Documents show Black activist who became Dominican PM was target of RCMP – National | 24CA News

It has lengthy been identified that the RCMP Security Service took a eager curiosity in Roosevelt “Rosie” Douglas, a Black rights activist who attended faculty in Canada and would go on to be prime minister of Dominica.

But just lately launched information reveal simply how far the Mounties would go within the early Seventies to control the younger customer from the Caribbean.

Douglas, the son of a rich coconut grower in tiny Dominica, got here to Ontario to check agriculture earlier than transferring on to Sir George Williams University in Montreal.

Initially a supporter of the federal Conservatives, he grew to become an outspoken advocate for the development of Black individuals and solid ties with worldwide motion leaders.

Though he was a grasp’s scholar at McGill University by early 1969, Douglas emerged as one of many leaders of a protest at Sir George Williams towards alleged racism. As police moved to evict the coed demonstrators from the college’s pc centre, a fireplace broke out and chaos ensued.

Douglas was among the many dozens arrested and charged. He served 18 months in jail and was compelled to depart Canada in 1976 after combating to remain.

Douglas promoted the push for Dominica’s full independence from Britain and would lead the nation as prime minister for a short while earlier than his demise in 2000 at age 58.

A fee of inquiry into questionable RCMP safety actions publicly confirmed greater than 40 years in the past that Douglas was a goal of Security Service surveillance whereas in Canada. The Mounties recruited an informant who infiltrated the Black activist group and have become an affiliate of Douglas.

A particular operations group on the Security Service developed a nationwide program of disruptive countermeasures within the early Seventies to stop or include what the pressure noticed because the potential for political violence by agitators of varied stripes.

Specific targets of this system, which got here to be generally known as Checkmate, have been categorised for a few years. But information disclosed by means of the Access to Information Act reveal that considered one of these actions was geared toward eavesdropping on Douglas’s dialog with a fellow activist.

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The RCMP knew Douglas used his personal automobile to journey quick distances however unwittingly relied on one of many pressure’s informants to move him on longer journeys.

Douglas was heading to Toronto to satisfy an necessary contact visiting Canada from the Caribbean. The RCMP reasoned that if his automobile have been immobilized, Douglas would wish to journey within the informant’s car with the customer, permitting “us to monitor their discussions through technical means,” says an inner account of the Checkmate program, launched below the entry legislation.

“A chemical, harmless to the engine, was introduced to the gas tank of Douglas’ car for this purpose. The operation was unsuccessful due to the chemical’s malfunction.”

However, one other effort noticed the RCMP “conduct an operation to discredit Douglas as a leader within the Black community and factionalize an already shaky alliance of Black groups Douglas was attempting to bring under his control.”

The RCMP adopted the proactive Checkmate ways out of concern that current authorized mechanisms have been both reactive and due to this fact inappropriate to intelligence wants, or insufficient to cope with new safety threats.

The RCMP archival information spotlight issues in regards to the emergence within the Nineteen Sixties of extra radical parts of the New Left and the intense proper. They level to increasing membership in Communist, Trotskyist, Maoist and different political organizations, together with the separatist FLQ in Quebec.

The Mounties have been additionally nervous about “Canadian extremists” making hyperlinks with overseas teams such because the Irish Republican Army, Palestinian organizations, and the Black Panther Party and Weathermen within the U.S., “all with a bloodied record of politically motivated violence and assassination.”

In the early Seventies, such Canadian parts weren’t united below a single banner, the RCMP wrote. “Individually, their actions seemed to be manageable, but the prospects of a Common Front foretold alarming consequences for civil order.”

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It is one factor for authorities to take motion towards people who’re instantly advocating violence, however fairly one other to silence people who find themselves merely espousing radical views on the idea they may take up weapons sooner or later, mentioned Steve Hewitt, whose e-book “Spying 101” examined RCMP surveillance of college campuses.

“That strikes me as rather dangerous in a free society.”

Researcher Andrea Conte, who has additionally delved into police operations towards activists through the interval, doesn’t really feel he has an entire image of the RCMP actions with regard to Douglas. Conte factors out that Douglas unsuccessfully appealed to look on the inquiry into the RCMP within the late Seventies.

In a letter outlining why he must be allowed to testify, Douglas wrote he had been a part of an open and democratic wrestle towards racial injustice that was attracting help from parliamentarians, church buildings and different distinguished organizations.

“What did the RCMP fear in me _ a non-violent civil libertarian?”

Security Service ways through the period included unlawful break-ins, the theft of a Parti Quebecois membership record and the burning of a barn to stop a gathering from happening.

The RCMP’s deeds led to the disbandment of the Security Service and the 1984 creation of the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Eight years in the past, CSIS acquired authority to transcend conventional intelligence gathering and have interaction in risk discount measures towards targets _ legalization of the form of “dirty tricks” that received the RCMP in bother.

In concept, there may be extra consciousness of those strategies and restrictions in place right now, however lingering tensions over permitting a home intelligence company to hold out disruption operations, mentioned Hewitt, a senior lecturer in American and Canadian research on the University of Birmingham in England.

“There’s always the potential for it to be abused.”