a genius, a seductress, a self-destructive wreck… the fiery author, historian and critic was a complex, fragile human being, as the biography of John L Williams reveals.
Cyril Lionel Robert James – better known as CLR James – was a cultural historian, journalist, intellectual and cricket socialist and writer. He was born on January 4, 1901, in Tunapuna, on the East-West Corridor of the island of Trinidad and Tobago, and died on May 31, 1989, in London, England.
He was a leading figure in the Pan-Africanist movement. His biographer Paul Buhle called James’s 1932 work, The Case for West Indies Self-Government, “The First Important Manifesto for National Independence in the British West Indies.” But his most famous work is The Black Jacobins. Published in 1938, it is a history of the Haitian slave revolution in the 1790s. Written from a Marxist perspective, it won him wide acclaim.
In the Global North, James is mainly known for two books; The Black Jacobins is one of those. She probably founded Atlantic Studies. The second is Beyond a Border (1963). It influenced the research agenda of the late 20sth Centuries of cultural studies. Each of the books is indicative of different arms of James’s broad intellectual project. The first asked scholars to reconsider the role of racial oppression in capitalism, and the second prompted a reconsideration of the role of class formation in popular culture through its treatment of sport, race, and imperialism.
These projects combine to offer a Marxist-inspired analysis of modernity in which issues of combined and uneven development are foregrounded. The result is a demonstration of enduring connections between advanced capitalist countries and colonized regions along lines of race, class, and everyday experience. But along with George Padmore, James’s advocacy of Pan-Africanism is of extreme importance. It would therefore be appropriate to shed some light on Pan-Africanism and its role in utilizing the nexus that color and class have in modern politics. Pan-Africanist ideas first began to circulate in the mid-19th century in the United States. These were led by Africans from the Western Hemisphere.
The most important early Pan-Africanists were Martin Delany and Alexander Crummel, both African-Americans, and Edward Blyden, a West Indian. Those early voices for Pan-Africanism emphasized the commonalities between Africans and people of color in the United States. Delany, who believed that blacks could not progress alongside whites, advocated the idea that African Americans should secede from the United States and create their own nation.
Crummel and Blyden, both Delany’s contemporaries, thought that Africa was the best place for that new nation. Motivated by Christian missionary zeal, both believed that Africans in the New World should return to their homelands and convert and civilize the inhabitants there.
James was certified as a teacher at the Queen’s Royal College in Port of Spain, Trinidad (1918). This appetite – that courage – was evident in James’ dedication as a teacher, organizing, choreographing and directing a school play of his own choosing, of Merchant of Venice. To James’ delight, the all-black student body “captured the Shakespearean rhythm perfectly.” However, in 1932 he moved to England and began his career in journalism.
But his love for literature remained the main one. It was in literature that he spent silent hours and days immersed in Balzac, Hazlitt and Melville. While in England, he published, The life of Captain Cipriani (1932, revised as The Case for West Indies Self-Government, 1933) which was sponsored by West Indian cricketer-turned-politician Learie (later Lord) Constantine. Due to the uniqueness of the subject, the book was praised by critics. During the 1930s, James was a cricket correspondent of Guardian (Manchester) and became increasingly involved in Marxist politics and the African and West Indian independence movements.
In 1936, James and his Marxist Trotskyist Group broke away from the ILP (Independent Labor Party, created at the behest of Trotsky) to form an open party. It is well known that Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels and the 3Ls: Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
Trotsky’s cherished notion of permanent revolution is an explanation of how socialist revolutions could occur in societies that had not achieved advanced capitalism. In 1939, James met Trotsky, who was then living in exile in Mexico, where James also met artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In 1938, this group took part in several mergers to form the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). The RSL was a highly functionalised organisation.
In 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, James left England to live in the United States. There he increasingly wrote and lectured, with great linguistic clarity and deep conviction, on social and political reform. It was perhaps inevitable that he would be expelled in 1953 when America was gripped by Senator McCarthy’s obsession with un-American activities. This meant that his efforts were channeled into West Indies politics, particularly the move towards a Caribbean federation.
His expulsion took place when the Cold War had reached its peak. While in the US, he was interned in Ellis Island in New York City, where he wrote an analysis of Herman Melville Moby Dick call Mariners, Renegades and the Lost (1953). Thereafter, he remained in transit, moving between London and Trinidad, where he was secretary of the Federal Labor Party of the West Indies (1958–60).
To conclude this article, I want to highlight his love for cricket. In 1963, he jumped from his considerable status in the world of radical politics to fame as a writer on cricket with Beyond a Border, widely considered by many to be the greatest book on the game yet written. His argument that cricket was a pleasure but must always be placed in context against more important issues, and written in almost classical language, made it one of the few books on cricket eligible to be listed as literature.
In 1986 an extensive collection of his writings was published with the simple title, Cricket. This included letters to friends ranging from West Indian cricket legend George Headley to the great cricket commentator John Arlott and a selection of newspaper and magazine articles. James’ influence was such that the book was published in paperback in 1989, two weeks before his death.
The writer is a professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected]
