Global radicals : Caribbean radical thought 1920-1983

This chapter explores the development of radical thought in the Caribbean, from the 1920’s until the American invasion of Grenada in 1983. The thrust of the argument is that radical thinkers had a global outlook, and not a nationalistic parochial one. They were aware of world debates and included within the international movements of their time. George Padmore is a case in point. An agent of the Communist International in the USSR and Germany, he fell foul with communism and became a Pan Africanist. CLR James, who spent most of his life in Britain and the US, was an eclectic mind, and a non-sectarian militant within international trotskysm. He was and still is a cherished figure in Trinidad, and all over the region. The Oil Workers Trade Union of Trinidad has spawned a radical, multiracial social and political culture which to some extent still informs the life of Trinidad. In Grenada, Maurice Bishop and Bernard Coard, also trained in the UK, combined radical concerns for social development and equality with rash pro soviet statements in the United Nations. In spite of soviet caution, they openly provoked the US by associating with Cuba. The revolution became increasingly sectarian, and soon after Bishop’s murder, the US invaded the island and put an end to the experiment. Radical thinking in the Caribbean cannot be understood outside the global framework