Cranleigh Street in Camden is the site of the capital’s latest blue plaque, where George Padmore lived at no. 22 from 1941 to 1957 with his partner and collaborator, Dorothy Pizer.

The address was a big part of the political landscape of pre- and post-war London, becoming a focal point for anti-colonial activists from around the world. Born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse in Trinidad in 1903, from 1935 Padmore began to chart a course of action which would have a deep impact on the anti-colonialist movements in both Africa and the Caribbean.

In 1937, Padmore formed the International African Service Bureau (IASB) to further this cause, which later became the Pan-African Federation. He moved to 22 Cranleigh Street in Camden in 1941 and from there he and his partner Dorothy Pizer paid host to many of the world’s political intelligentsia, some of them future presidents. In 1945, he and the IASB organised the legendary Fifth Pan African Congress in Manchester. It was the action plan proposed at this conference which eventually led to the decolonization of Africa and the Caribbean.

While making a living as a journalist, he wrote numerous books and pamphlets. His major books were: How Britain Rules Africa (1936), Africa and World Peace (1937), How Russia Transformed her Colonial Empire (1946), Africa: Britain's Third Empire (1950), Gold Coast Revolution (1953), and the work for which he is best well known, Pan-Africanism or Communism (1956).

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