George Padmore

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the Liberian ambassador George A. Padmore (1915–2005), see George Arthur Padmore.
George Padmore
pan-Africanist
Notable workHow Britain Rules Africa (1936);
Africa and World Peace (1937);
Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (1956)

George Padmore (28 June 1903 – 23 September 1959), born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a leading

Communist Party
.

From there he moved to the

Kremlin, but continued to support socialism.[1]

Padmore lived for a time in France, before settling in London. Toward the end of his life he moved to Accra, Ghana, where he helped shape the politics of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party.[2]

Biography

Early years

Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, better known by his

Asante warrior who was taken prisoner and sold into slavery at Barbados, where his grandfather was born.[5] His father, James Hubert Alfonso Nurse, was a local schoolmaster who had married Anna Susanna Symister of Antigua, a naturalist.[3]

Nurse attended Tranquillity School in Port of Spain, before going to St Mary's College for two years (1914 and 1915). He transferred to the Pamphylian High School, graduating from there in 1918. After that he worked for several years as a reporter with the Trinidad Publishing Company.[6]

In late 1924, he travelled to the United States to take up medical studies at

Edward Blyden of Liberia.[9][10] Nurse subsequently registered at New York University but soon transferred to Howard University
.

Communist Party

During his college years in the US, Nurse became involved with the Workers (Communist) Party (CPUSA). When engaged in party business, he adopted the name George Padmore (compounding the Christian name of his father-in-law, Constabulary Sergeant-Major George Semper, and the surname of the friend who had been his best man, Errol Padmore).[11]

Padmore officially joined the Communist Party in 1927 (when he was in

mass organization targeted to black Americans, the American Negro Labor Congress.[12] In March 1929 he was a fraternal (non-voting) delegate to the 6th National Convention of the CPUSA, held in New York City.[13]

Padmore, an energetic worker and prolific writer, was tapped by Communist Party trade union leader

Moscow City Soviet
.

As head of the Profintern's Negro Bureau, Padmore helped to produce pamphlet literature and contributed articles to Moscow's English-language newspaper, the Moscow Daily News.[14] He was also used periodically as a courier of funds from Moscow to various foreign Communist Parties.[15]

As a deputy of the Moscow soviet, Padmore had served on the commission to investigate the [1930 racial] assault on

ISBN 0742567303
.

In July 1930, Padmore was instrumental in organizing an international conference in Hamburg, Germany. It launched a Comintern-backed international organization of black labour organizations called the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW).[15] Padmore lived in Vienna, Austria, during this time, where he edited the monthly publication of the new group, The Negro Worker.[15]

In 1931, Padmore moved to Hamburg and accelerated his writing output, continuing to produce the ITUCNW magazine and writing more than 20 pamphlets in a single year.

Nazi seizure of power.[16] Padmore was deported to England by the German government, while the Comintern placed the ITUCNW and its Negro Worker on hiatus in August 1933.[16]

Disillusioned by what he perceived as the Comintern's flagging support for the cause of the independence of colonial peoples in favour of the Soviet Union's pursuit of diplomatic alliances with the colonial powers, Padmore abruptly severed his connection with the ITUCNW late in the summer of 1933.[16][17] The Comintern's disciplinary body, the International Control Commission (ICC), asked him to explain his unauthorized action. When he refused to do so, the ICC expelled him from the Communist movement on 23 February 1934.[16] A phase of Padmore's political journey was at an end.

As a result of his membership in the Communist Party and working for it in the Soviet Union and Germany, Padmore was barred from re-entry into the United States. He was a non-citizen[13] and the government did not want to admit known communists.[18]

Pan-Africanist

Although alienated from

Lawrence and Wishart, known to be sympathetic to communists. Publication of books by black men at that time was rare in the United Kingdom. A Swiss publisher distributed a German translation in Germany.[19]

In 1934 Padmore moved to

International African Friends of Ethiopia in response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. That organization developed into the International African Service Bureau (IASB), which became a centre for African and Caribbean intellectuals' anti-colonial activity. Padmore was chair, the Barbadian trade unionist Chris Braithwaite was its organising secretary, and James edited its periodical, International African Opinion. Ras Makonnen from British Guiana handled the business end.[20] Other key members included Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya and Amy Ashwood Garvey
.

As Carol Polsgrove has shown in Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, Padmore and his allies in the 1930s and 1940s—among them C. L. R. James, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, the Gold Coast's

The Bantu World
.

In 1941, Padmore argued that the British Empire should be transformed into "federated commonwealths based upon Socialist principles."[23]

Before

decolonisation in the post-war period.[25]

Padmore used London as his base for more than two decades. He and Dorothy Pizer, a white English writer and his domestic partner and co-worker, shared a flat that became a center for African nationalists. Padmore maintained connections across the world, sending articles to international newspapers and keeping up a correspondence with American writers and activists W. E. B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. The latter was then living in Paris. At Padmore's urging, Wright travelled to the Gold Coast in 1953 to explore the buildup to independence; he wrote Black Power (1954). Before Wright left the Gold Coast, he gave a confidential report on Nkrumah to the American consul; later he reported on Padmore to the American Embassy in Paris. According to the embassy's account, Wright said that Nkrumah was relying heavily on Padmore as he made plans for independence.[26]

When Wright published Black Power in 1954, Padmore was finishing a book that he hoped would be both a history and blueprint for African independence: Pan-Africanism or Communism? It was his attempt to counter Cold War suspicions in Western nations that the African independence movements were fundamentally communist-inspired.[27]

As independence neared for the Gold Coast, the London community had splintered. In 1956 James had returned from the United States, but Padmore and Pizer referred to him with condescension in letters to Wright.[28] Meanwhile, former Padmore ally Peter Abrahams published a roman à clef entitled A Wreath for Udomo (1956), which contained unflattering portrayals of the members of this London political community. George Padmore was identified by many as the model for the character "Tom Lanwood".[29]

But Padmore's alliance with Nkrumah held firm. From the time of Nkrumah's return to the Gold Coast in 1947 to lead its independence movement, Padmore advised him in long detailed letters. He also wrote dozens of articles for Nkrumah's newspaper, the

best man when Sir Stafford Cripps' daughter Peggy married the anti-colonialist Joe Appiah, who was one of Nkrumah's closest allies at the time.[31]

Padmore accepted Nkrumah's invitation to move to Ghana, but his time there as Nkrumah's advisor on African affairs was difficult. He was talking with friends about leaving Ghana to settle elsewhere when he returned to London for treatment of

cirrhosis of the liver
.

Padmore died on 23 September 1959, aged 56, at University College Hospital in London.[32] A few days later, responding to rumours that the activist had been poisoned, his companion Pizer typed out a detailed statement about his death. She said that his liver condition had worsened in the previous nine months, before he sought treatment from a longtime physician friend. Due to his failing liver, he suffered haemorrhages that resulted in his death.[33]

Legacy

  • After Padmore's death, Nkrumah paid tribute to him in a radio broadcast: "One day, the whole of Africa will surely be free and united and when the final tale is told, the significance of George Padmore's work will be revealed." In the Pittsburgh Courier, George Schuyler said Padmore's writings had been "an inspiration to the men who dreamed of a free Africa".[34] Padmore's physician friend, Cecil Belfield Clarke, wrote the obituary that ran in The Times, describing Padmore as a writer who wrote books and studied them. Jamaican pan-Africanist and diplomat Dudley Thompson wrote of Padmore in a letter to The Guardian: "He was truly international and the entire colonial world has suffered a loss."[35]
  • After a funeral service at a London crematorium, Padmore's ashes were buried at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana on 4 October 1959.[36][37] The ceremony was broadcast in the US by NBC television.[33] As C. L. R. James wrote,

...eight countries sent delegations to his funeral in London. But it was in Ghana that his ashes were interred and everyone says that in this country, famous for its political demonstrations, never had there been such a turnout as that caused by the death of Padmore. Peasants from far-flung regions who, one might think, had never even heard his name, managed to find their way to Accra to pay a final tribute to the West Indian who spent his life in their service.[36]

Staying on in Accra, Dorothy Pizer wrote a preface for a French edition of Padmore's Pan-Africanism or Communism. She began research for a biography of Padmore. However, as she told Nancy Cunard, she was frustrated by his habit of having destroyed his personal papers and not having talked about his past.

Works

  • The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers (London: Red International of Labour Unions Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 1931)
  • Haiti, an American Slave Colony (Centrizdat, 1931)
  • The Negro Workers and the Imperialist War Intervention in the USSR (1931)
  • How Britain Rules Africa (London: Wishart Books, 1936)
  • Africa and World Peace (Foreword by Sir Stafford Cripps; London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd, 1937)
  • Hands Off the Protectorates (London: International African Service Bureau, 1938)
  • The White Man's Duty: An Analysis of the Colonial Question in the Light of the Atlantic Charter (with Nancy Cunard) (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1942)
  • The Voice of Coloured Labour (Speeches and Reports of Colonial Delegates to the World Trade Union Conference, 1945) (editor) (Manchester: Panaf Service, 1945)
  • How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire: A Challenge to the Imperialist Powers (in collaboration with Dorothy Pizer) (London: Dennis Dobson, 1946)
  • "History of the Pan-African Congress (Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action)" (editor) (1947). Reprinted in Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited (London: New Beacon Books, 1995)
  • Africa: Britain's Third Empire (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)
  • The Gold Coast Revolution: The Struggle of an African People from Slavery to Freedom (London: Dennis Dobson, 1953)
  • Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (Foreword by Richard Wright. London: Dennis Dobson, 1956)

Citations

  1. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution
     (1963).
  2. ISBN 978-0821422939
    .
  3. ^ a b James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (1967), p. 2.
  4. ^ "George Padmore commemorative plaque", George Padmore Institute, 27 June 2011.
  5. ^ Kevin Kelly Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, UNC Press Books, 2006; p. 27.
  6. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), p. 3.
  7. ISBN 978-0719064746
    .
  8. ^ Edwin S Wilson, "Blyden-Cowart: George Padmore’s daughter dies, February 3, 2012", Pambazuka News, 9 February 2012.
  9. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), pp. 4–5.
  10. ^ Cameron Duodu, "Edward Wilmot Blyden, Grandfather of African Emancipation", Cameron Duodu Blogspot, 8 July 2011.
  11. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), p. 6.
  12. ^ a b c Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African-Americans, 1917–1936, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998; p. 60.
  13. ^ a b Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI), Moscow, fond 515, opis 1, delo 1600, list 33. Available on microfilm as "Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives," IDC Publishers, reel 122.
  14. ^ Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, pp. 177–78.
  15. ^ a b c d Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 178.
  16. ^ a b c d Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 179.
  17. ^ George Padmore, "An Open Letter to Earl Browder", The Crisis, October 1935, p. 302.
  18. ^ Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 177.
  19. ^ Carol Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause (2009), pp. 1–15.
  20. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 25, 29–37.
  21. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 23–42.
  22. ^ Sir Stafford Cripps KC, MP, "Foreword", Africa and World Peace (1937), p. ix.
  23. ISBN 978-0-7190-8901-5
    .
  24. ^ Ken Lawrence, "Padmore and CLR James". Archived 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 45, 70, 75.
  26. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 125–27.
  27. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, p. 145.
  28. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, p. 130.
  29. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 132–36.
  30. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 151–54.
  31. ^ Cameron Duodu, "Peggy Appiah" (obituary), The Guardian, 6 March 2006.
  32. ^ "George Padmore", Making Britain, The Open University.
  33. ^ a b Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 162–63.
  34. ^ George S. Schuyler, "Views and Reviews", The Pittsburgh Courier, 31 October 1959, p. 12.
  35. ^ Dudley J. Thompson, "Mr. George Padmore", The Guardian, 9 October 1959, p. 2.
  36. ^ a b Christophe Wondji, "A Tribute to George Padmore, A Great Pan-Africanist", New Afrikan 77, 26 January 2014.
  37. ^ "George Padmore" Archived 14 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat.
  38. ^ "George Padmore Library".
  39. Emmanuel Akyeampong, Steven J. Niven (eds), "George Padmore"
    , in Dictionary of African Biography, Vols 1–6, OUP USA, 2012, p. 75.
  40. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 163–65.
  41. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 155–56.
  42. ^ "Who was George Padmore?". George Padmore Institute. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  43. ^ John La Rose, "Life experience with Britain" Archived 20 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Chronicle World - Changing Black Britain.
  44. ^ Dan Carrier (28 October 2021). "The flat that changed history". Camden New Journal.
  45. ^ "Anti-colonial campaigner commemorated with plaque", BBC News London, 28 June 2011.
  46. ^ "BBC London News - George Padmore Plaque unveiling". 29 June 2011. Retrieved 10 November 2021 – via YouTube.
  47. ^ John Gulliver, "Toast to slayer of empires"Archived 1 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Camden New Journal, 30 June 2011.
  48. ^ Josie Hinton (30 June 2011). "Blue Plaque pays tribute to Pan-Africanist George Padmore". Camden Review.
  49. ^ Cameron Duodu, "George Padmore commemorated with plaque in London", Pambazuka News, 30 June 2011.
  50. ^ OpenStreetMap.

Further reading

External links

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