Abstract

This paper will focus on the often-neglected peace and nonviolence contributions of Afro-Trinidadian radicals C.L.R. James and George Padmore. Regularly not included in accounts of the development of nonviolent strategies because of their Marxist and Trotskyist approaches, I will argue that they play a key role in the development of nonviolent strategies, both in their native Trinidad and in the greater Pan-African world. James and Padmore each explicitly mention ways in which the cross-racial alliances and workers' movements in Trinidad inspired them. They insist, along with Gandhi, that disciplined strikes and boycotts are part of the tactics of nonviolence. The article focuses on James, as he recounts his first encounters with Gandhian nonviolent tactics as he learned them from C.F. Andrews who visited Trinidad in 1929, giving talks and writing news articles. James along with Padmore debated the use of nonviolence in their publications in the late 1930s. Through the influence of W.E.B. DuBois and Kwame Nkrumah (and with James' concurrence), the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England decided to fully defend a project of nonviolent action based on boycotts and strikes, in order to win Africa's liberation from European colonization.