West Indian cricket’s first revolutionary

Vaneisa Baksh on Learie and his lineage

Learie Nicholas Constantine published seven books between 1933 and 1966. All dealt with cricket and his environment, in England, and Trinidad, his place of birth. 

Constantine brought to his writing a keen sense of justice and fair play and his authorial criticisms of inequities in the prevailing systems was the first time a cricketer had raised the voice of censure. 

The impact was powerful as it raised awareness among already disquiet populaces, particularly as it came from a black voice in cricket; the previously invisible man. 

Of significance was his youth in a fomenting Trinidad as the emerging black middle class began to agitate against the oppressions of imperialism and racism. 

Constantine knew these conditions, he wrote in Cricket and I: “Trinidad is a Crown Colony, that is to say it is governed by the Colonial Office officials in England, and a movement for throwing off this yoke is gathering strength.” Because he was not fettered by considerations of a political career being harpooned by frankness, he spoke his mind freely and the impact of a black cricketer speaking out against social injustices created as much of a stir as CLR James’s Beyond a Boundary did 30 years later.

His public candour was made even more profound because of his reputation in cricket. Neville Cardus had written of him that he heralded “the coming one day of Weekes, of Worrell, of Headley, of Walcott, of Kanhai, of Sobers” and that they were all “cricketers in Learie’s lineage.” 

If one were to try to visualise the kind of cricketer he was, the closest one might come in lineage is Dwayne Bravo. Although Curtly Ambrose and Chris Gayle share his 21 September birthday, it is Bravo’s temperament that most matches Constantine’s. His natural exuberance on the field meant he was always chasing the ball no matter how far away it was. He was an exceptional fielder. He could change his bowling speeds from very fast to medium to slow, keeping batters guessing. And he felt every ball deserved to be hit, and once hit deserved a run. His was a hyperactive and entertaining presence.  

He played cricket constantly from December 1928 to September 1931, the most concentrated period of his life. He became the star of the Lancashire League – appreciated for bringing what was described as a uniquely West Indian style of play – and changing its character as his popularity gave the League its greatest period of financial prosperity, which allowed other professionals to be brought in. 

His own lineage was impeccable. His father was Lebrun Samuel Constantine, one of the first black West Indian cricket stars. When the first English team (Robert Slade-Lucas’s in 1895) visited the West Indies, Lebrun was on the Trinidad side. He was also a member of the two first West Indian teams to tour England, in 1900 and 1906. On the 1900 tour, he made the first century by a West Indian in England in the match against the MCC at Lord’s. Although a cocoa estate overseer, because of his colour, Lebrun would not have been included in the first touring team automatically. Teams representing the colonies in cup and inter-colonial matches were made up of white players, and only Trinidad included black men, probably because they could not find enough whites for a competitive team. So rigid was the policy that in the 1890s, Barbados had refused to compete against Trinidad in the Challenge Cup if black players were included. 

Trinidad’s position was influenced by Pelham Warner, who was born there, educated in Barbados and then left for England where he was later to be President of the MCC. Warner had advocated for the inclusion of black players on representative teams as necessary to broaden the game’s appeal, and specifically, on the first tour to England, to avoid embarrassment against county teams.

The black players were demonstrating great prowess and could not be ignored. The competitive nature of the contests among local clubs and in inter-island games forced a reconsideration. The prestige of winning was just too great for the planters and merchants organising the matches to ignore the need to assemble the strongest possible teams. 

Although the West Indian team did not fare well on that 1900 tour, Lebrun Constantine and CP Cumberbatch impressed enough to gain selection for the second one in 1906. Lebrun almost didn’t get there though, as he could not afford the cost of the trip, and only the last-minute intervention of a Port of Spain merchant allowed him to board the ship that had already set sail. 

Gentlemen cricketers were expected to be able to meet their financial costs. Writing about that episode Learie describes his father as “one of the most remarkable cricketers of them all,” and observes “that was the sort of thing my father was up against during all his career.”  

The “gentlemen” on the team did not feel any responsibility to underwrite the cost of their less privileged teammate. It is a measure of Lebrun’s standing as a cricketer that his fare was paid by a merchant fan, who saw him in Port of Spain on the day the steamer sailed. Referring to him only as Mr. Maillard, Learie wrote that Maillard bought clothes and packed a trunk for Lebrun, collected some pocket money and they set off in a carriage for the jetty, but they had missed the steamer, and Maillard hired a launch to chase after it. 

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Yet it was cricket that had elevated his father to the world stage. Learie’s maternal uncle, Victor Pascall, was a member of the inter-colonial team, as was another uncle, St. Croix Constantine. Indeed, the entire family was heavily involved in cricket and this brought a certain prestige to the clan.  

“My mother could keep wicket nearly as well as a County wicket keeper; my sister had as much aptitude for batting as I have ever had; and on Sundays and in the evenings we played off the most terrific matches…” he wrote in Cricket in the Sun, adding that his father tolerated no slackness on the field and many raps drummed any lethargy out of the Constantines as they were drilled equally hard without regard for gender or age. 

His brother, Elias, was also a very good cricketer. The right-hander began playing for Trinidad in 1935, that year scoring the fastest hundred in local cricket (34 minutes) for Trinidad Leaseholds (also Learie’s team). Local historians claimed he would have beaten the world record set by England’s PGH Fender (32 minutes) had the fielders not taken more than three minutes to retrieve the ball after one of his sixes. Elias and Learie once opened the bowling for Trinidad against an MCC team in 1925. Learie had figures of 4 for 40, while Elias had 2 for 27.  Curiously, Learie, in both Cricket in the Sun and Cricket and I, never mentions him, despite hailing the ability of his mother, Anaise, and his sister, Lenora. 

There is no word of another brother, Ossie, who also played, though not at the first-class level. This striking omission may derive from the marked focus on his own exploits in his writings, a feature he acknowledged with no apology. He traces his lineage from the established cricketers, St. Croix, Lebrun and Victor yet he ignores the performances of his brothers, as their inclusion may have competed for attention to his own success and stature. In Cricket and I, he speaks of having a “slight attack of swollen head,” which may have been more pervasive than he allowed. 

By the time he was 14, he was captain of his school XI, which he described in Cricket in the Sun as being composed “mostly of Negroes, with some East Indians and Chinese members. Our standard of play was amazingly high.” Revealing the impact of self-image, he noted, “In two years, we lost only one match, and that was because our opponents turned out in full cricket whites. Anyone who has played schoolboy cricket will know the importance of the psychological factor; we in our coloured shorts and black boots lost our morale from the start.” 

At 15, he left school and began examining his prospects for earning an income. 

“How to do it – that was the problem. In the West Indies the only independent professions are medicine, the law, dentistry and journalism, and these are dreadfully overcrowded because it is the burning ambition of every native boy to make himself independent.” As law seemed the most practical, he began as an office boy, intending to work his way through the ten years it would require for him to join the ranks of lawyers.

“Some other time I mean to write a book about life as a black man sees it, and in that I shall have some hard but truthful things to say about life in the West Indies as it is lived by West Indians. It is not very pleasant for the vast majority who can never obtain any sort of independence,” he wrote.

He continued to play, making it on to the Victoria Club’s second XI, ignoring his father’s counsel of cricket second, profession first. After three games, he was transferred to the first XI, which his father captained. There, his training began in earnest, under the tutelage of his father and uncle. When trials came around for the Trinidad XI, the 19-year-old Learie was more than ready, and though he was surprised that his father did not attend, he thought little of it. 

“How little I knew! But I learned long afterwards that he had deliberately stood down from the trials so as to give me my chance, though he was as keen as mustard to play.” It meant closing the door on his own future on the Trinidad XI yet, Lebrun, who was born in 1874, would have been 47, his cricket years already numbered.

In 1922, the team went to British Guiana, the game from which the West Indies team for the 1923 tour of England would be chosen. Learie had only played in three first-class matches, but he was selected. 

The West Indian players were allowed about 30 shillings weekly, apart from their hotel and travelling expenses. It was barely enough to cover necessities; a pack of cigarettes became a luxury. No official programme of entertainment or activities had been set up, so time between games hung heavy on their money-less hands. Combined with the dreary weather, it made for inordinately long rests in bed. 

Later, in Australia, they were treated to days full of social activity, which provided the other extreme. But in 1923, the English reserve made them wonder at the workings of the colour bar. The team was surprised to find it not as apparent as it was in the West Indies. 

In Trinidad, the elite, white, influential Queen’s Park Cricket Club steadfastly ignored him. When the MCC made him a life member, he noted bitterly that the QPCC had never seen fit to do the same, although it eventually named one of its stands after him. 

Constantine believed the time lapse between the previous two tours (1900 and 1906) and the 1923 tour had erased traces of West Indian cricket in England. That tour of England revived memory and established a West Indian identity on the cricket landscape. The team’s performances had done enough to create some interest in England. Significantly too, it contributed in large measure to the excitement in the West Indies, and cricket clubs began “springing up like mushrooms.” Betting became the rage.

With a good pace attack in George Francis, George John and the all-rounder Constantine, the bowling against England was impressive, but the team’s performance was not. Constantine now had to decide on his future. His apprenticeship in the solicitor’s offices was not giving him enough time for his cricket, and vice versa. He had been plodding away at the law for eight years already; the end was in sight; until one day, a missed catch, which he attributed to burning the midnight oil, settled the matter.

“I went from dusty deeds to sunny fields, throwing away eight years’ hard labour so as to claim the right to live instead of exist. I believe man lives but once; had I turned the other way and plodded back to the lawyer’s parchmented den, I should today (perhaps) have been shriveled and wise and successful in interference, and never have known the ecstasy of fulfilment.”

After a series of short stints at various jobs, he went to Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd, which was generous towards his cricket. 

He played in inter-colonial tournaments and against visiting English sides, and did so well that when the time came for the fourth tour to England in 1928, and the first Test match for the West Indies, Constantine was selected. It was a magnificent tour for him. His batting, bowling and superb fielding completely eclipsed other players. 

Despite his poor showing in each of the three lost Test matches, he was an all-round sensation. One of the matches against Middlesex was described by The Times as being won single-handedly by Constantine. At the end of the tour, Nelson Cricket Club in Lancashire offered him a contract. He wanted to accept, but it created a dilemma. 

He knew that he would have to make a choice, because however much he loved cricket, he had to earn an income, and staying in the West Indies provided little prospect for him to do both. 

He returned to Trinidad to prepare for Nelson and the Lancashire League, taking with him not only his sense of personal accomplishment, but pride in “the absolute knowledge at last that the West Indies, despite our Test defeats, had put into the field a team that cricketers knew could challenge any country and give them dour work and an uncertain result in any match. That was the deepest joy of it – we had put West Indies cricket in the international class.”

Back home, he described the joys of village cricket, making some interesting observations about its hierarchical structure. He defined the average village in Trinidad as one of a few hundred people: “labourers in the fields, carpenters, agricultural workers, the village teacher, perhaps two parsons (Roman Catholic and Anglican), Negroes mostly, a number of Indian labourers, some Chinese and Spaniards too.”

The team was cosmopolitan, “including Negroes, a fleet-footed Indian or two, and perhaps the son of a wealthy Chinese shopkeeper whose finances keep the side going. The Chinese may be the captain, or that post may be taken by the schoolmaster or some older Negro.”

To Constantine, the inclusion of the “Negroes” was so natural that it warranted no explanation, but he had to identify the strengths on which the Indians were included. They were a minority on the team, although they had already begun to constitute a large percentage of the population. As for the Chinese, the role of the financier was one of such supreme importance that the son would automatically qualify to be captain through the father’s generosity. The post of captain was one requiring some distinction, and thus a schoolmaster or a respected villager could hold it. In this respect there was great similarity in the way teams were selected for village games as they were for inter-colonial and other matches. To Constantine the high standards, the enthusiasm and the nurturing environment of community were the foundations of performance excellence. 

“This is village cricket indeed, with the keenness that will one day soon turn out a team of world-beaters.”

Joining the Lancashire League in 1929, he found exciting cricket, with better grounds and teams determined to win matches, not settle for draws, as in county games. In England, Constantine began to be more conscious of the differences in the relationship between whites and blacks, as compared with that in the West Indies. He encountered racism, but remained convinced that it was more vicious among the colonials in the West Indies. 

He and his wife Norma had moved to Nelson, the Lancashire cotton town, and they were the only black couple there. Eventually they brought their two-year-old daughter, Gloria, to join them. In 1932, CLR James came along too, bringing his politics and love for cricket. They worked closely on his first book, Cricket and I, which was published in 1933. Constantine felt he had much to say on the game and its environs, and James influenced the medium of expression. Their interaction was critical to both their careers. Constantine joined the League of Coloured Peoples, but only superficially at first. He may have been wary of his contract not being renewed, suggested Gerald Howat in his 1975 biography, Learie Constantine.

“He must have recognised the possibility of his contract not being renewed if he had allowed himself to become a ‘political’ figure. Neither his financial aspirations nor his personal feelings at the time would have made him want to run this risk. Nevertheless, he had no illusions about the implications of being a coloured man.”

Writing about James, in CLR James: Cricket, the Caribbean and World Revolution in 2001 Farrukh Dhondy also pointed to Constantine’s dilemma, and deduced that in the face of this, James was encouraged to become the more vocal of the two on public platforms. Dhondy wrote that Constantine had become “a working-class hero, being a black cricketer and a leading player for Lancashire.” Yet, he was also friendly with mill owners and landed people – the division between the two classes would have stuck Constantine somewhere in an awkward middle ground. 

“If he talked of anti-colonialism the discussions and questions would inevitably lead to questions of social justice and the politics of Nelson, the mills, Lancashire, the Government. He felt he couldn’t be seen to back one side or the other in the bitter politics of textiles. It was partly to solve this problem that Constantine left the speaking platform to James.” 

Cricket had elevated his social standing in England, just as it had in Trinidad. James was influential in deepening Constantine’s awareness of issues of social justice, politics and colonialism. It would be some time yet before he would actively become involved in these matters. 

His standing in the Lancashire community had grown. Even when he left the league in 1937, he continued to live in Nelson for another 12 years.

In 1933, when the West Indies again toured England, Constantine, who played in only the second Test, became embroiled in the Bodyline controversy. Despite their captain, Douglas Jardine’s, advocacy of bodyline bowling in Australia the preceding season, the English were against it on their turf. Pelham Warner said it was against “the best interests of cricket.” At the end of the season, Wisden, singling out the bowling of Martindale, Constantine and Clark, described it as “a noxious form of attack not to be encouraged in any way.”

According to Howat, Constantine’s bowling could be explained through his relationship with English cricketers in the 1920s and 1930s. Whilst he had struck up a friendship with Patsy Hendren, he had found Wally Hammond to be snobbish on West Indian soil during the 1926–27 tours. Howat wrote that Constantine “was sure the England player preferred the society of ‘white’ West Indians, and he decided that he would settle that score on the cricket field.” The two became friendlier in later years, but Hammond on tour gravitated towards accepting the clear social distinctions between the white colonial elite and the other players in the West Indies. 

In Cricket in the Sun, Constantine laid it out. “I think the time has come to speak out plainly what I mean in this matter of West Indian captaincy. It is not only what I mean – every coloured player who has ever turned out in an international side has been conscious of it, and it rots the heart out of our cricket, and always will until it is changed.” 

The question of meritocracy was one he had debated with James. “Even in cricket, you see, it is not the most competent captain who is chosen. The atmosphere of servitude is fostered, and we know it well. There is only one support for the argument so commonly used that a coloured captain could not get the best out of his side; and that is that white players might be too self-conscious to do their best under him.” 

He believed that it was inaccurate to suggest that. 

“That is an argument which can only be used by those who do not know the white cricketers of the West Indies. They might be reserved at first, but if a coloured captain showed that he knew his job, they would co-operate thoroughly to win success.”

But he felt a coloured team should be led by a coloured captain. “The West Indies teams, mainly composed as they always are of coloured players, should have a coloured captain,” he argued.

“If, in the West Indies, it stopped at the captaincy, there would be no great harm done, though we should still lose matches unnecessarily. But it goes deeper than that. It has happened in the past that white captains have shown a marked preference for white players and anyone who examines the selections of West Indian teams during this century will see clearly that better coloured players have often been excluded.” 

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Constantine began to see the extent of poverty in Nelson and how it excluded no colours. He was working as a billeting officer and an Air Raid Precautions equipment officer, and this required visits to homes. He learnt that poverty did not distinguish between white and black. 

His income had dropped considerably, and when an offer came from the Ministry of Labour for him to become a temporary civil servant with responsibility for those West Indians who had been brought to the factories to relieve Englishmen for war service, he took it. He was also responsible for West African seamen in Liverpool. 

Constantine was inclined to more sympathy for the poverty-stricken Englishman than the West Indian immigrant. “Anyone who believes he has difficulties working with people could never imagine the difficulties I had working for my own people. The men went to work and returned grumbling. They had difficulties about ‘digs.’ We had to do everything for them as you would for children – remittances to families at home; questions of clothing.”

However much it exasperated him, he did not abandon what James called in Beyond a Boundary his “abiding ambition – to use his reputation and the financial competence it gave him as a means of advancing the cause of the West Indian people.” Constantine had to be mindful that white workers might resent any favouritism shown to West Indians, and would fear them becoming a permanent labour force. He was aware that the more skilled workers were sensitive to racial discrimination, and argued that Britain’s reputation would suffer when these men returned home. Generally, he found ways to circumvent these complexities, but he too suffered. His own popularity, his debonair turnout, his ease with English customs, all of these rendered him an easy target for those oppressed by English cultural racism. 

The influx of coloured workers and troops from the USA and the West Indies during the war brought a new dimension and scope. The League of Coloured Peoples campaigned for commissions for coloured men in the forces, and began discussing the role of the Empire in its colonies after the war. Constantine became president of the League for a short time. During the war, he began doing radio broadcasts – first on cricket, then about his life in England – which became very popular. For his war efforts, he was awarded the MBE in the 1946 New Year’s Honours List. 

But in 1943, a two-day match at Lord’s between a Dominions side and England put him through a significant ordeal. He had booked into the Imperial Hotel at Russell Square in London, and on arriving he was allegedly told that the hotel “did not want niggers.” He and his family sought other accommodation, but he took legal action. The case of Constantine v Imperial London Hotel was heard before Justice Birkett in June 1944, and is a landmark in discrimination cases. Judgement was in his favour, but he received nominal damages of five pounds. 

The post-war years saw Constantine struggling to complete his legal studies, and in 1954, he became a barrister, shortly after the publication of his book, Colour Bar. In the opening, he cites some experiences of racial attacks, including one incident where, “At a famous cricket gathering, a white woman said aloud to another as my wife approached them: ‘I see they’ve let the jungle in on us’.” 

The book protested racial discrimination, and got a mixed response. “People have asked me why Constantine, who, of all persons, has been so well received in England, shows what seems to be such an obsession with racial prejudice. …Constantine wanted to use his great reputation in order to clear a road for others,” wrote James. 

He received an offer in 1947 from Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd to return as assistant to the legal adviser. Returning briefly, he found it frustrating and turned down the offer. 

“People in controlling positions, content with status quo and feeling that no startling changes should be made, gave me to understand that I should be tolerated as a worker among them only if I confined my representation mainly to the sporting side of matters. My popularity as a cricketer… was to be used to dissuade coloured rebelliousness, as I felt, whether it was right or wrong.”

He was indignant that they could feel that he would use his position this way, not after he had been “burning to show what I could do for good in my own land!” Still, he returned, leaving England ambivalently in December 1954. Within a few months of arriving, he entered politics at the invitation of Dr Eric Williams, founder and leader of the People’s National Movement (PNM) party. He was initially a reluctant politician, but by January 1956, he had become party chairman, and in September of that year, he won his Tunapuna seat. Constantine was given the portfolio of Minister of Communications, Works and Public Utilities, a wide range of responsibility. His tenure was marked by his constant references to his stature in the UK. 

In December 1958, he told the Trinidad Legislative Council that, “I hope I am not immodest when I say that many people never knew of the West Indies until they got to know of Constantine, and if this is the thanks I am going to get from the country for the service I have rendered abroad, then I hope I will not live long enough to regret the day that I entered into politics.”

Constantine felt that his compatriots did not hold him in the high esteem he felt was due to him. Moreover, his fellow politicians did not appreciate his claim for greater gratitude for his services abroad. It was perhaps this distance between them that encouraged Dr Williams to post him abroad again as the High Commissioner to England in 1961. Constantine’s popularity in England increased after his posting, and it is believed that this contributed to the disintegration of his friendship with Prime Minister Williams.

Constantine remained in England until his death on 1 July 1971. In the years following his post as High Commissioner, he had been busier than his health would permit. In 1965 he was one of 15 members of the Sports Council advising the British Government on the development of amateur sports. Two years later, he was appointed to the Race Relations Board, and was made Rector of St. Andrews University. He had continued broadcasting for the BBC – in 1964 was on its General Advisory Committee, and in 1968, one of its 12 governors. In January 1969, he was given a peerage, Baron Constantine of Maraval and of Nelson, the first black man to be made a peer. Lord Constantine had been honoured in England; the honours in his homeland would come posthumously.

Learie Constantine knew from early that he was an exceptional cricketer. He was confident of his own ability and never doubted that he was as good as the best. This supreme confidence allowed him to demand the compensation he was worth. He felt it his duty to represent those who were not as gifted as he was, and those who did not benefit from the opportunities he had had. Thus, though he remained apolitical in one sense, he became involved in several causes where he felt injustices had taken place. Racial discrimination became one of the causes he championed, and although it was in London that he brought the celebrated case against the Imperial Hotel, he continued to feel that the colonials in the West Indies were the worst practitioners of discrimination. He was bitter about its manifestation in cricket, where selections were determined on policies based on race and social status, and he campaigned for equality of terms for players. 

Despite grappling with social inequities, economic hardship, racial discrimination, a form of exile from home and political animosity, Constantine emerged with the lordly grandeur that was etched on his face when he set out to assert that “they” were no better.