anyhow..nothing you have said subsequently, proves satisfactorily all contention and implication contained in your first negative above about James.
the british intellectual going to Britain.
dats how james saw himself in 1932 sailing for London. when he arrived he knew there would be great disparity between what he 'knew' by preparation in trinidad and the reality he would encounter he was smart enough to expect it and deal with as he did.
Trinidad was deepely colonial in 1932, James himself prepared the 'case for westindin independence'
what was colonial life and how did it impact a mind and life like James? by 1958 he had returned to be general secretary of the PNM and the federal labour Party..from which posititions James led the fight for Frank Worrell to become the captain of the westindies team
5 years after James left the westindies exploded and the Moyne commission was sent out. from there to internal self-government in 1956 under williams, federation in 1958 and independence in 1962 after the federation dissolved.
how can James be said to have abandoned the westindies?
James could not do much better than the 'case for westindian independence' at the time. arrest and incarceration was the easiest thing for the colonial administration to do. as James pointed out they were even planning to arrest Cipriani.
in fact the westindian revolution such as it was, had to be prepared in Britain where there was greater freedom, greater democracy than in any damm colony. so too the African decolonisation which also had an american component.
James did not turn his back on the westindies...
indeed all that the westindies has become... all the great men and women the westindies produced since 1839 had to leave colonial society to have any chance of development...exile in the north was their fate, a condition Edward Said knew very much about hence his conclusion on the significance of James above
henry Sylvester Williams, Claude Mckay, Malcolm Nurse, J A Rodgers, Williams himself, and tons more...all great westindian intellectuals from the last century, matured and developed in Britain and the USA.
today that phenomena is still intact for the westindies are still only glorified colonies, socially still colonised with all attendant dangers for those whose practise is liberative intellectualism and its literary, political and economic products..liberative sociology so to speak.
if james had been born in 1951, 61, 71, even 91 and were alive now, and lived in trinidad, and developed his life there exactly as he did in Britain from 1932, in the USA 1939 to '53, and back again to Britain, he wouldn not only be arrested and jailed, he would be assassinated.
thats right. the social life in Trinidad curently, under black and Indo elitist leadership is worse, far less democratic than it ever was in 1932..under arbitray british colonialism. it is far more dangerous now than it was back then.
the trinidad police/military currently..indeed all westindian police/military are far worse, more violent and brutal than they were under british colonialism.
and the police/military are far better armed today, and more prepared to kill ordinary westindians currently, than ever before... anyone indeed they are told are a threat. they shoot ordinary westindians down like dogs in the street..especially in Trinidad.
I saw that with my own eyes in 1991 in Arima, on my way to Sangre Grande to see a friend.
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