rastafari

Port Morant was the crucible for the development of the early Rastafari movement. Between April and December 1933 Howell’s increased militancy was reflected in his fiery speeches and his problems with the police at his meetings. He preached against white people and church leaders, calling them thieves and liars, and said that the Church was misleading the black masses with a “pie in the sky” story and miseducating black children.

By late 1933 planters and church leaders from eastern St Thomas sent “evidence” to the colonial secretary, who gave the authority to the police to arrest Howell on December 31, 1933. Howell was arrested and tried in March 1934 at the courthouse at Morant Bay. His arrest and trial were political conspiracies between the planters and the police. He was found guilty of sedition and sentenced to two years in prison.

Prison, mob attacks

The imprisonment of Howell may have inhibited the growth, but it did not destroy the movement. There were two instances after 1934 that police led mob attacks on Rastas. Circa 1936, Howell hosted big celebrations that attracted Rastas from all over Jamaica at his King of Kings World Headquarters, Port Morant. Rastas were beaten and robbed, the place was destroyed while the police watched and, in the end, they escorted the looters away from the scene.

Howell and early Rastafari were under “heavy manners” during and after the enactment of the 1938 laws, which were initiated by the police leadership to prevent Howell from conducting meetings in the public sphere. The war with the police led to Rastafari’s exodus from Port Morant, St Thomas, to Pinnacle, Sligoville, St Catherine. The police raided Pinnacle twice in the early 1940s.

Howell was arrested in 1951 for possession of ganja, and in 1954 Pinnacle was raided and the police were able put an end to the Rastafari commune but, by that time, the scattered movement had begun to develop into new communities.

Police aggression against Rastas in the 1960s

The implementation of the anti-Rasta doctrine by the police was intensified in the 1960s, especially in the the aftermath of the 1963 Coral Gardens affair.

In accordance with the new ganja laws of the 1960s, police began raiding Rasta camps in search of the herb. There were regular arrests of peaceful people who were not criminals.

The cutting and shaving of Rastafari became a sport for some police officers during that period. It is not hard to imagine that the police are still barriers to the development of the black consciousness movement in Jamaica. It was in the 1970s that the new thinking in politics accommodated, tolerated, and promoted the movement of Rastafari.

Rastafari, indeed, is “Jamaica’s gift to the world”.

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