Putting Empire in Black and White

Abstract

Between 1934 and 1939, in the aftermath of the trauma he experienced by his expulsion from the Communist Party and before the outbreak of war in Europe, George Padmore worked to rehabilitate his political career outside the bounds of the international communist movement. The complexity of Padmore’s engagement with Marxism and his commitment to Comintern thinking, as we shall see, belie any single conclusion because they stood the test of time in varied ways and in unforeseen moments. His daily commitments demonstrate that he was devoted first and foremost to building up a cadre of anti-colonial nationalists who could lead their respective nationalist movements, as well as fostering a critical interpretation of world events among as wide a black audience as possible. Yet his willingness to move outside the bonds of the international communist movement, especially before 1945, did not result in a dismissal of the white Left. Black workers were, ultimately, the authority and the source of their own liberation, but Padmore did not reject the need for aid and solidarity from sympathizers in the imperial centre. The irony is that Padmore’s arguments did in fact work to break ‘the hegemonic imperial macro-narratives within Marxism’ that tended still to view colonial liberation as coming from a rise of the European proletariat.¹