113. International African Service Bureau, ‘Manifesto against War’, September 25, 1938; International African Opinion 1:4 (October 1938).
114. ‘Politics and the Negro: Africa and the New Diaspora’, International African Opinion 1: 3 (September 1938).
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
117. Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom, p. 204.
118. ‘Editorial: Hitler and the Colonies’, International African Opinion 1: 5 (November 1938).
119. Ibid.
120. Ibid.
121. Ibid.
122. Ibid.
123. Eric Williams, The Negro in the Caribbean, p. 52.
124. Ibid., p. 53.
125. Ibid., 57: ‘At various periods before 1935 there had been labour unrest in the British West Indies and attempts at the formation of Workingmen’s Associations. It is significant that one of the most important of these uprisings took place in Trinidad in 1919 during the international unrest which followed the World War.’
126. Ibid., p. 65.
127. George Padmore, ‘Fascism in the Colonies’, Controversy 2: 17 (February 1938).
128. International African Service Bureau, The West Indies Today (London: International African Service Bureau, 1956), p. 40.
129. Ibid., p. 41.
130. ‘In carrying out this programme, the Bureau will be pleased to supply speakers to Labour Party Branches, Trade Unions, Co-operative Guilds, and other working-class and progressive organisations, in order to explain the present conditions under which the coloured populations in various parts of the Empire live’. Williams, The Negro in the Caribbean, quoted from ‘What Is the International African Service Bureau’, on inside back cover.
131. George Padmore, ‘Manifesto against War’, International African Opinion 1: 4 (October 1938).
132. C. L. R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (London: Allison & Busby, 1977), p. 69.
133. Edwards, Practice of Diaspora, p. 305.
134. Ibid.
135. Williams, The Negro in the Caribbean, p. 52.
136. James, History of Negro Revolt, pp. 5–6.
137. Ibid., p. 16.
138. Ibid., p. 18.
139. Ibid., p. 27.
140. Ibid., p. 45.
141. Ibid., p. 47
142. Walter Rodney, ‘The African Revolution’, in Paul Buhle, ed., C. L. R. James: His Life and Work (London: Allison & Busby, 1986), p. 32.
143. For a fuller account of such movements, see Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against European Colonial Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
144. Rodney, ‘African Revolution’, pp. 34–5.
145. Ibid., p. 31.
146. James, History of Negro Revolt, p. 52.
147. Ibid., p. 62.
148. Ibid.
149. Ibid.
150. Ibid., p. 69.
151. Ibid., p. 71.
152. Ibid., p. 81.
153. Ibid.
154. Ibid.
155. Ibid., p. 83.
156. Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, p. 238.
157. The Times, 4 May 1938, cited in ibid., p. 308.
158. Cited in Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, 330. ‘By the end of August … it was clear that the main response of the Colonial Office to the Jamaican labour rebellion was to accept it as final proof that some major action had to be taken to revise West Indian policy’ (p. 336).
159. See ibid., p. 327.
160. Cited in Post, Arise Ye Starvelings, p. 367.
161. Arthur Calder-Marshall, Glory Dead (London: M. Joseph, 1939), p. 255. See also W. M. Macmillan, Warning from the West Indies (London: Faber & Faber, 1936).
162. W. Arthur Lewis, Labour in the West Indies: The Birth of a Workers Movement (London: New Beacon, 1977 [1939]), p. 41.
163. Ibid., pp. 18–19.
164. Ibid., p. 19.
165. Ibid., p. 40.
166. Ibid., my emphasis.
167. C. L. R. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, in Anna Grimshaw, ed., The C. L. R. James Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 294–5.
168. ‘Between 1930 and 1945 all of us saw African emancipation as dependent upon the breakdown of imperialist power in Europe. Armed rebellion was sure to be crushed unless the imperialist powers were impotent; and this could only be the result of revolutions within the metropolitan powers themselves … The need for a political reappraisal rose from the fact that, contrary to our pre-war speculations, nowhere had the proletariat of the metropolitan powers overthrown the imperialist state. The actual struggle of the Africans now had to depend on themselves alone.’ Ibid., p. 294.
169. Makonnen, Pan-Africanism, p. 147.
9. Smash Our Own Imperialism
1. George Padmore to Nancy Cunard, n.d., Harry Ransom Centre, Nancy Cunard Papers (hereafter HRC) 17.10.
2. Nancy Cunard and George Padmore, ‘The White Man’s Duty: An Analysis of the Colonial Question in Light of the Atlantic Charter’, in Maureen Moynagh, ed., Essays on Race and Empire (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2002), pp. 127–77.
3. Cunard and Padmore, ‘White Man’s Duty’, p. 138.
4. Ibid., p. 139.
5. Ibid., p. 144.
6. Ibid., p. 160.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 127.
9. Typescript of ‘White Man’s Duty’, HRC 9.10.
10. Cunard and Padmore, ‘White Man’s Duty’, p. 136.
11. Ibid.
12. Nancy Cunard and George Padmore, The White Man’s Duty (London: W. H. Allen, 1942), front cover.
13. James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore’s Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (London: Pall Mall, 1967), p. 12.
14. For more on this phase of Padmore’s political career, see Imanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, transl. Ann Keep (London: Methuen, 1974).
15. Hooker, Black Revolutionary, pp. 17–18.
16. Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 5.
17. Robin D. G. Kelley, ‘A Poetics of Anticolonialism’, in Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, transl. Joan Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review, 2000), p. 20.
18. Ibid.
19. ‘George Padmore: Black Marxist Revolutionary’, in C. L. R. James, At the Rendezvous of Victory: Selected Writings (London: Allison & Busby, 1984), p. 257.
20. James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below, p. 11.
21. Susan D. Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich: Race and Political Culture in 1930s Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Minkah Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Carol Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis, ed., George Padmore: Pan-African Revolutionary (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2008).
22. C. L. R. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, in Anna Grimshaw, ed., The C. L. R. James Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p. 290.
23. Cited in Anthony Bogues, ‘C. L. R. James and George Padmore: The Ties That Bind – Black Radicalism and Political Friendship’, in Baptiste and Lewis, George Padmore, p. 200.
24. Rupert Lewis, ‘Introduction’, in Baptiste and Lewis, George Padmore.
25. James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below, p. 3.
26. Matera describes James’s views as going ‘beyond the cautious anti-imperialism of the ILP’. Marc Matera, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), p. 79. My suggestion here is that James Padmore and others contributed to a degree of radicalization where the organizati
on’s engagement with the Empire was concerned.
27. As Cedric Robinson has noted, left politicians such as William Gallagher (of the Communist Party), Fenner Brockway and Reginald Sorensen were among those associated with the black intelligentsia in Britain, who included, in addition to James and Padmore, Arnold Ward, Chris Jones, Ras Makonnen and Peter Blackman, among others. Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London/Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 261.
28. James, ‘George Padmore: Black Marxist Revolutionary’, in James, At the Rendezvous of Victory, p. 256.
29. Bert J. Thomas, ‘George Padmore’, in Thomas, ed., The Struggle for Liberation: From Dubois to Nyerere (New York: Theo Gaus, 1982), pp. 46–7.
30. George Padmore, ‘Trusteeship – the New Imperialism’, New Leader, 2 February 1946.
31. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, p. 293.
32. Peter Abrahams, The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century: An Autobiography and Meditation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000), p. 38
33. Geiss, Pan-African Movement, p. 353.
34. Hooker, Black Revolutionary, p. 46.
35. Arnold Ward, cited in Makalani, In the Cause of Freedom, p. 185.
36. James, citing Padmore, in ‘George Padmore: Black Marxist Revolutionary’, p. 255.
37. Cited in Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa, p. 4.
38. See James, ‘George Padmore’.
39. Ibid., p. 254.
40. Cited in Hooker, Black Revolutionary, p. 31.
41. Ibid., p. 33.
42. James, ‘George Padmore’, p. 255.
43. Ibid.
44. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, p. 292.
45. George Padmore, The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers (London: Red International Labour Unions Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 1931), available at marxists.org.
46. James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below, p. 22.
47. George Padmore to Cyril Olivierre, 11 December 1945, Padmore Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, MG.624.
48. Padmore, Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers.
49. George Padmore to Cyril Olivierre, 28 July 1934, Padmore Papers, MG.624.
50. James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below, p. 28.
51. For an extensive discussion of Padmore’s collaboration and friendship with Kouyaté, see Edwards, Practice of Diaspora, Chapter 5. Edwards writes that the two men developed an internationalist politics enabled by the Comintern in the first instance, but ‘one not wholly subsumed in a Comintern agenda, one that emphasizes race-based organizing and anti-colonial alliances among differently positioned revolutionaries of African descent’ (p. 264).
52. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, p. 293.
53. See Hakim Adi, West Africans in Britain: 1900–1960, Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), pp. 24–8.
54. James, ‘Notes on the Life of George Padmore’, p. 292.
55. Ibid., p. 293.
56. Nancy Cunard to Dorothy Padmore, ‘For Dorothy’, n.d., HRC 17.10.
57. Dorothy Padmore to Nancy Cunard, in ibid.
58. Cited in Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey: An Autobiography (London: C. Hurst, 1970), p. 198.
59. George Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa (London: Wishart, 1936), pp. 390–1.
60. Ibid., p. 391.
61. Times Literary Supplement, 27 June 1936, cited in Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, p. 17.
62. Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa, pp. 3–4.
63. Ibid., p. 4.
64. George Padmore to Otto Theis, cited in Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa, p. 5.
65. Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa, p. 7.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., p. 9.
69. Ibid., p. 16.
70. Ibid., pp. 15–16.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., p. 17.
73. Ibid., p. 395.
74. C. L. R. James, ‘ “Civilising” the “Blacks”: Why Britain Needs to Maintain Her Colonial Possessions’, New Leader, 29 May 1936.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa, p. 395. Polsgrove notes elegantly: ‘Around the act of publication, a political community had formed.’ This was, also, ‘a collaborative work, an exercise in solidarity’. Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa, p. 7.
78. Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa, pp. 395–6.
79. Ibid., p. 333.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., p. 335.
82. Ibid., p. 350.
83. Ibid., p. 360.
84. C. L. R. James, ‘The Making of the Caribbean People’, in C. L. R. James, Spheres of Existence: Selected Writings (London: Allison & Busby, 1980), p. 177.
85. Padmore, How Britain Rules Africa, p. 362.
86. Ibid., p. 363.
87. Ibid., pp. 394–5.
88. Arthur Ballard, ‘Smash Our Own Imperialism’, New Leader, 21 April 1939.
89. Gideon Cohen, The Failure of a Dream: The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II (London: Tauris Academic, 2007), p. 1.
90. Ibid.
91. Christian Høgsbjerg, ‘C. L. R. James, George Orwell and “Literary Trotskyism” ’, George Orwell Studies 1: 2 (2017).
92. Sarah Britton, ‘ “Come and See the Empire by the All Red Route!”: Anti-imperialism and Exhibitions in Interwar Britain’, History Workshop Journal 69: 1 (1 March 2010), p. 82.
93. Satnam Virdee, Racism, Class, and the Racialised Outsider (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 83.
94. Ibid., p. 84.
95. ‘National Liberation to Be Demanded in Empire’, New Leader, 8 November 1941, p. 1.
96. James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below, p. 29.
97. Ibid.
98. C. L. R James, ‘Truth about “Peace Plan”: Britain’s Imperialist Game’, New Leader, 20 December 1935.
99. Jomo Kenyatta, ‘Hitler Could Not Improve on Kenya’, New Leader, 21 May 1937.
100. Ibid.
101. George Padmore, ‘Hands off the Colonies!’, New Leader, 25 February 1938.
102. George Padmore, ‘Whither the West Indies?’, New Leader, 29 March 1941.
103. George Padmore, ‘The Government’s Betrayal of the Protectorates’, Controversy 2: 21 (June 1938).
104. Padmore, ‘Hands off the Colonies!’
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. ‘West Indians Reply to Anglo–US Imperialism’, New Leader, 4 January 1941.
109. Padmore, ‘Hands off the Colonies!’.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. George Padmore, ‘Why Moors Help Franco’, New Leader, 20 May 1938.
113. George Padmore, ‘Police Sweep on Workers’ Leaders in the Colonies’, New Leader, 20 October 1939.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. George Padmore, ‘Not Nazism! Not Imperialism! But Socialism!’, New Leader, 27 December 1941.
117. Trevor Williams, ‘What the Empire Is’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
118. Ibid.
119. Reginald Reynolds, ‘The Road to Empire: How Britain Won and Keeps India’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
120. ‘British Govt Is Also “Imperialist Aggressor” ’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
121. Fenner Brockway, ‘Has Hitler Anything to Teach Our Ruling Class?’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
122. Jomo Kenyatta, ‘Their Land Was Stolen: Slave Conditions in Kenya’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938; George Padmore, ‘Colonial Fascism in the West Indies’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
123. Jon Kimche, ‘How Brit
ish Empire Got a Hold in China’, New Leader, Empire special supplement, 29 April 1938.
124. ‘In the Empire: West Indies to Burma in Revolt’, New Leader, 13 January 1939.
125. Councillor W. R. Gault, ‘Red Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition,’ New Leader, 6 May 1938.
126. Arthur Ballard, ‘The “Other” Exhibition’, New Leader, 12 August 1938.
127. Arthur Ballard, ‘We Are Going to Run an Anti-Empire Exhibition!’, New Leader, 3 June 1938.
128. Britton, ‘Come and See the Empire’, p. 78.
129. ‘Success of Anti-imperialist Exhibition’, New Leader, 19 August 1938.
130. Britton, ‘Come and See the Empire’, p. 82.
131. ‘News from Somewhere: George Padmore’, New Leader, 21 April 1939.
132. Arthur Ballard, ‘The Greatest Slave Revolt in History’, New Leader, 9 December 1938.
133. Ibid.
134. Arthur Ballard, ‘Warships on the Way to Crush Jamaica Strikers’, New Leader, 27 May 1938.
135. Arthur Ballard, ‘Ten Years’ Imprisonment for Stealing Two Shillings’, New Leader, 17 June 1938.
136. Arthur Ballard, ‘Behind the Empire Exhibition: Police Fire on Jamaica Strikers’, New Leader, 6 May 1938.
137. Arthur Ballard, ‘Tyranny in the Empire,’ New Leader, 24 March 1939.
138. Ibid.
139. Arthur Ballard, ‘Empire “Sahibs” Bare Their Teeth’, New Leader, 9 June 1939.
140. Ibid.
141. Fenner Brockway, ‘How to Stop Hitler without War’, New Leader, 24 March 1939.
142. Ibid.
143. Ballard, ‘Tyranny in the Empire’.
144. Brockway, ‘How to Stop Hitler without War’.
145. Ballard, ‘Empire “Sahibs” Bare Their Teeth’.
146. ‘India and the War’, New Leader, 29 September 1939.
147. ‘African Workers Ask, “What Can the Blacks Know of Democracy?” ’, New Leader, 24 November 1939.
148. Ibid., emphasis in original.
149. The IASB anti-war Manifesto drafted by Padmore and discussed in Chapter 8 was also carried by the New Leader. Executive Committee of the International African Service Bureau, ‘A Manifesto from the Colonial Workers’, New Leader, 23 September 1938.
150. HC Deb, Colonial Office, 14 June 1938, vol. 337, cc. 79–189 (c. 165).
151. Ibid.
152. Ibid., c. 157.
153. Ibid., c. 168.
154. Høgsbjerg, ‘James, Orwell, and “Literary Trotskyism” ’, pp. 43–60.
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