We don’t sing his name in songs and the house he was born in was demolished in a ‘clean up campaign’ but George Padmore, born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse on June 28, 1903 was and remains one of the most influential names and voices of Pan Africanism.

It bears repeating for the millionth time that this tiny island nation of Trinidad and Tobago punches way above its weight in terms of global impact of our visionaries, our thinkers, our radicals.

Today is the also day that another year of children accessing the results of the traumatic and emotionally violent Secondary Entrance Assessment. Education is a double edged sword, a saviour and way out of poverty, which is also the thing teaching us further and further away from ourselves.

I’m thinking about George Padmore and what lessons he could teach another generation about themselves, their place in the world and the role they play in transforming their communities.

‘It is the revolutionary duty of the advanced sections of the working class of Europe and America to support the struggles of the colonial masses, for only a united front of all the oppressed and exploited can free the toiling masses of all countries and races from their common enemies — the imperialists and their social democratic agents, missionaries and chiefs, as well as the black capitalists and landlords who help the white imperialists to keep the native workers and peasants enslaved.’

How the Imperialists are “Civilizing” Africa, The Negro Worker, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1932