CLR James in conversation with Stuart Hall
1983-85 Channel 4 52’
The first version of this conversation in fact took place in the corner of a BBC studio at the Television Centre in White City, at the same that I was making the film of “Beyond a Boundary”. Having had so many fascinating conversations with CLR along the way about the many things he was interested in beyond cricket, his broad cultural and literary interests and, in particular the singular trajectory of his life and the development of his political ideas after leaving Trinidad at the age of 30, first to England and later to the USA, I approached Barrie Gavin with idea of recording a long conversation between CLR and another great West Indian intellectual, the Jamaican cultural theorist and political activist Stuart Hall, who I also knew. Barrie thought it was a great idea and we booked a huge TV studio that happened to be empty and invited them both along, CLR as always wearing his distinctive trademark wide-brimmed hat! Their wide-ranging conversation, lasting almost two hours, went extremely well and completely gripped everyone in the studio who was lucky enough to hear it. Topics ranged from Shakespeare and William Hazlitt to Calypso and Paul Robeson, with particular reference to “Black Jacobins”, CLR’s landmark book about Toussaint L’Ouverture and the slave revolution of San Domingo. We immediately offered it to the then BBC 2 Controller Aubrey Singer as something that (cut down to 50/60 minutes) he might like to screen on his channel during the week “Beyond a Boundary” was being transmitted on BBC 1. In an internal memo to the Head of Music and Arts, of which I still have a copy, Aubrey’s answer was unforgiveably short and alas not sweet: “I’m sorry I have no interest in CLR James” - a perfect example of the ignorance of power and the power of ignorance!
But the story doesn’t stop there. A year or so later we wanted to revive the proposal, but, to our horror, discovered that what we thought was just a temporarily rejected tape had in fact been wiped...and thus this historic conversation was no more. Ten years later however we were thankfully able to film a shorter version of it again for Channel 4. And this is the documentary record that fortunately remains. CLR was of course much older and more frail, but his mind was still extremely sharp and this later conversation still wonderfully eloquent.
Novelist, historian, cricket writer and, above all, political theorist and activist, CLR James is one of the most outstanding and wide-ranging black intellectuals of this century. Stuart Hall talks with him about some of the people he has met, from Leon Trotsky to Paul Robeson, and traces the development of his ideas from his childhood in Trinidad, where he was born in 1901, to the long periods spent in England and the US.
Old men grow fond, and quite right. CLR JAMES TLKING TO STUART HALL was filmed three years ago when the old spellbinder was only 84. If he’s a touch pleased with himself, the trumpet he blows plays glorious tunes.
W Stephen Gilbert, The Independent, 30 April 1988