Padmore, George

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Padmore, George

c. 1902
September 23, 1959

The political activist and journalist Malcolm Nurse adopted the name George Padmore in 1927. He was born in rural Arouca, Trinidad, in the British West Indies. However, his childhood and teenage years were spent in a middle-class suburb in the island's capital, Port of Spain. At the age of nineteen he briefly served as a reporter for the Trinidad Guardian, a daily newspaper. Due to frequent arguments with the newspaper's editor, Padmore resigned and in 1924 departed for the United States.

A desire to pursue a career in medicine and later law led him to Fisk University, New York University, and Howard University. While working among blacks in Harlem, Padmore edited a newspaper, the Negro Champion (later known as the Liberator ). He joined the Communist Party in 1927 and began contributing articles to the Daily Worker in New York. He also worked with the Communist Party's American Negro Labor Congress.

In 1929 Padmore went to Moscow and lectured on the trade union activities of blacks in the United States. Soon he was appointed head of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUC-NW), an arm of the Red International of Labour Unions, or Profin-tern. In June 1930 the ITUC-NW began publishing the widely read Negro Worker, which Padmore edited. The ITUC-NW was a vibrant group and in July 1930 organized an international conference of Negro workers in Germany.

Padmore's role as a voice for the oppressed and exploited working class was evident in numerous books and pamphlets, including The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers, How Britain Rules Africa, and Africa and World Peace.

Padmore began to display a phenomenal organizational ability after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. He assisted fellow Trinidadian C. L. R James in forming the International African Friends of Ethiopia. In March 1937 Padmore transformed this anti-imperialist group into the International African Service Bureau (IASB) and served as its chair.

By 1944 the IASB had been dissolved and Padmore, along with other Pan-Africanists, formed the Pan-African Federation (PAF) in England. In 1945 Padmore was the mastermind of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester, England.

Although Padmore was a staunch Pan-Africanist, his work incorporated other ethnic groups. By 1946 he was instrumental in establishing the London-based Asiatic African Unity Committee, comprising Indians and Africans with the intention of building a united front against imperialism. He had a close fraternal relationship with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru of India.

In 1945 Padmore met Kwame Nkrumah (then a student from Ghana) in London. Nkrumah assisted in the Pan-African Conference in 1945 and served as the regional secretary of the PAF. Nkrumah never forgot Padmore's friendship and commitment to African unity, and in 1957, when he had become the prime minister of Ghana, he appointed Padmore his political advisor.

At the time of his death, the indefatigable Padmore had sown the seeds of anticolonialism and laid the foundation of an indestructible anti-imperialist movement that resulted in many British colonies gaining political independence.