Abstract
The conviction of the British left, and of Padmore, that the march of fascism in Europe and in Africa would inevitably lead to war was affirmed on 1 September 1939. The global conflict between 1939 and 1945 transformed the political and economic culture of both metropole and colony. For Britain, the human and material resources of the colonies, and the strategic location of bases, became essential assets in its survival against the Axis attack. In order to secure the support of one of its most valued colonies, India, Britain was forced to irrevocably commit to Indian independence. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 dealt a considerable blow to one of the most fundamental bases of British rule in Asia: prestige.1 The war’s economic toll upon Britain itself was massive. The participation of colonial peoples — through their labour in the colonies and on distant battlefields — impacted the infrastructure of the colonies themselves, how they were ruled, and the roles and relations within each colonial society. By the end of the war, a change in atmosphere in the Colonial Office was ‘palpable’.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonization, 1918–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p 88.
For wartime changes to British thinking on colonial labour, see Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 110–166.
Ashley Jackson, The British Empire and the Second World War (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), pp. 90–91.
S. Pennybacker, From Scottsboro to Munich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 86–87.
Quoted in R. Ottley, No Green Pastures (London: J. Murray, 1952), p 68.
N. Stammers, Civil Liberties in Britain during the Second World War (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), p 14; p 88.
T. Sullivan, ‘Listening Through: The Wireless and World War Two’, in War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experience in World War Two, eds P. Kirkham and D. Thoms (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995), p 173.
C. Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2009), p 29.
Nancy Cunard and George Padmore, White Man’s Duty (London: W.H. Allen, 1942), p 4.
These debates were focused primarily on Britain’s imperial presence in Asia. For a useful overview of these debates, see Chapters 11, 13, and 14 in W.M. Louis, Ends of British Imperialism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
The remark is hand-written in the margin of Padmore’s copy of Hallett Abend, Pacific Charter (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1943), p 62.
Quoted in H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (London: Longman, 1996) , p 354.
D. Johnson, World War II and the Scramble for Labour in Colonial Zimbabwe (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2000); D. Hargreaves, Decolonization in Africa, p 54; A. S. Milward, The Economic Effects of the Two World Wars on Britain (London: Macmillan, 1970); L. Collingham, The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food (London: Allen Lane, 2011), pp. 121–141.
For colonial troops in Britain’s war effort, see G. Schaffer, ‘Fighting Racism: Black Soldiers and Workers in Britain during the Second World War’, Immigrants and Minorities 28, no. 2 (2010), pp. 246–265; B. Bousquet and C. Douglas, West Indian Women at War: British Racism in World War II (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991).
James Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore’s Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (London: Pall Mall, 1967), p 66.
George Borodin, Red Surgeon (London: Museum Press, 1944), p 25. The markings are contained in Padmore’s copy in Accra.
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p 133.
J. Parker, Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937–1962 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p 62.
Padmore, ‘Black and White’, Vanguard, 21 April 1945.
Makonnen’s restaurant provided significant funds for the Federation, as well as a key location for the Congress. Makonnen, Pan-Africanism from Within, pp. 136–137. For more on this restaurant, see John McLeod, ‘A Night at “The Cosmopolitan”: Axes of Transnational Encounter in the 1930s and 1940s’, Interventions 4, no. 1 (April 2002), 53–67.
George Padmore, ed, Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action and History of the Pan-African Congress (Manchester: Panaf Services, 1947), p 119.
Hakim Adi’s description of a British ‘coup’ is particularly important here. Adi, ‘George Padmore and the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress’, in George Padmore: Pan-African Revolutionary, eds Baptiste and Lewis, pp. 66–96. See also Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), p 164.
For Du Bois’s politics in these years and his relationship to the NAACP, see C. Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 58–112. For Du Bois’s relationship to American communism and the McCarthy era, see G. Horne, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985).
C.L.R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (Connecticut: Lawrence Hill, 1978), p 71.
L. Winkiel, Modernism, Race, and Manifestos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p 19.
E. Wilson, Russia and Black Africa before World War II (London: Holmes and Meier, 1976), p 289.
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Part 1.
See especially S. Rose, Which People’s War? (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003).
L. Beers, Your Britain Media and the Making of the Labour Party (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 165–185.
Saliha Belmessous, Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 2–3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Leslie James
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
James, L. (2015). ‘The Long, Long Night is Over’: A War of Opportunity?. In: George Padmore and Decolonization from Below. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137352026_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137352026_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46906-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-35202-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)