Here, on the cricket field if nowhere else, all men in the island are equal, and we are the best men in the island. - C. L. R. James

I do not want to get liberated from them [memories of racialism]. I would consider liberation from them a grievous loss, irreparable.

Trotsky had said that the workers were deflected from politics by sports. With my past I simply could not accept that. I was British and the history of those decades in Britain was very familiar to me, both the politics and the sport. The organisational drive for sport had come from Britain.

From their French masters, [the slaves] had known rape, torture, degradation, and, at the slightest provocation, death. They returned in kind. For two centuries the higher civilization had shown them that power was used for wreaking your will on those whom you controlled. Now that they held power they did as they had been taught.