CLR James

Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901–19 May 1989) was a journalist, and a prominent socialist theorist and writer.

London years

In 1933, James moved to London. James had begun to campaign for the independence of the West Indies while in Trinidad, and his Life of Captain Cipriani and the pamphlet The Case for West-Indian Self Government were his first important published works, but now he became a leading champion of Pan-African agitation and the Chair of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, formed in 1935 in response to Fascist Italy's invasion of what is now Ethiopia. He then became a leading figure in the International African Service Bureau, through which he later met Kwame Nkrumah. In Britain, he also became a leading Marxist theorist. He had joined the Labour Party, but in the midst of the Great Depression became convinced of Trotskyism and in 1934 joined an entrist Trotskyist group inside the Independent Labour Party.

Related Topics:
1933 - London - West Indies - International African Service Bureau - Kwame Nkrumah - Labour Party - Entrist - Independent Labour Party

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In this period, amid his frantic political activity, James wrote a play about Toussaint L'Ouverture, which was staged in the West End in 1936 and starred Paul Robeson. He also wrote what are perhaps his best-known works of non-fiction: World Revolution (1937), a history of the rise and fall of the Communist International which was critically praised by Leon Trotsky, and The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938), a widely acclaimed history of the Haitian revolution which would later be seen as a seminal text in the study of the African diaspora.

Related Topics:
Toussaint L'Ouverture - West End - Paul Robeson - World Revolution - 1937 - Communist International - Leon Trotsky - 1938 - Haitian revolution - African diaspora

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In 1936, James and his Trotskyist Marxist Group left the Independent Labour Party to form an open party. In 1938, this new group took part in several mergers to form the Revolutionary Socialist League. The RSL was a highly factionalised organisation and when James was invited to tour the United States by the leadership of the Socialist Workers' Party, then the US section of the Fourth International, in order to facilitate its work among black workers, he was encouraged to leave by one such factional opponent, John Archer, in the hope of removing a rival.

Related Topics:
1936 - Marxist Group - Open party - 1938 - Revolutionary Socialist League - Socialist Workers' Party - Fourth International

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