Red International and Black Caribbean by Margaret Stevens

Author:Margaret Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786801647
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

This common experience of “difficulties” and prohibitions visited upon black delegates from Chicago to Panama seems offhand to validate what was then Haywood’s claims to the universality of “National oppression” across the Diaspora, stretching the “Black Belt” from the United States to the Caribbean Basin. And yet, the reality is that the main way that Ford was able to gather this intelligence and data about the hardships in each case was by means of Huiswoud’s personal visits to these regions—at least relative to the Caribbean. In other words, the comrades were collectively building the movement even though they had political differences, and this was the essence of what centralism and Communist discipline entailed.

Huiswoud’s experience indicated that the colonial boundaries of empire acted as a common impediment to recruiting delegates for the conference. But it was clear that the conditions of repression were especially pronounced in the context of the British Empire’s Anglophone Caribbean. Notwithstanding their political differences over how to formulate the nature of racial oppression in the national versus colonial context, western ruling classes in Europe and the US alike were all united around the principle of full repression of Communist efforts aimed at black working-class mobilization and organization on an international basis.

Political and economic conditions within the British West Indies posed a distinct set of tactical challenges given the nature of colonial rule in the British Empire. In Jamaica, Huiswoud was able to build off of the support he had garnered from his successful struggle waged in August 1929 at the UNIA convention as a representative of the ANLC. On Ford’s account, in

… Jamaica Comrade Huiswoud has been successful in getting a delegate for the London Conference. This delegate is a Negro Railroad worker … From the reports of Comrade Huiswood, it was stated that this delegate was elected by a committee … of the Jamaica Labor and Trades Union.

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