Banana Link International Coordinator, Alistair Smith, pays tribute to St Vincentian journalist, trade unionist and social activist, Renwick Rose. Described as a “humbling giant” and a longtime Banana Link collaborator, Renwick passed away on 27 May aged 78 in his native St Vincent.
“Wha’ ’appening?” was the standard Vincy greeting that started many a banana conversation with Renwick, friend and fellow traveller from the Eastern Caribbean island nation of Saint Vincent & The Grenadines. Apart from his earlier years as a teacher, he was best known as a tireless journalist and advocate. In the banana world he was best known as the Coordinator of the Windward Islands Farmers’ Association (WINFA).
Together with Gilbert Bermudez, founder and former coordinator of the Latin American Banana Trade Union Coordinating Body (COLSIBA), and myself, as founder of Banana Link, he led a process of reflection and action on banana production and trade. He was the pillar of the triangular alliance between small farmers, plantation workers and informed consumers. It is this alliance that has driven Banana Link’s work for the last 30 years.
Back in 1992, I met Renwick at a press conference in Saint Lucia where he and small farmer delegates reported back to local media on a visit to understand what happens at the consumer end of the banana chain in the UK. Renwick saw clearly that sustainable livelihoods would never be achieved unless we found ways of engaging with the powerful players between farmgate and supermarket shelf. He also spoke of “the cold winds of ‘free trade’ blowing towards the Caribbean” with the creation of the Single European Market and appealed for help in finding out what was being cooked up in Brussels. That was precisely what was happening!
In October 1993, as Coordinator of Farmers’ Link, I organised what turned out to be an epic journey to Europe by Renwick and Gilbert. Although Gilbert’s English was non-existent and Renwick’s Spanish was limited to key phrases like “situacion muy dificil, companero” they travelled to Britain, then took the boat to the continent to meetings in Brussels and then Germany. On the ferry to the Hook of Holland, they encountered one of those “situaciones muy dificiles” with large numbers of drunken and racist English football fans travelling to a match in Amsterdam. Renwick’s warning to Gilbert led them to seek safe haven in the captain’s quarters to avoid any violent confrontation. Later on in the same trip, Renwick went on strike when the German volunteer leading them on foot to a meeting, with all their luggage, got lost in the hills of Wuppertal. Renwick sat down on his suitcase, refused to walk up and down any more hills and sought the solidarity of his Latin American companero!
Bringing the players together
After some 15 meetings of the European Banana Action Network (EUROBAN), founded in 1994, many of which Renwick attended as WINFA’s Programme Coordinator, it was decided to organise the first ever International Banana Conference. In 1997 and 1998, we co-organised preparatory workshops in Costa Rica and Saint Vincent to secure input from Latin American workers and Caribbean farmers into the event held in Brussels in May 1998 with 320 participants from 45 countries. All this against a backdrop of raging trade wars over European banana import policies that had preserved a certain level of favoured access by Caribbean and African ex-colonies to the EU market. The “cold winds of free trade” were coming from the USA and Latin American governments, at the behest of the US-based fruit multinationals, with endless trade law debates and hearings being played out in the inaccessible rooms of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva.
But Renwick’s convictions and capacity to explain the complexity of the banana ‘world stage’ to farmers were now focused on creating a fair banana trade that would allow small farmers to survive more easily if, and when, the EU was obliged by the ‘free trade’ ideology to open its market without social and environmental conditionality.
In 2000, this dream of a fair trade banana became a reality thanks to his perseverance, mobilising capacity and to the permanent strategic support of organised Latin American workers and European consumers. The first Fairtrade bananas from the Windwards were sold by Britain’s Cooperative supermarket chain, followed very shortly by J Sainsbury. Banana Link’s consumer education and campaigning work at events like the Notting Hill Carnival and with Caribbean communities in Britain ensured a ripple effect as other supermarkets followed suit and Fairtrade came to account for one banana in four sold in Britain. Renwick’s regular visits and our permanent contact with farmers in the Windward Islands were the backbone of this achievement.
Away from the international stage, in his home country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Renwick was the architect of the democratisation of the banana industry, using the structures and opportunity of Fairtrade to set up local fair trade farmers’ organisations across the industry. His influence with long-time Prime Minister of Saint Vincent, Ralph Gonsalves, helped position WINFA and its thousands of farmer members as important players in the small island economies and guaranteeing sustainable rural livelihoods, decades after post-colonial land reform had broken up the plantation model set up by the British company Geest.
Bringing players together again
In 2004 and 2005, WINFA, COLSIBA, IUF, EUROBAN and US partners LEAP, organised preparatory workshops in the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Western and Eastern Europe feeding into the second International Banana Conference in May 2005, this time in the Flemish Parliament in Brussels. Again, the alliance of organised small farmers, trade unions in plantations and organisations in consumer countries brought the banana world together around our common agenda for social, economic and environmental transformation of the banana industry. “Reversing the Race to Bottom” and creating a race to the top were the focus, bringing for the first time players from the supermarket world and African exporting countries into the arena. Renwick’s vision, shared by the civil society alliance, was to propose the creation of a ‘permanent multi-stakeholder forum’, as we framed it.
After as exhaustive as possible a series of preparatory events organised by the international civil society alliance and a formal year-long preparatory process hosted by the FAO, fruit companies and big retailers, governments and UN bodies and civil society launched the World Banana Forum. Renwick was nominated as its first chair. Again, his combination of vision and pragmatism had made a dream come true.
In the eye of the storms
The story of the 2010s, after Renwick handed over the coordination of the Windward farmers’ transformation through fair trade, is one of increasing climatic deregulation in the Eastern Caribbean. Some of the most violent hurricanes in history almost completely wiped Grenada and Dominica off the map. Others very seriously affected Saint Vincent and Saint Lucia, leaving farmers’ devastated and increasingly unable to re-enter the international market. This climatic violence coupled with the gradual liberalisation of the EU banana market after the WTO-imposed reforms of 2006, caused Windwards banana exports to plummet. By the end of the decade only Saint Lucia was left in the international trade, with very small volumes. Farmers were left to try and save their livelihoods in the sub-regional market or by diversifying away from bananas. WINFA’s focus had to shift to adapt to its members’ needs.
The demise of the fair trade success story was a hard truth to digest for Renwick and a source of profound disappointment. Overcoming the social and economic injustices inherited from the colonial period was a movement he led, but climate injustice and the inherent disadvantages of not competing with the economies of scale in the global banana trade were factors beyond the control of rural people in the Windward Islands, however visionary their leaders were.
Daring to be wise
Renwick’s vision and wisdom, as well as his sense of humour, live on. His contribution was enormous. His last writing on the role of women in Caribbean social struggles demonstrates his understanding of – and support for – the transformational power of organised women, an uncommon attribute for a man of his generation.
Thirty years after the creation of Banana Link, nearly forty since the creation of WINFA and 33 since the birth of COLSIBA in Latin America, Renwick’s legacy is, amongst other achievements, the movement driven by organised workers and small farmers that has put the issues of social and economic justice on the international banana agenda.
Our deep heartfelt condolences go to his wife Ancelma, his children and grandchildren, and the whole extended family who supported him throughout his long struggle with cancer. The forthcoming book by Gilbert Bermudez is dedicated to Renwick, a testament to his influence across any language barriers.
As Renwick would say: “One Love!”
Read more
Vincentian Giant Renwick Rose Has Died – St Vincent Times
Searchlight loses stalwart Renwick Rose – Searchlight (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)
Veteran journalist and trade unionist Renwick Rose has died – One News SVG
Photo: St Vincent Times
