A Conference Report from the Archives:
Vol. 12, No. 48, Pages 233–236 (January–June 1969)
A year ago I wrote about a beginning: how the idea of C.A.M. was born in a Bloomsbury flat, how monthly meetings were held and largely attended at the West Indian Students Centre, how a great conference was held at the University of Kent, at Canterbury. I called the article “First C.A.M. Conference”. I almost called this one “Last C. A. M. Conference”. It almost seemed an end. One newspaper report tried to describe it so. In the Trinidad Guardian the sensational headline “Black Power Splits Caribbean Artists” bannered an account of Black Power enthusiasts at the Conference attacking C.A.M. from every angle, and predicted its rapid disintegration. The London immigrant newspaper, The Hustler, quoted as key comments the duty of members to contribute to the “international movement in the Third World towards the global overthrow of Racism”, and that “the artist must become spiritually part of the Black Community”. Just why C.A.M. exists, what it should be doing, where it should be meeting, and above all, with whom it should be communicating: these were indeed the central issues of the Conference. After eighteen months’ existence, C.A.M. was ripe for introspection and self-criticism. C.A.M. after Canterbury 1968 will not be the same. There will be, perhaps, no Canterbury 1969. But C.A.M. at an end, no. What united the Conference, and what must compel C.A.M. to continue in some shape or other, is the need for communication. This was the over-riding concern, the prime criterion, of the Conference. Between the two conferences, Enoch Powell has spoken. The necessity to communicate with and to feel part of a community in a land which had suddenly seemed very hostile gave a special urgency to C.A.M.’s continued existence: in Britain, at any rate.
A year ago I described the setting of the Conference and the way it was structured. So much was so similar, to repeat would be tedious. Eliot College last year, Rutherford this, but the architecture was identical. Two painters’ work took up the walls last year—Aubrey Williams and Clifton Campbell; this year there was also work by Ronald Moody, Errol Lloyd, Art Derry, Karl Craig, Edmund Gill, Paul Bash. Again there was a book display, but this year it was more accessible, open more often and with a far wider selection of books related to the Caribbean. Edward Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey and John La Rose were there again, practising writers at the core of C.A.M.; but CLR James was in Africa, George Lamming in Jamaica, and Michael Anthony in Brazil. We had Wilson Harris, though; his words and personality were probably the greatest single force at the Conference. There were more critics and editors: Kenneth Ramchand and Louis James again, strengthened by Henry Swanzy. Gerald Moore and Clive Wake, too. There were fewer people recently back, or on leave from, the Caribbean: more West Indians who had lived in Britain for some time, or British people with a particular involvement in the West Indies. This in itself meant that the focus was more on communication within Britain, less on communication within the West Indies. Again, there were people from other parts of the world: Kwabena Amoako from Ghana, Cosmo Pieterse from South Africa, Daniel Moreau from Paris.
Again, it was the lectures that formed the basis of all the Conference talk. The lectures fell into pairs, two on each of the three days. The first set the direction of the Conference: “West Indians in Britain”. The Jamaican sociologist Stuart Hall spoke in general terms of the confrontation of “intimate enemies”—as he called the host and West Indian immigrant communities—but he spoke with a perception that was both professional and the result of many years as a West Indian in Britain. Discussion ranged over his analysis of the West Indian personality, attitudes in Britain to West Indians, concern for the second- and third-generation immigrant. Here at the start, the overriding concern for communication was voiced. Henry Swanzy—editor of the B.B.C. programme Caribbean Voices in the early 1950s—asked about the role of the artist in this situation of confrontation, whether it was for the artist to explain groups to one another. The clarification and articulation of the West Indian artist’s own experience was considered most important. Richard Small picked up this point and urged more fusion between the West Indian artist and intellectuals in Britain and the “grassroots” immigrants. It was for this reason—communication with a community for a purpose—that he challenged C.A.M. to take its meetings to Brixton and Ladbroke Grove. Then, after this hot, topical session, cool academic analysis: “Aimé Césaire and the French Caribbean”. Dr. Clive Wake gave a breakdown of the Martiniquan poet’s famous Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. The poem itself spoke, and gave depth to points already touched on in the first session: Césaire’s awakening to his own negritude, to his own people—with whom he must identify himself and to whom he must communicate. That Césaire not only voiced these feelings in Cahier but has in his life given them practical demonstration was pointed out by Gerald Moore. Césaire is both Mayor of Fort de France and represents Martinique in the French Government. From this session came a request to hear more of the poem. A reading of part of it happened the same evening—in French and in English translation. The quality of Césaire’s committment closed the section:
“I have only an immensity of love burning in me. I accept totally, without reserve.”
On the second day, a similar balance of talks. Ivan Van Sertima began, with “The Void of History in the Caribbean”. It dealt with the familiar themes of the lack of a sense of history in the Caribbean, the need for a rediscovery of beginnings and roots, but with freshness and urgency from a recent return visit to Guyana after nine years. Van Sertima regretted particularly the fact that the most widely read West Indian writers in Guyana today are Mittelholzer and Naipaul. This led to discussion on style and form in West Indian literature, and its presentation of West Indian people. Andrew Salkey described Wilson Harris as the antithesis of Naipaul: the most liberated writer, the least trapped. Henry Swanzy suggested that the value to Harris of his years as a land surveyor could not be overestimated: the fact that he was away, by himself, in a society which is oral, lively and social, and where it is very difficult to be a private person. Then Van Sertima’s talk was followed by an examination in West Indian literature of just those roots for which he had urged rediscovery. Gerald Moore titled his lecture “The West Indian presence in Africa” He described the flow of West Indians to Africa, particularly of writers recently, and discussed in detail the work of two: Denis Williams and Edward Brathwaite. Brathwaite subsequently described his attempt in Masks to explore the West Indian past in Africa, to “rehabilitate a section of the West Indian consciousness”. A Trinidadian described his deep feelings when he first became aware of his African past; a Jamaican denied any interest in or awareness of Africa—yet after the late-night reading by Brathwaite of Masks and other parts of his trilogy, she was most evidently moved. And the Ghanaian poet Kwabena Amoako gave testimony to the power of Masks to communicate to others beside West Indians.
Finally, on the third day, we began with Wilson Harris and ended with Henry Swanzy. “The Amerindian Presence in the West Indian Novel”: the subject was entirely appropriate. Harris’ talk was prefaced by a reading of four extracts from his novels, with critical comments, by Kenneth Ramchand. Harris spoke as much on the form of the novel as of his treatment of the Amerindian character, and described his vision of a radically new art of fiction. But it was in his spontaneous answers to the questions that followed that Harris was at his most lucid and most memorable. “It is the involvement in translating something which is one’s responsibility. No one can hand you what you want.... One is deeply involved with past, present, future. One has no alternative but to accept the invisible thing that is pushing one from behind.” It was therefore to delighted laughter that Henry Swanzy quoted from his Caribbean Voices diary of 14th August, 1954: “Wilson Harris: Statement”. These diaries, or “ego books” as Swanzy called them, gave a fascinating glimpse into the beginnings of West Indian writing. It was fourteen years since he had severed direct connection with this writing but, said Swanzy, he had watched with admiration as more than he had ever dreamed of had developed. What he lamented was the fact that the better Caribbean writers just do not get through to the large British reading public.
C.A.M. emerged, then, from the Conference as something very much alive, something which has already established a purpose in so many directions that this Conference can mark no end. For West Indian artists themselves, it provides a chance to discuss common points of concern, it gives a feeling of community and confidence. “So much has happened to us since C.A.M. began,” said Karl Craig. “There is so much to do and so much we will do. Something in me has been awakened.” To West Indians in Britain, C.A.M. has brought West Indian writing and art. Locksley Comrie—one of the most ardent advocates of a change in C.A.M.’s direction—spoke with sincerity at the last session of how Brathwaite’s poetry and Salkey’s latest novel “took me back home. They showed me what I did and what I might have done”. For West Indians in the West Indies, C.A.M. has voiced —and where possible tried to implement—concern: for more West Indian literature to be broadcast over the radio, for a wider range of West Indian novels to be available in paperback, for the free-flow of ideas into the West Indies: and in consequence an appeal to the Government of Jamaica to lift the ban on the work of three Black Power writers was forwarded from the Conference. And for non-West Indians, C.A.M. has brought West Indian art closer, and has opened to them and fully involved them in the West Indian outlook and concern. The West Indies, Britain and the world need West Indian art and writing; West Indian artists need this audience.
Maybe it is his very rootlessness and compulsion to travel that gives the West Indian artist a universal voice. In Britain, West Indians and British alike need the channels of communication to be open to each other on the level that only art can provide, more desperately now perhaps than ever before. The confrontation in Britain described by Hall could become catastrophic, or it could become splendidly creative, for both sides.
C.A.M. must stay alive.