George Padmore's Black Internationalism

Abstract

In George Padmore’s Black Internationalism, Rodney Worrell traces the main features of Padmore’s social and political thought. Worrell explores Padmore’s use of the ideologies of Marxism and pan-Africanism as vehicles to liberate Africa and the Caribbean from the grip of European imperialism. As an engaged Marxist revolutionary, Padmore played a leading role in the Soviet Union’s black internationalism project during the early 1930s. After he severed his ties with the Comintern, he became one of the leading pan-African activists in Britain from the mid-1930s until he migrated to Ghana in 1957, where he made his mark as a member of the International African Service Bureau, the Pan-African Federation, and in organizing the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, in 1945. Padmore became a major theorist of the unification of the African continent and worked assiduously to see this become a reality as Kwame Nkrumah’s advisor on African affairs. Worrell provides a sound and thorough account of Padmore’s strident anti-imperialism and radical anti-colonial critiques while simultaneously outlining his championing of self-determination. This engrossing work scrutinizes Padmore’s political praxis and illuminates his invaluable contribution to pan-Africanism and his dedication to the liberation of Africa and the Caribbean from colonial rule.