LR James' ear­ly at­tempt at bi­og­ra­phy, The Life of Cap­tain Cipri­ani, is a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of work. It presents a snap­shot in­to a pe­ri­od in Trinida­di­an his­to­ry, and a per­spec­tive that is both new and or­di­nary, via an episod­ic study of its sub­ject.

The Cap­tain is a fig­ure whose name lives on in the name of the labour col­lege, and whose stat­ue stands ever im­pos­ing­ly on the prom­e­nade at bot­tom of Fred­er­ick Street. But he's not present in pub­lic con­scious­ness the way, say, TUB But­ler is.

To re­call Arthur Cipri­ani's life and times is rea­son enough to ap­pre­ci­ate the reis­sue of James's fledg­ling work of 1932, and its spin­off pam­phlet, The Case for West-In­di­an Self Gov­ern­ment, which was pub­lished by Leonard and Vir­ginia Woolf's Hog­a­rth press in 1933.

As Brid­get Br­ere­ton's ex­cel­lent in­tro­duc­to­ry es­say to the con­tem­po­rary Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press edi­tion points out, the work is an "ap­pren­tice" work. It's not ac­tu­al­ly a bi­og­ra­phy, it's of­ten shal­low, and in places fa­tal­ly par­ti­san.

Its val­ue is that it presents an ear­ly glimpse of a tech­nique which James would per­fect lat­er: in­ter­twin­ing pub­lic and per­son­al his­to­ry and bi­og­ra­phy to il­lu­mi­nate the un­lit cor­ners of his­to­ry as a whole, as he did mas­ter­ful­ly in The Black Ja­cobins and Be­yond a Bound­ary.

Cipri­ani first came to promi­nence dur­ing the First World War when he (as a white of­fi­cer) stood up for the black West In­di­an Reg­i­ment's sol­diers, who were giv­en me­nial du­ties to per­form dur­ing wartime, and with­held from ac­tion on the front­lines.

The rea­son for this was racism. A sep­a­rate con­tin­gent from Trinidad, the (white) Mer­chants and Planters' Con­tin­gent, held them­selves apart from the en­list­ed men. Cipri­ani was the ex­cep­tion.

On his re­turn to Trinidad, Cipri­ani con­tin­ued his "strug­gle for the bare­foot man." One of his first pub­lic speech­es in 1919 which en­deared him to the mass­es was one which point­ed out the war prof­i­teer­ing by Trinida­di­an mer­chants.

Cipri­ani went on to be­come the leader of The Work­ing­men's As­so­ci­a­tion (TWA) and be­came an elect­ed mem­ber of the leg­is­la­ture when lim­it­ed fran­chise was grant­ed in 1925. James un­der­took to write a bi­og­ra­phy be­cause of his ad­mi­ra­tion for the Cap­tain, but al­so ev­i­dent­ly be­cause it pro­vid­ed an en­tr�e in­to the hot top­ic among West In­di­an and Trinida­di­an in­tel­lec­tu­als of the time (the 30s and 40s): race, na­tion­al­ism, and self-rule.

James was a mem­ber of the Bea­con Group, which was built on the ef­forts of the for­mi­da­ble Al­bert Gomes. Or­tho­doxy to­day has it the Bea­con Group (James, Al­fred Mendes, Gomes, Ralph Men­tor and oth­ers) rep­re­sent­ed a lit­er­ary and po­lit­i­cal awak­en­ing in Trinidad, and was a cat­a­lyst for na­tion­al­ist con­scious­ness via its epony­mous jour­nal.

It's worth men­tion­ing here that the In­di­an com­po­nent of the pop­u­la­tion fig­ures not at all in James' con­scious­ness. In­di­ans are giv­en a mere para­graph, al­though there were ac­tive In­do po­lit­i­cal groups in Trinidad at the time. Cipri­ani's as­sault on Sar­ran Teelucks­ingh, one of the vice pres­i­dents of TWA over the con­tro­ver­sial di­vorce leg­is­la­tion in the late 20s, frac­tured the in­ter­ra­cial plat­form to which the TWA as­pired. This was glossed over and the at­tack omit­ted by James.

This omis­sion has been not­ed many times and need not be gone in­to here, ex­cept to say na­tion­al­ism was (as it re­mains in some quar­ters) a black and white af­fair. In that re­gard, James dis­sects the stra­ta and seg­ments of "cre­ole so­ci­ety"–the white British colo­nials, the French Cre­ole aris­toc­ra­cy, the coloured and mixed-race as­pi­rants to so­cial hi­er­ar­chy, and the am­bi­tious and tal­ent­ed black mid­dle class.

He shows how each fits in­to the un­sta­ble mo­sa­ic, where na­tive tal­ent was sup­pressed, and mediocre colo­nials were placed in­to po­si­tions of im­por­tance. The dis­as­trous con­se­quences of that, we still live with to­day. (In­ci­den­tal­ly, much of what James re­ports here was en­act­ed in VS Naipaul's The Mim­ic Men. Yet James is praised, Naipaul re­viled.)

James fo­cus­es on a few episodes of Cipri­ani's life, like the war, or de­bates in the leg­is­la­ture, to il­lus­trate the ab­sur­di­ties and enor­mi­ties of Crown Colony gov­ern­ment. The sys­tem of gov­ern­ment was such that all pow­er resided in the gov­er­nor, and once he want­ed some­thing, there was no way around it.

In ef­fect, gov­er­nance was a luck and chance game: it all de­pend­ed on who you got. If the gov­er­nor was de­cent, you got pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment. If not, well, you got what we've had since in­de­pen­dence. The leg­is­la­ture was com­prised of elect­ed and ap­point­ed mem­bers, and the elect­ed mem­bers could nev­er car­ry a vote be­cause of their small num­bers.

Iron­i­cal­ly, James would write in a lat­er vol­ume (Par­ty Pol­i­tics in the West In­dies in 1962) that even when the elu­sive dream of in­de­pen­dence had been achieved, the sys­tem con­tin­ued to work thus­ly. That is, one man (E Williams) con­tin­ued to make all the de­ci­sions, de­spite the ac­cou­trements of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions de­signed to check and bal­ance. Williams in­sti­tu­tion­alised this, but Messrs Robin­son, Man­ning and Pan­day were all ea­ger acolytes of the sta­tus quo, and con­tin­ued the tra­di­tion when their turns came.

One of the el­e­ments of the book that's been praised, but which might not be so well-liked now is James' con­tempt for the "brown" and "coloured" mixed-race class­es. He speaks about their fawn­ing at­tempts to seek out the so­ci­ety of the lighter skinned, and their will­ing­ness to ex­ist on the fringes of that so­ci­ety, paid for by their wealth, sim­ply for the prox­im­i­ty.

He writes of the "trans­ports of joy in­to which men, rich and pow­er­ful, are thrown by a few words from the colo­nial sec­re­tary's wife or the Chief Jus­tice's daugh­ter." And less flat­ter­ing­ly, but, one sus­pects, clos­er to the truth: "In a Crown Colony, one would find men who would walk down Fred­er­ick St in their draw­ers if the Gov­er­nor should ask them to do so."

The po­lit­i­cal and com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions of these at­ti­tudes were clubs and ca­bals which con­trolled busi­ness, so­ci­ety and a great deal of pow­er based on fi­at, chance and whim. This sense of help­less­ness no doubt seeped in­to the cul­ture of the na­tion, and re­mains there to­day.

That is the val­ue of these seem­ing­ly dis­parag­ing anec­do­tal in­ci­dents: they show the na­ture and prove­nance of the so­cial tox­ins which in­fest our so­ci­ety to the present.

While the busi­ness and po­lit­i­cal worlds may have changed own­ers and con­trollers, and the own­ers and man­agers are os­ten­si­bly na­tive, the fun­da­men­tal at­ti­tudes, the need for ob­se­quious­ness, and the fun­da­men­tal el­e­ments of whim­sy and ego, and the ab­sence of ra­tio­nal­i­ty in mat­ters of the gravest im­por­tance, have not changed. Ex­am­ples of this in­clude the (then) gov­ern­ment's con­tor­tions to give a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny tax ex­emp­tion for its pro­vi­sion of elec­tric­i­ty ser­vices to Port-of-Spain, and its re­fusal to in­tro­duce trade union leg­is­la­tion in Trinidad.

That's or­di­nary cor­rup­tion, but as for racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, the is­sue was more com­pli­cat­ed than it would ap­pear. James writes of Cipri­ani's rais­ing the is­sue of dis­crim­i­na­tion at the Im­pe­r­i­al Col­lege of Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture against coloured men, in the leg­is­la­ture, on­ly to have coloured mem­bers con­tra­dict him. He writes, telling­ly that the na­ture of the Gov­er­nor's ap­point­ments led to men fill­ing po­si­tions which were more con­cerned with their own wel­fare than the peo­ple's.

"A per­son gain­ing his first im­pres­sion of pol­i­tics from a read­ing of some of these de­bates," he writes, "would con­clude that it was not the sole busi­ness of gov­ern­ment to gov­ern prop­er­ly, but a favour be­ing con­ferred up­on the peo­ple."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For these in­sights in­to the an­tecedents of our present so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, the book is worth read­ing. For his­to­ri­ans and so­ci­ol­o­gists who wish to con­struct an ac­cu­rate and not ro­man­ti­cised (if not out­right in­vent­ed) pic­ture of Trinida­di­an his­to­ry, this book pro­vides a valu­able in­gre­di­ent. (In­ter­est­ing­ly, James does not men­tion ca­lyp­so or Car­ni­val as hav­ing any po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.)

Aside from its val­ue to Trinida­di­ans, to schol­ars, read as part of James' oeu­vre, it is a fas­ci­nat­ing point on his men­tal con­tin­u­um, an in­sight in­to the evo­lu­tion of that prodi­gious mind.

BOOK IN­FO

CLR James: The Life of Cap­tain Cipri­ani: An Ac­count of British Gov­ern­ment in the West In­dies,

Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press.