Encountering metropolitan England’s racism shattered colonial Blacks’ faith in the Empire.

Evidence

For Padmore, Makonnen, and their African comrades, I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson and Kenyatta, in the anti-imperialist Left, there was another difference. Inevitably, even James realized that the illusion of the Empire as a global fraternity, benevolently orchestrated by advanced races for the interests of backward ones, was at best remote from the actualities they encountered. England, with its ever-broadening, grubby, dark poverty, its “low-life” fascists actively aligned and identified with factions of the ruling classes, its vulgar displays of racism (which “inexplicably” victimized those among the colonials who were proudest of being British), and its political mediocrity, inspired contempt, not confidence. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1261