95. Clemens Dutt, ‘The Colonial Policy of the Labour and Socialist International’, Anti-imperialist Review 1: 1 (July 1928), p. 14.
96. Ibid., p. 15.
97. The Covenant of the League of Nations, available at the Avalon Project at the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School, at avalon.law.yale.edu.
98. For an informative account of the Mandates system, see Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
99. Reginald Bridgeman, ‘Britain and the System of Colonial Mandates’, unpublished TS (n.d. [possibly 1934/1935]), Bridgeman Papers, 2. U DBN/26/1.
100. ‘League against Imperialism and for National Independence (British Section), Fifth Annual Conference, Saturday and Sunday, January 25th and 26th 1936’, Bridgeman Papers, Hull University Archives, U DBN 25/1.
101. Susan Pedersen, Guardians, p. 3.
102. Ibid., p. 5.
103. Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, vol. 1, p. 88. For another account of the organization’s founding moment and subsequent history, see Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York, London: New Press, 2007).
104. Willi Münzenberg, ‘From Demonstration to Organisation’, Anti-imperialist Review 1: 1 (July 1928), p. 10.
105. ‘Report of the First Annual Conference of the League against Imperialism (British Section), 1931’, Bridgeman Papers, Hull History Centre, U DBN/25/1.
106. Saville, ‘Reginald Bridgeman’, in Bellamy and Saville, Dictionary of Labour Biography, p. 47.
107. Michele L. Louro, ‘Where National Revolutionary Ends and Communist Begins: The League against Imperialism and the Meerut Conspiracy Case’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 33: 3 (2013), p. 335.
108. Louro argues that, for the British Section of the LAI ‘from 1929 to 1933, the Meerut Conspiracy Case consumed nearly all of its time and resources’. Ibid., p. 339.
109. J. Ayodele Langley, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa, 1900–1945: A Study in Ideology and Social Classes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), pp. 301–2. For more on Senghor, see also David Murphy, ‘Defending the “Negro Race”: Lamine Senghor and Black Internationalism in Interwar France’, French Cultural Studies 24: 2 (2013), pp. 161–73.
110. Ibid., p. 305.
111. Cited in Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, vol. 1, p. 272.
112. J. R. Campbell, ‘J. R. Campbell, Introducing the Resolution on IMPERIALISM & WAR, Nov 1934’, unpublished, Bridgeman Papers, U DBN/25/4, p. 5.
113. James Maxton, ‘Foreword’, Anti-imperialist Review 1: 1 (July 1928), p. 1.
114. Münzenberg, ‘From Demonstration to Organisation’, Anti-Imperialist Review 1:1 (July 1928), p. 8.
115. Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, vol. 2, p. 974.
116. Fenner Brockway, ‘The Coloured People’s International’, New Leader, 26 August 1927.
117. Fenner Brockway, ‘At the International’, New Leader, 16 September 1927.
118. Ibid.
119. Brockway, ‘Coloured People’s International’.
120. Fenner Brockway, ‘At Brussels’, New Leader, 18 February 1927.
121. Brockway, ‘Coloured People’s International’.
122. Ibid.
123. George Lansbury, ‘A Great Week-End at Brussels’, Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 19 February 1927. Reprinted in the Canton Gazette, 25 March 1927.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid.
129. Ibid.
130. Ibid.
131. Pedersen, Guardians, p. 112.
132. Ibid., p. 78; Dantés Bellegarde, cited in ibid., p. 84.
133. Ibid., p. 92.
134. Ibid., p. 93.
135. Christian Høgsbjerg rightly notes that assumptions about such durability and legitimacy were hegemonic among progressive British intellectuals of the period, and cites Lansbury’s own later insistence (in 1934) that there could be no immediate decolonization even under a socialist government. This was, of course, a retreat from the insight Lansbury articulates here, representing his own retrenchment from the LAI into Labour conservatism. But the point still remains: the moment of the LAI represents a fracture in the hegemon. See Christian Høgsbjerg, C. L. R. James in Imperial Britain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), p. 201.
136. ‘Report of the National Conference of the League against Imperialism (British Section), February 1931’, Bridgeman Papers, Hull University Archives, U DBN25/1.
137. Conrad Noel, The Meaning of Imperialism (London: League against Imperialism, 1928), p. 7.
138. Ibid., pp. 13, 2.
139. Ibid., p. 2.
140. Ibid., p. 3.
141. Ibid., p. 4.
142. Ibid., p. 5.
143. Ibid., p. 6.
144. Ibid., p. 12.
145. Ibid.
146. Ibid.
147. Cited in ibid., p. 15.
148. Ibid.
149. J. R. Campbell, ‘J. R. Campbell, Introducing a Resolution on Imperialism and War, Nov 1934’, unpublished, Bridgeman Papers, U DBN/25/4]
150. The Colonies and Oppressed Nations in the Struggle for Freedom: Resolutions Adopted by the Executive Committee of the League against Imperialism and for National Independence (Berlin: International Secretariat of the League against Imperialism, 1931), p. 3, in Bridgeman Papers, U DBN/25/1.
151. Ibid., p. 9.
152. Ibid.
153. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
154. Ibid., p. 5. The Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order, 18 March 1925, stated that “coloured” seamen who did not possess documentary proof of their status as British must register as ‘aliens’ in Britain. National Archives, Kew, HO 45/12314.
155. See Petersson, Willi Münzenberg, especially vol. 2, for a very thorough if rather cluttered account of the various machinations and movements that brought the organization to its final end in 1937.
156. Ibid., p. 976.
157. Petersson, ‘The “Colonial Conference” ’, p. 75.
7. Black Voices Matter
1. Pan-African Association, ‘Address to the Nations of the World by the Pan-African Conference in London, 1900’, in J. Ayodele Langley, ed., Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa 1856–1970: Documents on Modern African Political Thought from Colonial Times to the Present (London: Rex Collins, 1979), pp. 738–9.
2. Owen Charles Mathurin, Henry Sylvester Williams and the Origins of the Pan-African Movement, 1869–1911 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976). Mathurin suggests that the first use of the term ‘pan-African’ is to be found in a letter written by Williams in 1899 with reference to the upcoming conference. Ibid., pp. 46, 52.
3. Ibid., p. 54.
4. Jonathan Derrick, Africa’s Agitators: Militant Anti-colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918–1939 (London: Hurst, 2008), p. 23.
5. ‘Report of the Pan-African Conference’, cited in Mathurin, Henry Sylvester Williams, p. 56.
6. W. E. B. Du Bois et al., ‘Address to the Nations of the World by the Pan-African Conference in London, 1900’, in Langley, ed., Ideologies of Liberation, p. 738.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 739.
9. Ibid., p. 738.
10. Ibid, my emphasis.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., pp. 738–9.
13. Ibid., p. 739.
14. Ibid.
15. Laura A. Winkiel, Modernism, Race and Manifestos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 34, 27.
16. Pan-African Association, ‘The London Manifesto (29 August 1921)’, in Langley, Ideologies of Liberation, p. 748.
17. Ibid., p. 748.
18. Ibid., p. 750.
19. Ibid., p. 749.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 750.
22. Ibid., p. 749.
23. Ibid., p. 750.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., p. 751.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 752.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 751.
34. Ibid.
35. The phrase ‘rebel sojourner’ that appears in the subheading is Wayne F. Cooper’s. See his Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996).
36. Pan-African Association, ‘London Manifesto’, p. 751.
37. Satnam Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider (London: Palgrave, 2014), p. 74.
38. E. D. Morel, ‘Black Scourge in Europe’, Daily Herald, 10 April 1920. The subheadings on the front page included: ‘Sexual Horror Let Loose by France on the Rhine’, ‘Disappearance of Young German Girls’ and ‘A Deliberate Policy’.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., emphasis in original.
42. R. C. Reinders, ‘Racialism on the Left: E. D. Morel and the Black Horror on the Rhine’, International Review of Social History 13: 1 (April 1968), p. 4. This is a full – and damning – account of Morel’s pamphlet and its reception.
43. Morel, ‘Black Scourge in Europe’.
44. Ibid.
45. E. D. Morel, ‘Black Scourge in Europe’, Daily Herald, 10 April 1920.
46. ‘Black Peril on the Rhine: Wave of Indignation’, Daily Herald, 12 April 1920.
47. Morel, ‘Black Scourge in Europe’.
48. ‘Brutes in French Uniform’, Daily Herald, 13 April 1920.
49. Reinders, ‘Racialism on the Left’, p. 2.
50. Reinders offers a full list. Ibid., p. 7.
51. As just one example, the entry for Morel in the left-wing encyclopedia Spartacus Educational (spartacus-educational.com) also fails to refer to the ‘Black Scourge’ affair.
52. ‘Democratic Control, Debate on Labour’s Foreign Policy, the Black Troops’, Daily Herald, 26 April 1920.
53. E. D. Morel, The Horror on the Rhine, with a Preface by Arthur Ponsonby and New Foreword by the Author, 8th edn (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1921), p. 23.
54. Barbara Foley, cited in Gene Andrew Jarrett, ‘Introduction’, in Claude McKay, A Long Way from Home (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), p. xxv.
55. Claude McKay, ‘A Black Man Replies’, in Wayne Cooper, ed., The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Prose and Poetry, 1912–1948 (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 55–6.
56. Ibid., p. 55.
57. Ibid.
58. Reinders notes that, many years later, McKay explained that he believed the Second International’s fear that French militarism would destroy the German Social Democrats is what may have motivated the turn to race by Morel and others – the knowledge that an appeal to racial solidarity would be the only hope in the face of widespread anti-Germanism in Britain. Reinders, ‘Racialism on the Left’, p. 26.
59. McKay, ‘A Black Man Replies’, p. 56.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. For a thorough account of these see Jacqueline Jenkinson, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009). Jenkinson cites a letter from the African Races Association of Glasgow which condemns ‘the unwarrantable attacks that have been made upon men of colour, without exception, as one common herd of inferior beings’, also asking pertinently: ‘Did not some of these men fight on the same battlefields with white men to defeat the same enemy and make secure the British Empire?’ (p. 8).
63. Ibid., p. 4.
64. Virdee, Racism, Class, and the Racialized Outsider, p. 79.
65. McKay, A Long Way from Home, pp. 75.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Claude McKay, letter to Nancy Cunard, 18 September 1932, Harry Ransom Center Nancy Cunard Papers (hereafter HRC) 17.1.
69. Wayne F. Cooper and Robert C. Reinders, ‘A Black Briton Comes “Home”: Claude McKay in England, 1920’, Race and Class 9: 1 (1967), pp. 80, 79.
70. Ibid., p. 80.
71. McKay, A Long Way from Home, p. 76.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., p. 68. He sought refuge in two clubs, one ‘for colored soldiers’ in a basement in Drury Lane which he felt obliged to withdraw from after describing in print the ‘patronizing white maternal attitude toward her colored charges’ of the Englishwoman who ran it. Ibid., p. 67–8.
74. McKay, letter to Nancy Cunard, 30 April 1932, HRC 17.1.
75. McKay, A Long Way from Home, p. 78.
76. Ibid., p. 77.
77. Ibid., p. 78.
78. Ibid., p. 61.
79. Claude McKay, ‘Socialism and the Negro’, in Cooper, ed., Passion of Claude McKay, p. 54.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., p. 51.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid., p. 53–4.
84. Ibid., p. 54.
85. Leon Lopez, ‘The Yellow Peril and the Dockers’, Workers Dreadnought VII: 30 (16 October 1920).
86. Ibid.
87. Jarrett, ‘Introduction’, in McKay, A Long Way from Home, p. xxvii.
88. Cited in Winston James, ‘A Race Outcast from an Outcast Class: Claude McKay’s Experience and Analysis of Britain’, in Bill Schwarz, ed., West Indian Intellectuals in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 85, emphasis in original.
89. Ibid., p. 72.
90. ‘Stabbing Negroes in the London Dock Area’, editorial, Workers Dreadnought VI: 11 (7 June 1919).
91. ‘The Indian Reform Bill’, editorial, Workers Dreadnought VI: 12 (14 June 1919).
92. ‘India and Ireland: India Going Sinn Fein’, Workers Dreadnought VIII: 43 (7 January 1922).
93. Cited in Mary Davis, Sylvia Pankhurst: A Life in Radical Politics (London: Pluto, 1999), p. 106.
94. Sylvia Pankhurst, India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: Sunshine, 1926), pp. 637–8.
95. McKay to Cunard, 1 December 1931, HRC 17.1, emphasis in original. Also cited in Lois Gordon, Nancy Cunard: Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 164.
96. Jane Marcus, Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004). Marcus writes, correctly, that Cunard has too often been dismissed as an eccentric wealthy aristocrat whose sole claim to fame is her bohemianism: ‘When the stories of African anticolonial struggles are finally written, perhaps it is here she will find her place in history’ (p. 122). She also has a place in the histories of anti-racism in Britain and the United States.
97. For a fuller picture of the Scottsboro campaign in Britain and key figures associated with it, see Susan D. Pennybacker’s excellent detailed study, From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). Another LAI figure who was visible in the Scottsboro campaign was Willi Münzenberg, in addition to many other communists including Saklatvala.
98. For an account of how Negro sits within a wider modernist antho-logical culture, see Peter J. Kalliney, Commonwealth of Letters: British Literary Culture and the Emergence of Postcolonial Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially Chapter 2, ‘Race and Anthologies’.
99. Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 310.
100. Nancy Cunard to Dorothy Padmore, ‘For Dorothy’, HRC 17.10.
101. Edwards, Practice of Diaspora, p. 310.
102. Irina Rasmussen Goloubeva, ‘Curating Art, Rewriting World History: Nancy Cunard’s Negro: An Anthology (1934)’, in Margrét Gunnarsdóttir Champion and Irina Rasmussen Goloubeva, eds, Ethics and Poetics: Ethical Recognitions and Social Reconfigurations in Modern Narratives (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), p. 283.
103. Cited in Hugh Ford, ed., Nancy Cunard: Brave Poet, Indomitable Rebel, 1896–1965 (New York: Chilton Book Company, 1968), p. 114. Cited in Gordon, Nancy Cu
nard, p. 156.
104. Laura A. Winkiel, ‘Nancy Cunard’s Negro and the Transnational Politics of Race’, Modernism/Modernity 13: 3 (September 2006), p. 513.
105. Alain Locke to Cunard, 14 April 1934, HRC 20.10.
106. Marcus, Hearts of Darkness, p. 123. Marcus is eloquent on Cunard’s centrality to modernism as a ‘living network, a one-woman permanent walking demonstration against racism and fascism, and a celebrant of black culture in all its forms. She had a voice in shaping many of the competing and conflicting discourses of modernism, but in their histories there is only the marginal trace of a husky whisper, a streak of kohl across those hooded piercing eyes, remembered in a malicious footnote, and a stunning visual history in photographs, portraits, and sculpture by major and minor modernist artists’ (ibid.). Marcus argues that Cunard changed art history by pioneering ‘the revaluation of ethnic objects as art for museums and private collectors’ (p. 126).
107. Ibid., p. 128.
108. HRC 10.8 contains several of these offensive letters that Cunard kept.
109. Alan Warren Friedman, ‘Introduction’, in Alan Warren Friedman, ed., Beckett in Black and Red: The Translations for Nancy Cunard’s Negro (1934) (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014), p. xi.
110. Winkiel, ‘Nancy Cunard’s Negro’, p. 515.
111. Winkiel, Modernism, Race and Manifestos, p. 162.
112. Robin D. G. Kelley, ‘ “But a Local Phase of a World Problem”: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950’, Journal of American History 86: 3 (December 1999), The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History – A Special Issue, p. 1,055.
113. Cunard, ‘Review of Africa Answers Back’, undated typescript, probably 1934 or 1935, HRC 8.6.
114. Cunard to the Spectator and Lothrop Stoddard, probably 6 June 1931, HRC 10.6.
115. James (Ford?) to Cunard, 2 April 1934, HRC 20.10.
116. Hughes to Cunard, HRC 15.11.
117. Cited in Anne Chisholm, Nancy Cunard (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1979), p. 191.
118. McKay to Cunard, 20 August 1932, HRC 17.1.
119. Hugh Ford, ‘Introduction’, in Cunard, Negro, p. xi.
120. A shortened version of the anthology was published in 1970 by Hugh Ford.
121. For more on Beckett’s work with the anthology, see Friedman, Beckett in Black and Red.
122. Eugene Gordon to Cunard, 7 June 1934, HRC 20.10, emphasis in original.
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