{"id":1786,"date":"2025-03-01T16:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T16:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/?p=1786"},"modified":"2025-06-15T08:08:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T08:08:43","slug":"aime-cesaire-and-martinique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/?p=1786","title":{"rendered":"Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire and Martinique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Socialist History online public meeting on <\/strong><strong>19 May 2025<br \/>\n<\/strong>Speaker <strong>Kevin Morgan<\/strong><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RFuSVS9ADPI?si=9b6nnp_c9q-DBKee&amp;start=5\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><br \/>\nIn October 1956 Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire announced his resignation from the French communist party in an open letter to the PCF\u2019s leader Maurice Thorez. Better known as a writer and co-architect of the concept of negritude, C\u00e9saire was a communist of eleven years\u2019 standing and one of two PCF deputies representing Martinique in the French national assembly. The story of his break with communism has been told many times; his letter to Thorez is deservedly famous and its declaration that \u2018Marxism and Communism should serve the Black people, not the Black people serve Marxism and Communism\u2019 quoted countless times. This talk revisits the episode from the perspective of Martinique\u2019s \u2018other\u2019 communists: some 3,500 of them in 1956, with sixty per cent of the popular vote and a remarkable group of political intellectuals of whom Ren\u00e9 M\u00e9nil is perhaps best-known. C\u00e9saire had not informed them that he was breaking with his party; they have rarely been considered since. Nevertheless, they held on to several of their strongholds on the island and made important contributions to the writing of a Martinican history from below and ideas of cr\u00e9olit\u00e9. In seeking to recover something of this overlooked history this talk will also offer fresh light on the better-known trajectory of C\u00e9saire himself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kevin Morgan<\/strong> is a former editor of Socialist History who has written mainly on communist and British labour movement history. He is preparing a book of essays on the French and British left and became interested in how C\u00e9saire\u2019s repudiation of Stalinism and writing of a book on Toussaint Louverture compared with that of C.L.R. James. Through first-hand accounts and digitised source materials he stumbled into this fascinating history that seems to have had very little exposure in English and deserves to be better-known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Socialist History online public meeting on 19 May 2025 Speaker Kevin Morgan \ufeff In October 1956 Aim\u00e9 C\u00e9saire announced his resignation from the French communist party in an open letter&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meetings","category-past-shs-meetings","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1786"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1830,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1786\/revisions\/1830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}