Union man disputes Penny’s claim about father Story Created: Mar 18, 2014 at 9:26 PM ECT Story Updated: Mar 19, 2014 at 10:10 AM ECT Gerry Kangalee, education and research officer at National Workers’ Union, has taken issue with statements by Pennelope Beckles-Robinson and Danny Montano that Beckles-Robinson’s father, Lionel, was involved in the Bloody Tuesday labour unrest in 1975 and was jailed. Beckles-Robinson had stated her father was secretary-general of Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) and she lived through the revolutionary days of Bloody Tuesday, including watching the police come for her father during those times. Kangalee’s letter on the issue was read out by People’s National Movement (PNM) party chairman Franklin Khan at the PNM meeting in Bon Air on Monday night. The Express was given a copy of the letter. Kangalee said he spoke to Cecil Paul about the inaccuracies and at first decided to leave it alone. He said when he saw Montano stating his father was minister of National Security when Beckles-Robinson’s father was arrested, he “knew then that I should not have ignored the distortion of working class history propagated by Ms Beckles-Robinson and now compounded by Danny Montano”. “It struck me that I was part of a project documenting certain ignored and/or not well known aspects of working class history, yet I was letting pass this blatant revision of a significant period of our history by these descendants of the very people who had done the most to derail the struggle of the labour movement over the years,” said Kangalee. “Beckles-Robinson’s claims that due to her father’s ‘career with the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union...’ she had lived through the revolutionary days of Bloody Tuesday, including watching police come for her father during those times. “Now, her father Lionel Beckles’s career as general-secretary of the OWTU came to an end in 1972. Bloody Tuesday was March 18, 1975. If Beckles-Robinson watched police coming for her father in 1975, it certainly wasn’t because of his union activity,” he said. “Danny Montano claimed Lionel Beckles was arrested ‘in the 1970s revolt’ and his father, national security minister at that time, would have jailed her father. “The only truthful thing in that statement was that Danny Montano’s father, Gerard Montano, was the PNM’s Minister of Home Affairs. That post is now referred to as National Security.” But Khan pointed out that Patrick Manning replaced Gerard Montano in 1971 as San Fernando East MP, so he was not in office for Bloody Tuesday. “The records will show that the ‘1970s revolt’ was marked by two states of emergency. The first ran from April to November 1970. The second state of emergency began in late 1971 and ended in June 1972. At the time of the two states of emergency, Lionel Beckles was general-secretary of the OWTU, but he was not, as Montano claims, jailed by his (Montano’s) father,” Kangalee stated.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 19:30:04 +0000
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