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Cecil King, the Press, and Politics in West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John Chick
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Extract

There was a close and continuing relationship between the press and nationalist politics in colonial British West Africa which acquired a new dynamic towards the end of World War II. As the imperial impluse faltered, a younger, more radical African leadership appeared which saw newspapers as a means of carrying their message to a wider political class than that addressed by the relatively conservative pioneers. It had for some time been true that ‘The spontaneous expression of grievances, against this tax or that bureaucratic decision, was built up by a handful of…journalists into a generalized protest against the fact of British authority.’1 Now movers and shakers like Nnamdi Azikiwe in Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast began to use the press in a frontal assault on their colonial régimes. Couched in terms ‘verging on joyful vituperation’, newspapers reached out beyond the elite of the cities to rural opinion leaders and the urban poor.2

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 375 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: the rise of Gold Coast nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1965), p. 555.Google Scholar

2 Enahoro, Peter, Address to IPI Annual Assembly, 1965Google Scholar, quoted in Hopkinson, Tom, ‘A New Age of Newspaper in Africa’, in Gazette (Leiden), 14, 2, 1968.Google Scholar The parts played by the Nigerian and Gold Coast leaders are covered in Jones-Quartey, K. A. B., A Life of Azikiwe (Harmondsworth, 1965)Google Scholar, and Timothy, Bankole, Kwame Nkrumah: his rise to power (London, 1963 edn.).Google Scholar

3 Typical was the reaction to a 1949 report on the press in the Gold Coast prepared for the Information Department of the Colonial Office by Brigadier R. F. Johnson, who recommended tightening the laws of sedition and putting Nkrumah out of the way by means of ‘an action for libel and a well selected criminal prosecution’. The CO response was that the laws were adequate, even if there was room for improvement in their application. Public Records Office, London, File CO 537 4639 31649.

4 The issue of European involvement in West African journalism is examined in Chick, J. D., ‘The White Press: a study of the role of foreign-owned newspapers in Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, 1946–1965’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester, 1967.Google Scholar In addition to the Mirror Group's papers, the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation published the Ashanti Times (Kumasi) from 1947 onwards, while the Thomson Organisation had a major stake in the Daily Express (Lagos) between 1960 and 1965. On the former, see Chick, John D., ‘The Ashanti Times: a footnote to Ghanaian press history,’ in African Affairs (London), 76, 302, 01 1977, pp. 80–94.Google Scholar

5 West African Pilot (Lagos), 24 and 30 12 1952.Google Scholar

6 Letter from Cecil King to K. W. Lines, 24 December 1952, emphasis in the original. The stolen letter was dated 2 December 1952. Ironically, King had written to the general manager in Nigeria in very similar terms on 17 December, but the Lagos office was not as leak-prone as that in Accra.

7 King's files were thrown out when his London office was cleared in 1968, but rescued by an executive who recognised their significance and made them available to the author.

8 The story of King's earlier career with IPC is well told in Edelman, Maurice, The Mirror: a Political history (London, 1966).Google Scholar Events surrounding the removal of Guy Bartholomew in 1952, and King's own replacement by Hugh Cudlipp in 1968, are covered in Cudlipp's, Publish and Be Damned! The Astonishing Story of the Daily Mirror (London, 1953), and Walking on the Water (London, 1976).Google Scholar

9 Wright, Peter, Spycatcher: the candid autobiography of a senior intelligence officer (Toronto, 1987), p. 369.Google Scholar

10 King, Cecil H., Strictly Personal: some memoirs of Cecil H. King (London, 1969).Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p. 101.

12 Williams, Francis, Dangerous Estate: the anatomy of newspapers (London, 1959), p. 194.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p. 196.

14 The best known conflict came over the publication in the Daily Mirror of a controversial cartoon in 1943, which led to threats of suppression. See Edelman, op. cit. pp. 111 ff.

15 Sampson, Anthony, The Anatomy of Britain Today (London, 1965), p. 142.Google Scholar

16 Aloba, Abiodun, ‘Journalism in Africa’, in Gazette, 5, 4, 1960.Google Scholar

17 Winchester, Clarence, ‘Report to Lord Kemsley on the British West African Press’, 1945 typescript.Google Scholar

18 Suffern, Roy, ‘Newspaper Prospective Nigeria: extracts from a report on a visit, March 27–April 27, 1947’, typescript.Google Scholar

19 The view that the Colonial Office was not directly responsible for the Mirror Group's intervention is borne out by official records of the period, since released.

20 King, op. cit. p. 148.

21 ‘The Growth of the West African Press’, in The Times British Colonies Review (London), Summer 1955, p. 19.Google Scholar

22 King, op. cit. p. 24.

23 Cudlipp, Hugh, At Your Peril (London, 1962), p. 24.Google Scholar

24 King, op. cit. p. 95–7.

25 Cudlipp, At Your Peril, pp. 20–2.

26 Memorandum from Hugh Cudlipp to London staff, circa 1953.Google Scholar

27 King, op. cit. pp. 149–50.

28 Cecil King's son Francis served in Accra for some years, while Lawrence Cook, Percy Roberts, and Frank Rogers all went on from African subsidiaries to become directors of the parent company. Rogers was managing director of the IPC at the time of King's dismissal and accompanied Cudlipp to the final showdown with the Chairman.

29 As King told one of his staff on the Coast: ‘Be careful to read West Africa which should reach you by air every week. Williams is very much in touch with anyone important here and anyway our papers should all tell roughly the same story’. Letter to John Tully, 7 August 1951.

30 Suffern, op. cit. pp. 22–3.

31 King, op. cit. pp. 149–50.

32 Letter to Frank Rogers, 29 March 1950.

33 Letter to Tully, 16 July 1951.

34 All African and European staff who held executive positions during this period were interviewed by the writer in the course of 1964, 1965, and 1966.

35 Letter from Laurence Cook to David Williams, 23 August 1957, and text of address by Cook to European staff, London, 17 July 1958.

36 The decision to buy into Sierra Leone was considered to be the Mirror Group's most serious mistake. It had been heavily influenced by the fact that journalist from Freetown had played a distinguished part in the development of the press elsewhere in West Africa. In fact, the Daily Mail's circulation was never sufficiently large to sustain a really profitable operation, while staff proved less adaptable than those recruired in Ghana and Nigeria.

37 Interview with Alhaji Babatunde Jose, 17 December 1965, and letter from Martin Therson-Cofie to the author, 15 December 1966.

38 Sampson, op. cit. p. 146.

39 Braddon, Russell, Roy Thomson of Fleet Street (London, 1965), p. 127.Google Scholar

40 Letter to Roy Thomson, 22 March 1963, and reply of 11 April 1963.

41 See Chick, ‘The White Press’, pp. 375–412, and Agbaje, Adigun A. B., The Nigerian Press, Hegemony, and the Social Construction of Legitimacy, 1960–1983 (Lewiston, 1992), pp. 155 ff, for accounts of Thomson's activities in Nigeria.Google Scholar

42 Memorandum to David Williams, 7 July 1952, emphasis in the original.

43 Letter to Lines, 2 December 1952.

44 Letter to Tully, 16 July 1951.

45 Letter to Basil Freestone, 5 February 1951.

46 Ibid. 26 January 1951.

47 Letter to Laurence Cook, August 1957.

48 Letter to Percy Roberts, 29 October 1957.

49 As Bankole Timothy had explained two years earlier in the preface to what became the first edition of his biography, Kwame Nkrumah (1955), ‘In the columns of the Accra ‘Daily Graphic”, I have commended Nkrumah's actions or policies when they deserved praise, but I have also criticised when I felt that in the public interest he deserved a rap on the Knuckles.’

50 Peregrine Worsthorne attacked the Mirror Group in Encounter (London), 05 1959, p. 5Google Scholar, for undermining the freedom of the press in Ghana by achieving a dominant position in the market and then surrendering its independence. Cecil King replied in ibid. June 1959, p. 92, that there had been no change of policy: criticism by ‘responsible members of the opposition’, was still published. As indigenous opposition was silenced, however, it became increasingly difficult to take this argument seriously. While there were good economic reasons for selling the Daily Graphic in August 1962, the paper's emasculation had begun to undermine staff morale throughout the Group. Interview with Laurence Cook, October 11 1966. Once the ties were broken the Daily Mirror (London), 5 03 1964, published a stinging editorial attack on Nkrumah, who was said to have produced ‘a vicious parody of Independence’ based on fear.Google Scholar

51 Interview with Cecil King, 11 November 1966.

52 Letter to Lines, 7 April 1955.

53 Ibid. 30 September 1953.

54 Letter from Roberts, 21 October 1950.

55 Letter from Cook to Williams, 23 August 1957.

56 Letter to Tully, 9 October 1951.

57 On these issues see, for example, Daily Mail 30 March 1957, Daily Graphic, 14 September 1957, and Daily Times, 30 January 1964.

58 Letter to Tully, 9 October 1951.

59 Letter to Rogers, 21 September 1951.

60 Ibid.

61 Three years earlier King had launched a campaign to get Sir John Macpherson removed from his position as Governer-General of Nigeria, writing among others to Sir Hugh Foot in Jamaica and Sir Andrew Cohen in Uganda, while remarking to Lord Astor that ‘The sooner he falls under a bus the better’. Letter to Astor, 7 October 1953.

62 Letter from Roberts to King, 30 April 1953, and letter from Roberts to the author, 20 February 1967.

63 Letter to Roberts, 8 May 1953.

64 Interview with Roberts, 1 February 1965, and cable to Roberts from King, 6 February 1958.

65 Letter to Lines, 26 May 1952.

66 See, for example, letters from Cecil King to K. J. Hanford, 24 April 1953, and to Francis King, 19 October 1954. Bailey, Jim of Drum Magazine (Johannesburg), which the Mirror Group distributed in West Africa, was rebuked in an undated letter, circa 1955, for the tone of its editorials and told that ‘In our West African papers we eliminate, as far as possible, sex, crime and material likely to raise the tension between the white and black races.’.Google Scholar

67 Letter to Lines, 5 May 1952.

68 There are numerous references to such initiatives in King's correspondence. In 1951, for example, there were lengthy negotiations with Gold Coast officials on a proposal to import newsprint on behalf of African-owned newspapers. These came to nothing. In 1953, discussions were held with the CPP on the supply of a second-hand rotary press. Letter of 9 March 1953 from Kwame Nkrumah, and letter of 8 September 1953 to Kojo Botsio. Managers were instructed to give every assistance to indigenous proprietors. Letter to Lines, 14 November 1953.

69 Interview with King, 11 November 1966.

70 While King deliberately distanced himself from colonial officials, his behaviour in West Africa was wholly in character. According to Cudlipp, op. cit. p. 18, ‘When a conversation no longer interests him he stops it; when a social function bores or irks him, and they all do, he leaves’.

71 See, for example, letter to Martin Therson-Cofie of 8 November 1955 and 23 July 1956.

72 Typical was King's response to a proposal to install him as ‘Graphichene’ at a company dance in Accra: he warned staff to do nothing which might appear to have political overtones or cause offence by making light of chiefly institutions. Letter to Tully, 2 October 1951.

73 Whitaker, Philip, ‘The Western Region of Nigeria, May 1956’, in Mackenzie, W. J. M. and Robinson, Kenneth E. (eds.), Five Elections in Africa (Oxford, 1960), p. 53.Google Scholar

74 Increase Coker, ‘The Daily Times as I See It’, undated typescript, circa 1960, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

75 Ainslie, Rosalynde, The Press in Africa: communications past and present (London, 1966), p. 57.Google Scholar

76 Accra Evening News, 18 February 1953.

77 Coker, op. cit. p. 6, who attributes the rather exaggerated anti-communism of the Daily Times to the period when Frank Rogers was general manager in 1950–1. This is borne out by King's private correspondence with Rogers, who was more conservative than most of this colleaguses and closer to the colonial government than his successors. No one else in the organization would have written that ‘one of our duties is to show these people, in a polite sort of way, how much more civilised Great Britain is than their own country’, letter of 13 December 1950, or warned King to distance himself from Thomas Hodgkin because of that writer's communist sympathies, letter of 28 Jyly 1951. While the Daily Times was always pro-Western, its preoccupation with subversion had largely disappeared by 1952.

78 See, for example, Ainslie, op. cit. pp. 241–2, and Oluwasanmi, H. A. in Passin, Herbert and Jones-Quartey, K. A. B. (eds.), Africa: the dynamics of change (Ibadan, 1963), p. 169.Google Scholar

79 West African Pilot, quoted in letter to King from Tully, 30 May 1951.

80 The reaction of the nationalist press, and the reasons for its ambivalence towards foreign intervention, are covered at length in Chick, ‘The White Press’, pp. 315–40 and 453–98.

81 Interview with King, 11 November 1966.