MARXIST thought in the Caribbean extends beyond the obvious trailblazers of the Cuban revolution.

The likes of Cuban revolutionaries Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Trinidad’s CLR James, Guyana’s Walter Rodney and Grenada’s Maurice Bishop have all made a huge contribution towards the theory and practice of Marxism in the region.

The problem is that after these names most people, even seasoned activists, will begin to struggle to add many other names, especially women, from the region to this list of great thinkers and activists.

But I want to add another who I think sits easily with these makers of very good trouble — historian and political activist Richard Hart.

Some people reading this will be unfamiliar with Hart’s work but that’s about to be put right and hopefully, this towering but gentle man can be more widely remembered and learnt from.

Hart was born in Jamaica in 1917 and was one of the foremost pioneers of Marxism in Jamaica.

I met Hart in London during the late part of the last century when my comrade and sister Mary Davis introduced me to this charming man.

Within a few short minutes of speaking to him, I quickly realised and was embarrassed that I knew nothing of the political struggles in Jamaica, the country that was the birthplace of my parents.

I knew far more about the US civil rights movement and Malcolm X than I did about somewhere where my family had blood in the game.

So I started doing my research and after devouring everything that Hart had written I decided that he deserved to be read alongside the works on Caribbean history and politics by CLR James and Eric Williams. Higher praise than that I am unable to give.

His book, The Slaves Who Abolished Slavery: Black in Rebellion, is, for me, a really important work. As accessible as anything you will ever read on the enslavement of Africans, the book leads the reader to an understanding that it was the enslaved themselves who did more than anyone to make the brutal inhumane system unworkable.

It was not the work of abolitionists such as William Wilberforce that was the decisive factor in the ending of enslavement. That honour belonged to the enslaved themselves — some of whom, I am proud to say, would have been my ancestors.

Rebellions by enslaved people against the system were endemic. Many of these uprisings turned into major rebellions, such as the 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 enslaved people who rose up in 1832.

It was the largest rebellion of enslaved people in the history of the British Caribbean. The uprising, led by black Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe, played a major role in persuading the British that the end was nigh for enslavement.

But writing down, as Hart did, that black people had agency in our own liberation was a revolutionary act in itself. It would have been hard reading for many, including some on the left, who believed, with their saviour complex, that enslavement and colonialism was ended mainly because of the, no doubt brave, intervention of white campaigners.

Hart was one of the founding members of Jamaica’s social democratic People’s National Party (PNP) in 1938 alongside Norman Manley who served as its president until his death in 1969.

Hart served as a member of the PNP national executive committee from 1941 until 1952. A year before being elected to the EC, Hart was arrested by the British colonial powers for having the audacity to help organise a protest demanding the release of trade union leader Alexander Bustamante.

Bustamante’s crime was attempting to form a trade union, a task in which Hart was assisting.

The trade union leader, who founded the Jamaica Labour Party in 1943, would later become the country’s first chief minister — the head of pre-independence Jamaica’s government — in 1953.

Hart was a committed trade unionist and saw it as a means of organising and raising the living standards of Jamaicans still suffering in the harsh aftermath of enslavement and the brutal British colonial regime. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Caribbean Labour Congress from 1945 to 1953.

Hart, an unapologetic Marxist, was imprisoned without trial by what was long regarded as a ruthless British colonial administration in Jamaica.

In 1954 Hart, along with Frank Hill, Ken Hill and Arthur Henry — known as “the four Hs,” was expelled from the PNP for their Marxist views. But Hart continued to play a leading role in the politics of the island leading up to independence in 1962.

Like many on the left in Jamaica, such as leading academic and activist Trevor Munroe, Hart was concerned that the country was in a state of “constitutional decolonisation,” rather than fully freeing itself from British colonial rule.

Today, the British monarchy is still the head of the Jamaican state with the final court of appeal in the country being the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council.

Moves to shift the final vestiges of British colonial rule by removing the monarch as Jamaica’s head of state are gathering pace with cross-party agreement between the ruling Jamaica Labour Party and the opposition PNP. A referendum on the subject is expected soon and predicted to easily pass.

Hart’s excellent work, Towards Decolonisation: Political, Labour and Economic Developments in Jamaica 1938–1945 describes the process of decolonisation from a Marxist viewpoint.

This is well worth a read for all those who throw around terms such as decolonising. What is required is a fundamental change in society not a few ragtag artificial changes.

After a stint in Guyana for two years from 1963, where he edited the Mirror newspaper, which supported the legendary Cheddi Jagan, Hart moved to London in 1965 and co-founded Caribbean Labour Solidarity (CLS) in 1974 with key activists such as Cleston Taylor and Lionel Jeffrey.

Hart remained the honorary president of CLS until his passing in 2013. He went on to serve as attorney-general in the revolutionary government of Grenada after the New Jewel Movement was successful in overthrowing the US-backed regime of Eric Gairy in 1979.

Hart spent his final years in Britain where he became a close ally of the Communist Party of Britain. He died in Bristol on December 21 2013 as a true inspiration to many of us of Caribbean heritage.

He is someone whose contribution to Marxist thought and action in the Caribbean and Britain needs to be more widely appreciated.