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The Gold Coast Aborigines Abroad1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Samuel Rohdie
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Extract

The article discusses the contacts between the proto-nationalist Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protection Society and left-wing and Communist organizations in Europe and in Britain during the 1930s. The Society represented the interests of chiefs, merchants and barristers who found their political and economic positions threatened by the depression and by the tightening up of colonial rule. The Society reacted by petitioning the British Government for greater political representation and for redress of specific grievances. Left-wing groups in Europe at first regarded the Society as a popular nationalist body and offered it support. The Profintern attempted to influence it, while organizations such as the League Against Imperialism helped the Society in its petitions to the Colonial Office and to the House of Commons. But the narrow social base of the Society made it deaf to a radical socialist programme, and incapable of organizing a mass movement which could effectively pressure the British Government.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , November 1965 , pp. 389 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

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References

2 Sekyi to Mankirado Yaw Ewua, 23 Aug. 1932.

3 W. E. Pietersen & Co. to Sekyi, 5 Dec. 1931.Google Scholar

4 Sekyi to McDonald Smith Co., 3 02. 1920Google Scholar; Sekyi to Liberty's London, 16 10. 1920Google Scholar; Millers Ltd. to Sekyi, Feb. 1921Google Scholar; Crombie Steedman & Co. to Sekyi, Feb. 1921.Google Scholar

5 Personal communication from H. Van Hein Sekyi. Sekyi to Malta Cigarette Co., 5 08. 1920.Google Scholar

6 File: Sekyi's Writings.

7 Editor of Literary and Social Guide to Sekyi, 13 May 1921; Sekyi to Aristotelian Society, 18 July 1921; Gold Coast National Aid Society to Sekyi, 9 Aug. 1921; Saltpond Youngmen's Progressive League to Sekyi, 18 Dec. 1922; Sekyi to the British Institute of Philosophical Studies, 7 May 1926; Cape Coast Literary and Social Club to Governor Guggisberg, 25 Oct. 1919; Sekyi to Bar Association, 20 Nov. 1919; Revd. Isaac Sackey to Sekyi, 25 Feb. 1921; Optimism Club to Sekyi, 7 Mar. 1921; Eureka Club to Sekyi, 12 May 1921.

8 File: Sekyi's Writings, ‘Sonnet’.

9 Ibid. ‘From the Mirage’.

10 The first GCARPS delegation to England in 1897 was concerned with land rights. The National Congress of British West Africa delegates in 1920 were as interested in constitutional reform as they were in unloading cocoa stores in England. Sekyi had gone to England in 1929 on cocoa and mining business; he had similar concerns when he returned to England in 1932. The GCARPS delegates to England in 1934 negotiated mining concessions and were financed by Cape Coast merchant interests. See notes 11–13, 45, 110.

11 The author is at work on a social history of Ghana, 1927–39, for which much material exists especially in the papers of the Gold Coast Farmers' Association, Cocoa Hold-Up papers and the papers of the Eastern Provincial Council at Cape Coast and Accra Archives. There is considerable information in these papers concerning attempts on the part of Gold Coast farmers to form marketing and buying companies, and the organizational co-operation between merchants, farmers and traditional rulers. See below, p. 397.

12 The Society, and the Association had co-operated during the 1930–1 cocoa hold-up.

13 The correspondence and talks began in 1928 and continued throughout the 1930s.

14 The papers of the Eastern Provincial Council reveal Ofori Atta's interest in A. J. Ocansey's Gold Coast and Ashanti Cocoa Federation, which relied on the Council and was a rival to the Farmers' Association. Ocansey was a newspaper owner, merchant, cocoa dealer and property speculator.

15 George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? (London, 1956), pp. 322ff. Among the colonial delegates were Nehru; J. T. Gumede of the African National Congress; J. A. LaGuma, Secretary, Non-European Trade Union Federation, South Africa; Lamine Gueye and Garan Kouyatte of the Ligue Pour la Défense de la Race Nègre.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid. Willi Munzenberg, who had helped convert the Socialist Youth International into the Communist Youth International in 1919, was instrumental in setting up the anti-imperialist conference. The conference was attended by a number of socialist and left-wing delegates who were not communists; Comintern at the time was concerned with creating a broad united front. There is no evidence to support Padmore's comment that ‘… the British League was run from behind the scenes by Communist Party stalwarts like Mr Ben Bradley’. His book is filled with similar innuendoes and cheap anti-communist slurs. He wrote it at the height of the cold war and is anxious to prove his own disillusion and change of heart. Padmore had been a Deputy on the Moscow Soviet; Chairman of the Negro Bureau of Profintern; Lecturer in Colonial Affairs at the University for the Toilers of the East. The issues of the 1930s are seen in a very different light by him in the 1950s, when he was involved in bourgeois African nationalist politics.

18 Padmore to Sekyi, 23 Mar. 1932.

19 E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, in (London, 1953), 461, from the resolution ‘On Trade Union Movements in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries.’

20 Ibid., 383ff.; 396ff.; the debates during the 4th Comintern Conferences, 1922, are especially interesting in terms of the Comintern doctrine of nationalism.

21 Padmore, op. cit., 322.

22 Padmore to Sekyi, 23 Mar. 1932. ‘… African seamen, calling at this port, have told us much about you … It was from these seamen that we received your address …’

23 Sekyi made it a point to keep up with European opinion and ideas. His tastes, however, were somewhat contradictory. As well as subscribing to the Negro Workers' Review, he had subscriptions to the Tatler, the Strand Magazine, The ‘Right’ Book Club, the Negro World, West Africa and the African Messenger.

24 Padmore to Sekyi, 23 Mar. 1932

25 Sekyi to Padmore, ? June 1932.

26 Padmore to Sekyi, 9 June 1932.

27 Padmore, op. cit.; Padmore had the University of the Toilers of the East in mind when he wrote to Sekyi.

28 Sekyi to Padmore, 19 June 1932.

29 admore to Sekyi, 9 July 1932. Padmore's friend in France was Garan Kouyatte. See note 15.

30 Sekyi to Padmore, 15 July 1932.

31 Padmore to Sekyi, 21 July 1932.

32 Padmore to Sekyi, 9 July 1932.

33 Wuta-Ofei to Sekyi, 9 July 1932. Padmore judged Wuta-Ofei ‘a very interested and progressive man … a very capable fighter’. See note 32.

34 Padmore to Sekyi, 21 J u ly 1932.

35 Carr, op. cit.

36 Padmore to Sekyi, 9 July 1932.

37 Sekyi to Padmore, 15 July 1932.

38 Sekyi to Padmore, 15 July 1932. The Akim Abuakwa Proclamation of Native Customary Law, Proclamation No. 4 of 1932 was revoked by Proclamation No. 6 of 1932. See Government Gazette, No. 29, 9 Apr. 1932, and Extraordinary Gazette, No. 48A, 8 July 1932.

39 See above, p. 393.

40 See below, pp. 401–2.

41 Bridgeman to Sekyi, 15 June 1932.

42 Ward to Sekyi, 28 Aug. 1932.

43 Ward to Sekyi, 28 Aug. 1932

44 Padmore, op. cit. p. 329.

45 While Sekyi was in London negotiating on behalf of the Gold Coast Farmers' Association, he met with T. Hutton-Mills, Jnr. and A. J. Ocansey of the Gold Coast and Ashanti Cocoa Federation, who were also trying to come to some arrangement with European financiers and cocoa manufacturers.

46 Ward to Sekyi, 11 July 1932.

47 Sekyi to Padmore, 25 Aug. 1932.

48 Sekyi to Padmore, 25 Aug. 1932. The MacGregor Laird Centenary issue of West Africa (1932) carried an article on the Asamangkese case.

49 Sekyi to Dr Harold Moody, 11 July 1932; 4 July 1932. Sekyi to Alex Koi, 6 July 1932; Koi to Sekyi, 5 Sept. 1932. The Executive of the League for Coloured People included Dr Harold Moody, President; Alex Koi, Vice-President; D . Degazon, Secretary; F. S. Furbert, Assistant Secretary; D. Tucker, Publicity Secretary; R. S. Nehra, Treasurer; Stella Thomas, Librarian. The Executive of the League of Africans included Alex Koi, President; Y. A. Deressa, Vice-President; E. Marroes, General Secretary; J. S. Adoo, Jnr., Publicity Secretary; A. A. Adesigbin, Treasurer. Sekyi's address to the League for Coloured People was on ‘Some Current Misconceptions Concerning and Affecting Non-Europeans’. It referred to a group of colonial students and to a Dr Potter who had wanted to help them but had erred in his approach.

50 Sekyi to Secretary, Ethical Union, 11 Aug. 1932. Sekyi showed great enthusiasm for the Union and even tried to interest his African friends in London to join it.

51 Padmore to Sekyi, 31 Aug. 1932

52 Sekyi to Padmore, 7 Sept. 1932. Padmore arrived in London in September; Sekyi left London for the Gold Coast in November.

53 Padmore to Sekyi, 17 Aug. 1932

54 Sekyi to Padmore, 25 Aug. 1932

55 See note 10.

56 The Indian, M. N. Roy, emphasized the pre-capitalist economic order prevailing in colonial territories and made a clear distinction between the peasantry and the nationalist bourgeoisie. At the 1920 Comintern Conference, Roy argued that the revolution in colonial countries would be neither communist nor bourgeois, but petty-bourgeois. He presented the thesis that Comintern must support a division of the land among the peasants and not subordinate the peasantry to the bourgeois democratic nationalist movement. His thesis was opposed by Lenin. The conference decided on tactical co-operation with bourgeois democracy seeking to achieve national liberation; it failed to resolve the potential contradiction between support for a bourgeoisie and support for social groups in revolt against the bourgeoisie. See Carr, op. cit. pp. 22off.

57 See Cocoa Hold-Up papers and papers of the Eastern Provincial Council; see notes 14 and 45.

58 See note 57. In actual fact, these divisions were only maintained for a short time; by 1935. the GCFA was working with the Eastern Provincial Council and there was a move to bring the various cocoa groups together.

59 See note 45.

60 Padmore to Sekyi, 9 July 1932.

61 Danquah to Sekyi, 7 July 1932

62 Customs receipts in 1929–30 amounted to £2,489,575; by 1934–5 they had dropped to £1,906,080. The value of cocoa exports in 1929-30 was nearly £4tn. above the value in 1935–6. W. E. Pietersen & Co. was forced to cut its salaries by 42 per cent. The Company wrote to Sekyi: ‘The result of the trading … is very unsatisfactory and discouraging … attributed to the financial depression which had tied down all our resources.’ As a result of the depression many new companies, especially for the marketing of cocoa, were formed by Africans; however, the Times of West Africa, Nov. 1933, listed twelve African companies which were being struck off the list of registered firms in the Gold Coast. These were Bradford Stores, Ltd.; West African Cooperative Producers, Ltd.; Tropical Products Corporation, Ltd.; Bettels, Ltd.; Akuaffo Syndicate, Ltd.; Obueffies Factory, Ltd.; Akan Planters Association, Ltd.; Tropical Industries, Ltd.; Gold Coast Planters Union, Ltd.; Agricultural and Industrial Co. Ltd.; Central Cooperative Oil Palm Industries, Ltd.; and the Gold Coast Oil Mills, Ltd.

63 GNA, Accra, ADM 1/164, Despatch No. 163 of 29 Mar. 1935, Governor Hodson to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister; the Gold Coast Independent, 1 Dec. 1934: ‘ … the lot of the artisans, labourers, and time-keepers employed by the Government … is indeed pitiable’; J. I. Roper, Labour Problems in West Africa (London, 1958), pp. 55–7: ‘By this time the economies of West Africa were deeply involved in world trade, and the impact of the crisis was sharp and serious.’ xports from the Gold Coast fell 50 per cent from 1928 and … ‘the reductions of wages that followed caused widespread discontent. The cocoa hold-up of 1930–1 in Ghana was a sign of the prevailing disquiet, and there was an upsurge of serious discontent among the employed workers. …’

64 Legislative Council Debates, 1934.

65 Hansard, 2 Apr. 1935.

66 ADM 1/879, Despatch No:740 of 8 Dec. 1936, Governor Hodson to Ormsby-Gore.

67 Wallace-Johnson papers, Institute of African Studies, Legon.

68 Enclosure No. 1 in ADM 1/859, Despatch No. 282 of 9 June, 1934, Acting Governor to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Central National Committee to Acting Colonial Secretary, 8 June 1934. The delegation included Nana Sir Ofori Atta; Dr F. V. Nanka-Bruce, MLC; K. A. Korsah, Ll.B., MLC; A. Sawyerr, Member of the Accra Town Council; J. B. Danquah, Editor, Times of West Africa; James Mercer, Surveyor and Auctioneer; E. O. Asafu-Adjaye, Ll.B.; I. K. Agyeman, President of the Asante Kotoko Society.

69 Coleman to Secretary of State, 9 Mar. 1934.

70 Coleman to District Commissioner, Cape Coast, 28 June 1934.

71 Acting Commissioner Central Province to Coleman, 4 July 1934.

72 Sekyi to Redfern, ? 1934.

73 ADM 1/859, Despatches No. 260 and No. 282, Acting Governor to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister.

74 Coleman to Acting Commissioner Central Province, $ July 1934.

75 Sekyi to Redfern, ? 1934. Sekyi referred to the 1926 GCARPS delegation to the Colonial Office, when Casely-Hayford ‘betrayed’ the Society by co-operating with the Government.

76 GCARPS to Redfern, 9 Mar. 1934

77 S. R. Wood to R. B. Paul, 4 Sept. 1935.

78 Sekyi to Redfern, ? 1934.

79 At least at the beginning of the controversy with the Provincial Councils, the Society wanted to protect the institution of Paramount Chiefs and only attacked them as undemocratic in order to destroy the claim of the Councils to represent the people of t he Gold Coast.

80 See note 68.

81 ADM 1/1002, Despatch No. 510 of 7 Sept. 1934, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister to Governor Hodson.

82 ADM 1/1010, Despatch No. 108 of 16 Feb. 1935, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister to Governor Hodson.

83 Redfern to Sekyi, 29 Jan. 1935.

84 Renner was the President of the Ashanti Freedom Society, rival to the Asante Kotoko Society. See note 68. Wallace-Johnson had been a trade union organizer in Nigeria; he had studied in the Soviet Union and knew George Padmore.

85 The organization of the League did not proceed very rapidly until late 1935. At the time Wallace-Johnson offered support to the Society, he was himself in need of political allies.

86 See minutes of the Eastern Provincial Council and the Joint Provincial Councils; both bodies expressed extreme hostility to Wallace-Johnson, the League and the newspapers which supported them.

87 Hansard, 31 July 1934; 14 Nov. 1934; 2 Apr. 1935.

88 Sekyi to Redfern, ? 1934.

89 Sekyi to Redfern, 8 July 1934.

90 Renner to Maxton, 8 Aug. 1934.

91 WASU to Sekyi, 8 03. 1934.Google Scholar

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid.

94 Sekyi to the African Hostel Defence Committee, 16 June 1934.

95 Coleman to J. Sackeyfio, 12 July 1934. Coleman asked the Association to meet the delegation when it arrived and to offer it the support of the Association.

96 G. D. H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (London, 1948), pp. 247–8.

97 Kidd to Wood, 21 Jan. 1935; Bridgeman to Wood, 28 Jan. 1935; Manchester Guardian, 7, 8 Jan. 1935; Daily Herald, 16 Jan. 1935.

98 Kidd to Wood, 21 Jan. 1935.

99 Bridgeman to Wood, 28 Jan. 1935.

100 Cartwright to Moore and Wood, 1 Feb. 1935; Crozier to Kidd, 8 Feb. 1935; Moore and Wood to Acting Secretary of the GCARPS, Axim, 26 Mar. 1935; Moore and Wood to Brenton, 29 May 1933; H. Rathbone to Wood, n.d.

101 Moore and Wood to Acting Secretary of the GCARPS, Axim, 26 Mar. 1935; Moore and Wood to WASU, GCSA and the League for Coloured People, 13 Apr. 193s, 22 Apr. 1935. The delegates lectured to the Society of Friends on 16 Apr.; the H. G. Wells Society on 25 Apr.; they spoke at Guildhouse on 12 May and at Faringdon Hall for the International Friends of Abyssinia on 28 July.

102 Woolf to Wood, 13 Apr. 1935, 21 Apr. 1935; Wood to Foot, 1 Mar. 1933.

103 Moore and Wood to Buxton, 11 Apr. 1935. Though Bridgeman and Kidd had asked Wood to write against C. R. Buxton and the official Labour Party stand on imperialism, they contacted Buxton and right-wing Labour MPs on the Society's behalf.

104 Kidd to Wood, 5 July 1935. This letter was written to Wood after the Society's petition had failed to be accepted by the House Committee.

105 Moore and Wood to Coleman, 4 June 1935.

106 Livie-Noble to Wood, 18 Feb. 1935.

107 Bridgeman to the Editor of the Gold Coast Spectator, 6 Jan, 1935.

108 Ward to Wood, 16 Jan. 1935.

109 Bridgeman to Wood, 28 Jan. 1935. See Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (London, 1964), p. 24. Austin contends that Renner and Agyeman were among the ‘enterprising young men who were interested more in the profit to be gained from Stool disputes than in commoner rights’. For a detailed account of the role of the Ashanti Friends of Freedom Society in protests against the setting up of the Ashanti Confederacy Council and of the interest which the LAI and Bridgeman took in the matter, see GNA: SNA 728/33, The Constitution of Ashanti Confederacy, Protests Against: Ashanti Friends of Freedom Society.

110 One reason the Society required more organized support was financial. From July 1934 to Mar. 1936, the delegates received £3,508 for personal expenses; this sum was exclusive of fees to solicitors, printing costs, etc. In July 1934, Redfern received £1000; presumably he was given more money later on. Most of the funds for the delegation were provided by Chief Biney of Cape Coast, an ex-President of the Society, who was willing to support the delegates, provided they carried out his mining concession negotiations in London. When the delegates returned to the Gold Coast in 1936, having failed with the petition, they were accused of neglecting the people of the Gold Coast for Biney's business and for personal gain. See note 10.

111 Acting Secretary of the GCARPS, Nsawam, to the editors of the African Morning Post and the Gold Coast Spectator, 23 Feb. 1935.

112 J. A. Longdon to Secretary of Society, 5 Apr. 1935.

113 President, Kumasi Branch to Sekyi, 26 Mar. 1935; Longdon to Sekyi, 15 Mar. 1935.

114 E. Y. Becr Boni to Eastern Province Chiefs, 9 Apr. 1935. Boni's letter was an attempt to gain the support of the chiefs for the Society in the stronghold of the Provincial Councils. His appeal was not confined to the Paramount Chiefs, but was addressed as well to minor chiefs who, like the Ohene of Asamangkese, looked for an opportunity to undermine the power of the Omanhenes.

115 J. Acquaah, Secretary of the Ga Young People's Literary Club to Secretary of GCARPS, 2 July 1935. Acquaah sent a contribution to the Society and wrote: ‘Moved by patriotic and philanthropic instincts, and cognisant of the great political Armaggedon in which your and our revered Society is engaged, a group of young men met, spoke, and sent out a circular for the voluntary subscription for the Society. By the grace of God, our appeal has met with some degree of success.’ Similar sentiments and contributions came from the Aborigines' Improvement Club and the Youth of Sekondi and Takoradi.

116 C. F. Sagoe to Coleman, 17 Aug. 1935. The editors were given complimentary copies of the petition ‘… for meritorious work done on behalf of the Society, and to ask them to use their good offices in making the books widely known for sales purposes.’

117 Branches were established at Accra, Nsawam, Mangoase, Koforidua, Odumasi, Somanya, Akuse, Kete, Saltpond, Cape Coast, Sekondi, Takoradi, Axim, Elmina, Suhum, Nyakrom, Kwanyaku; at the first annual conference of the League a resolution was passed expressing ‘appreciation to the … Society … for the way and manner it had been handling the Native Affairs of the country.’ See note 67.

118 J. B. Danquah to Wood, 7 June 1935. Danquah and the Ofori Atta-led delegation had fallen out with one another. Danquah now turned to the Society, and wrote to Wood pleading for co-operation in the Gold Coast and adopting the Society's theoretical stand: ‘ … until we can bring all our chiefs together to form a strong central government vis-à-vis the British … we shall ever tread the downward path to colonial servitude and the loss of national pride and strength.’

119 J. B. Ofori to Sekyi, 19 Aug. 1935. ‘Youngmen’ were often quite aged. The term seems to refer to opposition groups to traditional rulers in rural areas. Investigation of local government records, district record books and stool dispute inquiries are necessary before this term can be given any exact meaning. ‘Youngmen’ were certainly not simply school leavers or Lumpen urban elements, nor can they simply be regarded as commoners. In a situation of rapid social change and of political conflict, old terms tend to take on new meanings. By I9SO, CPP ‘Verandah Boys’ seemed to have become the nearest equivalent of the traditional ‘Youngmen’ opposition.

120 R. C. Essien to Coleman, 3 May 1935. Essien was referring to the action of the Government in the Central and Western Provinces; the Government was no doubt also active against the Society in the Eastern Province. According to the papers on the Cocoa Hold-ups of 1930 and of 1937 at Cape Coast Archives, there is considerable evidence that the Government tried to break the hold-up, threatened the Paramount Chiefs and employed force against opposition to the Councils, the Government or the chiefs who supported the Government.

121 See note 38; Asamangkese Division Regulation Ordinance, 1935, Government Gazette, No. 22, Mar. 1935. See also minutes Eastern Provincial Council and minutes Joint Provincial Councils, GNA, Accra. The Asamangkese Ordinance helped Ofori Atta succeed in his dispute with the Ohene.

122 J. J. Thompson to Secretary of GCARPS, 24 08 1935.Google Scholar

123 Election Petition: F. W. Nanka-Bruce v. A. W. Kojo Thompson.

124 Ibid. Wallace-Johnson declared that the Gold Coast Independent was ‘the enemy of the League’.

125 Ibid. ADM 1/859, Despatch No. 225 of 10 May 1934, Governor Thomas to Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister.

126 Wallace-Johnson Papers.

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid. Mary Lokko was the organizer for women; Prince Mohammed Eket accompanied Wallace-Johnson on tour, and Chief Alhaji Alli was on the Executive of the League.

129 See GNA: ACC 1/6o, Gold Coast Farmers' Congress, ‘Resolutions of … 13 December, 1949’. The Congress was formed out of the Gold Coast Farmers' Association. See especially GNA: ACC 765/56, The Cocoa Situation, 1937. Correspondence in this file relating to the early 40s clearly shows farmers' grievances against the Government and against the chiefs. An attempt at reconciling the dispute between farmers and the chiefs and brokers is recorded in the minutes of the Standing Committee of the Joint Provincial Council which met with the Farmers' Committee on 12 Nov. 1941. T h e Committee obliquely attacked the chiefs for supporting the Scheme. The Committee included Ayew, Ashie-Nikoi, and Mante Ababio, who was its chairman.

130 Moore and Wood to Clement Attlee, 28 May 1935.

131 Moore and Wood to Ronald Kidd, 26 June 1935.

132 ADM 1/1019, Despatch No. 596 of 12 Aug. 1935, McDonald to Governor Hodson.

133 Hansard, 13 May 1936.