A Buttress for the ‘Beacon Light’

Abstract

George Padmore stepped into the 1950s more well-known than he had ever been, and with a keen awareness of the incipient presence of the Cold War in the drive for independence. The need for caution and clear thought was essential: the possibilities for political independence and for revolutionary social change were palpable, yet simultaneously extremely fragile. At the end of 1947, when Kwame Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast and Padmore began his long-distance correspondence advising the future leader on political strategy, the West Indies were inching towards federation and Nigeria still seemed the most likely African state to progress towards negotiated self-government. The partition of India and Pakistan had just been expedited, and Burmese and Ceylonese independence swiftly followed in 1948. Self-government in the Indian subcontinent served as a crucial influence on Padmore’s thinking; it showed that constitutional independence, negotiated and secured via strong political leadership and an articulate national political party like Nehru and the Congress Party, could succeed. In particular, Nehru’s emphasis on socialism and internationalism as the best tools for development after independence became an inspirational model which Padmore referenced throughout the decade. On the other hand, by the early 1950s the ‘counter-insurgency’ campaign in Malaya had become a protracted conflict of decolonization with clear anticommunist overtones, and heightening tensions within French and British settler colonies in North, East, and Central Africa set debates about self-determination on a razor’s edge.