Claudia Jones was born in the British Empire, on the island of Trinidad on 15 February 1915. As was the case with millions of families born in the Caribbean, her family had to migrate to find opportunities for work. Her family moved to New York, and it was in America that Jones became politicised. As a high school students she became of member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), before abandoning their incremental reform approach and joining the Communist Party to argue for revolutionary change. Her prominent activism in the CPUSA meant she was declared un-American and deported in 1955.
Rather than deport her to Trinidad, where the colonial governor thought “she may prove troublesome”, the authorities sent her to Britain. After all, her passport would have read “subject of the British Empire”. Jones is a reminder that the migration narrative in Britain needs a rethink. Those who came from the colonies were not foreigners. Britain was an empire, not a nation, and every single colonial “subject” contributed just as much as the so-called indigenous population to these islands. The Caribbean played the same function for the British Empire as the American South for the US, housing the plantations that powered economic development. Claudia Jones was born and died in Britain, and those who remain in the former colonies today have just as much claim to British wealth as anyone on the British Isles. Indeed, calls to “keep Britain white” have always been not just offensive, but ignorant.
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