The raids on the Rastafarian fortress of Pinnacle – Part II

THEY CALLED the hilltop Rastafarian settlement in St Catherine The Pinnacle, because of the lofty heights in which it was situated. And, the Rastas basked in the manifestation of existing in a space, far from the madding crowd, one in which the Government and the Church had no control over their minds and operations.

But, they were not invisible, and the authorities were not ignorant of the ‘bangarangs’ between them and the residents in the surrounding communities. The complaints from aggrieved people were many, and so the police decided to investigate such in an early morning operation, led by high-ranking personnel.

In the early morning of Monday, July 14, 1941, a party of 153 well-armed constables and their superiors departed Kingston “in high-powered cars and wagons, and two motor buses, for Spanish Town”. In addition to their weapons, they had rations and first-aid kits. At Spanish Town, they joined an Inspector Browning, 20 men from the St Catherine Constabulary, and some injured people taken from the hospital to identify their alleged Rastafarian attackers.

When they arrived at the main gate at The Pinnacle, the only person they saw, in a thatch hut, was a bearded elderly man, who identified himself as Hamilton, who said he was from St Thomas, and had been in his gatekeeping job for nine months prior to the raid. But, if the police wanted to surprise the Rastas, they were the ones who were surprised. All the huts on The Pinnacle were empty. Where were the Rastas, and who had given them wind of the arrival of the police? Nobody had.

You see, the Rastas had to fetch water from a nearby river source early every morning, so when the police arrived, they were gone to do their duty. A group of police who had gone to enter The Pinnacle from another point, came upon the long line of water-laden Rastas returning to the camp. That was when the surprise manifested.

Headlines Delivered to Your Inbox

Sign up for The Gleaner’s morning and evening newsletters.

The women and children were allowed to return, but all the men were escorted back to the main entrance where they saw their accusers, who identified them under the glare of the morning sun. Seventy of them were eventually arrested. The people rejoiced, praising the police for delivering them from the menace that the Rastas had brought upon them. Some, upon hearing the news, went to Pinnacle to reclaim their firecoal allegedly stolen from them by the Rastas.

But, where was Leonard Howell in all of this? He had eluded the dragnet, and by noon a search party of about 30, adamant that Howell be captured, went all over Pinnacle and adjacent properties searching for him. It is said that on the Sunday prior to the Monday raid he had a late-night meeting, but got up early the Monday morning, dressed himself, told his household that he had a “bad dream”, and left.

The Daily Gleaner of July 15, 1941 reported that, “Pinnacle today is by no means deserted. There are still many women and children occupying the huts thereon, but their spirit might well be broken, now that their male companions are to be charged with assault, etc, and their leader is in hiding from the strong arm of the law.”

The strong arm of the law eventually caught him, for, on August 20, 1941 Leonard Howell was tried again for sedition and sentenced to two years in prison. When he was released in 1943 he returned to The Pinnacle. For almost a decade after his return, The Pinnacle flourished as the residents were left alone to carry on their lives. Trading and farming were their major sources of income, of which they earned a lot. The population also boomed as people saw Pinnacle as a place where they could go to prosper on their own. But the good life was not to last forever.

In 1954, government militia invaded The Pinnacle and completely destroyed the village. The residents fled, but they were to subsequently return. Yet, Pinnacle did not really get back to its heyday. Leonard Howell died in 1981 at age 82, leaving a legacy of a movement that transcends race, colour and class, which has electrifying tentacles all over the world, and which is the subject of many studies, research, college and university papers.

He perhaps had no idea that the movement which he started on the streets of Kingston and St Catherine, and for which he was incarcerated, would have become one of the most influential movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, but, it is indeed.

The raids on The Pinnacle might have stymied operations on the rocky hilltop with the panoramic view, but they did not stop the universal appeal of the messages of Rastafari, a folk religion that was born right here in Jamaica, but evolved into an international movement.