Ariel and Prosper: West Indians Listen to Britain

Paper abstract:Ariel and Prosper: West Indians Listen to Britain is a chapter from the forthcoming second volume of Memories of Empire, The Caribbean Comes to England. The paper focuses on the role of radio in the moment of decolonization and in the early moments of the postwar mass migration of West Indians to Britain. It reconstructs in some detail the phenomenology of the mutual interactions between the Anglophone Caribbean and the metropole during decolonization. Much of this appears now to be arcane (concerning, for example, mid twentieth century light entertainment) and will not be of immediate appeal to a North American, and younger, audience. But it is worth reflecting more generally on the place of the BBC in the final days of empire. And it gives us the chance to address the analysis of two great Caribbean political figures much concerned with the practicalities of decolonization: CLR James and Frantz Fanon.