13 Facts About Clennell Wickham

Clennell Wilsden Wickham was a radical West Indian journalist, editor of Barbadian newspaper The Herald and champion of black, working-class causes against the white planter oligarchy in colonial Barbados during the inter-war period, leading to the social unrest that triggered the Riots of 26 July 1937.

Clennell Wickham was a prescient journalist whose writings in the Barbados Herald newspaper were a major catalyst for change.

Clennell Wickham had his finger more closely than most on the pulse of the people and had warned that "an inarticulate majority brooding over unrepressed wrongs and unventilated grievances is a serious menace".

Clennell Wickham described the attitudes of the white assembly in the early 20eth century as follows:.

Clennell Wickham shaped a lot of Atholl Edwin Seymour "TT" Lewis's political thought, and he had a high regard for the man.

Once Lewis took up a copy of Wickham's magazine Outlook, from which he proceeded to read an article by Clennell and proffered nothing but praise for the man.

Lewis corresponded with Clennell Wickham and found him influential, lucid and of penetrating prose - stating Clennell Wickham had in the 1920s exposed, among other things, the social failings of the Barbadian plantation economy.

Clennell Wickham founded and edited The Outlook: A Monthly Magazine and Review, known for his radical political views expressed primarily in his previous weekly Herald.

When writing in January 1935, Clennell Wickham saw the need for mobilization of the workers as the basis for the democratic movement.

Barbara Clennell Wickham, his surviving younger sister, related how on his return to Barbados he had been asked to vacate a church pew reserved for whites.

Clennell Wickham had a career in the World Meteorological Organization, which took him to Europe for several years, and served for many years as the editor for the literary quarterly magazine BIM.

Clennell Wickham co-edited The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories.

Now an award in non-fiction prose, named after him, The John Clennell Wickham Scholarship, is presented each year to an individual who uses language to inspire, entertain and educate.