C L R James: A Political Biography

By the time Cyril Lionel Robert James died in London in 1989 at the age of 88, the Trinidad-born black journalist, author and radical was known and admired on three continents as one of the great intellectual and political figures of this century. He helped lead the International African Service Bureau in 1930s London, a pioneering think tank that supported African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. He was founder and early U.S. leader, until the late 1940s, of the international socialist movement led by Russian exile Leon Trotsky. Deported from the U.S. for his radicalism in 1953, James continued to write, publish and conduct socialist and anticolonial activities from London and Trinidad. He wrote a novel, Minty Alley (1927) and a famous book on cricket and culture, Beyond a Boundary (1962), among others. This richly detailed biography takes us inside the small, influential world inhabited by James and his colleagues. Worcester, program director at the Social Sciences Research Council, summarizes James's writings with sympathy and insight, and gives a rare tour of the inner workings of Cold War-era marginal left-wing politics. But Worcester also shows the profound influence James's ideas had on the broader left-wing and anticolonial movements in Europe, the Caribbean, Africa and the U.S. Some of James's ideas about culture, participatory democracy, mass movements, socialist and antiracist politics are now staples of left-of-center thought and activity everywhere. Illustrations. (Jan.)