Ending British Rule in Africa

In Ending British Rule in Africa, Carol Polsgrove has provided a novel approach to both black British histories and the histories of anti-imperialism and pan-Africanism. The book provides a detailed empirical account focused on a small community of black African and West Indian writers and activists, who were at the forefront of the effort to contest British imperial rule from their main base in London from the 1930s onwards, and who were later involved in one way or another with the independence of Ghana in the 1950s. In doing so, Polsgrove illustrates how writing and publishing allowed these individuals and the organizations they formed to position themselves at the heart of wider global political networks. The account centres on the Trinidadian George Padmore, who moved to Britain in 1935 having earlier studied in the USA, where he had joined the Communist Party, and subsequently moved to Russia to play a key role in the Comintern’s International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers. Padmore soon involved himself with anti-imperialist politics in London and joined a small but significant group of black anti-imperialists including C.L.R. James, Ras Makonnen and Jomo Kenyatta. Polsgrove focuses on the complex relationship between politics and the many forms of writing which this group and their associates produced, demonstrating the importance of writing and publishing to the formation of this political community. In the context of a British imperial society marked by racism and the colour bar, Polsgrove emphasizes that writing ‘was itself a political act’ given that it opened ‘a space in the public sphere for voices that had been excluded from it’ (p. 168–9). The account considers a range of genres, including monographs, pamphlets, self-issued periodicals and journalistic contributions to other periodicals, supported by a vast amount of archival research drawing on some previously unexplored collections

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