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general, learn first, and of course, for the simple reason that he hears it most frequently spoken”. 10 Four years later, after much intensive work, Thomas produced The Theory and Practice of Creole Grammar , an important linguistic breakthrough of its time. Thomas was in Grenada when he read Froude’s The English in the West Indies . Froude asserted his belief in the “natural superiority” of whites and their God-given right to rule over Africans. He claimed that West Indian blacks needed a religion to keep them from “falling back into
their dealings with others was extremely important, especially in the works of early abolitionists such as Granville Sharp. Sharp’s arguments against the slave trade and against Atlantic slavery were less concerned with establishing the moral equivalency of Africans and Europeans than in attacking the pretensions and tyranny of West Indian slave-holders and highlighting the danger to Britain from allowing too many Africans into the
… 6 The eminent Jamaican critic and poet Edward Baugh, in his essay “The West Indian Writer and His Quarrel with History” (1977), regarded “The Muse of History” as the “discursive theoretical twin of Chapter 22 ” 7 of Walcott’s long poem “Another Life”. Baugh noted that Chapter 22 was actually initially published as a stand-alone poem, entitled “The Muse of History at Rampanalgas”. In my reading, however, I found Walcott’s essay, in tone and argument, to be deeply related to the infamous Chapter 19 in
English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
Federation [in 1958] of which he was a supporter since his early teens that spurred him [Lewis] to return to the region. He saw it as a decisive step towards his long-held vision that, ‘Out of a mosaic of complexions a new nation is beginning to arise which is neither European nor African nor Indian; it is the West Indian nation of the future’”. 36 According to Girvan, Lewis viewed the West Indies Federation as having more than economic and political benefits. He also believed that the new entity would promote democratic governance across the
possible. As one of the party’s few non-white activists rightly stated, the arrival of thousands of West Indians, Pakistanis and Indians provoked ‘an all pervasive sense of embarrassment’ in its ranks.5 Colour and the Commonwealth During a 1948 Labour Party annual conference debate on racial discrimination, one delegate asked: if socialism ‘does not mean that common men can live together decently and live together as brothers, I ask you what does it mean?’6 Before the 1950s, however, practical expressions of the party’s commitment to racial equality were largely
he had been born and brought up. 8 This “dis-identification” was enormously productive for thinking through the ways in which self-understandings are open to change over time but can also harden and congeal. Hall took on the questions of what it meant to be “West Indian”, “black” and ultimately “Pan-African” at first personally, then politically, and finally theoretically. In so doing, he wrestled artfully with the duality of identity, seeking to understand when, how, and why it at times appeared to be, and was experienced as, something constructed and, hence
tract entitled An appeal to the religion, justice, and humanity of the inhabitants of the British Empire, in behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies . For him, one of the most serious of all the vices of the West Indian system was ‘the almost universal destitution of religious and moral instruction among the slaves’. 52 Christianity, he adamantly believed, taught a person self
Marcus’s decision to incorporate the UNIA in the US, a process completed in July 1918. The Afro-American newspaper of December 1918, in an article headlined “A New Radical Organisation”, reported that the UNIA’s members included “all colored peoples, Americans, West Indians, Africans and Indians in its membership”. 18 By 1919, the organisation had acquired its headquarters at Liberty Hall in Harlem. Amy became general secretary and secretary of the Ladies’ Division of New York Local, and, with Marcus, immediately embarked on a
during the Second World War (1939–45). He was one of the first black pilots in the British air force, becoming a second flight lieutenant and navigator of bombers during the war. When the war ended in 1945, Thompson was awarded a Rhodes scholarship and studied law at Oxford University. He distinguished himself as an outstanding and articulate scholar, serving as president of the West Indian Students’ Union at Oxford. Upon graduation, he was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in London in 1950. Instead of joining a reputable and lucrative British law firm as he had the