The rise of the Black Internationale: Anti-imperialist activism and aesthetics in Britain during the 1930s

Abstract

This article explores the radical ferment associated with the cadre of anti-imperialist activists through the lens of films made by Paul Robeson during his sojourn in Britain in the 1930s. The collective biography of the activist intellectuals with whom Robeson affiliated himself while in Britain may be said to track the rise of an exemplary Black Internationale, a loosely organized but nonetheless coherent revolutionary project linking anti-fascism and anti-imperialism. Like other expressions of Popular Front culture, the Black Internationale was grounded in an anti-racist ethnic pluralism and an anti-fascist politics of international solidarity. While they exemplify these values, the films in which Robeson participated during this period also demonstrate his movement away from elitist conceptions of cultural uplift that characterize earlier Pan-African doctrines. In addition, Robeson's British films gradually assumed a more explicitly documentary form grounded in ideals of egalitarianism and solidarity. Thus, in both form and content, Robeson's work during this period articulated a radical political aesthetics that resonated with audiences galvanized by the rise of fascism in Europe and the intensification of imperialism around the world. In recovering Robeson's encounters with figures such as C.L.R. James in Britain, I intend additionally to illuminate a seminal but ill-documented moment in the pre-history of British anti-racism. This unique coming together of international figures in a common, anti-colonial cause can also be seen to have left a distinctive trace on the specific black British cultures that come into being in the postwar period. The activism and aesthetics of Paul Robeson and the Black Internationale laid important foundations, establishing powerful anti-imperialist traditions that prevailed after the eclipse of the Popular Front and beyond the apparently brief heyday of British anti-fascism.

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