Letter from Dr Peter Milliard, Pan Africanist, Mancunian, to Larry Brown, composer, Paul Robeson's accompanist

Peter Milliard with Anne van Laer

Peter Milliard was born in British Guiana. He studied medicine in the US and worked in Panama where he helped striking canal workers.  Arriving in 1923 to train further in Edinburgh, he settled in Manchester to work as a doctor.  When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Milliard organised the International Brotherhood of Ethiopia, doing street meetings in Stevenson Square. A couple of years later he was joined in Manchester by Ras Makonnen. Milliard founded the Manchester Negro Association in 1943 becoming its president. With Makonnen he established the Pan African Federation, Manchester branch, in early 1945. The two of them were key organisers of the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester in October that year. Suffering increasingly poor health, Milliard died early in 1953.

The letter is in the Larry Brown collection in the Schomburg Library, Harlem, New York. It is quoted in part in a footnote in Martin Duberman's biography of Paul Robeson, p686, footnote 7. There is no other letter from Milliard in the collection. It seems likely that given the comments Milliard makes about Robeson, Brown did not reply to the letter.

Letter from Dr Peter Milliard to Larry Brown

Capoey,

West Point

Manchester 19

Sunday July 3rd 1949

My dear Brown,

Your letter of June 13th last was a real surprise my recent experience has taught me not to expect letters from people who had lived in England.  Believe me you are the outstanding exception. Do please accept my hearty thanks.

Let me at once enquire as to your health. I trust that you are having no more trouble with those disagreeable things that call for the knife. Take my advice: don't squeeze don't pick don't (?) don't touch and two try not to (?) them at all.  You will find that the little boils can give a lot of trouble if they are interfered with. Left alone nature takes care of them for the bodily resistance is quite sufficient to put them out of action.

I do hope your general health is good and you are fit enough to face

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the firing line.

Now I did not reply to your letter immediately as I wanted to report progress   in other words I was waiting to announce the arrival of the food parcel. I can now let you know that I received the parcel on Wednesday last. Everything was in perfect condition. Not having had Carolina rice for years I hastened to cook some for dinner that evening. You know how difficult it is to get rice here so you can imagine how enjoyable it was. Had two ladies to join me at dinner. They did themselves well and pronounced my cooking excellent. As soon as I sample the other articles I shall report to you.

To the most common place. For a change we are enjoying excellent weather all over England so (?) in Manchester but I cannot recall so excellent a summer during my long sojourn in England. I am glad we really needed some of Nature's tonic. The coming winter should find us fortified against its rigours. I need I not ask what is (?)  there? No seasons as a rule are true to form

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and one may safely look forward to summer when (?) is due.

Tomorrow is Independence Day whatever that means. I hope you have a pleasant holiday but don't blow yourself to pieces. I am looking forward to meeting you again here or in New York very soon.

Well what price (?) Paul? A section of the public in England is constant (?) against him and (?) reports re the marriage of his son to a pale face has not helped matters. What is happening? Personally I am disappointed in Paul. He has become Anglicised (?) And Negroes who have become Anglicised (?) should be left severely alone. What does Paul expect to gain by joining the Communist Party especially in Britain? What contribution does he expect to make to his people by allying himself to Anglo-Saxon communists. It is alarming how Negroes misinterpret (?) the feelings and attitudes of the Anglo Saxon Whites. I say without fear of contradiction that there is only one party in

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England. The imperialist party. If tomorrow the Communist of England won power and form[ed] a government Mr/our(?) Paul Robeson would (?) how he had been fooled. (?) my (?) friend Paul Robeson's talk  of "Allies" is so much rubbish. Doubtful allies are dangerous. Better no allies than doubtful ones. We have a West Indian Peter Blackman by name he has been a member of the Communist Party these many years. What contribution has he been able to make by reason of such membership. Visits all over the continent at their expense and a splash here and there. These are personal benefits at the expense of his people as (?) if only helps to fasten the wool over our eyes more securely. I accept Communism as a creed for our African forefathers were all communists as a necessity and a natural (?). We therefore (?) but this bastard creed which the Anglo-Saxon Whites are fathering must be??. 

A word about the meeting which Paul graced or disgraced at Bellevue last May. it was a howling success as a "Communist" show but as a political meeting billed for a speech from Paul exposing the (?) charges against

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 the (?)Trenton lads it was a failure. That meeting simply confirms my oft repeated assertions that Negroes should be watchful lest they make themselves tools of the Whites. Paul did not make a speech explaining the Trenton case. What an opportunity what (?) he had for bringing home to the people what happens in America. The people departed without a knowledge of the Trenton case. I speak for myself: Paul succeeded in making himself a buffoon. He sang "Waterboy" like a 3rd rate comedian and I am just a bit tired of Negroes who seek sympathy, pity and tolerance from Whites by referring to the fact that their fathers or grandfathers were slaves. Good god this is of a global (?) asset. Other people have been slaves. White slaves worked in the fields of America along with the Blacks. The present Australians are descendants of slaves and (?) hear them talking about what their forefathers

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were but always the Constantines and the Paul Robesons must mouth this slush. Paul is disappointing I am no longer interested in him. Moreover he prefers the company of Whites and his courtesies are reserved only for Whites. "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul." One word more I think this marriage of his son is a great political blunder and it is an historical betrayal if it can be so dignified.

Well I must be off. Please let me hear from you again. I am happy to meet again a (?) Southern Negro hospitable kind and genuinely friendly My mind goes back to the days when I lived in DC and enjoyed the friendship of some (?) and genuine Negroes. God bless them.

Therefore let me thank you and take this opportunity of wishing you the best. Anytime you come to England, my house is at your disposal.

Cheerio

(signed)

Peter Milliard