7. Dr. Eric Williams: Racial Ideology and Trade Unionism

Eric Williams was born in 1911 in Port-of-Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago. He attended a renowned high school, Queen’s Royal College, and one of his teachers was C.L.R. James. After secondary school, Williams decided to pursue history at Oxford University in England. Whilst in England, Williams attended meetings and lectures where he was able to meet political activists such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. Interestingly, Williams met two Trinidadians based in London—his former high school teacher, C.L.R. James, and George Padmore. Both Padmore and James were anti-imperialists and strongly denounced colonialism. Williams briefly taught at Howard University in the USA and then returned to Trinidad where he embarked on a political career that spanned 25 years.