C.L.R. James, Eric Williams and the Making of Party Politics in the West Indies

This paper examines the relationship between C.L.R. James and Eric Williams in the context of the appearance of the former’s book, Party Politics in the West Indies, in 1962. It briefly considers the career of the two men up to 1958, when Williams, now chief minister of Trinidad & Tobago, invited James to return to Trinidad to edit his party’s paper. The paper then examines the interaction between, and the conflicting political views of the two men between 1958 and 1961, when James was expelled from Williams’ party. The paper ends with a close analysis of the book James published in 1962.