Conclusion: ‘The Soliloquy of Africa’

Abstract

Just five days after Padmore passed away in a London hospital, officials in the British Foreign Office began to assess the impact of Padmore’s death upon politics in Africa, as well as the implications for British interests on the continent. The Foreign Office determined that Padmore had ‘filled the role of political theorist to the Pan-African Movement’ and that his death ‘leaves a vacuum’ that could lead to the movement stagnating, becoming ‘run down’, or more ominously for the British, ‘falling into the wrong hands’.² They believed that no one was yet capable of ‘lay[ing] down the dogma of Pan-Africanism’ and that filling Padmore’s shoes presented a unique challenge since his was ‘a role (that of political thinker), rather than an appointment’.³ Ironically, both British and Soviet observers believed that Padmore had blocked their ability to effect African leaders (especially Nkrumah), and that Padmore’s passing removed an important obstacle to their influence on the continent. Now that this ‘renegade’, as Ivan Potekhin, a leading Soviet Africanist put it, was no longer a factor, Soviet observers felt that Nkrumah would be more willing to deal with Moscow.⁴ Thus, both the Soviets and the British assessed that Pan-Africanism was at a critical juncture at the time of Padmore’s death.

‘Time would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before I discovered that it is not the quality of goods and utility that matter, but movement; not where you are and what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there’.¹

~ C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary