From Comintern Negro Bureau chief to architect of Pan-African independence, the revolutionary journalist who broke with empire
"Pan-Africanism or Communism?" — rejecting Cold War binaries, his final book insisted African liberation must chart its own course
Trinidad-born Pan-Africanist theorist and journalist. Appointed head of the Profintern's Negro Bureau in Moscow in 1929, he led organising efforts among colonial workers. But he broke with the USSR in 1934 when Soviet diplomacy prioritised alliance with the colonial powers over liberation movements. From London he chaired the International African Service Bureau and organised the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, setting the agenda for postwar decolonisation. As Kwame Nkrumah's closest advisor, he helped shape Ghana's independence and the vision of African unity.
Career Timeline
- 1903Born in Arouca, Trinidad as Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse
- 1924–1927Studies at Fisk and Howard Universities; joins CPUSA (1927)
- 1929Reports to Comintern in Moscow; appointed head of Profintern's Negro Bureau; elected to Moscow City Soviet
- 1930Organises ITUCNW in Hamburg; edits monthly The Negro Worker
- 1933–1934Deported from Germany after Nazi takeover; breaks with Comintern over USSR's shift on colonial policy; expelled February 1934
- 1934–1945Settles in London; chairs IASB; organises 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress
- 1947–1957Advisor to Nkrumah; publishes The Gold Coast Revolution (1953); supports Ghana's independence
- 1957–1959Moves to Ghana as Nkrumah's advisor on African affairs; dies in London 1959; ashes interred at Christiansborg Castle
Break with the Comintern and the London Pan-African Network
In 1933, shortly after the Nazi takeover, the ITUCNW offices in Hamburg were ransacked and Padmore was deported from Germany. But the deeper rupture was political. By 1934 the Soviet Union, seeking to counter fascist Germany and Japan, began courting Britain and France, colonial powers whose empires Padmore had dedicated his life to dismantling. Colonial liberation was demoted in Comintern priorities. For Padmore, this was a betrayal. On 23 February 1934 the Comintern's International Control Commission expelled him; the CPUSA press branded him a 'lackey of imperialism.'
Settling in London in 1935, Padmore reunited with boyhood friend C.L.R. James and, together with Jamaican Pan-Africanist Amy Ashwood Garvey, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, Sierra Leonean labour organiser I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, and others, founded the International African Service Bureau (IASB) in 1937. The IASB held Hyde Park rallies, lobbied trade unions and Parliament, and published International African Opinion, bringing the colonial question to the British public. Colonial authorities banned its publications; Special Branch surveilled every member. Padmore's 1938 'Manifesto Against War' urged African and Caribbean colonial subjects to refuse military service in the looming world war while appealing for anti-war solidarity from white workers. The IASB became the organisational seedbed for the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress, where W.E.B. Du Bois called Padmore 'the organising spirit of the Congress.'