Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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ariat resorted
to
strikes.
In
1919 the Lagos dockers,
a
generally
exploited group whose real income had fallen considerably owing
to inflation, went on strike for 4s per day. The going rate of one
shilling per day had persisted since the previous century. At the
same time the skilled workers were organising themselves into
trade unions to defend their interests: the Sierra Leone Railway
Skilled Workmen Mutual Aid Union emerged during the railway
strikes
of
July
and
October 1919 and
the
Nigerian Railway
Mechanics Union led the 1919 Nigerian railway strike. In Sierra
Leone,
the
July strike was also accompanied
by
widespread
attacks on' Syrian' merchants, Levantine immigrants who by hard
work, low profit margins and increasing access to credit through
family and ethnic solidarity were challenging established Creole
retailers and whose racial exclusiveness and condescending atti-
tude towards Africans bred resentment. They were popularly
believed to be responsible for and profiteering from the 1919 rice
shortages.
In general
the
post-war protests
and
strikes, recurrent
in
industries such as mining and the railways throughout the 1920s,
had the support
of
the African press and the more politically
conscious intelligentsia: Herbert Macaulay
in
Nigeria, Casely
Hayford in the Gold Coast and Claudius May in Sierra Leone. The
westernised elite
of
lawyers, doctors, journalists and merchants
could empathise with the plight of the low-paid African clerks and
workers. They too had seen their economic and political position
progressively restricted. When in 1926 the Sierra Leone railway
attempted
to
impose discriminatory examinations
for
African
salary increments, the workers went on strike. Contributions
to
the strike fund were received from workers and prominent Sierra
Leoneans as far away as Lagos and Kumasi. Yet many of these
same middle-class Africans, while sympathetic to the problems of
the petty bourgeoisie and clerical class, were distressed by the
growth of working-class militancy. They looked upon strikers as
rabble-rousers since riots by the urban poor and unemployed were
often sparked by labour agitation. Jackson's
Lagos Weekly Record
roundly condemned
the
1920 strike
by
staff
of
the Marine
Department. Official response ranged from compromise with the
clerical
staff,
in
the form
of
increased war bonuses and salary
awards,
to
militant opposition
to the
unskilled workers.
A
preference
for
conspiracy theories resulted
in a
preoccupation
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA, 1919-1929
with identifying
and
persecuting 'ringleaders'.
The
Colonial
Office, reacting
to
British labour unrest
as
much
as to
issues
underlying West African strife, tended
to
assume
an
even more
strident stance than
the
local administration. Official attitudes
hardened generally
as
economic conditions worsened.
Late
in
1920
the
brief period
of
prosperity ended abruptly
as
Europe entered
the
post-war depression
and
export prices
for
African commodities collapsed.
The
Liverpool price
for
Gold
Coast cocoa fell from
172s per cwt in
March
1920 to 44s in
December,
the
highest
and
lowest prices recorded
on the
world
market during
our
period.
16
Thereafter
the net
barter terms
of
trade remained sluggish, failing to achieve pre-war levels until the
1950s. There was an immediate outflow of specie and a tightening
of credit, since colonial monetary supplies were closely linked
to
the balance
of
trade. African merchants
who had
ordered large
quantities
of
stock
at
premium post-war prices found themselves
without
a
market,
in
debt
and
unable
to
obtain further credit.
Many went out of business. Bewildered by falling producer prices,
Gold Coast cocoa farmers staged
yet
another hold-up,
in 1921.
Local farmers' associations, often synonymous with the local
asafo,
were mobilised
by the
wealthier farmers,
the
most prominent
being John Kwame Ayew. Such rural capitalists,
who had
hitherto been brokers and exporters as well as large farmers, were
being threatened
by the
penetration
of
buying stations
and
brokers employed by expatriate firms. Hence they supplanted
the
chiefs
as the
driving force behind rural protests.
The
chiefs,
in
the ambiguous position
of
colonial agents
and
leaders
of
their
people, failed to support the strike, their reaction being
a
response
both
to the
challenge
of
the rich farmers
and to the
goading
of
the British administration. As
in
1908, many
of
the small farmers
could
not
hold
out for
long
and the
attitudes
of
the chiefs were
often crucial.
The
African
and
Eastern Trading Company
temporarily increased
its
producer price
and
this, followed
by a
rise
in
world price,
not
only ended
the
boycott
but
convinced
people
of
the success
of
the hold-up.
The impact
of
falling customs revenue and railway receipts,
by
over 40 per cent in British West Africa generally, was particularly
marked
in
the Gold Coast where the public debt had doubled and
16
Roger
J.
Southall, 'Polarisation
and
dependence
in the
Gold Coast cocoa trade,
1890-1938', Transactions
of
the Historical Society
of
Ghana, 1975, 16, 1,97.
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND LIBERIA
government expenditure tripled between 1918 and 1920. The pace
of appointments slowed and the impetus toward Africanisation
was lost. Guggisberg was forced to cancel the proposed Northern
Territories railway, intended to tap the hinterland and help sustain
investment at Takoradi. Furthermore, construction of the port
was plagued by delays and rising costs. This was partially due to
the incompetence of the various British and Canadian engineering
firms, but also because of the 'buy-British' regulations. As a
result, the contractors were compelled to purchase costly but
inferior British steam shovels rather than more suitable American
ones.
Thus 'development' loans, repayable by the Gold Coast,
helped sustain British business and employment.
In the British Cameroons, after an unsuccessful attempt to
operate the captured German plantations as a government depart-
ment, it was decided to put them up for sale to Europeans. The
possibility of subdividing the land into African farms or returning
it to its indigenous owners was rejected:
Without capital it would mean that the buildings and machinery would fall
into ruin, entailing loss, and without the necessary experience disease would
spread and the cocoa would be destroyed. The resources of civilisation must,
therefore, be brought to the aid of the native and the plantations sold to
companies able to develop them.'
7
To the British officials, plantations represented European invest-
ments in development which should be preserved. This view led
to self-justifying assumptions regarding the inability of the
African population to sustain a viable peasant-based export
economy. After failing in 1923 to attract non-German purchasers,
Britain agreed to allow the former planters to repurchase their
property the following year. By 1936, German planters owned
293,678 acres, compared to 19,053 and 263 acres in British and
Swiss ownership respectively. In certain cases Africans who had
occupied vacant plantation land were allowed to remain, but such
tolerance was as much a reflection of the difficulties in attracting
European investors as of British paternalistic concern. A few
African-owned plantations were established but in general Afric-
ans were relegated to the role of plantation labour. Nearly 16,000
were thus employed by 1935, being increasingly drawn from
southern Nigeria and Cameroun.
17
West Africa, Report on
the
British sphere of
the Cameroons
(1922), Cmd. 1647, 62.
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA, 1919-1929
Between 1922 and 1929 the income terms of trade gradually
recovered throughout British West Africa, thereby increasing
colonial customs revenues. By 1929 Nigeria's exports were worth
over £17.5m; half came from palm-oil and kernels, which were
followed by groundnuts, cocoa and tin. From the Gold Coast,
exports in
1927
were worth £ 14m, of which
84
per cent came from
cocoa. Manganese now contributed almost as much as gold;
scarcely less important were diamonds, which had been found in
the Eastern Province by
a
government survey in 1919: production
(open-cast) and marketing (mostly for industrial use) was domin-
ated, though never exclusively, by Consolidated African Selection
Trust. Sierra Leone's exports reached a peak in 1927 of £i.6m,
very largely from palm products. The overall rise in export values
was mainly due to the increased volume of agricultural exports. In
the absence of technological improvements, this was achieved by
applying more land and labour to the cultivation of cash-crops:
more farmers were working harder to sustain the level of imports.
This expansion of cultivation was facilitated by
a
transport
revolution: the introduction of lightweight Ford lorries, pion-
eered by African importers such as W. A. Dawodu of Lagos.
Often African-owned and operated, these American Fords were
capable of travelling over crude dirt roads through tsetse-infested
cocoa- and palm-producing areas
to
bush markets hitherto
dependent upon human porterage. They thus opened up new
areas and reduced the ton/mileage rates. The government-owned
railways came under increasing competition from motor-
transport, despite restrictions
on
licences and unauthorised
African road construction. History
was not to
sustain
Guggisberg's contention in 1923 that 'motor lorries can only be
regarded as temporary and inadequate measures in meeting the
general demands of trade in this country'.
18
Having assumed the
burden of low-return, long-term infrastructural investment
to
facilitate British private enterprise, the colonial governments were
overtaken by technological change. On the other hand, African
businessmen who assumed the initial risks were increasingly
undercut by the ever more powerful European companies which
quickly took over the Ford and automobile tyre franchises.
Consequently African investors were forced into
the
less
18
G. B. Kay and S. Hymer, Tie political
economy
of
colonialism
in Ghana:
a
collection
of
documents
and statistics (Cambridge, 1972), 146.
43
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND LIBERIA
remunerative or speculative ventures, thereby reinforcing the
prejudices of colonial bankers against loaning funds to Africans.
There were at this time numerous business mergers and
take-overs in West Africa, reflecting more widespread trends
towards vertical integration and capitalist consolidation. By
1927-8,
only fourteen firms exported 95 per cent of the Gold
Coast's cocoa. The Niger Company lacked the resources to
maintain its increasingly complex commercial and mining opera-
tions and was bought out by Lever Brothers during the
1920
crisis.
Lever's own original quest for a cheap source of palm-oil for
soap-making gave way to broader commercial interests as the
company's African holdings increased. In 1929 the United Africa
Company was formed; it amalgamated Lever's West African
interests with the African and Eastern Trading Company. As
commercial operations came to be concentrated among fewer
firms, it became easier to establish buying and price-fixing
agreements.
The post-war economic problems, and European attempts to
deal with them, provoked increasing demands from educated
African bourgeois nationalists for a greater voice in government.
In March 1920, delegates drawn from the four British West
African colonies had met at the Accra Native Club to form the
National Congress of British West Africa and to debate a wide
range of economic and political grievances. Proposals for such a
conference had appeared regularly in the African press since the
idea was mooted by Casely Hayford and Dr Akiwande Savage in
1912:
it perpetuated the concept of a United British West Africa
guided by its educated '
sons
of the soil' which dated from the
nineteenth century. The delegates were mainly successful
professional men: lawyers, doctors and clergy with a sprinkling
of merchants, journalists and chiefs. Liberal in their political and
economic persuasions, they sought constitutional reforms,
including elective representation, in order to redress economic
and social disadvantages; they did not press for radical change.
They denounced, as obstacles to 'free trade', export taxes on
African commodities, proposals by the Empire Resources Devel-
opment Committee for the exploitation of natural resources
through concessionaires under state control, and the discrimi-
natory practices of banks and shipping firms. They called for
modification of paternalistic legislation which inhibited the free
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sale of land, for the opening of the judiciary and medical services
to qualified Africans and for the establishment of
a
West African
university. They wanted equal opportunity, mutual accommod-
ation
of
their interests and effective representation within the
colonial system. Simultaneously they wished the Colonial Office
to consider whether the increasing number
of
Syrians were
'undesirables and
a
menace
to
the good Government
of
the
land'.
19
What distinguished the National Congress from earlier
organisations, such as the Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protec-
tion Society, was that it brought together African intellectuals and
professional men from all four colonies in the hope of rectifying
common grievances through concerted political action. To these
ends the conference resolved to send a delegation to London, the
fountain-head of authority, rather than agitate for local reforms
within the separate colonies.
The delegation, which arrived in London in September 1920,
sought to present its case to British politicians, the Colonial Office
and the press. A lengthy petition asking for constitutional and
other reforms arising from conference resolutions was submitted
to the king. Unfortunately, like most NCBWA literature and
pronouncements,
it
obscured central issues in a welter of trivia
and failed to distinguish specific grievances in the varied colonies.
At one stage
it
was thought that the petitioners were seeking
self-government. The mandarins at the Colonial Office were quick
to point out inconsistencies and obscurities, while the NCBWA
alienated the colonial governors by appealing to London over
their heads. Governors Clifford of Nigeria and Guggisberg both
denounced the Congress as an unrepresentative body and
its
demands for elective representation as premature. In the Gold
Coast legislative council Nana Ofori Atta, the paramount chief
of Akim Abuakwa
in
the Eastern Province, declared that the
chiefs, not the Congress, were the rightful spokesmen
of
the
people; a summary of his speech was cabled to the Colonial Office.
The secretary of state, Lord Milner, refused to see the delegation
and advised the king to reject the petition. Consequently Congress
leaders were compelled to take their case back to the divisive
arenas of parochial colonial politics.
From the beginning the National Congress had been plagued
by division and petty jealousies. In Nigeria quarrels between Drs
"> Resolutions of
the Conference
of Africans of British West Africa (London, 19*0).
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND LIBERIA
Savage and Randle led the latter
to
form his own conservative
Reform Club, while Ajasa's
Nigerian Pioneer
opposed all manifest-
ations of Congress. In the Gold Coast, Congress leaders clashed
with those of the more parochial Aborigines' Rights Protection
Society,
a
division personified
by
the enmity between Casely
Hayford and E.
J.
P. Brown, who allied himself with Nana Ofori
Atta. Only
in
Sierra Leone was there
a
semblance
of
unity
amongst the bourgeoisie, and they had no claim to speak for the
people
of
the protectorate: here
at
least the British authorities
could plausibly argue that the chiefs more truly reflected the views
of the rural masses. Congress leaders had tended to assume that
their interests coincided with those of the chiefs and people. Ofori
Atta's speech embodied many chiefs' fears and suspicion of the
educated bourgeoisie. The failure
of
the London delegation
inflamed the conflict between the Gold Coast Congress and the
more conservative elements, who were accused of stabbing the
Congress in the back. Casely Hayford's considerable energies were
devoted to rallying support amongst the chiefs against Brown and
Ofori Atta and in winning control of the executive of the ARPS,
which he achieved
in
1922. Yet
in
the process the Gold Coast
branch, which had been the mainstay
of
the Congress, focused
increasingly on local issues to the detriment of the broader British
West African perspective. Except during
the
inter-colonial
Congress sessions, at Freetown in 1923, Bathurst in 1925—6, and
Lagos in 1930, there was little Pan-British West African activity.
At the Freetown session
a
formal constitution for the National
Congress was adopted and Casely Hayford was elected president,
a position he held until his death in 1930. But, as in subsequent
sessions, the subjects and solutions which dominated deliberations
were those formulated
at
the Gold Coast Convention
in
1920.
Interest waned; the Gambia branch gradually withered, while the
Nigerian branch, which was never very active, failed
to
send
representatives to the Bathurst or Freetown sessions and all but
disappeared. Herbert Macaulay, Dr Savage and many of the Lagos
elite were preoccupied with local politics, especially their defence
of the
eleko
or paramount chief of Lagos and the ruling house of
Dosumu against high-handed treatment by the British adminis-
tration, and the criticisms of Henry Carr, Kitoyi Ajasa and others
who viewed the
eleko
as an anachronism.
African leadership was further fragmented by constitutional
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA, 1919-1929
reforms initiated in 1921 by Governor Clifford, who moved to
abolish Lugard's Nigerian Council and restore the legislative
council. As a result, Africans gained elective representation to the
legislative council of Nigeria in 1923; Sierra Leone followed in
1924 and the Gold Coast in 1925. It was a limited franchise,
excluding all but the wealthiest Africans in the urban centres of
the colonies: in Freetown, there were 1,866 eligible voters out of
a total population of approximately 25,000, while in Lagos there
were only 1,601 voters in 1923, among a population of nearly
100,000. Besides, elected members were outnumbered by 'tradi-
tional rulers', colonial chiefs nominated by the governor or, as in
the case of the Gold Coast, elected from and by newly-established
provincial councils of chiefs. Many of the elite saw this as a
betrayal, an attempt to pack the legislative councils with Africans
who would vote with the government, which retained an official
majority. Casely Hayford attempted to mobilise opposition to the
new constitution and provincial councils through the ARPS but
merely succeeded in alienating increasing numbers of chiefs.
Eventually he and the more assimilationist bourgeois nationalists
secured election to the legislative council, vowing reform from
within. Yet, like their contemporaries in Sierra Leone and
Nigeria, they discovered that their influence upon government
policy was marginal. Their ineffectiveness bred disillusion and
growing indifference amongst the electorate, and British officials
argued that the apathy of voters proved the unrepresentative
nature of elected unofficials. There was a similar rift in Sierra
Leone between the Creole elite of the colony and the leaders from
the protectorate. In 1922 the latter founded the Committee of
Educated Aborigines in opposition to the Creole-dominated
Congress. The latter was used by E. S. Beoku-Betts and Dr
Bankole Bright to win successive re-election to the legislative
council, but the Creole establishment received a major blow to
its power and prestige when the British invoked instances of
corruption and mismanagement to end elective mayoral municipal
government in Freetown in 1926. In Nigeria, Herbert Macaulay's
Nigerian National Democratic Party dominated Lagos politics,
winning the quinquennial legislative council and triennial Lagos
town council elections. In effect, however, the constitutional
'reforms' of the 1920s polarised the interests of the various elites,
traditional and bourgeois. Politically, the educated bourgeois elite
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BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND LIBERIA
were confined
to the
coastal colonies, while divisive ethnic
nationalism
was
encouraged
by the
delegation
of
increased
responsibility
to
the numerous Native Authorities,
in
harmony
with indirect rule.
During
the
1920s, 'native authorities' became increasingly
involved in decisions regarding the location of
schools,
roads and
other amenities; they also became responsible
for
enforcing
a
profusion
of
forestry, agricultural, labour, sanitary and police
regulations. All too often, little attention was given to the manner
in which these new undertakings were to be financed. Especially
in the so-called ' unreformed' native administrations, those with-
out native treasuries where local administration was supported
out of the income of the
chief,
new costs were frequently met by
extra-legal exactions. Thus colonial chiefs gained new powers at
the expense
of
alienating their subjects, and
in
the Gold Coast
Colony there were numerous attempts through the courts
to
destool chiefs. The position
of
chiefs
in
the Gold Coast was
however further entrenched by the Native Authorities Ordinance
of 1927; it was defended by J. B. Danquah, a lawyer and younger
brother
of
Nana Ofori Atta, who invoked the past powers
of
chiefs while stressing that final power and responsibility for laws
now rested with
the
colonial authorities.
The
bourgeois
nationalists were divided. One faction, led by Casely Hayford,
eventually came to accept the new order; the more militant section
of the ARPS,
led by
Kobina Sekyi,
a
Cape Coast barrister,
maintained a determined opposition.
The monarchs
of
Benin and Asante, whom the British had
exiled at the time of conquest, became the foci for resurgent ethnic
nationalism. In 1914 the former
oba
of Benin, Ovonramwen, had
died in exile at Calabar, leaving the way open for Lugard to restore
his heir, as Eweka II, and impose indirect rule, on the Northern
Nigerian model. There ensued
a
protracted struggle between
traditionalists and those whose power had been enhanced under
British authority,
a
division which became
an
institutionalised
aspect of Benin polity. As for Asante, Guggisberg was impressed
by its people's 'loyalty' and by the image portrayed
in
Captain
Rattray's ethnological studies. In 1924 he cautiously agreed to let
Prempeh
I
return as a private citizen and in 1926 Prempeh was
allowed to preside over the attenuated state of Kumasi, though
it was not until 1935 that his successor, Prempeh II, was installed
as
asantebene
of the reconstructed confederation.
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On the economic front, there were a number of African
initiatives aimed at countering European commercial dominance.
The National Congress had put forward various demands. In 1924
John Ayew formed the Gold Coast Farmers' Association to
circumvent exporters by marketing directly overseas. Unfort-
unately an American agent appropriated the proceeds from the
sale of 10,000 tons of cocoa, resulting in a £250,000 loss by the
association. On a much more ambitious scale were the efforts of
the Gold Coast entrepreneur Winifried Tete-Ansa, who tried to
unite African producers, traders and businessmen in competition
with the European-dominated export firms. In 1924 he acquired
the Industrial and Commercial Bank, which began operations in
Nigeria and the Gold Coast in 1929 with the aim of mobilising
African savings and assisting African businessmen and farmers.
It was linked to another Tete-Ansa enterprise, West African
Co-operative Producers, which sought to coordinate the activities
of various farmers' associations and serve as their marketing
agent. Finally, there was the West African American Corporation,
incorporated by Tete-Ansa and a group of American black
activists in the USA. This was to market cocoa and other produce,
as well as supplying wholesale imports. It was an ambitious
enterprise which enjoyed the support of prominent African
merchants, cocoa farmers and politicians. In line with the pro-
gramme of the National Congress, the corporation sought to
improve the economic position of Africans without altering the
basic system or challenging colonial authority. It was handicapped
by lack of capital and managerial skills, compounded by personal
rivalries and discord, and in
1929—30
the sudden fall in commodity
prices led to its collapse. The story illustrates the general failure
of primary-producer interests to break into the established systems
of vertically integrated European consumer-supplier oligopoly
without recourse to radical economic and political changes.
In the midst of this social, economic and political dislocation,
West Africa experienced an often dramatic deterioration of public
health. The influenza pandemic of 1918-19, originally introduced
from overseas, spread by ship along the coast, and inland by road
and rail. In southern Nigeria half the population were believed
to have been clinically ill, while 250,000 (3 per cent of the
population) died. This was followed by serious outbreaks of
smallpox
in
the south and middle belt of Nigeria and cerebro-spinal
meningitis in the sudanic belt of northern Nigeria and the
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