Hello, you're very welcome to Long Read. It's a Jacobin podcast where we look in

depth at political topics and thinkers. My name is Daniel Finn. I'm the

features editor here at Jacobin and I'll be presenting the show. For most of

the 20th century Trinidad and Tobago had a population of fewer than a million

people but this Caribbean nation made an outsized contribution to radical

theory on political activism. C. L. O. James and Eric Williams published two of

the most important works by its slavery and its role in the development of

capitalism. Williams went on to become the country's first leader after

independence. Their fellow Trinidadian George Padmore took on a pivotal role in

the struggle against racism and colonial rule. Padmore helped nurture a

generation of activists who successfully challenged the idea that Europe was

destined to rule the world. Our guest today is Theo Williams. He's a lecturer in

history at Durham University and the author of Making the Revolution

Global, Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before

decolonization. What was the social and political context in Trinidad at the

time when Padmore was born as Malcolm Nurse? So George Padmore or Malcolm

Nurse as he was born was born in Trinidad in June 1903 and I think the most

salient social and political facts that we have to think about here was that

Trinidad along with the nearby island Tobago was a British colony and it was a

crown colony which meant in essence that it was governed directly from

Britain with no meaningful political representation from the island itself and

like most Caribbean islands it had been a slave colony originally under Spanish

...