The rise of the Black Internationale: Anti-imperialist activism and aesthetics in Britain during the 1930s

Abstract

This article explores the radical ferment associated with the cadre of anti-imperialist activists through the lens of films made by Paul Robeson during his sojourn in Britain in the 1930s. The collective biography of the activist intellectuals with whom Robeson affiliated himself while in Britain may be said to track the rise of an exemplary Black Internationale, a loosely organized but nonetheless coherent revolutionary project linking anti-fascism and anti-imperialism. Like other expressions of Popular Front culture, the Black Internationale was grounded in an anti-racist ethnic pluralism and an anti-fascist politics of international solidarity. While they exemplify these values, the films in which Robeson participated during this period also demonstrate his movement away from elitist conceptions of cultural uplift that characterize earlier Pan-African doctrines. In addition, Robeson's British films gradually assumed a more explicitly documentary form grounded in ideals of egalitarianism and solidarity. Thus, in both form and content, Robeson's work during this period articulated a radical political aesthetics that resonated with audiences galvanized by the rise of fascism in Europe and the intensification of imperialism around the world. In recovering Robeson's encounters with figures such as C.L.R. James in Britain, I intend additionally to illuminate a seminal but ill-documented moment in the pre-history of British anti-racism. This unique coming together of international figures in a common, anti-colonial cause can also be seen to have left a distinctive trace on the specific black British cultures that come into being in the postwar period. The activism and aesthetics of Paul Robeson and the Black Internationale laid important foundations, establishing powerful anti-imperialist traditions that prevailed after the eclipse of the Popular Front and beyond the apparently brief heyday of British anti-fascism.

Keywords:

• popular front
• black Marxism
• Paul Robeson
• anti-imperialism
• political aesthetics
• internationalism

Notes

1. For detailed musicological analysis of the Ballad, see Barg, “Paul Robeson's Ballad for Americans.”

2. Denning, The Cultural Front, 129.

3. On the dependence of US national identity on anti-black tropes, see Singh, Black is a Country, 114, 216–23.

4. Robeson, Here I Stand, 48.

5. Robeson, Here I Stand, 35.

6. Robeson, Here I Stand, 33.

7. For discussion of Paris as a cosmopolitan space for black internationalism, see Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora.

8. Although biographers of James, Padmore, and Robeson have touched on the individuals involved, Cedric Robinson's “Black Intellectuals at the British Core” remains one of the sole extended treatments of this seminal moment in British anti-imperialist and anti-racist history. Also important is Penny Von Eschen's Race Against Empire, a sub-section of which is devoted to the anti-imperialist constellation in Britain during the 1930s.

9. Paul Gilroy curiously completely ignores the radical milieu of the 1930s in his seminal work The Black Atlantic.

10. Weinbaum, “Reproducing Black Globality.”

11. The term “Black Internationale” was used by American journalist George Schuyler in a strident article published in the NAACP's journal Crisis in 1938 that lambasted the models of black internationalism put into circulation not simply by James and Padmore, but also by US-based writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Claude McKay, as well as by a global network of periodicals such as the Chicago Defender, the Negro Worker, and La Dépêche africaine. For a discussion of Schuyler's work, see Bain, “‘Shocks Americana!’”

12. Robeson, Here I Stand, 48.

13. Quoted in Robeson, Jr, The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, 286.

14. Quoted in Robeson, Jr, The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, 292.

15. For a discussion and rebuttal of these aesthetic slurs, first articulated during the era of the Popular Front by New York intellectuals, see Denning, The Cultural Front, 115–35.

16. On the pan-ethnic character of Popular Front internationalism, see Denning, The Cultural Front, 129–35.

17. Denning, The Cultural Front, 114.

18. Kelley, “Introduction,” 16.

19. Kelley, Race Rebels, 108.

20. For details of the dramatic impact of this visit to the Soviet Union, see Duberman, Paul Robeson, 184–91.

21. For a discussion of the masculinist imaginary of pan-Africanism, see Stephens, Black Empire.

22. For analysis of these pseudo-scientific racist doctrines, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather.

23. Stephens, Black Empire, 44.

24. It cannot be a coincidence that Robeson helped found one of the most significant internationalist African American organizations, the Council on African Affairs (CAA), in 1937, two years after encountering James's IAFE in London. For discussion of the CAA, see Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 17–21.

25. James, “Abyssinia and the Imperialists,” 63.

26. Hooker, Black Revolutionary, 42–6.

27. Quoted in Robinson, “Black Intellectuals,” 200.

28. James revised the text of the play that I am using for this reading during the late 1960s. Unfortunately I lack the space here for an extensive discussion of James's revisions. The later version of the play, renamed The Black Jacobins, is available in the C.L.R. James Reader.

29. James, Toussaint Louverture, 1.

30. For a detailed discussion of these years, see Buhle, C.L.R. James, 38–53. Further discussion of James's thought during this period can be found in King and Kelley and Lemelle.

31. Cedric Robinson makes this point in relation to James's history of the Haitian revolution, but it applies equally if not more powerfully to the play under discussion. See Robinson, “Black Intellectuals,” 182.

32. James, Toussaint Louverture, 32.

33. James, Toussaint Louverture, 48.

34. Paul Buhle notes the similarity in this regard between the issues confronted by revolutionary leaders in the Soviet Union and in Haiti, suggesting that James's reading of the situation in the latter was influenced by Trotsky's discussion of conditions in the former. See Buhle, C.L.R. James, 60.

35. On this disconnection as Toussaint's tragic flaw, see Rabbitt, “C.L.R. James's Figuring,” 122–3, and Buhle, C.L.R. James, 60–1, although both of these discussions are based on the later version of the play.

36. Toussaint Louverture, 65.

37. Toussaint Louverture, 72–3.

38. Toussaint Louverture, 88.

39. Toussaint Louverture, 49.

40. For a discussion of the dominant colonial ideologies of the era, see Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics.

41. Buhle, C.L.R. James, 57.

42. Robeson, Jr, The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, 311.

43. For biographical details of Robeson's association with Welsh mining communities, see Duberman, Paul Robeson, 229.

44. Denning, The Cultural Front, 125.

45. While Goliath's death may suggest the problematic American literary and cinematic tradition of black self-sacrifice for white characters, the poly-ethnic militancy of the Popular Front culture within which The Proud Valley is situated hardly supports such a reading of black subordination. For a discussion of the tradition of black self-sacrifice, see Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mamies, and Bucks.

46. Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, 53.

47. Barg, “Paul Robeson's Ballad,” 54.

48. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 40.

49. For a more detailed discussion of Claudia Jones's activist work in Britain, see Dawson, Mongrel Nation, 92–6.

50. The foremost champion of this non-essentialist, pan-ethnic definition of blackness remains A. Sivanandan. For discussion of the history behind “black” British identity, see his Communities of Resistance.

51. Examples of this legacy can be found in such disparate phenomena as the radical aesthetics of bands like Asian Dub Foundation and in the organization of the important Rock Against Racism campaigns. On these phenomena see Dawson, “This is the Digital Underclass,” and “Love Music, Hate Racism” respectively.