By Nigel Westmaas
Context
The New World, the inspiration of Lloyd Best in 1957, was a loosely organized grouping of intellectuals, educators, cultural workers, writers and activists mainly from the anglophone Caribbean or with Caribbean origins and interests. Together with its principal means of organization and communication through speeches, small group discussions and its publications, including the journal (Jamaica) and quarterly (Guyana), the New World, at one point or another in the heady decade of the 1960s, it boasted groups and associates in Antigua, Guyana, Barbados, St Vincent, Jamaica, England, Puerto Rico, St Kitts, Canada (Montreal), and the USA (Washington, New York and Chicago).
At the time in which the New World was conceived and operated, the Caribbean, like other parts of the world was in the ferment of pre-independence change. The Cold War was in a state of full blown refrigeration, and formal anti-colonialism was at its pinnacle of optimism and activity amidst the fitful retreat of the former empire(s). With anti-colonialism as its wellspring, one of the great seismic shifts in the thinking of peoples under colonialism was held in the Bandung (Indonesia) conference of 1955. With forward
