Cyril Lionel Robert James was a Trinidadian Afrikan journalist, socialist theorist, and writer. Born in Tunapuna, Trinidad then a British Crown colony, on January 4, 1901, James was the first child of Elizabeth James and Robert Alexander, a schoolteacher. James was a gifted child who at the age of six won a scholarship to Queens Royal College. After college, James worked worked there as a teacher; among those he taught was the young Eric Williams, who would become the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. and as a cricket reporter. During this time he also wrote two novels, La Divina Pastora (1927) and Triumph (1929). With an interest in politics, he wrote a biography of the Trinidadian labor leader, Arthur Cipriani, The Life of Captain Cipriani, published in 1929. In 1910 he won a scholarship to Queens Royal College, the islands oldest non-Catholic secondary school, in Port of Spain, and after graduating Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anti-colonialist Beacon Group, a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine, in which he published a series of short stories In 1932, he immigrated to England where he reported cricket matches for the Manchester Guardian. Politically, James was a strong supporter of West Indian independence. He wrote a pamphlet, The Case for West Indian Self-Government, published in 1933. James moved to London where he studied Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Leon Trotsky. He initially joined the Independent Labor Party (ILP) and became chairman of its Finchley branch. He also wrote for left-wing journals such as the New Leader and Controversy. When James became a Marxist he left the ILP and formed the Revolutionary Socialist League. As a follower of Trotsky, James was highly critical of the government of Joseph Stalin and the British Communist Party. In 1936, James published Minty Alley, a novel based on his childhood in Trinidad. He also wrote a play about Toussaint L’ouverture, the leader of the Haitian revolution, and in 1936, Paul Robeson played the leading role in its production at the Westminster Theatre. James published several books on politics including Abyssinia and the Imperialists (1936) and World Revolution 1917-1936 (1937). This historical account was highly critical of Stalins 1924 pronouncement, Socialism in One Country, and provided support for the ideas of Leon Trotsky. In 1934, James wrote a three-act play about the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint LOuverture, which was staged in Londons West End in 1936 and starred Paul Robeson, Orlando Martins, Robert Adams and Harry Andrews. That same year saw the publication in London of Jamess novel, Minty Alley, which he had brought with him in manuscript from Trinidad. It was the first novel to be published by a Black Caribbean author in the UK. His study of the Haitian revolution, The Black Jacobins, was published in 1938. In that same year, James moved to Amerikkka, where he lectured on political issues and continued to publish books about politics, including Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity (1947), Notes on Dialectics (1948), The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA (1948), State Capitalism and World Revolution (1950), and The Class Struggle (1950). After a tour sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), he visited Trotsky in Coyoacán, México. He stayed about a month and also met Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, before returning to the USA in May 1939. A key topic that James and Trotsky discussed was the Negro Question. Whereas Trotsky saw the Trotskyist Party as providing leadership to Black community – in the general manner the Bolsheviks provided guidance to ethnic minorities in Russia, James suggested that the self-organised struggle of Amerikkkan Afrikans would precipitate a much broader radical social movement. He then stayed in the USA until he was deported in 1953. By 1940 he had begun to doubt Trotskys view of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state. He left the SWP along with Max Shachtman, who formed the Workers Party (WP). Within the WP, James formed the Johnson-Forest Tendency with Raya Dunayevskaya (his pseudonym was Johnson and Dunayevskayas was Forest) and Grace Lee (later Grace Lee Boggs) to spread their views within the new party. James also wrote at length about the work of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. But in America, his Marxist writings caught the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy and fellow right-wingers, in 1953, under threat of deportation for having overstayed his visa by over ten years. In his attempt to remain in the USA, James, while being detained on Ellis Island, wrote a study of Herman Melville, Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In, and had copies of the privately published work sent to every member of the Senate. Returning to England, James appeared to Padmore and his partner Dorothy Pizer to be a man adrift. After James started reporting on cricket for the Manchester Guardian, Padmore wrote to American novelist Richard Wright, That will take him out of his ivory tower and making his paper revolution.... Grace Lee Boggs, a colleague from the Detroit group, came to London in 1954 to work with him, but she, too, saw him at loose ends, trying to find his way after fifteen years out of the country. In 1957, James traveled to Ghana for the celebration of its independence from British rule. He had met Ghanas new head of state, Kwame Nkrumah, in the United States when Nkrumah was studying there and sent him on to work with George Padmore in London after World War II; Padmore was by this point a close Nkrumah advisor and had written The Gold Coast Revolution (1953). Writing from Ghana in 1957, James told American friends that Nkrumah thought he, too, ought to write a book on the Convention Peoples Party, which under Nkrumahs leadership had brought the country to independence. The book would show how the partys strategies could be used to build a new African future. James invited Grace Lee Boggs, his colleague from Detroit, to join in the work, though in the end, James wrote Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution on his own. It was not published until 1977, after Nkrumahs overthrow, exile and subsequent death. After returning to the West Indies and influenced by the events of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, his book Facing Reality (1958) revealed disillusionment with both Communism and Trotskyism. Soon after, he worked on a biography of George Padmore and parts of the book appeared in The Nation journal. In 1963 James published Beyond a Boundary, a combination autobiography and an analysis of sports and politics. Other books by James include Radical America (1970) and Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977), and Radical America (1970). Cyril Lionel Robert James moved back to London where he died on Malcolm Xs birthday, May 19, 1989. Source: Spartacus School and Wikipedia
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 13:03:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015