Cold War in a Hot Zone offers both more and less than it promises. Its title suggests that readers will learn about US Cold War policies towards the West Indies, but the book has little to say about that topic. Instead it delves deep into British West Indian politics, the relationship of the labour movements and the independence movements in the region, and the role of the West Indies and West Indians in the racial politics of the United States. The book is filled – sometimes overwhelmingly so – with the voices of participants in the events it describes. The reader emerges with a vivid and detailed picture of the tumultuous period in British West Indian history and its global context, while sometimes wishing for greater synthesis and analysis.
Horne opens and closes the book with the 1953 British-led coup against the elected government of Marxist Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana. The intervening pages describe in great and lively detail the events, organisations, and shifting alliances in the British West Indies in the 30 or so years leading up to the coup. Surprisingly, the volume does not go on to discuss the Kennedy Administration's involvement in overthrowing Jagan again, in 1963.
Much of the book focuses on the two trends in British West Indian politics leading up to 1953, which Horne calls the more conservative ‘authoritarian labor politics’ and ‘the CLC [Caribbean Labor Congress] left-labor model’ (p. 157). In British Guiana, the former trend was represented by Forbes Burnham and the latter by Cheddi Jagan; in Jamaica, the former by Alexander Bustamante and the latter by Richard Hart. The CLC itself split in the early 1950s, under heavy pressure from Great Britain and the United States, with leaders like Jamaica's Norman Manley, Barbados's Grantley Adams, and Trinidad's Albert Gomes adopting the anti-communism promoted by the colonial powers.
But the story of the politicking and the split in the CLC along Cold War lines is only one of several that Horne tells in this book. Another extremely interesting tale is that of the relationship between the West Indies and racial politics in the United States. We learn that 70% of black New Yorkers hailed from the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, and of the disproportionate role that black Caribbeans played in the history of black radicalism in the United States, from W. E. B. Du Bois (of Haitian ancestry) to Ferdinand Smith, ‘perhaps the most powerful Negro trade union leader in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s’, a Jamaican (p. 36). Migrant agricultural workers from the West Indies repeatedly challenged the colour line in the US south, laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement. US-based blacks provided much of the funding for the CLC.
The nature of West Indian radical activism shaped US domestic as well as foreign policy, and the process showed the intricate interrelation between the foreign and the domestic. ‘It would not be simple for Washington to secure allies in its backyard as long as nationals from there were being treated so atrociously. Definitely this dilemma provided further impetus for Washington to put its racial house in order,’ Horne explains (p. 151). Moreover, the Cold War gave the United States leverage against Great Britain in its project for hemispheric control. ‘The beauty of the Cold War from Washington's viewpoint was that it was useful in convincing London to give ground in its closely-held Empire in the interest of anti-communist unity’ (p. 160).
Along the way, Horne also offers some suggestions and insights about the role of labor in the colonial order. The labour movement was at the heart of British West Indians' drive for independence. ‘Colonial democracy’, he notes, was the ‘ultimate oxymoron’. When the democratically-elected Jagan tried to implement US-style labour legislation in British Guiana, he ‘revealed the often hidden fact that the kind of democracy allowed in London and Washington was not appropriate for a colony – that's why it was a colony and not independent’ (p. 183).
Despite these tantalising insights, at times the detail – and the extensive quotes from diplomats, secret service officers, newspapers, and labour and independence activists that fill every chapter – overwhelm the larger arguments of the book. The emphasis on the various individual leaders also leaves a gap regarding the actual workers in the labour movements. Why, for example, did Jamaica's sugar and banana workers follow Bustamante rather than Manley? How were the rank and file involved in, and affected by, the ongoing splits and divisions among labour's leaders? How does the case of British Guiana, where the strongest radical political movement was made up primarily of East Indians, fit into the picture Horne presents of black radical politics?
While clearly not the last word on all of the questions it raises, Cold War in a Hot Zone is a lively and valuable contribution to the literature on the politics British West Indies during the mid-twentieth century.
