Come Here To Me!

C.L.R James speaking in Trafalgar Square, London. (1935)

Whether cricket or Marxism is your bag, C.L.R James is a towering figure in each world. They are, I concede, two worlds that tend not to meet. His 1963 memoir Beyond a Boundary, which he himself described as “neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography”, is widely regarded as one of the finest books ever written on any sport. He maintained that “cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.”

Born in Trinidad in 1901, Cyril Lionel Robert James made important contributions in many fields of life. As a historian, he penned The Black Jacobins, an acclaimed history of the Haitian Revolution, and he would make many important intellectual contributions to the field of postcolonial studies. A lifelong political activist, he was highly critical of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and was aligned with Trotskyist movements in the turbulent 1930s. He arrived in Britain in 1932, taking up a job as cricket correspondent with the Manchester Guardian and throwing himself into political activism in London.

In 1935, he arrived in Dublin, lecturing on the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Here, he befriended Nora Connolly O’Brien, the daughter of James Connolly, and encountered opposition from some surprising quarters.

The response to the invasion of Ethiopia: 

An imperial grab for Africa, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia was condemned by the League of Nations by fifty votes to one (the single dissenting voice being the Italians themselves).  Despite condemnation, little real action was taken by the European powers after the commencement of the invasion in September 1935, and the annexation of the country allowed Mussolini to proclaim that “the Italian people have created an empire with their blood. They will fertilize it with their work.” The following year, Mussolini would send men and planes to Spain to crush democracy there, but 1935 demonstrated his disregard for the sovereignty of other nations to all who were paying attention. From Dublin, Éamon de Valera had been one of the few political leaders to loudly condemn the actions of the Italians, warning the League of Nations that “if on any pretext whatever we were to permit the sovereignty of even the weakest state amongst us to be unjustly taken away, the whole foundation of the League would crumble into dust.”

James, then a member of the Independent Labour Party, wrote extensively on the fascist invasion, writing in The New Leader:

Let us fight against not only Italian imperialism, but the other robbers and oppressors, French and British imperialism. Do not let them drag you in. To come within the orbit of imperialist politics is to be debilitated by the stench, to be drowned in the morass of lies and hypocrisy.

He was a founding member of the International African Friends of Ethiopa, and in this capacity lectured all over Britain, speaking at a protest rally in Trafalgar Square on the need for solidarity. In December 1935, he arrived in Dublin to address a meeting opposing Italian fascist aggression, finding a weak left but some welcoming faces. James would later recall that “he didn’t really understand what it meant to be revolutionary until he went to Ireland.”

Meeting Nora Connolly O’Brien and the Irish Citizen Army:

A young Nora Connolly in Irish Volunteer uniform, taken before the 1916 Rising.

In Dublin, C.L.R James found an ally in Nora Connolly O’Brien, a veteran of the revolutionary period who shared the socialist republican worldview of her martyred father.

In Ireland, the left was in a moment of crisis. Faced with a hostile anti-communism which had the potential to spill into physical violence (as happened with the ransacking of Connolly House in March 1933), the movement had also been torn apart by a series of splits. There was a moment of great hope in 1934 with the birth of the Republican Congress, an attempt to bring about a broad alliance of left republican, socialist and communist activists, and a movement which proclaimed that “a republic of a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle which uproots capitalism on its way.” Ideological disagreement in its infancy had largely crippled the Congress, and created ill feeling among activists. One outcome of the turbulence of the period was the reemergence of a revolutionary body styling itself the Irish Citizen Army,  which included veterans of the 1913-23 period in its ranks, such as Nora herself and Seamus McGowan. It was members of this body who were central to the invitation of C.L.R James to Dublin.

James was condemned in the pages of Workers’ Voice, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland, for “devoting his main conclusions to a most irresponsible attack on the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.” James was denounced from the floor by a Communist Party speaker, who told the gathered crowd:

Those responsible for bringing the lecturer to Ireland and Mr James himself should remember that reactionary though certain sections of the Irish working class leadership is, this is the first attempt inside the revolutionary forces to try and disseminate such lying counter-revolutionary propaganda against the Communists. Such Fascist activity has been left to the clergy and the Duffy and Cosgrove movement up to date.

Not startled by the denunciation he received here, James invited Nora Connolly O’Brien to lecture in London on the Irish situation, an invitation she availed of. Nora’s contacts with Trotskyites in the British left led to a correspondence with Leon Trotsky himself, who wrote to her affectionately in June 1936:

I was very touched by your kind letter. A great deal of circumstances prevented me from writing to you immediately. I always have been greatly interested in Ireland, but unfortunately my interest remained only platonic. I never had the opportunity to study in detail Irish history and politics. Since my early days I have got, through Marx and Engels, the greatest sympathy and esteem for the heroic struggle of the Irish for their independence. The tragic fate of your courageous father met me in Paris during the war. I bear him faithfully in remembrance. I made up my mind to read your book about your father in the very next time.

James maintained an active interest in Irish politics, writing an article on “Ireland and the Revolutionary Tradition of Easter Week” for the 25th anniversary of the rebellion. There, he maintained:

British banks still dominate Ireland, but some of the chains have been struck off. Today de Valera knows that if he were to countenance aid to Britain, his doom would be sealed. Connolly had made a tactical mistake, but his faith, in the Irish hatred of British imperialism was a profound revolutionary faith, based on knowledge of his people, revolutionary courage and intuition, and a deep understanding of Irish history. His rashness was valuable beyond the timid caution of a thousand lesser men.

By the time of his passing in 1989, James had compiled a remarkable body of work, spanning political theory, history, sports and other fields. He believed that “when history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.”

This article would not have been possible without the excellent workersrepublic.org resource, an important collection of primary source materials.