“THE FOLLOWING CONVERSATION consists of two excerpts from interviews I conducted with C. L. R. James in Washington, DC, during 1976–77. The first section, videotaped on November 12–13, 1977, focuses on his experiences living in the United Kingdom; the second, audiotaped on October 15, 1976, focuses on his 1936 novel Minty Alley, the first novel by a Black West Indian to be published in England. The transcriptions have been edited for length and clarity.”
“Before I went to Queen’s Royal College, I had read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair about 10 or 15 times. I used to read that book over and over again. Not because it was a famous book, not because it was a classic novel — because it was in the house. And it was a long book — about 800 pages. I couldn’t absorb it, you know. But I would read it all”
“And there I got into the habit — I am sure from there — of being very disrespectful and critical of people in authority. Thackeray is very strong on that”
“And I absorbed that, so that, by the time I was about 15, that is the way I saw the world”
“And it was very helpful to see the world that way in the Caribbean, because the people who came from Britain and ruled the colonies were in much the same situation as the aristocrats were in Thackeray’s novel.”
“And I absorbed that, and, very naturally, I passed into the idea of being against them. I was against them before I analyzed who or what they were”
“I went up to Nelson — in Lancashire, where Constantine lived — and I went to see a local cricket match. And I saw there one of the greatest of all cricketers. He was at this time a man of 60, and I wrote an article about him. Why? Nobody knows. A habit of journalists. I sat down and wrote the article. Something had struck me, so I wrote — 1200 words. I showed it to Constantine and said, “Look.” And he looked and said, “That’s a very fine article.” I said, “Where can I get it published?” He says, “I don’t know, but I can tell you what to do. Send it to Mr. Neville Cardus — the senior cricket writer in England at The Manchester Guardian — and tell him I told you to send it to him and ask him if he can get it published.””
“So, I sent it to Mr. Cardus. And I get a letter from him telling me to come and see him. Nelson is about 40 miles from Manchester. I picked myself up, and I went to see him. He said, “We like your article very much. We are going to publish it.” I said, “What? In The Guardian?” He says, “Yes, we’re going to publish it in The Guardian. And there’s something else. I have a lot to do here reporting cricket. I want to have an assistant so that I can go off in this direction. Would you like to do that?” I said, “I’d be most willing.” He says, “Well, you’ll hear from us by the time next season begins.” And next season, they gave me a job. So, I went straight away and, for years, earned money by writing about cricket for the press. And a lot of publicity.”
“Now, I have always been a remarkable speaker from a public platform. It is a quality that I respect but do not exaggerate because you can have that quality and perpetrate the most stupid and mischievous ideas, or you can have that quality and put forward ideas that are really beneficial. Now, since I was 16, I’ve been speaking an hour or two. I never used a piece of paper. Never. I stand up and speak for an hour and a half, two hours sometimes.”
“And I go to England in 1932 and the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial movement has not yet developed fully. But it is coming, and various elements in the Labour Party, or various people who are interested in colonial questions, are very anxious to hear a literate and loquacious colonial speak about the colonial problem. And here is one! So, they sent for me everywhere: “Come and speak to us.” So, I went all over England, and then they began to see my name in the newspapers writing on cricket in The Manchester Guardian. All the progressives read that paper. Even the reactionaries read it. And I made my name on cricket matches. And then I write books, so there are reviews of my books. I published, in England, six books in six years. And so, I get widely known. They’re sending for me, and people are telling others, “That James is a tremendous speaker. Send for him. He can hold an audience.” And I’ve been able to do that all the time. That’s one of the burdens of my life.”
“Yesterday, you were telling the story of how, when you went to meetings of the British Communist Party, you would sometimes gain the floor and show them from their own pamphlets how they were misquoting Lenin. Could you tell that story again?”
“I could give you one concrete example of that. A woman from Russia, who was in England at the time, held a meeting at which she set out the Stalinist policy. And she said, among other things, that Lenin had always said that socialism could be constructed in a single state. And she read from a pamphlet in which Lenin was supposed to have said that”
“I got up and read from a volume — that same volume of Lenin — in which Lenin had said that socialism was impossible in a single country. And the Stalinists had published that volume and had published a translation of what Lenin had written. But Stalin, about 1924 or ’25, had crossed that out in Lenin’s publication and had written that it was possible. And that was the book she read from! But I got up and said, “I have here your own Communist Party publication of that speech, of that writing by Lenin where he said it is not possible. I say, I have it here. Let me bring it up and show it to you.” And I walked right up to the platform and said, “Here it is, here is Lenin’s volume where [there’s] a statement that socialism is impossible in a single country … here it is on page so-and-so.” And I showed it to her. And Kingsley Martin and the rest of them read it and said, “Yes, there it is.” They couldn’t understand that. And the meeting faded away”
“I don’t know that it was so politically important. I don’t know what good it did. But it was great fun to destroy their meetings. They had no means of stopping me at all because I had so much of what they had published that was against what they were saying. And I was very familiar with this material”
“You have written that unless professors and students participate in the conflicts of their own society, they cannot possibly understand the problems and solutions attempted by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.”
“Yes. I wanted to draw the attention of my students to the fact that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were not professors in some abstract university. They were in Athens at the time, and Plato was very hostile to the democracy. And it was his hostility to the democracy that led him to work out The Republic and various other texts. He was dealing with realities — that is the basis of the Greek philosophers. They were dealing with democracy, in life. There it was. And that’s why they remain, up to this day, the foundation of all that we are attempting to do”
““Unless you are aware that there is a struggle going on around you, and know what is taking place,” I said, “you will not be able to understand Plato, Aristotle, and the rest of them. You won’t be able to understand the relevance of an intellectual movement and ideas to a concrete social struggle.””
“When the revolution broke out in 1970, I happened to be in Ottawa speaking. And I told them, “I want you to take note that I am saying here that at the present time, the policies of C. L. R. James are the policies that the revolutionary elements in Trinidad are carrying out. Don’t let anybody quote what I have written in books against what they are doing. What they are doing is what matters, and please put aside my ideas. I hope they helped them to reach where they are, but be clear about that: not what I’ve written in books but what the young people are doing.” And my idea of going to the Caribbean is to encourage this process of development, this readiness to experiment and leave behind what they are ready to leave behind”
“But they are a bit nervous as to where they are going, so I would tell them, “Everything now depends on you. Don’t ask me. You find out. You know. And go wrong. Don’t be afraid of going wrong. Lenin says that a man who never went wrong never did anything. So go wrong and you will find out. As long as you have a general democratic attitude, and the moment things are too wrong, then people will complain, and you will change to something else.””