Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989),[1] who sometimes wrote under the pen-nameJ. R. Johnson, was aTrinidadian historian, journalist,Trotskyist activist and Marxist writer. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple ofMarxism, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice inpostcolonial literature.[2] A tireless political activist, James is the author of the 1937 workWorld Revolution outlining the history of theCommunist International, which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and in 1938 he wrote on theHaitian Revolution,The Black Jacobins.[3]
Characterised byEdward Said as an "anti-Stalinistdialectician",[4] James was known for hisautodidactism, for his occasional playwriting and fiction, and as an avid sportsman. The performance of his 1934 playToussaint Louverture was the first time black professional actors featured in a production written by a black playwright in the UK. His 1936 bookMinty Alley was the first novel by a black West Indian to be published in Britain.[5] He is also famed as a writer oncricket, and in 1963 published his bookBeyond a Boundary, which he himself described as "neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography".[6]
In 1910, James won a scholarship toQueen's Royal College (QRC), the island's oldest non-Catholic secondary school, inPort of Spain, where he became a club cricketer and distinguished himself as an athlete (he held the Trinidad high-jump record at 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) from 1918 to 1922), and also began to write fiction.[9] After graduating in 1918 from QRC, he worked there as a teacher of English and History in the 1920s;[9] among those he taught was the youngEric Williams, who became the firstPrime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
In 1932, James left Trinidad for the small town ofNelson inLancashire, England, at the invitation of his friend, West Indian cricketerLearie Constantine, who needed his help writing his autobiographyCricket and I (published in 1933).[14] James had brought with him to England the manuscript of his first full-length non-fiction work, partly based on his interviews with the Trinidad labour leaderArthur Andrew Cipriani, which was published with financial assistance from Constantine in 1932.[15][16]
During this time, James took a job as cricket correspondent withThe Manchester Guardian.[14] In 1933, he moved toLondon. The following year, he joined aTrotskyist group that met to talk for hours in his rented room.Louise Cripps, one of its members, recalled: "We felt our work could contribute to the time when we would see Socialism spreading."
When the IAFE was transformed into theInternational African Service Bureau in 1937, James edited its newsletter,Africa and the World, and its journal,International African Opinion. The Bureau was led by his childhood friendGeorge Padmore, who became a driving force for socialist Pan-Africanism for several decades. Both Padmore and James wrote for theNew Leader, published by theIndependent Labour Party (ILP), which James had joined in 1934 (whenFenner Brockway was its General Secretary).[19]
Also in 1936,Secker & Warburg in London published James's novel,Minty Alley, which he had brought with him in manuscript form from Trinidad.[14] (Fenner Brockway had introduced him toFredric Warburg, co-owner of the press.)[24] It was the first novel to be published by a black Caribbean author in the UK.[25] In 1937, he wrote the foreword toRed Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war, by Juan Ramón Breá andMary Stanley Low.[26]
In 1936, James and his TrotskyistMarxist Group left the ILP to form an open party. In 1938, this new group took part in several mergers to form theRevolutionary Socialist League (RSL). The RSL was a highly factionalised organisation.
At the urging of Trotsky andJames P. Cannon, in October 1938, James was invited to tour the United States by the leadership of theSocialist Workers' Party (SWP), then the US section of theFourth International, to facilitate its work among black workers.[29] Following several meetings inNew York, which garnered "enthusiastic praise for his oratorical ability and capacity for analysis of world events," James kicked off his national speaking tour on 6 January 1939 inPhiladelphia.[30] He gave lectures in cities includingNew Haven,[31]Youngstown,Rochester, andBoston,[32] before finishing the tour with two lectures inLos Angeles and another inPasadena in March 1939.[33] He spoke on topics such as "Twilight of the British Empire" and "The Negro and World Imperialism".[33]
Constance Webb, who later became James' second wife, attended one of his 1939 lectures in Los Angeles and reflected on it in her memoir, writing: "I had already heard speeches by two great orators,Winston Churchill andFranklin Delano Roosevelt. Now I was hearing a third. The three men were masters of the English language, a skill that gave them extraordinary power."[34]
James's relationship withLouise Cripps Samoiloff had broken up after her second abortion, so that intimate tie no longer bound him to England.[35]
In April 1939, James visited Trotsky inCoyoacán,Mexico. James stayed there about a month and also metDiego Rivera andFrida Kahlo, before returning to the United States in May 1939.[36] A key topic that James and Trotsky discussed was the "Negro Question". Parts of their conversation were transcribed, with James sometimes referred to by his pen-name, J. R. Johnson.[37] Whereas Trotsky saw the Trotskyist Party as providing leadership to the black community, in the general manner that the Bolsheviks provided guidance to ethnic minorities in Russia, James suggested that the self-organised struggle of African Americans would precipitate a much broader radical social movement.[38]
As "J. R. Johnson", James wrote the column "The Negro Question" forSocialist Appeal (later renamedThe Militant), and was also a columnist for the WP newspaperLabor Action.[39]
While within the WP, the views of the Johnson–Forest Tendency underwent considerable development. By the end of theSecond World War, they had definitively rejected Trotsky's theory of Russia as a degenerated workers' state. Instead, they classified it asstate capitalist, a political evolution shared by other Trotskyists of their generation, most notablyTony Cliff. Unlike Cliff, the Johnson–Forest Tendency was focusing increasingly on the liberation movements of oppressed minorities, a theoretical development already visible in James's thought in his 1939 discussions with Trotsky. Such liberation struggles came to take centre stage for the Johnson–Forest Tendency.
After the Second World War, the WP witnessed a downturn in revolutionary sentiment. The Tendency, on the other hand, was encouraged by the prospects for revolutionary change for oppressed peoples. After a few short months as an independent group, during which they published a great deal of material, in 1947, the Johnson–Forest Tendency joined the SWP, which it regarded as more proletarian than the WP.
In 1955 after James had left for Britain, about half the membership of the Committee withdrew, under the leadership ofRaya Dunayevskaya, to form a separate tendency ofMarxist humanism and found the organisationNews and Letters Committees. Whether Dunayevskaya's faction had constituted a majority or a minority in the Correspondence Publishing Committee remains a matter of dispute. HistorianKent Worcester says that Dunayevskaya's supporters formed a majority, butMartin Glaberman says inNew Politics that the faction loyal to James had a majority.[40]
The Committee split again in 1962, as Grace Lee Boggs andJames Boggs, two key activists, left to pursue a moreThird Worldist approach. The remaining Johnsonites, including leading member Martin Glaberman, reconstituted themselves asFacing Reality. James advised the group from Great Britain until it dissolved in 1970, against his urging.[41]
James's writings were also influential in the development ofAutonomist Marxism as a current within Marxist thought. He himself saw his life's work as developing the theory and practice of Leninism.[citation needed]
In 1953, James was forced to leave the US under threat of deportation for having overstayed his visa. In his attempt to remain in America, he wrote a study ofHerman 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. He wrote the book while being detained at the immigration station onEllis Island. In an impassioned letter to his old friend George Padmore, James said that inMariners he was usingMoby-Dick as a parable for theanti-communism sweeping the United States, a consequence, he thought, of Americans' uncritical faith in capitalism.[42]
Returning to Britain, James appeared to Padmore and his partnerDorothy Pizer to be a man adrift. After James started reporting on cricket for theManchester Guardian, Padmore wrote to American novelistRichard Wright: "That will take him out of hisivory tower and making his paper revolution...."[43]Grace Lee Boggs, a colleague from the Detroit group, came to London in 1954 to work with James, but she too, saw him "at loose ends, trying to find his way after fifteen years out of the country."[44]
In 1957, James travelled toGhana for the celebration of its independence from British rule in March that year. He had metGhana's 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 the Second World War; Padmore was by this point a close Nkrumah advisor and had writtenThe Gold Coast Revolution (1953). In correspondence sent from Ghana in 1957, James told American friends that Nkrumah thought he too ought to write a book on theConvention People's Party, which under Nkrumah's leadership had brought the country to independence. The book shows how the party's 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 wroteNkrumah and the Ghana Revolution on his own. The book was not published until 1977 (byAllison & Busby in London),[45] years after Nkrumah's overthrow, exile and subsequent death.[46][47]
In 1958, James went back to Trinidad at the request ofEric Williams, who was then the island's premier, and editedThe Nation newspaper, publication of Williams's pro-independencePeople's National Movement (PNM) party.[48] James also became active again in the Pan-African movement. He believed that theGhana revolution greatly encouraged theanticolonialist revolutionary struggle.
James also advocated theWest Indies Federation.[49] It was over this issue that he fell out with the PNM leadership. He resigned as editor ofThe Nation in 1960,[48] and returned to Great Britain, where he joinedCalvin C. Hernton,Obi Egbuna and others on the faculty of theAntiuniversity of London,[50][51] which had been set up in early 1968 by a group of left-wing thinkers led by American academicJoseph Berke.[52] In 1968 James was invited to the US, where he taught from 1970 at theUniversity of the District of Columbia (formerly Federal City College), leaving for Trinidad in 1980.[1]
Ultimately returning in 1981 to Britain,[1] whereAllison & Busby had in the mid-1970s begun a programme of reissuing his work, starting with a volume of selected writings,[53] James spent his last years inBrixton, London.[54] In the 1980s, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate fromSouth Bank Polytechnic (later to become London South Bank University) for his body of socio-political work, including that relating to race and sport.
James died in London from a chest infection on 19 May 1989, aged 88.[1] His funeral took place on Monday, 12 June in Trinidad, where he was buried atTunapuna Cemetery.[55][56] A state memorial service was held for him at theNational Stadium, Port of Spain, on 28 June 1989.[57]
James married his first wife, Juanita Young, in Trinidad in 1929, but his move three years later to Britain led to their estrangement. He met his second wife, Constance Webb (1918–2005), an American model, actress and author, after he moved to the US in 1938; she wrote of having first heard him speak in the spring of 1939 at a meeting in California.[58] James and Webb married in 1946 and their son, C. L. R. James Jr, familiarly known as Nobbie,[59] was born in 1949.[60] Separated forcibly in 1952, by James's arrest and detention on Ellis Island, the couple divorced in 1953, when James was deported to Britain, while Webb remained in New York with Nobbie.[60] A collection of James's letters to Webb was posthumously published asSpecial Delivery: The Letters of C.L.R. James to Constance Webb, 1939–1948, edited and introduced by Anna Grimshaw (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).[61] Stories written by James for his son were published in 2006 asThe Nobbie Stories for Children and Adults, edited and introduced by Constance Webb.[62]
In 1956, James marriedSelma Weinstein (née Deitch), who had been a young member of the Johnson–Forest Tendency;[63] they remained close political colleagues for more than 25 years, but divorced in 1980. She is best known as one of the founders of theInternational Wages for Housework Campaign.[63]
In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of titles by James were published byAllison & Busby (co-founderMargaret Busby's father had attended Queen's Royal College with James),[64] including four volumes of selected writings published during his lifetime "that looked to bring together the best of James' writing and introduce him to a new audience":[65]The Future in the Present (1977),Spheres of Existence (1980),At the Rendezvous of Victory (1984), andCricket (1986).
The C. L. R. James Institute was founded with James's blessing by Jim Murray in 1983. Based inNew York, and affiliated to the Centre for African Studies atCambridge University, it has been run byRalph Dumain since Murray's death in 2003.[73]
A public library in theLondon Borough of Hackney is named in his honour. There was a C. L. R. James Week of ceremonies in March 1985,[74] and his widow,Selma James, attended a reception there to mark its 20th anniversary. TheHackney London Borough Council had intended to drop the name of the library as part of a new development inDalston Square in 2010, but after protests from Selma James and local and international campaigners includingAndrea Enisuoh,[75][76] the council promised that the library would retain the name of C. L. R. James. A council statement said: "As part of the new library, there will be a permanent exhibition to chronicle his life and works and an annual event in his memory, and we are pleased to report the state-of-the-art education room will also be named after this influential figure."[77][78] The new Dalston C. L. R. James Library was officially opened on 28 February 2012.[79] The library is housed in Collins Tower, which is named forSir Collins (1937–2018), a music producer and co-founder ofThe Four Aces Club that was demolished to make way for the site.[80] Selma James spoke at the launch on 2 March 2012 of a permanent exhibition dedicated to James's life and legacy.[79][81]
In May 2013, a conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication ofBeyond a Boundary was held at theUniversity of Glasgow.[95][96]
James is the subject of the 2016 feature-length documentary filmEvery Cook Can Govern: Documenting the life, impact & works of CLR James, made by WORLDwrite.[97][98]
On 17 March 2023, a blue plaque was unveiled inSouthwick, West Sussex, to mark the house where in 1937 James wroteThe Black Jacobins, at an address on Old Shoreham Road discovered by historian Christian Hogsbjerg from a letter that had been intercepted bySpecial Branch.[100][101]
In 2024, James received aPEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Award forToussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History (Verso, 2023, adapted by Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee).[102]
Duke University Press publish the series "The C. L. R. James Archives", edited byRobert A. Hill, literary executor of the estate of C. L. R. James, producing new editions of books by James, as well as scholarly explorations of his oeuvre.[106]
He is widely known as a writer on cricket, especially for his autobiographical 1963 book,Beyond a Boundary, which he himself described as "neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography".[6] It is considered a seminal work on the game, and is often named as the best single book on cricket.John Arlott called it "so outstanding as to compel any reviewer to check his adjectives several times before he describes it and, since he is likely to be dealing in superlatives, to measure them carefully to avoid over-praise – which this book does not need ... in the opinion of the reviewer, it is the finest book written about the game of cricket."[107] A conference to mark the 50th anniversary of its first publication was held 10–11 May 2013.[95][108]
The book's key question, frequently quoted by modern journalists and essayists, is inspired by a line inRudyard Kipling's poem "English Flag" – "What do they know of England who only England know?" James asks in the Preface: "What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" Acknowledging that "To answer involves ideas as well as facts", James uses this challenge as the basis for describing cricket in an historical and social context, the strong influence cricket had on his life, and how it meshed with his role in politics and his understanding of issues of class and race.[citation needed]
While editor ofThe Nation, he led the successful campaign in 1960 to haveFrank Worrell appointed the first black captain of theWest Indies cricket team. James believed that the relationship between players and the public was a prominent reason behind the West Indies' achieving so much with so little.[109]
World Revolution, 1917–1936: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International. London: Secker & Warburg (1937). New edition, with introduction by Christian Høgsbjerg, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (2017),ISBN978-0-8223-6308-8.
A History of Negro Revolt. Fact monograph no. 18, London (1938). Revised asA History of Pan-African Revolt. Washington:Drum and Spear Press (1969).A History of Negro Revolt, London: Creation for Liberation,ISBN978-0947716035 (1985). AsA History of Pan-African Revolt, with an Introduction byRobin D. G. Kelley,PM Press (2012).[110]
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg (1938). Revised edition, New York: Vintage Books/Random House (1963).ISBN0-679-72467-2. Index starts at p. 419. Library of Congress Card Number: 63-15043. New British edition with foreword, London:Allison & Busby (1980).
The Invading Socialist Society (with F. Forest and Ria Stone). New York: Johnson Forest Tendency (1947). Reprinted with new preface, Detroit: Bewick/Ed (1972).
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. New York: privately printed (1953). Detroit: Bewick/Ed, (1978). London: Allison & Busby (1984).
Modern Politics (A series of lectures given at theTrinidad Public Library, in its Adult Education Programme). Port of Spain: PNM Publishing Co. (1960).
A Convention Appraisal: Dr. Eric Williams: first premier of Trinidad & Tobago: a biographical sketch. Port of Spain, Trinidad: PNM Publishing Co. (1960).
Party Politics in the West Indies. San Juan, Port of Spain: Vedic Enterprises (1962).
Not For Sale (withMichael Manley). San Francisco: Editorial Consultants (1976).
The Future in the Present, Selected Writings, vol. 1. London: Allison & Busby (1977);[65] Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill Books (1977).
Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. London: Allison & Busby (1977); Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill Books (1977). Duke University Press, 2022, with Introduction by Leslie James.[111]
Spheres of Existence, Selected Writings, vol. 2. London: Allison & Busby (1980); Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill Books (1980).
At the Rendezvous of Victory, Selected Writings, vol. 3. London: Allison & Busby (1984; biographical introduction byMargaret Busby).
Cricket (selected writings, ed. Anna Grimshaw). London: Allison & Busby (1986); distributed in the United States bySchocken Books (1986). AsA Majestic Innings: Writings on Cricket, new edition, London:Aurum Press (2006).
Anna Grimshaw (ed.),The C.L.R. James Reader. Oxford: Blackwell (1992).
Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History – the 1934 play adapted into a graphic novel, by artists Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee, published byVerso Books (2023,ISBN9781788737906).[22]
^abcGrimshaw, Anna, "Notes on the Life and Work of C. L. R. James", inPaul Buhle (ed.),C. L. R. James: His Life and Work, London: Allison & Busby, 1986, pp. 9–21.
^abBusby, Margaret (3 August 1996), "Storming the pavilion of prejudice",The Guardian, p. 29: "Allison & Busby set about a publishing programme, beginning with hisSelected Writings, and in the course of the next decade produced nine James volumes."
^"C.L.R. James: A Tribute: Eulogies Delivered at the State Memorial Service Held for the Late C.L.R. James, National Stadium, Port-of-Spain, 28 June 1989", 1990, 20pp, inTrinidad and Tobago national bibliography, p. 31.
^Webb, Constance, "C. L. R. James, the Speaker and his Charisma", in Paul Buhle (ed.),C. L. R. James: His Life and Work, London: Allison & Busby, 1986, p. 168.
^"Beyond a Boundary", BBC,Radio Times, Issue 3787, 22 August 1996: Abridged in five parts (25–30 August 1996) by Margaret Busby, produced by Pam Fraser Solomon. .
^"Radio", inDavid Dabydeen, John Gilmore, Cecily Jones (eds),The Oxford Companion to Black British History, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 392.
Douglas, Rachel.Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History (2019)online
Featherstone, Dave, and Chris Gair, Christian Høgsbjerg, and Andrew Smith (eds),Marxism, Colonialism and Cricket: C.L.R. James's Beyond a Boundary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018,ISBN978-1478001478.
Flood, Anthony, "C. L. R. James: Herbert Aptheker's Invisible Man",The C. L. R. James Journal, vol. 19, nos. 1 & 2, Fall 2013.
Forsdick, Charles, and Christian Høgsbjerg (eds),The Black Jacobins Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017,ISBN978-0822362012.
Gair, Chris (ed.)Beyond Boundaries: C.L.R. James and Postnational Studies. London: Pluto, 2006,ISBN978-0745323428.
Glaberman, Martin,Marxism for our Times: C. L. R. James on Revolutionary Organization, University Press of Mississippi, 1999,ISBN9781578061518.
McClendon III, John H.,C. L. R. James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism?. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004,ISBN978-0739107751.
McLemee, Scott, & Paul LeBlanc (eds),C. L. R. James and Revolutionary Marxism: Selected Writings of C. L. R. James 1939–1949. Prometheus Books, 1994. Reprinted Haymarket Books, 2018.
Nielsen, Aldon Lynn,C. L. R. James: A Critical Introduction, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.ISBN978-0878059720
Polsgrove, Carol,Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.ISBN978-0719077678
Quest, Matthew. "C.L.R. James's Conflicted Legacies on Mao Tse Tung's China."Insurgent Notes, Issue 8, March 2013.
Quest, Matthew, "'Every Cook Can Govern:' Direct Democracy, Workers' Self-Management, and the Creative Foundations of CLR James' Political Thought."The CLR James Journal, 19.1 & 2, Fall 2013.
Quest, Matthew, "George Padmore's and C.L.R. James's International African Opinion." In Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert C. Lewis (eds),George Padmore: Pan African Revolutionary. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle, 2009, 105–132.
Quest, Matthew, "Silences on the Suppression of Workers Self-Emancipation: Historical Problems With CLR James's Interpretation of V.I. Lenin."Insurgent Notes, Issue 7, October 2012.
Renault, Matthieu,C.L.R. James: la vie révolutionnaire d'un "platon noir". Paris: La Découverte, 2016,ISBN978-2-7071-8191-6.
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