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GEOFFREY BING

Reap the Whirlwind

An Account of
Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana
from 1950 to 1966

MACGIBBON & KEE

FIRST PUBLISHED 1968 BY MACGIBBON & KEE LTD
3 UPPER JAMES STREET GOLDEN SQUARE LONDON W I
COPYRIGHT @ GEOFFREY BING 1 9 68
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
EBENEZER BAYL1S & SON LTD
THE TRINITY PRESS
WORCESTER AND LONDON

sbn: 261 62009 6

For our adopted son
PATRICK ADOTEY BING

this account of his country
during the first sixteen years
of his life

CONTENTS

1 AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE Page II

2 GOING TO GHANA 40

3 THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 73

4 INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 117

5 CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER 160

6 ATTORNEY GENERAL 19S

7 THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 239

8 DESIGNING A REPUBLIC 278

9 MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 313

10 EDUCATION 340

11 THE LAST YEARS 372

12 THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY 416

13 THE HARVEST 439

APPENDIX 451

INDEX 497

For they have sown the wind,
and they shall reap the whirlwind :
it hath no stalk:
the bud shall yield no meal:
if so be it yield,

the strangers shall swallow it up.

hosea 8 : 7

CHAPTER ONE

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

For nine years, from its independence in 1957 to 1966, Ghana
was illuminated by the glare of world publicity. Every figure who
appeared on its stage was magnified and distorted, almost beyond
recognition. Then suddenly in February 1966, as the result of a
military rebellion this little country was, so it seemed, cut down to
size. Overnight it was converted into what in fact it had always been,
a small state on the West Coast of Africa in no way historically,
strategically or economically important to the world.

In size, it is true, Ghana, or the Gold Coast as it used to be
called when still a British colony, is almost equal to Great Britain;
but this is no criterion in a continent where some states, like the
Sudan and the Congo, exceed in area the whole of Western Europe.
Its population is minute compared with, say Nigeria. It commands
no strategic river or land communications and its territories have
never been essential as a military or naval base for any world power.
Its mineral resources are of marginal importance, and in no way vital
to world industry or defence. Only in the production of about one-
third of the world’s supply of one semi-luxury crop, cocoa beans,
has it any global significance. Except, therefore, for the threat that if
Ghana dissolved into chaos, a bar of chocolate might, for a time,
cost a penny or so more, it had no importance to the world economy,
and from the point of view of the overall strategy of the great
powers it could be ignored whatever its military policy. Its sole
importance was its example.

But its example of what? By African standards, it is true, Ghana
was relatively wealthy and in its first nine years of independence
achieved, despite having one of the fastest-growing populations in
the world, a net increase in its gross national product. Ghana had
begun its independence on roughly the same level of production as
Mexico but it soon pulled ahead and maintained this lead over
Mexico’s relative achievement until the destruction of the Nkrumah
Government. This is a success which was worthy of note, but at

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 13

companies threatened to close their mines, their assets were acquired
on the London Stock Exchange by the Ghana Government in a
take-over bid whose orthodoxy and propriety were equal to any
similar operation by the most staid of British capitalist enterprises
and differed from such only in the more generous terms it accorded
to the retiring shareholders.

This remarkable world interest in Ghana presents, from the start,
a problem of presentation to anyone who, like myself, was a member
of its administration, played a part in the formulation of its policy
and is now writing a book about it. It might seem that the best and,
indeed, the most honest course would be to take the allegations
which have been made against Dr Nkrumah and others like myself
who worked with his government, where possible refute them, and,
in those cases when they must be admitted to have substance,
explain the circumstances which produced the miscalculations,
mistakes and even crimes which, on occasion, certainly occurred.
The fact that similar miscalculations, mistakes and crimes, made
contemporaneously in other parts of the world, were passed over in
silence or even applauded as acts of statesmanship and political
realism would appear, certainly at first sight, to have nothing to do
with the matter. That the preacher continually calls one sinner to
repentance while ignoring the obviously more heinous offences of
other members of his flock is no justification for the wrong-doer in
question refusing to examine his conscience or considering the
propriety of those of his actions for which he has been called upon
to account. This angle of approach has, in the case of Ghana, a
further advantage. The very exaggeration of much of the attack,
the misstatement of verifiable facts and the self-contradictory
grounds from which it was often mounted make refutation easy.

Yet this is not, I think, the best purpose which a book such as this
should attempt. Accordingly I have not tried to write primarily a
personal defence of Dr Nkrumah, his Ministers, or his Partv the
CPP, nor have I aimed to do so in my own case. If, ; n t j }e ^ urse
of the narrative these matters incidentally emerge, then well and
good, but to concentrate on them would only obscure the important
lesson in its world context which Ghana provides. ”

The fact that Ghana in general, and Dr Nkrumah i n particular
excited world comment, accompanied by adverse criticism when
the same comments and criticisms could have been made in'regard

I4 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

to other countries and individuals and were not, cannot be explained
away by the excuse of a hostile Western press. A journalist sent to
visit a game reserve will naturally go in search of wild life. He may,
out of a decent regard for the expenses his editor has been put to in
sending him there, underestimate the distance he was from the
beasts which he saw, and exaggerate the number of species he
observed, but his journey to the remote area in question would never
have been financed by his newspaper unless there was an outside
interest in what the game reserve contained.

In other words, the interest in Ghana and the hostility to it were
the result of external pressures, and the initial attitude of the
Western media of communication was the result of a climate of
opinion generated outside their editorial offices. The bad press
from which Ghana so often suffered was only one symptom of the
dislike for the country’s policy and its leaders shown by, not only
the Establishment in the West, but also by many supposedly non-
Establishment centres of opinion. The really interesting question is
why such hostility should ever have arisen at all and particularly
over such a broad front.

The answer most often given was that the Convention People’s
Party of Ghana having won power in colonial times through the
ballot box, abandoned, once independence was secured, the
democracy it had promised to establish, immediately instituted a
dictatorship, built up its leader Dr Kwame Nkrumah into an almost
godlike figure, flung its political opponents intojail and then indulged
in an orgy of ostentatious spending, corruption and general mis-
management that was bound to end in national disaster. Against
such conduct by Dr Nkrumah and his party had not those in
positions of responsibility in the developed countries not only the
right but the duty to protest ? Would they not have been failing in
their commitment to the developing world if they did not rigorously
investigate and publicize these matters as a warning to other states
coming to independence and which might otherwise fall into
similar evil ways?

It would be wrong to say that the Western attitude to Ghana was
in no way influenced by these high-minded principles. There were
many people in Britain, and indeed in the United States and else-
where, who had been fierce opponents of British colonialism. They
had regarded it as a dictatorship under which civil liberty was

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 15

disregarded and the colonial peoples impoverished and exploited. It
was only natural that they should feel that Ghanaian independence
was, at least in part, a result of their labours. They therefore
considered they had reason to protest when they were led to believe
that a country which they had helped towards independence, and
with whose reputation their own credit was involved, was continuing
to follow the evil methods of colonial rule. It is only human that
they should have, without inquiring too deeply into the truth of
the allegations so widely made, hastened to dissociate themselves
from a regime which was reported to be doing the very things which
they had assured their political opponents no liberated African
colony would ever do. Above all, there was a belief, particularly so
far as British liberals were concerned, that in one field at least
Ghana could succeed where Britain, the United States and the
Western World had failed. They were certain that, if only Ghana
gave the proper example, it would be possible to correct the
great African error which their forebears had made fifty years
before.

The South African settlement had reversed what had been
consistent British policy for a hundred years, namely never to
entrust political power to the local white minority. The old alliance
born from the struggle against the slave trade in which the colonial
administrator, the radical and the missionary identified themselves
with the African was fragmented by the peace of Vereeniging, which
ended the Boer war, and which at the same time guaranteed to the
defeated Boer republics that Britain would not, by the exercise of
the imperial authority she had reasserted by arms, extend the right
to vote to any African.

Complicated pressures at home had converted the British anti-
imperialist of the nineteenth century to the pro-Boer of the twentieth.
The stern Dutch Calvinists of Southern Africa had seemed, even to
the Roman Catholic Irish fighting to destroy a minority Protestant
ascendancy at home, the prototype of the anti-colonial freedom
fighter. Thus it was, thanks to support of English and Irish liberals
who, in the previous century, had been the strongest defenders of
African rights, that there triumphed the conception of a great gold
and diamond territory run, not on colonial, but on neo-colonial
principles, where the white minority would be free to corral and
exploit cheap black labour without any embarrassing social issues

x 6 reap the whirlwind

being raised in the United Kingdom Parliament. Fifty years, almost
to the day, before the establishment of Ghanaian independence
internal self rule had been restored in the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State and every black or coloured man in the then most
advanced and developed part of the African continent was thus
denied for ever the opportunity of achieving constitutionally the
right to determine his own future.

In 1910 the Conservative spokesman in the House of Commons,

A. J. Balfour, enunciated what had already become, and was to
remain, British policy throughout the first half of the twentieth
century. You cannot, he told the British House of Commons, give
Africans in South Africa equal rights with Europeans without
‘threatening the whole fabric of white civilization’. This earlier
‘Balfour Declaration’, though less well known, has had perhaps a
more profound effect on world politics than his subsequent more
publicized ‘Balfour Declaration’ on the rights of the Jewish people
to Palestine.

British liberal interest in Ghana arose in part from the belief
that Britain had, fifty years after granting self rule to the Boer
Republics, suddenly reverted to the older nineteenth-century policy
of putting justice to the African first. Those who had suffered from
the inherited guilt of the creation of South Africa suddenly felt
purged by the construction in Ghana of a replica of the British
Parliamentary system. OnDrNkrumah, an African Prime Minister,
it seemed miraculously fashioned in the Downing Street model,
was to fall the burden of righting the wrong their fathers had done.
To many British liberals, and to some perhaps in the United States
and Western Europe also, Dr Nkrumah was under a solemn
obligation to lead the Africans to their long Promised Land along a
stricdy constitutional path. It was only when he started marching
around the walls of Jericho blowing trumpets that their faith
wavered. After all their kith and kin were inside the fortifications
and no one knew what trumpet-blowing might lead to.

Dr Nkrumah was cast as a Messiah, but as a Messiah of ortho-
doxy, who, by his exercise of British political techniques would
convert the racialists of Southern Africa. To Mr Dennis Austin, for
example, who is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of
Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and who spent
many years in Ghana, Dr Nkrumah ‘was not evil or even vicious . . .’

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

According to this student of Commonwealth affairs ‘The main
impression he leaves behind is one of silliness . . . Ghana’s foreign
policy simply bore no relation to the size or resources of Ghana’.
In other words he should have stuck to the conversion of South
Africa by the practice of Western democracy and not concerned
himself with anything else. To Mr Austin and those like him the
problems of the world were no concern of the developing African
nations. Peace or war, the United Nations, the hunger and unrest
that haunt mankind today were matters which should be left strictly
to the rulers of the great powers. Mr Austin was, at first, prepared to
concede that Dr Nkrumah’s endeavours in these fields ‘did no harm
perhaps except once again to show the dream like world of myth
which Nkrumah inhabited’ but, by the time he had reached the end
of the article in which he had expressed these views, he could not
even stand by this soft impeachment. At his back, as with so many
British liberals, he too had heard the winged nemesis of the Southern
African betrayal. Dr Nkrumah in other circumstances might have
been laughed at — but nevertheless excused — for concerning himself
with humanity, but, in the African circumstances of the day this was
the great betrayal. Mr Austin was compelled to qualify his con-
clusion that Dr Nkrumah’s principal offence was ‘myth making’ :

\ . . Perhaps this is to be too kind,’ he concluded his summing up,
‘for one of the unhappy consequences of Nkrumah’s rule was that it
encouraged, and gave a spurious justification to, those who opposed
African independence. . . . One has only to consider how powerful a
criticism of white minority rule the preservation of a free political
society in Ghana would have been, to lament the failure of Nkrumah.’

Those who study historical myths may be pardoned for wondering
whether the greatest myth of all may not be the persistent liberal
belief in Britain and elsewhere that somehow somewhere some
African country will emerge and, by its example, convert South
Africa, Portugal and Southern Rhodesia to an acceptance of
democracy and racial equality. Dislike of Dr Nkrumah’s regime
sprang, in part no doubt, from the fact that there were liberals who
genuinely believed that Ghana had been called into existence out of
pure imperial beneficence so that Western Africa might prove
Southern Africa wrong. They never realized that Ghana was as
much a prisoner of its past as South Africa, and what Dr Nkrumah

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

could or could not do was to a large extent governed by Ghana’s
past history as the British colony of the Gold Coast.

Nevertheless had the criticisms of Ghana only come from sucti
sources they would have been understandable and, to some extent
perhaps, even justifiable. What is really of interest is that the bulk of
the criticism came, not from these liberal origins, but from organs
of orthodox conservative opinion in Britain, the United States, and
in many ways more significant still, in Western Europe and par-
ticularly in Federal Germany. Whatever the motives which promp-
ted criticisms from these quarters they were not caused by
disappointment that Ghana had not, through the force of its example,
dethroned white supremacy in Rhodesia and South Africa; nor
were they likely to be due to any overriding regard for human
values, parliamentary democracy or civil liberties in the under-
developed world in general.

It is difficult to escape from the conclusion that so far as those
in power in the Western countries were concerned Dr Nkrumah s
sin was not denial of civil liberty — that he behaved for example as
the British Government was contemporaneously behaving in
Kenya — or that his administration was extravagant or corrupt. If
Western policy had been directed specifically against these two
latter evils its first target would surely have been the oil sheikdoms
of Arabia and the immense wealth amid poverty which exist in
countries like Liberia and Thailand. It was motivated by something
else but what was there about his policy which produced this
response? Ghana’s example during the nine years of Dr Nkrumah’s
rule provoked apparently quite disproportionate world interest,
usually coupled with hostility, which cannot be explained, in the
main, in terms of the humanitarian excuses which were given for it.
Why then was the interest so sustained? What, in the last resort,
did it matter to Britain, the United States or Western Europe what
Ghana did?

There are some obvious partial answers but none of them provide
a completely satisfactory explanation. Africa has been the great area
of nineteenth-century colonization. It was here that for three-
quarters of a century' the white man had carried his burden. If
Africans now were proved able and ready to rule themselves, could
they not have done it before? Might not the moral excuse for
colonialism be exposed as a task of supererogation by Ghana’s very

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 19

existence? American civilization had, in part, been built on slavery.
The wealth of Belgium had been augmented by the horrors of
King Leopold’s exploitation of the Congo and Britain’s prosperity
in the eighteenth century had owed much to the slave trade. If
history could not excuse these past wrongs at least they could be
explained if it were shown that, even in the conditions of the
present, Africans could not rule themselves and the theory of
the inherent superiority of the white races, which had provided
the moral justification for past crimes, had at least some intrinsic
validity even today.

These reasons contributed, no doubt, to the Western disapproval
and publicized fascination that surrounded everything that Ghana
under Dr Nkrumah did, but they do not explain it adequately;
otherwise everything that Africans south of the Sahara did would
have been subject to a similar detailed and disparaging analysis and
it was not. One is driven back on the possibility that what Ghana was
doing during these years, ineffectual and confused as it might appear,
presented nevertheless a challenge to the Western system powerful
enough to compel it to mount a sustained counter-offensive.

Ghanaian policy had many facets. There was the advocacy of
African unity and the campaign against racialism, colonialism and
neo-colonialism. There was the belief in a ‘Third Force’, a grouping
of non-aligned states which would not depend on East or West and
which would yet have a definite and concerted policy of its own.
There was theoretical support for socialism but acceptance in
practice of a mixed economy. There was, at the United Nations and
elsewhere, an assertion of international equality and at home a
Government press which, at times, violently and rudely questioned
Western policy. But in all such things Ghana was by no means alone.
These may have been the outward features of Ghanaian policy, but
in total, it must have amounted to more than this to produce such
sustained hostility.

In the last resort Ghana, I think it can be shown, was attempting
to achieve a means of co-existence between the industrialized
nations and the poorer states who comprise the great bulk of man-
kind. Certainly its policy, including even its inconsistencies, fits
exactly into this pattern. On this small stage an experiment, I
believe, of great interest to the world was attempted and failed.

It was the all-prevailing feeling that this was so which kept me in

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

and other technicians did was essential. If there was to be develop-
ment on a mixed capitalist-socialist basis, not only such laws as those
governing concessions and labour relations, but the whole legal
framework of the state, required rebuilding. If it was impossible, for
example, to reform police and court machinery so as to render
unnecessary such laws as preventive detention, then the blame must
be shared between those from outside who came to help in Ghana
and those who might have come but did not.

In fact, for reasons which it is one of the objects of this book to
examine, the policy of internal and external co-existence tried by
Dr Nkrumah failed and the technical achievements in law and
administration which we accomplished were wasted efforts. Yet so
far as I am concerned one thing at least was saved from the wreck
and with this alone I am content. By working for ten years in the
Ghanaian Government I have established, at least to my own
satisfaction, that cooperation between African and European on a
basis of equality is possible and that, irrespective of colour, what one
has attempted, even if it has not been successful, is understood,
acknowledged and accepted at levels at which one would never
expect.

When I was in prison my wife was under armed guard in our
house. Alone, the telephone disconnected, and cut off from all our
friends she settled down to complete an elaborate patchwork quilt
on which she had been long engaged. An elderly and illiterate
policeman from the Northern Territories was among the sentries.
He told her that he could remember me from the time, sixteen years
before, when I first visited the Gold Coast. I was, he said, ‘a good
man’ and he would like to send me a message but he could not
write. Would my wife allow him to sew one of the six-sided patches
she was joining together? Afterwards if I was released she could
show it to me. Perhaps I would remember him and think of him
sometimes. Since then the quilt has been finished and my wife has
put around his few stitches a ring of ‘french knots’ so that we might
easily pick out that particular patch. If nothing else remains of what
I attempted in Ghana these few stitches in a patchwork quilt are, for
me, a sufficient memorial.

But why was co-existence unsuccessful? It is necessary first to
deal with the obvious paradox. What possible basis can there be for
arguing that if Ghana in fact was attempting a policy designed to

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

bridge the gap between the wealthy nations and the poor ones, this
would have occasioned the hostility of the Western World? A
peaceful and, particularly, a non-communist solution to die prob-
ems of world poverty and under-development has always been
proclaimed to be a matter of urgent Western concern. Mr Harold
Wilson, for example, in his book The War on World Poverty ,
wntten in 1953 , makes the same point as was to be made by Dr
Nkrumah in his Neo-colonialism-The Last Stage of Imperialism
welve years laten Mr Wilson's argument, like thaf of Dr Nkrumah,

dch ind nnT l the t,lat the growing disparity between

taken civl t- 8 m ^ ° n C ° llisi ° n COUrsc and ™lcss actio »
Ihe fin^r T Tu- ? b ° Und t0 be destr °y cd - Mr Wilson, in
Britain and 1 °^ b °° k ’ descnbes how men of good will in

themselves' on th! - 10SC ln tbe Movement, had prided

industrialism and* 6 ' 11 ^ ^' CarS marcb out °f nineteenth-century

■>■= welfare

dedicated rlmm 1 British Labour Movement, he said, had

Jnu“dpirf S v!°, ' S,r ° yine ! hc " Blincss ' squalor, misery,
" ' "‘i "fVictorran capitalism, and he continued:

Itm™r^L b rV' ry a rB ? r cali “ d - N »w rvho honour

half of this war-torn 7 ° 7 ° h '’ nzons: l hcir mission in the second

want not merely to the shn^ , C *° CaiTy tbe ' var on P ovcrt 7' and
of the earth. We shall findTh °t *■ ^ lslands but t0 tbc uttermost ends
as we know it find an! L r '° ° th T *** C3n world civilization
mies we h„e boil, up " on °-

aehat has 1,77777 77177777°"" “ *7' Wils0n h:,d Suggested,

deal with it? If one accents the U J. ears f smce be wrote his book to
°f The Wall Street Journal verv lVt-l^ °!i an ] edltorlal correspondent
■he rath May , 9 6, , he coiresidem",^™ " B ” iK iss “' of

t: S' d n T,t h sa “» “ •»» —

iissss k ”f ~

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 23

widening “between a white, complacent, highly bourgeois, very
wealthy, very small North Atlantic elite and everybody else, and this
is not a very comfortable heritage to leave to one’s children.”

« “Everybody else” includes approximately two-thirds of thepopula-
tionofthe earth, spread through about 100 nations. . . .Many diplo-
mats and economists view the implications as overwhelmingly— and
dangerously — political. Unless the present decline can be reversed,
these analysts fear, the United States and other wealthy industrial
powers of the West face the distinct possibility, in the words of British
economist Barbara Ward, “of a sort of international class war”.’

Dr Nkrumah in his book, having referred to a number of such
analyses as this, went on to quote President Truman’s statement of
1951 which Mr Wilson had placed in the forefront of his:

‘The only kind of war we seek is the good old fight against man’s
ancient enemies . . . poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy.’

on which he commented tartly:

‘Sentiments of a similar nature have been re-echoed by all political
leaders in the developed world but the stark fact remains: whatever
wars may have been won since 1951, none of them is the war against
poverty, disease, hunger and illiteracy. However little other types of
war have been deliberately sought, they are the only ones which have
been waged.’

Dr Nkrumah however argued that this difference between expressed
purpose and the actual result achieved was not the consequence of a
planned deception. ‘Nothing is gained, he said by assuming that
those who express such views are insincere. s ™sis was that the
internal pressure within developed states would always frustrate
such good intentions unless a mechanism for counter-pressure was
devised on an international scale.

‘But,’ he wrote, ‘world pressure is not exercised by appeals, however
eloquent, or by arguments, however convincing - - - It is necessary
to secure a world realignment so that those who are at themonientthe
helpless victims of a system will be able in future to exert a counter-
pressure. Such counter pressures do not lead to war. On the contrary,
it is often their absence which constitutes the threat to peace. . .

To accept that world conflict is inevitable is to reject any belief in

2 4

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

co-existence or in the policy of non-alignment as practised at present
by many of the countries attempting to escape from neo-colonialism.
A tvay out is possible. To start with, for the first time in human history,
the potential material resources of the world are so great that there is
no need for there to be rich and poor. It is only the organization to
deploy these potential resources that is lacking.’

But why was this organization lacking when leading spokesmen

fJr tbe deVC Oped and the under-developed world had for so
long called for its establishment?

hewinl S ,> ^ Ghana s nine tumultuous years is interesting just
n even V ^ ° f the ba ™ a * d antagonisms Shich

fact that i IS n - th i e br ° ad deSlgn that P rovokes hostility. It is the
some vested^ . partlcu a ^ atte ™P t to implement it runs counter to
rule bv an ali 0 ° n . labsm has never consisted merely in
financL m SaTT * br T in itStrain a of commercial,
the ending of iron™ i SOC | a rekl tionships which do not disappear at
to be regarded ^ t and ' aVe obten > from long usage, come

colonial System cammt l ** “S” 1 ° rder ° f th ings Thus the old

The bonds which bindVou by S ° me b ™ ad SWeep ° f policy '
independence are not nf "r/ P °° r colonial territory come to
thousand separate stn d S ° weave - They are composed of a
many,atfirsS t Indeed

state forward rather tharF b lr r lndlvldu:d strings pulling the new
Ghana and the btSe^f 11 bacL Both the hostility to
attempt to build a new ed'fi C * aroused > s P ra ng in part from its
building was not destroyed^ * “■ the C ° lonial fou ndations. The old
remodelled. Often the feam U l m partlcidar a h er particular, it was
those who had hh bked T *7 ^ ° ne most ad ^d by

was an ancient C ,° lonial To them it

not a proprietary interest Intp sdd bad a sen timental, if

necessary but to destroy the BririkT^T^L they acce P ted as

er w ed W3S an °ther matter entirely ^ had S ° laboriousl y
We are all victims of n u

independence came, both Brhabandru 10115 presum Ptions. When
" one - E " h

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 25

they had imagined it. Britain, on its side, presupposed that Ghana
had undertaken to behave like a Commonwealth country in that it
would preserve the outward semblance, at least, of what was always
supposed, in Britain, to be the colonial heritage, the rule of law, a
two-party system and the like. Ghana, on the other hand, regarded
itself as the inheritor of the methods of government in practice used
in the past by the British colonial administration and it considered
it was now fully authorized to employ them for its own national
purposes. The two beliefs were incompatible.

However, mistaken presumptions went deeper than this. Only
nine years prior to Ghana’s independence, Ernest Bevin, then
Foreign Secretary, had spoken of the mutual benefits which might
be derived from trade between African colonies and the industrial
nations. He was discussing ‘the organization in respect of a Western
union’ and he emphasized that he was not only concerned with
Europe ‘as a geographical conception’ :

‘Europe,’ he told the House of Commons, ‘has extended its influence
throughout the world, and we have to look further afield. In the first
place, we turn our eyes to Africa, where great responsibilities are
shared by us with South Africa, France, Belgium and Portugal . . .
The organization of Western Europe must be economically supported.
That involves the closest possible collaboration with the Common-
wealth and with overseas territories, not only British but French,
Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese. These overseas territories are largely
primary producers . . . They have raw materials, food and resources
which can be turned to very great common advantage . . .If Western
Europe is to achieve its balance of payments and to get a world equili-
brium it is essential that those resources should be developed and made
available, and the exchange between them carried out in a correct and
proper manner. There is no conflict between the social and economic
development of those overseas territories to the advantage of their
people, and their development as a source of supplies for Western
Europe. . . .’

It would be wrong to assume that Ernest Bevin’s plan, outmoded
as it might appear today, was a plea to return to imperial theories of
the pre-war years or that the Labour Party as a whole did not accept
his views. It was something to which I myself subscribed. Almost
a year before Ernest Bevin made this declaration, some fifteen

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Lab ° M t mbers of Parliament, of whom I was one, wrote a
pamphlet, Keep Left, with the idea of putting new policy proposals
before the 1947 Margate Conference of the Labour Party. By 1964
one 0 its authors was dead and four, including myself, were no
longer m Parliament but of the remaining ten, six (R. H. S. Cross-
™, n ’ Fr f Lee, George Wigg, J. P. W. Mallalieu, Harold Davies
ndbtephen Swingler) were appointed Ministers. From the start of
a r four, Michael Foot, Ian Mikardo, Leslie

w r .°° r f ow ^y att were to represent, though in different

I eft trr 6 V ° 1Ce ° P ro . test ' Parliamentary survivors of the Keep
trend^rifP ™ by ^ deadly representative of the main

SL r” ? Party and ° nr -947 pamphlet fore-
he •B irr" 1 ' ' 7 S fU '“ e Lab °” P° lic y* Meed, in many ways
““ - t0 "*■* Harold Wilson and man, others of

the descendant b „ otb Ideologically and organizationally

matttrot,, nolt ' " P a UfP gr ° U P' Yct African colonial
Ernest Bcvi/ In n ^ ^ that tlme surprisingly close to that of
heading^ ^ ^

SHc C an n Sloi C r Perati0n France ’ ° n the development of our

decrca T ° 7** f ° r African freedom and to

erease European dependence on America.’

lon^it t „ t rk : h ;' Ve . TO '.' Af tiean freedom’ seemed to all of us a
heading -The Importa„L^r A frirf°t lid:' Pan ’ Ph ''' " n<ler

concentrate our wnpovver and'r« ld lhC M ' d f 6 Elst b y force, we can
which should be ou^main ml • ? UrCeS ° n the Afncan development
years . . . The deTebn' “ lo f nial . rcs P™sibility in the next twenty
Africa for the growan/of " ’ S ° f a ,ar S e area in East

never again be short of fats^Toa rh ^ - h u 0Uld enSUre that We sha11
bear the responsibility for rh P Sher " ,th France and Belgium, we
should make even- effort to major part ofthe African continent. We
similar schemes. As well nc _°~°f erate closely with them in many
World for foodstuff and raw de P enden ce on the New

mic ^ for African sclMemrS’ ** P r0vide ** econo-
““ » »y that .he

uropcan Socialism depends on the

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 2 7

success of our combined colonial policies in the African Continent.
Up till now American, British and European democracy have been
tacitly based on racial discrimination, and the reactionary ideas of
White ascendancy. We have talked vaguely about the brotherhood ot
man and equality of races, but we have done little to put them into

practice’.

The good intentions were there. What was lacking was an exact
appraisal of the underlying facts. Those of us whose experiences are
largely confined to Britain, Western Europe or the United States ar
perhaps inclined to take for granted the way in which today the
relations between employee and employer and between consumer
and producer are regulated by law and custom and not to realize, to
the full, the extent to which the internal stability of the develope
world depends upon these comparatively modern developments an
the degree to which a comparable regulation is lacking in th
relations between the rich and the poor nations.

One hundred years ago Britain seemed, in Disraehs phrase to
have become ‘Two Nations’— the one which he called The Privi-
leged’ and the other ‘The People’. Their differences, it then seemed
would have to be solved by civil war. That class antagonism with
Britain did not develop to the point of revolution was not only t
politicians, such as Joseph Chamberlain, realize t at P^P
must ransom the evil it has done’ but that there existed the electoral
machinery which insured that radical property owners, suci

Chamberlain, achieved office. , T

From Britain from the franchise reform of 1867 ^nd m the Umt

States from almost the same date after the ivi a idc'for a

conscious effort to reconcile the ‘two Nations ’ and to provi dc f or a
system of internal co-existence. This change of relationship was no
achieved without hesitation and struggle. During the ast hun r d
years many Western countries have experienced ac te class confiict^

Revolutionary working class part.es have emerge
1 ' (~iniralists who have refused to contemplate

been many powerful ® ^vcrthelcss, as the policy of the

paymg any ransom whaLsoc :«r. : N Brf y Trade Union Congress

Ca^cnativeCm^^^^^^^ ^ ^ ugA ^

in the inter-war stars ami tna • Machinery

the dominant tendency was to negotia c n f (1 - sccin" that wealth
was built up throughout the twentieth century fo. seen, that wealth

28 REAP the whirlwind

in fact paid its ransom. The workers’ bargaining power was deli-
erately strengthened by laws which encouraged trade unions. The
State stepped in to regulate conditions and hours of work. The
system of unemployment insurance in Britain and elsewhere was in
itse a tate guarantee of a minimum wage. By delicate manipu-
ations o e law a balance was struck between consumer and
pro ucer. onopolistic exploitation was prevented yet retail price
maintenance m an open or concealed form protected the middle
man an t e s op keeper. Because the farmers’ vote in an industrial
country cou on occasion be politically decisive his products were
C ’ C T- V £ m , e ? ntl as * n tbe case °f sugar beet, subsidizing

of the les°s P devel C oped’ “world! C ° mpete SUgar CaM

tlieorv ■° P .^ le second world war it had become accepted in

develoned C0 ^ n P5 0m * se S ^ 0U W be negotiated between the

Western world 6 ^ ° pm “ W0ldd and that it was the duty of the
It found exnrpQ 0 ' ^ a ransom . por the evil done by past exploitation,
‘aid’ What wa , e umvers al acceptance of the principle of

/i Th.re^ r 6 ' WaS P ° Iitilal ™ chi "“r » it a

agreements aimed V 1 1S trU - 6 ’ 3 Pew unsa tisfactory international
HtadHSL, S ; PPOrt “; B the P races °f some primary pro-
which has to 'sell to rb ^ ut ’ ri raa ' n a developing country

uieguted balTnW l0P 'd S° rld is as «”“* at •!>= nteroy of
beginning of the nineteemh cenm®™’ 11 agnCul<ural ' ,orler at ,hc

as a qu esti o n' (if hack fd \'^ £ . e ^. pai ?P hlet we saw the problem solely

tvhite’aseS^bw' taST„r,h nd ,ie itos " f

One of Dr Nkrumah’s main ^ tbe s y m Ptom for the disease,
postulate the problem in “ ntr ^ U , tlons t0 world thinking was to

christened it, of ‘neo-colonialism’ a Co! n ter - m -’ 3S ksUe ’ as he

potential exploitation but tdi P -° ° Ur 1S lm P or tant as a badge of
miracle the pigmenTatS s ci f W ° uld Sti11 exist if b y

to one uniform hue. The exchan^f ^ changed overnight
Africa cannot be carried out ‘in a^orr^Y 3 between Eur0 P e and
Ernest Bevin’s phrase nor K P ect and proper manner’, to use

most Europeans white but bTcYseYY A f icans are b!ack and
nationally the regulating mart,' there does not exist inter-

veloped states. Yet at first siehTY Y‘ Ch exists within the de-
hrst sight it would appear that just such a

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

machine existed in embryo. The development of trade unions and
other methods of wage support, the guaranteed prices for farmers in
developed countries and the maintenance of retail margins for the
benefit of shop keepers are all of them a by-product of democracy.
The existence of popularly elected Legislatures in the Western world
has meant that no political party can maintain itself in power unless
it operates a governmental machine that provides for social justice,
at least of a sort. After the war it appeared for a time that the
United Nations might, on an international scale, perform the role
which popularly elected governments provided on the national plane.

As a Parliament, the United Nations, in a way, superficially
resembles the British House of Commons before the great Reform
Bill of 1832. Iceland with a population of 197,000 and India with a
population of over 498 millions each have the same vote. There
exist a number of what might be called 'rotten Boroughs’, scats
which are controlled in practice by the Western powers, a fact which
was frankly acknowledged by the awarding ‘pocket boroughs’
Belorussia and the Ukraine, to the USSR as a counter-balance!
The procedure used and the arguments advanced for excludin'' the
rightful representative of China and for seating in his p I aC e the
nominee of the defeated Chiang Kai-shek Government arc identical
with those used in the eighteenth century English House of Com-
mons to exclude John Wilkes and to seat in his place the defeated
candidate who supported the Government of the day. The United
Nations’ delegates are chosen, as were the members of the old
unreformed British Parliament, in a number of ways ;
which preclude the populat.on whom they nornin a ll v ’ rC n r '
having any voice in their selection. The delegate who Ls the pS
nominee of an absolute monarch notoriously unrcp rc%n
people or who is sent there by some quite irres ponsib *
clique precariously in power after having overthrown a p
chosen Government, is as much a member of, he Gece„,
as the delegate appointed by the democratic ? j m; J^-mbl,
country universally agreed to be represents „ r

opinion. . n

Nevertheless, history’ shows that even a Parliament &

such an illogical basis as that of Britain pnor t >1832 t , „ f

i ’ ind in act the General Avv~<,? unle

to the pressure of opinion an« , f .

t • • 1 x- • v Kv no m-*ans an exact copy of th» - Jt me

Lmted Nations is by no rnrans , ■

3° reap the whirlwind

British Parliament. While some states may be over-represented and
some under-represented, the total vote of the poor nations of the
world is generally proportionate to the sum of their populations and
a vote supported by two-thirds majority in the Assembly is likely to
be supported in practice, by Governments of countries whose
combined population represents two-thirds of such of the world
population as is represented at the United Nations. (In such calcu-
ations it is necessary to exclude China, as being, in fact as it is,
unrepresented.) The argument by the great powers that because the
system of representation in the General Assembly is illogical, they
n .^ e no attention to its decisions, is as false as the assumption
t at mg George III was entitled to rule as an absolute monarch
ecause certain of his subjects were under-represented and certain
others over-represented in his Parliament.

In the same way as the unrepresentative character of the unre-
orme ng is Parliament was in large part the result of manipu-
ations thought by the Tudor monarchs of the day to be to their
S0 r the , “ m p osi tion of the United Nations General
, fn ed ^ ^ ^ eat P°wers, presumably with a similar
small mrin eir f 0 ] ' vn mt fj CSts > l° n g before the great majority of the
ereat nmvm ° / e ' VOr t J were admitted to membership. It ivas the
the form of a P ^ ^ tlei,v ' ar designed the General Assembly in
the Tu/o Parliament of the world. Yet drey lacked the wisdom

setting un an !!!° narC f S °^^ n giand. Having correctly decided upon
them when the ° ''T r °P‘ n ‘ on which ivas capable of warning

diem. Havinn- ,1 ’• te . r .> Unore any tvarnmgs it might give

might be to provide ' ^ lnstltutI0n > rudimentary and defective as it
type of 'discipline affairs for the beginning of that

pUdVdSld* th “ inSt-tions had

avoid internal conflirt cou ” tnes an d which had enabled them to
own action Yet thev hiH ^ S ^ ran ^ ; ^ rom t h e consequences of their
In the same wav £ L 7 "*** Ut0 P ian ™rld authority,
to their Council all real , 0r monarchs reserved to themselves and
Assembly of the United NT,p C1S10ns u P on P olic y, so the General
authority lav with the five '° nS " aS °' Ven no execut ive power. All
the Securin' Council Neve^ t I e “ en . ts ’ P er manent members of

in "hich a'compromi hr ^l 1 "^ 111 ^' 0 there listed a body
compromise benveen the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ could

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

3 1

have been worked out and which could have devised a scheme for
the mutually profitable development of the world as a whole.

The less developed states which, like Ghana, supported the
United Nations, did not do so because of any legal powers residing
in the General Assembly. They well knew these, in practice, to be
non-existent. What they did believe was that the United Nations
was a pressure organization deliberately created by the great powers
as a safety valve and which, therefore, if intelligently used, could
influence the course of world events. It was, once again, this attempt
by Ghana to use an essentially Western institution, in an essentially
Western way, in order to redress the balance in the world, which
resulted in so much criticism of its activities. To the. industrialized
nations the United Nations was a front, a facade behind which real
business might be transacted. To countries like Ghana it was a
piece of democratic machinery which they were entitled to exploit
for the purposes for which they believed it had been created. To
them the General Assembly was a world representative organization
despite all its limitations and lack of power. In the same way as
Tudor monarchs allowed themselves to be guided by the consensus
of opinion in their Parliament, when they were under no legal
obligation to do so, so the newly independent states imagined that
the developed powers would never have created an organization m
which their voices were to be heard unless they intended to pay
some attention to what they said. It was a fatal misunderstanding.

British public opinion believed that Ghana should follow a
parliamentary system at home of the type that cxistc in the United
Kingdom and were shocked when it appeared not to do so. The
same public opinion, however, did not demand that Britain should
internationally pursue a policy ot parliamentary democracy, even in
its Tudor form so far as the United Nations were concerned and

were hostile: and con.cn.pn.ous of Britain

for not so doin'-. The Western world were not ev cn prepared to
permit am- political dialogue on a basts of equal, ty bettveen i,s c lf and
rtte dev" opine wo, Id. Ncmcolomahsm was pro„ 0IInKd

ca'hedn not to exist and social™ was ruled out as a remedy even
cjnicur.1, noi uih . ■ socialist journals.

by \\ cstern socialists w n'= Minister of Britain , , ,

Sir Alec Douglas Home, then n "ton, addressed

the Parliament of Nigeria on «.« -Oih . l..rc i tr/,. 2nd t0 ,j ft?
Members:

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Neo-colonialism had no place in Britain’s political dictionary.’ It was
a slander which should be allowed to evaporate ‘like the hot air which
it is . The first need was capital and the second ‘the confidence which
will attract it and allow it to fructify’.

Creating confidence’ was equated by even sympathetic Western
observers as disowning any socialist pretentions. Mr Dennis
ustin, or example, pointed out that socialism was a luxury which
the less developed world could not afford. Writing in the English
a ,i an . oclet y Journal Venture devoted, according to its title page,
o Socialism and the Developing World ’ he thus put Dr Nkrumah’s
policy as he saw it:

Tu 1 and Welfare Services runnin S at levels far ahead of the
tent f ti° 1 C cconon b' ■ The remedy is to increase the socialist con-
art' ° C C< ? on ° n p r ’ and t0 wam those that criticize that they may be
be r of I' k ° f , neo - col ^alists. No wonder that a growing num-
nonsense '° r SemntS t0 WOrk overseas than endure this

be obtained^hv 6 ' th at increased welfare services could

incrteXtr- , mStalImg a g 0 vernment whose policy was ‘to
which the Britishnen ^ eC( ? nom y’ had been the policy for

before Mr Austin w °P ^ T otec ^ in March 1966, three months
apparently never struck S artlC f ' Pact that this contradiction
home as Mr Austin • even . suc h a keen supporter of socialism at

obsen-ers^ubcoSu v "= mt£reSU f S eXample of how Western
with the less developed world mC 2 d ° UbIC standard when dealing

cteiliXSntSr Ld dieted and

before Sir Alec Douglas H ° n K ^ nter national Law fifty years
In x 9 3 3 a tding ** PaA "'

International law examine! ^ St ’ Lawrence, m his Principles of
thus: CXam ‘ ncd P revi ous accounts of it and explained it

plcasaStTord^. t0 . di ^ uise unpalatable facts in

arrangements that would h-i 1152 U - ^ ^ °^ tCn I s 10 sec ure assent to
'heir naked harshness dkn, ^ TCSentmcnt if set forth in

instruments for use whe^ 3 ^ an &“ a S c °f many international

use when prectston of statement is above all things

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

desirable. In order to group together under an appropriate heading the
part-sovereign states, we want a phrase that expresses dependence . , ,
Might we not give the name of client states to all those international
persons who are obliged to surrender habitually the conduct of their
external affairs in any degree, great or small, to some state authority
external to themselves. A client state implies a patron; and a palr'/n
state is, of course, the state who acts on behalf of the client state in a
manner defined either by long continued custom or by the terms of
some formal agreement or both. . . . Such terms as suzerainty and
protectorate have been so carefully avoided in all official documents
that the use of them might be regarded as indiscreet. But there can f;e
no reasonable objection to a description of Cuba as a client state/

That the country singled out. over forty years ago by Lawrence as
the best example of neo-colonialism in the New World should today
be the centre of revolutionary activity in the American continent
may perhaps be a matter that those who practise neo-colonialism in
Africa should take into account.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that neo-colonialism had thus been
described in the past. Dr Nkrumah was considered to have offended
against all international proprieties by writing a book on its darters
His offence was, first, that he had coined a new phrase
Colonialism’ to describe the relation between the ‘patron’ irA
‘client’ state and secondly that he had sought to examine ;V; ; r;
cation afresh and to expand its horizons. Such a task was v.-JJ

T-Tr~id of State bv the cstahni,.

irmai protest on the puDiirauon m tn c f.SA

C.M™, Tk LM Suff tfrynJhmU h W.-& ...

passages avhich caused the most oflcncc uerc su Bk o -
passages ctin noscdlv educational and -e.i. ."

nection between sup|** ^ thtf rr,™l

onranizations working »n ,,, , , . - •

slices. A vear af.tr Dr Nkrumah s la hr ,\m net,

• *. • j . t, tlic onraniz.iuons concern*

not only admiuct • j mc l!it:cncc Agency but -C ? '
supported by the ^ ‘ a£ '. cd with the full y// ™

supporting them, tn<- U- e , u , nd thc 3r .d

approval of the St.a c ‘ ^ , Knipcror’s d-c.' ' ' Dr

Nkrumah’ s sin was not no.cnv 1 - --a.

34 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

It is at least a mark of progress in the study of these matters that
m t e supplement to the Sunday Times of the 5th March 1967 Mr
ruce age in a special feature on Dr Nkrumah, entitled Messiah
ant ug was, whatever else unflattering he had to say, prepared to
admit that Dr Nkrumah was right and Sir Alec Douglas Home
wrong about neo-colonialism :

‘Neo-colonialism of course,’ he wrote/. . . certainly exists. It dates
™ C iscmery, made just after the war by the Western powers,
rl ■ Cre 7 aS . a muc h better way of making money out of Africa than
the v° ° nie ^ an< 3 dependencies there. This was to pull out and put
actuillv ma - n ‘V a , r ® C ' ^ ou ' vcre t ' lcn absolved from the cost of
what J“ S 1 1C P aCC> administrators, policemen, troops and

free to e\ commcrc ‘ a * enterprises were in fact rather more

tree to exploit the locals than before.

and asThrn^kfV 011 bept a ** tflc lucra dve business in your hands,
naive and in ' ^ ^ ovcrnmcnts were likely to be a good deal more

ceTed £m ? enenCCd than thG ' Vhitc civil scr vams° who had pre-

-tt:^ss^ siness **

more of a threauTAr htly ’ * bat tIl ' s Phenomenon was even
preceded it It could eTl” , natl0nallsm tha n the colonialism which had

of their exploitable asseK ^ndh J "T ^ nationS bcil * stri PP cd

tion, to show for it ’ ’ C " 111 no mvestment, no industrializa-

Lefi proposals, horden" beTif BeV f 1 f s thesis or on our °wn Keep
account the existing neo ml . C< f s ? ful > would have had to take into
then understood its essem ‘ COl ° nial u SItuation and neither he nor we
could be made to reflect a Fiir Mt £r ’ - a ^ 0p assumcd that Africa
poise to the power of the T unit y which would be a counter-

understanding, that as eady Soviet Union, **
Tsarist Russia, had been mrt' ^ ^ nited States, as indeed
partitioned Africa so that h * 5 ® Act of Berli n which had
disunity of Europe. The 1 re ^ ect ’ not the unity, but the

arranged, was not primarily tn a 6 P ur P° r s f °f the partition, then
uropean power dominating rt^\ e ° P APldca hut to prevent any one

TheconfirminaofP ^ g .. H COntlnent ‘
of this neutralization policy which*^ claims was typical

warded immense areas of Africa

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE

to a state with no pretence of possessing the necessary resources to
develop it. It was the same principle which led the great powers to
insist that Belgium, whose neutrality they had all guaranteed, should
control the heartland of Africa, the Congo. Indeed to increase
further this neutralization and sterilization of its possible potential,
the Congo was not even awarded to Belgium as such but personally
to its King. The settlement of 1885 was modified even before the
first world war by Turkey’s final exclusion from Africa in favour of
Italy. As a result of the subsequent world war Germany was
deprived of its African colonies and as a consequence of the second
world war Italy, who in any case had come late to the feast, lost hers.
Nevertheless the principle enunciated at the Berlin Conference of
sixty years before, namely that European stability depended upon
African disunity was reaffirmed in the Peace Treaties after the first
world war and was still intact in 1945. One of Dr Nkrumah’s
principal crimes was to be that he challenged this conception.
Further, by the time that Ernest Bevin spoke and we wrote our
pamphlet Keep Left, a new factor, ‘the cold war’ had come more and
more to dominate world thinking on African problems and the
possible re-partition of the African continent had acquired a new
dimension.

In 1966 Fritz Schatten, the head of the Foreign Department of the
West German Broadcasting system and a man who, according to his
publishers, ‘has a wide reputation in Germany and Switzerland for
his many studies of African problems in books and in the press’
wrote a general study of the Continent entitled Communism in Africa
to which I shall refer from time to time, as it is a convenient encyclo-
pedia of Western misconceptions about events, not only in Ghana
but throughout Africa. Yet even he had no doubt upon the basic
importance in African affairs of ‘the East-West conflict’:

‘. . . We have arrived at a point which is of fundamental importance ’
he wrote after summing up the evidence he was adducing. *. . "piie
independence of the African peoples is not the result of an examination
of conscience in die West, it is not the result of a voluntary act of re-
pentance and a determination to follow the straight and narrow path
in the future— let there be no illusions about that. It is ma inly the
“East-West” conflict that has forced the West to repair some of its
errors and cure some of its own moral sores.’

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Yet even so the West failed to learn from its own history. As with
the United Nations so with the granting of independence to African
States; the developed world shrank from the consequences of its
own act. Having correctly, in its own interests, allowed former
Colonies to be self-governing it almost immediately repented and
stepped in to prevent them governing themselves.

Yet a solution to the African question entirely in accordance with
the expressed aspirations of the developed world not only lay to hand
but had been projected and piloted in the past experience of the
industrial world when it was itself emerging from its undeveloped
state. If East and West had worked together, Africa was above all
the continent where they could have begun an experiment in
co-existence and co-operation. Why these apparently natural
consequences failed to follow upon the emergence of an independent
frica, the story of Ghana under Dr Nkrumah and its economic,
political and ideological relations with the rest of the world, in part,
at least, explains.

tt, 1 T°? d he presumptuous of me to suggest that this book gives
e w 0 e o the answer. It is not written with any such ambitious
p an in mind, even if I had the basic material upon which to work

^l are tW ° reaSOns wh y 1 lack this. In the first place, on the
-4 1 e ruary 1966 when the victorious mutineers fought
the D ° Wnin S Street of Ghana, Flagstaff House, all
“ ° :edl In my l office everything was destroyed, even the desks

™ apar u '? le CarpetS and curtains cut into ribbons, filing
v t0 f d the documc nts torn to fragments,
troved Fve ° ' :ve f yt ln S else of value were either stolen or des-
Ser alW^ 6 “ C0nd ! tl0ners were riddled with bullets. I was
for the la t nine 111(166(1 6Ver t0 a ee the house where

Zrs a cXinJ^- 1 had i iVed ' 1 h3d made 0V6r course of
and destroyed Thu documents hut these were all scattered

prevSt US6d mat6rial which has not
ofhwafLmvflfr ’ t ***** 15 0nly becaus6 ’ by ‘hance, a copy
claim that the^niiHM^™ 3nd S ° Survived > but 1 can in no way
way representative. ^ n ° W ln my P osse ssion are in any

AfriSfeandZv <a " P0SS t SS that knowledge of

be based. 1

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 37

January 1950 but I was still a British Member of Parliament until
May 1955 and I only visited the Colony from time to time on legal
matters. I did not settle there until February 1956. I served in the
colonial Gold Coast Government during the last months of its
existence as Constitutional Adviser to the Prime Minister and I
continued in this capacity after independence until September 1957,
when I became Attorney General, a post I was to hold for four
years. From October 1961 until the coup d'etat of the 24th
February 1966 I was one of the officials attached to the President’s
office. Throughout I was a civil servant. It may well be that in
Britain civil servants really run the Government and that if any
senior British civil servant so far forgot himself as to write a frank
and candid account of events as he saw them, this might prove a
more exact chronicle than any politician’s memoirs. It was not so in
Ghana. The civil servant was confined within narrow limits. The
country was run by Dr Nkrumah, his Cabinet and the various Party
and quasi Party organizations which shared in the government.

Part of the mythology which was built up around Dr Nkrumah’s
Ghana was that there was some sinister and secret influence
exercised by individuals who came from abroad and, so far as
Britain was concerned, I was cast for this role. To give one example.
In August i960 I visited London. This was marked by a centre page
feature article in the Daily Express by Douglas Clark entitled ‘MR
MEDDLESOME, Q.C.’ — ‘SEE HIM FLITTING FURTIVELY IN WHEN TROUBLE
IS IN THE AIR’ —

‘From time to time,’ wrote Mr Clark, ‘emerging from Africa like a
genie from a botde, there flits into Britain a most mysterious figure.
You catch only fleeting glimpses of him — this plump, toothy man with
the almond-shaped eyes and the strange, sudden smile. His plane
touches down at London Airport. Then with a whoosh he is away by
fast car to a third-floor flat above a chemist’s shop in Great Portland-
street. For the next day or two the road outside is all bustle. Black
limousines roll up. Black dignitaries roll out and hurry upstairs for
enigmatic conferences. Then abruptly it is all over. A puff of smoke, a
whiff of sulphur, and— presto !— Mr Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing,
Attorney-General of Ghana, has vanished back to Accra. . . .

Where might such an extraordinary career not end? Who could
predict a limit to the powerful influence that Mr Bing is gathering to

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

himself in the seething politics of Africa ? At this moment he is thick
in the Congo business. Deep in Ghana’s manoeuvres with Guinea.
Establishing personal relations with Lumumba. It may even be that
Mr. Bing, lying like a rhinoceros under the surface of the Zambesi,
may eventually prove a more formidable figure in Africa than any of
the coloured leaders who now capture the headlines. . . .’

In fact, so far as I can reconstruct the purpose of this particular
visit, it was primarily to discuss with Mr L. C. B. Gower then Sir
Ernest Cassell Professor of Commercial Law in London University,
the coordination of the work he was doing for the Ghana Govcrn-
°. n ° m P an y Law reform with that of a Ghanaian Commission
which had been appointed to draft a new law of Insolvency. I appear
also to have had discussions with Sir Eric Tansley, then Managing
of *> Cocoa Marketing Comply, and have

matte C mCeClnB - at ' High Commission about some legal

matters in connection with gold mining.

affairs 1S w^ g r fiCa i d0n T' d j stortio1 ? °. f the part I played in African
from othe argC y - COn f ned t0 Britain. Commentators on Ghana
in tiei rlnccr ^ f ° r this rolc individuals better known

painstakimr^Ynl Ve L F ° r exam Plc, in Dr Schatten’s

influences in ° ' V lat Le believed to be pernicious outside

American Prnfe ^ 1S not mcnt ioned. It is true, die

Fall of Kwame Nl' Bretton > in hi s book The Rise and

ran of Kwame Nkrmnah included me in his list of ‘kev advisers’

Nkrumah’s Wonafm d T- eX ’ Plai " inB ' vhat he conceivcd was Dr
d’etat. Indeed he described ^ ^ eX1 f cd .°. n the ev . e of the C0U P
tutoring noliticallv i'np ■ me j as a socla hst Robinson Crusoe

social revolutionary worid^polfti^^Hm “ ^ hi S h strate gies of
expatriate advisers whom ij lists ^ ** 0t Jf r tW ° key

this tutoring, were the West r ’ d , who P res umably aided in
Noe Dreviti, and Genem/ % ^ na " ‘* oc °late manufacturer, Dr
eightieth year, the Chairman nf Spe . ars ’ by cb ‘s time in his

Conservative Member of Pari' 16 i ^ sbant i ^°i d Fields, a former
of Directors. f Parhamen t and the founder of the Institute

Professor Bretton thwUdy Jackson^h^-^'f?^!) 11 appeared t0
a senior British Treasury' official seconded!^ Ghana^was’a figure°as

AFRICAN PROSPECTIVE 39

sinister as myself. Lady Jackson, better known under her maiden
name of Miss Barbara Ward, was a former Governor of the BBC
and is a noted Roman Catholic economist with a reputation in
academic circles in the United States. It was her views which were
quoted in the Wall Street Journal article to which I have previously
referred. It was she rather than me who, according to Professor
Bretton, ‘in particular assisted Nkrumah in his effort to cover up the
intellectual nakedness of his rule’. Nevertheless to him, it was not
even Lady Jackson, General Spears, Dr Drevici or myself who were
most influential. The dangerous figures were primarily, according
to him, ‘Negroes ... or as Nkrumah preferred to call them Afro
Americans . . . not a few of whom were self exiled from the United
States.’

In fact Dr Nkrumah had no colour or nationalist prejudices and a
number of people with special expertise but who were not Ghanaian
were either employed whole time or consulted on particular prob-
lems about which they were familiar. None of us could know by
reason of our work everything that was taking place and there was a
natural reluctance on the part of Ghanaians generally to seek advice
from Europeans on purely African issues.

For these two reasons I believe the best contribution I can make
to the history of Ghana is to write a largely personal account of the
sixteen years, from 195° during which I was associated with

the country. I can at least thus provide a source book which subse-
quent students may find of value but I do not offer it as any final
answer to the many questions which I hope it will raise.

CHAPTER TWO

GOING TO GHANA

A coincidence of coincidences first took me to Ghana. The chain
of chance was begun in May 1945 when I was in a military hospital
at \\ roxeter awaiting some plastic surgery for wounds to my face.

te war-time Coalition Go\ eminent came to an end and a General
Election was announced. Leave, even from hospital, was to be had
or the asking by soldiers who could show that thev were being
considered as Parliamentary candidates. A description of mv pre-
war activities had been on a general list circulated bv the Labour
arty anc t ie Pembroke County’s Labour General Management
Committee had, on the basis of this information, and, without ever
laung seen me, put my name on a short list to appear before their
selection conference in some three or four weeks’ time.

wwJtT a ia< ? an CX - CUSC t0 CSC3pc from hospital, go back home,
frlnl 1 r d , n ? t - bccn "! nCc lllc Normandy landing and look up old
Pembrnl LXP aini 'i 1K " ltl C tendcnti °^ly I '\as not certain when
mc 80 d0Wn - 1 8 0t a l "° and, in

bombed n7 ’ f ° r L °" dun th °ugh '»>’ ^ had b en

nZe 0 nw n,Tr Std Umnhabilabl< -‘- My family was’ in Ireland and

0 nSe d nCndS , S T Cd t0 bt ar0Und ‘ So in thc c,ld > fwr "ant

in m nfe r f°’ 1 . wcnt t0 the ^an Society offices. Even
StS3 vS,r- n r rC ° btainable to and it was an

1 soughuhese rn!!? ^ u Sa ’ Vation toy Hostels where normally
John °Parkcr whn ° rtS ’ i, dcrc ’ ^ last, I did run into one old friend,
outing Member P ? Cncral r Scwc ^ of the Society and the
distinguished bv ho' ^ ia f cnt f or Romford. His constituency was
FoSSn/eW S a - th3t UmC b >’ far tbc largest in England.
Dagenham John P-it-Ly'' r " aS ,r° bc Spbt j nt0 three. For one part,
constituency Romford*^ h-iTV "T Standln S' T he heart of thc old

GOING TO GHANA

told me, to choose a local Councillor or, at any rate, someone from
the area but if I was willing to let my name go forward it would at
least oblige his Party by providing them with the prescribed range

of choice. . .

Here at least, I thought, is the formal excuse for getting my leave
from hospital prolonged. However slight the chance of being chosen,
the experience of going to selection would at least be of value before
I went down to Pembroke. So, thinking nothing would come of it 1
agreed, subject to the Hornchurch conference being held before the
other. Meanwhile out of curiosity I went to see a journalist friend at
the offices of the old News Chronicle to find out about Hornchurch
where I had never been and knew nothing of. The same was true 0 j
Pembroke but at least one could buy a guide to that county while all
that I could learn about Hornchurch from the books of reference
was that there was an Urban Council, a telephone exchange (manua )

and a station on the District Line. ,

These were the days when Commonwealth and other Independent
Candidates had been winning most of the by-elections and there-
fore it did not seem strange that my News Chronicle friend advised
me that the man most likely to win in Hornchurch was an Inde-
pendent already in the field, a certain Charles Avon Deller. He was
campaigning with the slogan ‘Elect a local man who has served
throughout the war in the ranks’. Having been what was known as
P.A.F.— Prematurely Anti Fascist— I had in fact fought for a good
part of it in the Royal Signals as a signalman and then as an instru-
ment mechanic but my disability had eventually disappeared and I
had been commissioned and become a parachutist. This and the fact
that I had never been in Hornchurch let alone lived there seemed
to me fatal to my chances against Deller I was therefore delighted to
find, when having surprisingly been selected as the candidate, that
the local Party were not greatly perturbed by his riva ry-
With Deller there were four candidates in the running.
Nomination D ky we all turned up with our supporters and foo

deposits, redrew favour of a

Mil Wet Van der Elst, a worthy lady who devoted a considerable
is vioiet fip-htins elections in order to protest agamst the

Pft ofl her weal hh to fight :mg e ^ Ae qualities which he

GOING TO GHANA

future by resuming my practice at the Bar. ‘Returning to regimental
duties, eh,’ said Lord Attlee when I told him. Mine had not been a
key position in his Administration and it was the first time we had
spoken. There were many things I thought then a backbench
Member of Parliament ought to do and I had a number of interests
— opposing preventive detention and other infringements of civil
liberty in Northern Ireland where I had been born and lived
opposing monopolies— the Brewers and their tied public houses
seemed a good target-even foreign affairs in general but Colonial
matters I believed should be left to the experts. I may ave istene
to the debates on them but from Hansard I see I never jome in
them. My regimental duties were to extend to questioning many
aspects of Government policy but until I came to visit e o
Coast they never went so far as to criticize Labour s ommonwea t

methods. , r .

Meanwhile Charles Deller had settled down as the editor of the
local Hornchurch newspaper. I saw him occasionally and then
learnt quite casually that he had abandone is jo o join ®
Colonial Information Services. He left the constituency and I
thought, passed out of my life. The fact that he had been posted
the Gold Coast meant nothing to me. Except for a Tossing
in England ten years before, what little I ' ew a ° u . ,

from George Wigg who had been to West Africa and was ed

in promoting Adult Education there. He more than anyone,
realized the impact returning soldiers would be hkely tc -have on
African traditional societies. It was at a party S lve J
Extra-Mural Studies who had gone out there thanks to Wig£s
initiative, that I came to recall my previous slight contact with the

Colony. Fverutive of the National Council for Civil

3S approached by , Mr George E.
Mo»“ nd a Mr Samoel R. Wood mo

Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society w ho wished to arouse
British public

laws under which Dr Azikiwe t mnpm TtiA* t- -

Nigeria, and and forcedl^^vTSeliilo^

“xh^-Three years ago. rvhen

Society sent these delegates to London, their or 3 m ation had come

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

to be regarded as far too radical to be given, any longer, official
countenance. Despite the fact that their constitution, adopted in
r 897 , stated that one of their objects was ‘to inculcate upon the
members the importance of continued loyalty to the British Crown
and to educate them to a proper and correct understanding of the
relations which had existed for about four hundred years between
Britain and the Gold Coast’, they were no longer in favour. The
Colonial Secretary, it was true, had felt obliged to receive a Gold
oast Deputation on the matters in which they were interested but
this was restricted to the then African Establishment. This respect-
able delegation included Sir Edward Asafu-Adjaye, as he aftenvards
became, who was to be the first Ghanaian High Commissioner in
London and among the other members were Sir Arku Korsah, the
Chief Justice at Independence, Dr J. B. Danquah and Dr F. V.
an 'a ruce of Accra, reputed to be the best dressed man in the
o ony. mmaculate as ever’ one Gold Coast newspaper famous for
Jr ° UCU ' Vr ° te ° f ' b ‘ m at tbc Governor’s garden party,

and as aiways. wuh a krg 6 ^ in his bottomhole.’

Mnnrf* h a 0n ® ln *: s ^S bts Protection Society delegates, George
rf 1?? fr0m ? P' Coast Which tad been the British
still ' in an 1 Untl , somc S ' X V y ears before and which was

SamnllVclj o ,?' 1 ' 1 , *** lhc Africa » intellectual centre.

since before the Bet “a” Hecr' f b 'T Gol<l ^ P 0 '™?

town whirb wLn t ’ . e came ^ rom Axim, a western coastal
of those ahost riti "fH° Vlslt . lt: Lventy years later, resembled one

vLtVietotantaMn ?!? ‘V* Un!tcd S,a,es '"hose ™" s of

mines Axim bail ^ S n s 7? ld H uarl i over the abandoned silver
c”S Fm a shm, ’ h ‘T r t0 lhe “ <l™i American

town of the Gold Coast The°A W ° rld War k was the boom

the newly opened aold fi U Ankobra nver °n which it stood led to
and Axim atffie Z ofS ^ C ° nCeSsi ° ns of the interior
of self-made African hue' Cn Ufy seemed B^ely, with its new class
society, to become an im m , S S mEI ?. ! vbo owed httle to traditional

of a new port further to theS at S 1 C “ tre , Withthe buildi "&
interior traffic ceased i-e n , at d aborac ^ and a railway into the

■93! the t have been "’ 0 t »» d "en by

Cape Coast, a backwater m decillc an d have become, like

Mr Moore and Mr Wood retained their pride. They represented

GOING TO GHANA

in excess of what were thought necessary to qualify as an intel-
lectual’ in the Labour Party or indeed among British Members of
Parliament as a whole; but, though he was devoting himself almost
whole-time to African politics, he was not satisfied as yet that he had
sufficient academic background. He had started to read for the ar,
since apparently to enter Gold Coast politics it was almost obligatory
to be a barrister; but he had abandoned it having come to the
conclusion that Gold Coast problems could never be settled within
the narrow ambit of its existing colonial frontiers. What was needed
he believed was one united or federated state covering the whole of
West Africa and run on a socialist basis He had now wntte
pamphlet which was about to be published on colonialism He
promised to send me a copy but never did. It was a casua ^ e ^
and it was not until he reminded me of the conversation some years
later that I realized my fellow guest had been Kwame N kum .

Since, except for this meeting, I had had noWest African contacts
I was surprised to receive, just before the House rose for the 1949
Christmas recess a long letter from a Gold Coast lawyer, a 1 lr
Albert Heward-Mills He enclosed a record of a murder trial and
“ f I wouffibe prepared to come to Accra to conduct the
aDDeaWsainst^'the conviction. I had been most strongly recom-

mended by a Mr Charles Delta who had gone so far as to say m h.s
men. Dy , , f f • nf1 vT rs Van der Elst, that I was the only
opinion and that ofhls frl ' nd i reversal of the verdict. We are all
lawyer alive who could secure ar , , desnite the

susceptible to flattery and I determined to do the case despite the
suscep m w n i a.t ; iic seemed to me to have rather pointedly

fact that Mr Heward-Mills seem - c nni L;i: t :

failed to endorse my old election opponents views ot my capabilities.
At the time there seemed no internal or external political objection
At the tim British Parliament was in recess

to taking the case. Tte Vnus ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

over Christmas an fixed f or t h e 16th so I would have

January and the . London before Parliament

plenty of time to do x and be^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

resumed. Every 1 » i c( j„ c 0 f its affairs was confined to the odd

Coast though mj ^ h British press and in the House of

mentions that they recerveu m

Commons. f c mmons had been impressed by its

Many of us in the House Bums> when hc addressed the

S«U°h Smcmao- . 946 . He

4 8 RLAI* hil whirlwind

had told us about this ‘model Colony’ and its new ‘Burns’ Consti-
tution. The people are really happy,’ he had said, ‘and reallv
satisfied with the new Constitution they base gained.’ No doubt 1
-was surprised when the Colons fifteen months later dissolved into
riots and a Commission of Enquiry under Mr Aiken Watson, K.C.,
ported that the ‘Burns’ Constitution had been extremely unpopu-

i tla . t p ”? lcaU y c 'crj thing was wrong with the Colony’s
dm n,s ration, However it appeared that this had now been put

relo m C , COm ^r n ° f J: m l uir >' l,ad Inad c \->nous proposals for
hiuhlv 1 “ Afr ,‘ Can p^rmittcc-xshich seemed to me then a
annliLtion K T| Sn ,t l ? ea ~ had bccn appointed to work out their
acclaimed liv tl^ 13 now n j adearc port which had been universally
had 2 tl ^ Stlldil;d Africa " Gonial affairs in Britain. I
Committee Ren >' 3t 1 m , Uc!l prj ' scd document— the Cousscv
was on the n,!inr r" JS T - Hc COn,rJr - v J kintJ of ««mc bomb which

r^udona^douSon'iSrSZl,” Jb " m “ pn, '“ Lc a

affairs wasTm W yf r Parl «n«ntuy recollection of Gold Coast
our Keep Left croon I * t^™' 1 Issue " llcn Sir Winston Churchill and

Sir 0(25 AuaYTbn 31 \TTi “ P tt * cthw - ^ Chief, Nana

Rights Protection Sock-tv ^ lcarncd of froni l, te Aborigines
■Sinj-ono » 'MS- W. •> ot

then and i, stiU !" ‘ l ? G ° W . C ° M

monies continued intern,;,, .i , ana lot *a\, his funeral cerc-
these, in in,, a . u i . ■ <f c " } on H aktcr his burial and during
who had come to pav his t \ C . ICVcd t0 .* lave bL>cn onc °f his sons,

investigations followed and tS rclaf d “PP“ rcd - Policc
some of his other sons were rc,aUvcs of the old chief, including
chief’s murder. The motive arrcitcd and charged with the sub-
tly 1 the killing had been don^r" 0 '^ C „ ar buc t,lc allegation was
knight would have a sooir ,° r mUa P ur P°ses so tliat the old
whither he had gone. accompany him to the regions

death. In Brifain Tt kaTt in Novcmbcr *944 sentenced to

their guilt and the case wic fr scemcd considerable doubts as to
July 1946 the Privy Council hJwr C ° , mnlamcra blc appeals, but by
Sir Alan Burns came to address the ^. lsscd the l ast of these. When
Association some Member? ui, Commonw ealth Parliamentary
mbers, led by Leslie Hale and Sidney Silver-

GOING TO GHANA

man, expressed to him their concern about the case and later - some
eighty-five Members of the Commons petitione e
Secretary for a reprieve for the condemned men. In the mterv ^ 0
of the eight had died and two had been reprieved but manyMe
bers were disturbed to learn that the execution of the other five ha

been fixed for the 4th March 1947. „ 1 +n nut

On the day before the proposed hangings Leslie Hal « ^ ied
a Private Notice Question to the Colonial Secretary, - i

Jones, as to whether the Prerogative of Mercy might not be : exerc d
directly by the Colonial Secretary. His question was ruled out of
order and he raised this ruling as a point of order m the House

“S sudden storms

sweep without warning through Parliament.

appeared to admit the men had been ^mem

execution before being, on each ocas , ' 1 ^ ^ passioI1 and

and then Churchill intervened with a _ld war made

humanity which had, in the

him so effective as a reforming Honi ^ of the House,

Colonial Secretary shouted T ° a b skin g him once again to

agreed to telegraph to Sir Alan B ^ the question was

postpone the execution. Two days d : fferent . Arthur Creech
again raised the atmosphere was v , demonstrations of

Jones, in a lengthy statement .referred to pop^ ^ sentences ,.
public indignation at the dcla} ^ ^oth on the Executive

According to him there was s g Gover ° nor > s view ’ he said ‘the
and Legislative Councils . in Colony has already been

administration of British Ff 10 ? • was conveyed that the

discredited.’ All the same the ^ case had at least been

executions would not take P £ . wee h s later the executions

debated in Parliament. Never ^ ^ condemned men were hanged
were authorized and three o ec h ntrs reac hed the Governor,

before notice of further C J^ n Respited and finally reprieved. The
The two survivors were a ‘’^ jsc Commons in a written answer
news was conveyed to the ^ t j ucc wce ks before so momentous a
and a matter, which had see .. j t0 disappear without any subse-
question of principle, w as a

quent discussion. profound was the effect of the case in the

Later I was to learn how proi

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

5 °

Gold Coast. Even ten years later when I became Attorney-General
I had still to deal with its reverberations and it determined, to an
extent very difficult to estimate, relations between those of the
African establishment who had supported the Governor and those
who had stood by the accused members of Ofori Atta’s family. Dr
Nkrumah in Ghana, an autobiography which he wrote in 1956,
roundly asserted that Dr J. B. Danquah ‘withdrew his support from
the Burns Constitution’ on account of the case and in point of time
the United Gold Coast Convention, the original organization
formed to oppose Colonial rule, was first planned in April 1947, the
month following the executions, with Dr J. B. Danquah as one of its
leading forces and having on its executive two other relatives of Nana
Sir Ofori Atta I.

However when I was preparing to leave for the first time for
West Africa, all this background seemed of little significance. Sir
Alan Burns’ Constitution everyone now agreed must be scrapped.
Sir Alan himself had retired shortly after the controversy over the
executions. Sir Gerald Creasy, appointed in his stead, had occupied
the Governorship for two uneasy years during the riots and the
subsequent inquiries, had then, for reasons of health, relinquished
is post and gone off to govern in the more salubrious climate of

r-u 1 ' xt S 3 Pkce n0W re ‘S ned ^ old West African hand, Sir
lar es Noble Arden-Clarke, who had served a long apprenticeship
in lgeria. There seemed no possible political reason why I should
not spend a week in West Africa conducting an appeal before the
\\ est African Court of Appeal at its session in Accra.

mirl/ rra r? ed i, t0 Ai eaVe ° n Wednesda y the nth January at
r( . n C ay ;, ° n th ^ Monday before I was to go, the London papers

mSrnS t“ , * ^ had begUn m the Gold Coast. ° n the

dissolveH t !^ ey announced that Parliament was to be

StS L'S"™ 1 ElMi »" on. The old York
African eerT ' ln d KjSe days maintained its West

seventeen hoT’ T* S ,° W by modern standards. It was not until
Northern Nia ^ a ter eavin S London that we reached Kano in
had been nrnrl ^ ^ • "if 6 We were tcdd that a State of Emergency
m ? e G v° ld C0aSL Tt was m > r experience of
one’s self to the 'if t0 - 1VE between Britain and Africa and adjust

A A c 1 51115 P0kical situations ^ both.

Accra airport to meet me were Charles Deller and his new

GOING TO GHANA

employer, a Mr Fuad Taymani, a Syrian trader and, so I under-
stood from Deller, a student of law, and indeed the nearest thing
in West Africa to Mrs Van der Elst. Taymani was a close friend of
my client Neif Halaby, now awaiting the result of his appeal in
Ussher Fort Prison and, by an odd coincidence, imprisoned in the
same cell in which sixteen years later I was myself to be held. There
was no sign of the lawyer, Albert Heward-Mills, who had instructed
me. This Mr Taymani dismissed as of no importance and he
plunged into Middle Eastern politics. He and Neif Halaby, he
explained, were Druses, an exclusive Mohammedan sect whose
membership is restricted to a group of mountain dwellers in the
Lebanon. They had strong family feelings. This made the case very
difficult. Neif had been convicted, after all, of murdering his
brother. In these circumstances, I argued, the sooner I saw my
instructing lawyer the better and anyway what about the State of
Emergency. Neither were important, replied Mr Taymani, it was
better that we talked first. As Deller had told me, he himself had
studied law. This was certainly true for in the Accra Law Library,
long after the Halaby case was over, there was exhibited a list of
ancient and exotic law books which he was prepared to dispose of at
a reasonable price. However, said Mr Taymani, this was not a
matter of law, I must understand first the Druse position. As to the
Emergency — that was nothing. He himself, like all his compatriots,
had enrolled as Special Constables. This force alone could deal with
the agitators. The Syrians understood the Africans. It would be
necessary for me to get a special pass to go out after Curfew time
but Colonel Cawston could arrange that.

I imagined Colonel Cawston to be the military officer in charge of
Accra for the emergency but they said, no — he was just a very nice
man. I would like him and we would find him at the hotel and he
would explain who he was and what he did.

I had been told that there were only two hotels in Accra, one at
the Airport, a former United States Air Force mess, now Portuguese-
run and renamed 'The Lisbon’ and the other, ‘The Seaview’, Greek-
run and in the old part of Accra. It was to the Seaview that Deller
and Taymani took me. Popularly it was believed originally to have
been a slave market. What living quarters existed were on its first
and only storey. Six or seven bedrooms opened on to a passageway
which served as a hotel lounge. They had doors like those of a stable

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

loose box in which the top half could open independently of the
bottom. This was necessary if one was to get any draught at all but it
was disconcerting in that it enabled passers-by to look in to see if
whoever was in bed was anyone they knew. Later I was to come to
enjoy its atmosphere and,' until I took a little house of my own, I
always stayed there after this first visit; but now the hotel was full.
There was no sign of Colonel Cawston. No room had been booked
for me. It was better so, said Mr Taymani. I could stay at a new
establishment, just opened, the Avenida. At present it was the
unofficial headquarters of the Syrians serving in the Special Con-
stabulary. I would be among friends. Meanwhile we must find the
Colonel.

Our search for him gave me my first view of the Gold Coast
capital. Cape Coast, the home of the Aborigines Rights Protection
Society had been the original seat of Government. But its Castle,
taken over from the Dutch in 1667 and rebuilt in eighteenth-
century classical style, was tenanted by too many ghosts to make it
the appropriate seat for the new style Colonial administration. In
t e inscription on its walls, even in the graves in its courtyard, it
reflected that Indian summer of British rule in Africa when, the
slave trade abolished, a real mingling of the races on a basis of
equality seemed for a moment possible. Here in its great central
square was the grave of Philip Quaque, the first African to be
ordained into the Anglican Church. By his side lay Governor
MacLean, the just Briton of Gold Coast tradition who had ruled a
“ rC , y f rs a S 0- There are still today in Ghana goldsmiths who
V ' 1 V 1 a e a s ^ x ~h°°t chain of intricate linkage, a copy of the

necklace which Governor MacLean designed and presented to the

Cane rnfl'f 0 ’ U1 l egend ’ had been his faithful companion. In the
brieflv nm °) Vn n at ^ ew around tb ‘ s castle, prematurely and
dismitv of Af' ° a m ! xed cu lture which understood the

accented the 1Can • ltl0na ^ hfe and where missionary compassion
3 lotlv P t U i 10ns 0fas0cicty in which the white man was
English namec° r ?° k , “ African Their children, with their
the first to question | d a , catI0n and their indigenous ancestry, were
which thevhad he ’ Euro P^ an terms, the justice of the world into

ttszsssrt ? pe Coast was n ° piace f ° r the capitai
Sr and in 1877 ^ - ° f

GOING TO GHANA

Accra was, when the change was made, then inhabited almost
exclusively by Gas, a people who did not belong to the main ethnic
grouping of Southern Ghana, the Akans. They were a race of sea-
faring traders who had migrated to the area in the seventeenth
century. Their language had no affinity to Akan and their social
organization was in every way different, but they too had had a
similar mixed Colonial past. Originally Accra had been divided into

three European enclaves, British, Dutch and Danish. Jamestown

where the Seaview Hotel was — had been the British quarter. It was
called after James Fort, now a prison, and in which, a few (Jay, 3 f t , r
my arrival, Dr Nkrumah was to be lodged. James Fort was
named because it had been one of the headquarters of the ‘Comnan"
of Royal Adventurers of England Trading to Africa’ of which Jam'-"
Duke of York, afterwards King James II, was a distinguished
shareholder. About a quarter of a mile down the High Street aJon"
which we drove in search of Colonel Cawston, was Ussh^r Frit
where my client Halaby was being held and in which I was to b <•
imprisoned in my turn. It had been, until a century before* \hr-
Dutch headquarters and their slave trading depot. Somr* A <--1 °

on, following the line of the High Street was Christiansbor" of t
now the Governor’s residence but again until a centurv a" ** if’
territory of another European power and the Danish seat rfC°’ / °
ment. In the High Street between Christiansborg and Ur-rh^
was still another historic building of perhaps equal si^nif ^
the old Basel Mission— now a general warehouse far
Trading Company of Switzerland. In the nineteenth r r t
Gold Coast had been the nearest thing to a Colony Vihfah ^
land ever possessed and even at this time the Swiss comn '' /Itzer “
to the British and the Syrians, the largest foreign ,L P .’ n( f 1
population. ^ JC1 ” CTt ” th =

The Basel Mission which had established itself } n .u, n . , _
and on the Indian Calabar Coast m the 1840’s. old

ana on me lnuiuii ^ was a cr-J f

pietist and protestant organization. From the profa''r^ PP ° r ? ni
ventures it had financed its religious and educ^C,/ ^trading
certainly contributed as much, if not more, to pr ° )e . CtS ' u
Colony in the second half of the nineteenth century i n . **

colonial administration. At an early stage it ^ ,d the J nt S
cocoa. It established botanical gardens, enc 0 U r a .i C J In ? en 1 ted *f d
made attempts to develop local industry. Wfc

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

taught and preached in African languages and recruited Africans to
its Ministry. Its scholars translated the Bible from Hebrew and
Greek direct into Ga and Fanti. But the first World War had des-
troyed its religious influence and it was only the stronger fabric of
its commercial structure which, submerged for a time, reappeared
as an important institution in the Gold Coast in the inter-war years.

In 1918 the whole of the Swiss missionary' corps were rounded
up as German spies and interned. Their religious organization was
entrusted to the Church of Scotland under the mistaken belief that
the faith they taught was Calvinistic. Their commercial property
was confiscated and handed over to a hastily formed British trading
company, ‘The Commonwealth Trust’. It was a curious mixture
between a public and a private company. Its board of directors was
appointed by the Secretary' of State for the Colonies who naturally
chose retired Colonial officials. When later I w T as to become Attorney
General and investigate it, I found one of them was over eighty'
years of age and most of them over seventy'. Though it was the duty
of the Commonwealth Trust to provide, as did the Basel Mission,
for education out of its earnings, for some reason this new Company
scarcely made any profit. Still worse, the Swiss Government had
made a claim against the British Government for the illegal confis-
cation of the Mission’s religious and secular property'. After
considerable haggling Britain agreed to make a large dow’n pay'ment
m compensation and to return to the Mission its confiscated trading
pr< ‘. m ‘ scs : Gold Goast Government was told to find the money

nm tlC Ge = ls ^ adve Council of 1926 was ordered by the Colonial
ce to \ote the necessary funds. The incident w'as interesting as
C ‘? s ijr OCCasion when nominated European members voted
tL 1 1C " , rlcan | no . m ‘ Ilecs against the Colonial administration. As
ere was then a built-in majority of officials on the Council this was

recrvnn'rh c" . ln 3 j ie end dle Gcdd Coast tax payers had not only to

commn K ^ Government for property' handed over to a British

susffin?! • ab °- t0 COmpensate that company for the loss it

Swk Th!" rrT S thC bmldin S s now be handed back to the

of an English t A' ° n ' " 2S made l ° pa ^’ *° r ^ P ro P e rty and capital

income m S. rT S . con “ m had returned up till then no

excluded The ' T' ^ :rom "hose management it was totally

the directors C fce.f“ eCt “TT 1 » Britain was small—

dtreclors fees were only ftoo a yea, but the damage to British

GOING TO GHANA

prestige was immense. The one positive achievement of my period
as Attorney-General to be universally applauded was my arranging
of the handing back of the Commonwealth Trust to the Ghana
Government.

Between the old Basel Mission buildings and the Danish castle of
Christiansborg stood the European Club. Tradition held that it had
originally been the railway station for Balmoral and when it was
decided to erect a more fitting royal train stop Queen Victoria had
ordered that the original wooden building should be sent as a gift to
the Gold Coast. However this might be, it was certain that the core
of the club premises were of timber already fashioned before
importation and that it resembled an out-of-date railway station.
Here it was that, at last, we found Colonel Cawston. His history I
never fully discovered. All I could establish was that in the past he
had had something to do with War Graves but by the time I came
to meet him this was in the background and he had adapted himself
effectively to the Colony of his adoption, though surprisingly he had
become a Moslem, since this faith only comprised some ten per cent
of the Gold Coast population. At the moment he was practising as a
solicitor in Kumasi, the second largest town of the Gold Coast and
the capital of the Ashanti Region.

It was in Kumasi that the murder in which I was concerned had
taken place and Colonel Cawston, who had originally been instructed
with Albert Heward-Mills to conduct the defence had, early in the
proceedings, realized that what his client needed was not a lawyer
but a ballistics expert. Having some army experience with firearms
he threw away his brief and appeared as an expert witness for the
defence We had just settled down for a drink— generally speaking,
Colonel Cawston explained, Moslems in the Gold Coast did not
consider they were bound to refuse alcohol when the steward, an
African, whispered something to him and a little embarrassed he
suggested we should return to the Seaview, as, he muttered to me,
the Club’s rules about Europeans were strict A Turk, yes, they
qualified by reason of the area around Istanbul but a Syrian or a
Cypriot, no, they were Asiatics. We must either ask Mr Taymani,
the special constable, to go or else leave in a body m dignified
protest. As an anti-colonialist himself this was the only choice. He

would lead the way. .

This extraordinary club continued in existence even after Inde-

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

pendence. That it did so was the measure of the lack of political
appreciation by a large section of the European community as to
what was happening around them. Certainly the higher British civil
servants ceased to belong to it but it was still patronized by junior
officers and by business and professional men. A resolution,
proposed just before independence, to admit Africans was con-
temptuously rejected by the membership and considerable public
comment naturally was aroused. At the time I was Constitutional
Adviser to Dr Nkrumah and, in a joking way, he requested me,
through the Civil Service machine, to advise him. I suggested that in
existing circumstances there was no reason why the Government
should continue to let to the Club their premises for the nominal
rent of one shilling a year and if the members wished to continue

practising apartheid they should at least do so in a building for
which they paid the economic rent. He minuted back that this was
no doubt right in law but if the Government was to set an example
of tolerance in Africa it must avoid conflicts which raised racial
issues. To put up the rent at this moment would suggest that no
sooner did Ghana become independent than it victimized its
uropean inhabitants. In the end the Club voted to admit Africans,
, u fj,. once been refused, no one would join. Eventually its
ui dings were acquired for the Government and used as an experi-
mental theatre. Its Committee, protesting, did not take up the offer
ot other land on which to rebuild. Apartheid in Ghana ended not
with a bang but a whimper.

This however did not help us at the time and we had to go back
pi 6 1 r V1CW 1 WC wanted multi-racial drinking. Here expanding,
Mr Alh a !V St0n j SS A U , r< ;, d me t ^ lat ^ I had any difficulty in getting
was uffim Heward - Mll ls to instruct me he would. However, that
momenJ T A f ® Urgent thmg was t0 S et a curfew pass. At the
He had W d ’ h /7 aS n ° £ S ° popular with ^e civil authorities,
m ssion whthh 0 H d “ ‘ nf ° rmal meetin S the Watson Com-
W caui wpt !TH lnt ° the ri ° tS 0f I( H8 and their under-
that even some T! v 1 , , £ ° tcd ^em, Colonel Cawston explained,

In the end T tlSh P ° llCe ° fficers were corrupt,
were printed nie^e ^ P3SS w \ t h° ut Colonel Cawston’s help. They

of geometrical teigns'The'BririshTffiM 0 " the ”' ° nl> ’ a “ rieS
f»nd, y and f.^mmg. He ei'pllLS 3

GOING TO GHANA

many of the police were illiterate so it was no use having anything
written. Each day, he said, one changed one’s pass for one with a
different design which the police and the army previously had been
taught to memorize. I may have seemed apprehensive, for e
reassured me. The strike, he said, was being run by Nkrumah and a
few fellow extremists. They would soon have them in jail an t en
everything would return to normal. The next time I was to meet
him was six years later. I had just been appointed Constitutiona
Adviser and he was the Principal Secretary in Dr Nkruma s o ce.

It was approaching curfew time before I got sett e into e
Avenida and I was becoming desperate. The hearing e ore e
West African Court of Appeal was due in three days time and since
the Gold Coast Criminal Code and criminal procedure generally
was somewhat different from that of England I sti a to oo u
local cases and discuss with someone who had appeare e ° re
Court how the judges liked argument to be presen e . n
latter point I got little help from my companions. ey
sympathy for Mrs Van der Elst’s point of view, sai •

never get them to realize about the Druse, sai ay •
thing considered, said Colonel Cawston, per aps 1
stucLo ballistic;, he and

not always seen eye to eye. Taymam ha § , t fTC .

they all had to go off but if I was insistent about it why didn 1 1 go
and see Albert Heward-Mills myself. He only lived round the

corner and I had a curfew pass ^ it became

I set out to find his house not reali & t f lip-htw in

dark in the tropics. In those days ther % Wa , S p ^ at the roldsidf lit
Accra but as soon as dusk fell the petty traders at the roadside lit
Accra out as soon as r ^ streets had a f airy i and

htt e lamps to illuminate tot “ nQw and then ^ s j

ook with every colour ^ c ., e _b rea king bus, manned by police and
searched for the house a s * Then, out of the darkness

covered m wire netting, V f S lm ;‘ roar f rom a hidden crowd. I
behmd the lights wou c ^ ^ ^ eighteenth-century quarter of
ound the house a as . ^ wa u. The loud-pealing Victorian

ccra and surroun L, ered by w hat seemed to be the concerted
bell which I rang wa when I pushed open the door and

neighing of innumerable horses. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ size

pon^ThteT^vards discovered, were Gold Coast race

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

horses. The noise they made brought someone down who told me
that Albert Heward-Mills was not available as he had ‘travelled’ in
connection with not the Emergency nor my case but his racing
interests.

The next day everything was different. Albert Heward-Mills
turned up at the Avenida and we got down to preparing the case.
As it was explained to me later, people in the Gold Coast and indeed
in other parts of Africa, had very good manners. It would not have
been kind for my friends of the night before to tell me after I had
come all the way from Europe, that the lawyer I was to meet had
gone off on some business of his own. Albert Heward-Mills I
subsequently got to know well, came to like and respect and did a
number of cases for him. At the time he was, I suspect, justifiably
annoyed that I should have been brought from London to do this
Appeal. In time of call he was senior to me at the English Bar and
was, in addition, one of the foremost criminal lawyers of West

nca. He pointed out, what I had begun to suspect from reading
t re papers of the case, namely that far from a legal genius being
required, it would need a very bad lawyer indeed to lose the Appeal.
It was clear the only reason I was there was the influence of Charles
Defler with Fuad Taymani. I owed my brief to the mystic of Mrs
an der List and the vague hope that a lawyer from Britain might
appreciate the importance of the Druse.

The legal matter upon which I now found myself engaged had

rVvIc't-H NJ t0 d °L V , lth Afr , icans or with the political crisis in the Gold

to see lllustrated perfectly, if I had then had the wit

surmise’™ 6 f f S ° f law enforcement which later were so to
surprise me when I became Attorney General.

DeculiarTnd 11 ' 11 i n ^* rCU ™ 5 3tances arose in the first place out of the
St If f, del f P0S1 , tl0n 0f the S0 - calIed Syrians. This was a
Unlike the FreneWL P p VT British colonial authorities,
immiln^f rW m West AfH ea restricted European

class from Britain^ T * 6 ^ renc ^ cad ‘l es petits blancs’. The social
were the wealthv Tli ° , en . coura ° ed t0 sett l e in the Colonies
living and at one ti ^g t th °^ ght r in terms ofIar S e farms and gracious
Coast to this sort of e - 1 ^ W£re attem P ts t0 open up the Gold

might have made it poSbleTd' h™ 6 ° f l897, whkh f

1935 Samuel WnnH ' . brought my old acquaintance of

ood, into politics and had resulted in the formation

GOING TO GHANA

of the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society which, at
its inception, was an organization embracing both chiefs and African
intellectuals. The strength of the forces at that time at its command
impressed even Joseph Chamberlain. He received a deputation of
its members in London and ordered the then Governor, Sir William
Maxwell, to withdraw the proposed land legislation. The success of
this combination of chief and intellectual gave the Aborigines Rights
Protection Society for a time the status of ‘The Parliament of the
Africans’. Successive British Colonial Secretaries were compelled
to refuse permission to the Colonial authorities to undertake
legislation which they wanted but which threatened the economic
and socio-religious basis of the existing African society v> hich it v> as
the object of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society to perpetuate.
Thus the monied British colonist was kept out.

But the African system, which was powerful enough to exclude
him, was not capable, from its very T nature, of proriding its own
capitalist class in his place. The majority of the people m the
Colony belonged to a matrilinian type of society and were influenced
by the form of morality which goes with this type of social organi-
zation. A man’s first duty was to his family-in the matnlinian case
to the descendants of the woman who had founde it. - j one ui s
large group who was impoverished or in need of help, education or
training could look for support from the better-off members of this
enlarged family. In terms of Christian standards there was, perhaps,
more to be said for this arrangement than the rival monogamous
patrilinian system favoured by the missionaries, but there was no
doubt the African wav of life gave little incentive to private capital

TohnMemal, Sarbah, one of the foonderc of the Aborigines
Rights Protection Society, in an mtrodticnon he n-rote to an

nhi'h h ii“thfta“nar°et of this center,', the chiefs of the coastal
area and die Abilin intellectuals were united in attemptmg to

Gold Coast Law, described the society

preserve and develop.

■The African social system,’ he wrote in .907, 'is communistic and
has been built up gradually. As a race should grow its own laws jus
as been bu P - ovvn skeleton, so as to meet its own special

as an animal must gro customary law grown. The conflict

requirements, so has nau

6° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

between African Communism and European individualism confronts
the legislative reformer in British West African Colonies, who, when he
essays to destroy, should either provide an adequate substitute, or give
the people affected by his new enactments facilities to invent their own
restraints suitable to their changed condition. It is doubtful whether
the official mind has yet grasped thoroughly the fact that the under-
lying principle of the aboriginal social system is the sense of duty to be
performed, respect to be paid to the aged, and obedience to the man in
authority, whether head of family, headman of a town, or chief of a
tri e. To encourage the individual to compete with his neighbour in
t e performance of work, and to continue to take interest in the pro-
gress o is community is wise; but to insist on individualism to the
extent o encouraging selfishness, and destroying what is undoubtedly
k?? an eneficial in the native’s institutions, is hardly commend-
a e. n t e African social system the formation of a pauper class is
un -non n, nor is there antagonism of class against class. Indeed, recog-
n! I'' y pro ™ tlon t0 oP ‘ ce and public position in the community is
: j- • a , SU CI , Cnt , 1 j 1Cent ive t0 effort and perseverance. Dealingwith
native’s* rh Sm ’ S . ° U - n0t ^ t0 cieve '°P all the various sides of the
nroner nsefh 0ttler Wor< *? aiming at levelling up; divert to

definitely fr a ? d enthusiasm shown in company fights; and

Itmed w X , X ab " isi “ 1 «“■*■»*>" is hopelessly
therefore shot 1 ^a" mextnca % permeated with corruption, and

SX “e b Xr^ And “ thiS ““ Sh “ U

Romans no less • ■ t0n 3t 3 certam period seemed to the

Atticus recomm^TT-" 1181115 ’ ^ f3Ct < “’ cero > writing to his friend
ea^CareTsn “T “f * Pr ° CUre his sIaves Britain “be-

they are unfit to form a part of AetoulehoWof ArtcusV ^

a “ Uld w *thstand the pressures of

European ,2. tmZ ? ,he intrusi »" "f large-scale
intellectuals fought tn nr rear ^y ar( ^ act ion which the chiefs and
Coast society and added^n^ 6 • * 3 ?^ ted tlle structure of Gold

Neif Halaby and his friend’ ‘ FuTd T^' ^ SyrianS ’ ° f wh ° m
typical, filled the gaD in i mm •, ^aymam were m many ways
social system largely excluded* 1 ^' 6 S °? ety Prom which the African
: ™" d . th « native-born Gold Coaster and
n ls n capitalist was debarred by his

GOING TO GHANA

inability to acquire farming land. In the same way as the Jews in
Europe in the Middle Ages provided a small expert class of traders,
bankers and moneylenders for which the social system of the time
provided no native substitute, so the Syrians of West Africa
performed an essential service and were, like the Jews, a convenient
scapegoat on which to blame the social evils of a later day.

These ‘Syrians’ were in fact not from Syria but from the Lebanon
and many of them were Christians of the earliest of faiths, that of
the Maronite Church. It is possible in Accra on Sunday still to find
a crowded congregation listening to the Syriac liturgy Christian
worship in the shape it took and the language it used when it was
first formalized. Hard-working, self-made and with intense family
feeling, a community to themselves, disliked by Africans, patronized,
tolerated and humiliated in turn by the British, these Syrians formed
a neutral middle class to whom the Colonial authorities could not
look for any real support and yet who had no contact with African
intellectuals. The fact that the petty bourgeoisie was isolated in this
way in British territories, when in French Colonial territories it was
closely allied with the Imperial power, explains, in part, why the
British were forced to yield in their West African territories first and
why the French attempted to resist to the last. In so far as British
‘petits blancs’ existed, they were represented by the Colonel
Cawstons and the Dellers and were treated subconsciously as
though they were part of the Syrian community. Nobody s kith and
kin, they were, in their way, as anti-Colonial as the Africans around
them. The stability of the colonial system depended not on an
Afro-European middle class, as in the French colonies, but on a
system of Indirect Rule through the chiefs, now divorced from their
one-time professional allies. Intellectuals like Albert Heward-Mills
were outside the system, as indeed were almost all the old Ga
aristocracy in the capital.

The Mills, in its two branches, the Rewards and the Huttons, had
in the past played a great part in colonial politics. By leaving Cape
Coast the Colonial authorities did not escape from the African
intellectual and old Thomas Hutton-Mills had been among the
founders of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society. In Temple
House, the mansion he built for his family behind the Seaview
Hotel, constructed like a ship with a kind of promenade deck
surrounding the inner rooms, were hung the portraits of his

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

ancestors, the Mills, the Bruces and the Bannermans, all of African
matrilineal descent but with, as so often happened in the coastal
areas of the Gold Coast, the English names of their paternal
ancestors. Such aristocratic African families had in the nineteenth
century largely run Accra and its professional class was at least as
eveloped as that of Cape Coast. The relegation in the twentieth
century of Africans to the junior ranks of industry and Government
service was a result, not of the lack of ability or the availability of
trained men in any of the coastal towns but of a deliberate Colonial
ce policy which began unofficially in the last quarter of the
nineteent 1 century and which, at the opening of the twentieth, was
elevated mto an official doctrine by Joseph Chamberlain. In Temple
nouse, among the portraits, was a painting of Lieutenant-Governor
mnnerman, the African appointed to take over Accra after the
Danish withdrawal in 1850.

nrS e , X1Ste " c f e . for ove f a century of these great families who had
time^nm ail f , riCan ?l ass in the past explained why at this
one Lwv C r 1 SU 11 1 considered they had the right to govern. As

it ‘Trne l T 1 Cape S° ast ’ Franci . s Awooner-Williams, was to put
nation mn” 5 ° Cra f^’ ab: f r true religion, is the greatest blessing a
explained < en l° y ’ ut those of the old school of politics’, he
princ^ ° f CdUCati0n and ^nce, and ^reliant

princes working in the mterests of the country.’

patible U A m ™ le and democracy were not really com-

Party which Dr NfP ° a ”f- ocrats joined the Convention People’s
visit. Others inrl bad founded some six months before my

with the United C* i!Tr rai ^ ls Awooner-Williams himself, stayed
Party had split B ° d Coast . Convent ion from which Dr Nkrumah’s
outSSif ma l° nt}T ’ Kke Albert Heward-Mills, opted

trated on social pursuits & Ind^? f™™ their P rofessions > concen T
probably a larver inm ’ ^ dee d) from racing Heward-Mills had
dieted, it VS ^alw tha \ fr ° m tbe Bar and > ^ the two con-

National Liberation Wbch WOn his allegiance. When the

that its members had 1966 tbere was a )oke

of the Accra Turf ClnK r. , eacb ot her m the Stewards Enclosure
was certainly from thic '■ 1 * S l ™ e Reward-Mills was dead but it
Nknirmh

While the bulk of this arism ° f ItS non ~Pohtical ideology.

anst °cratic class was, at the time of my first

GOING TO GHANA

visit, inactive politically its object remained to put back the old
ruling families into the position they had occupied in Government
before they had been dispossessed by Joseph Chamberlain and his
Colonial Office successors. As Francis Awooner-Williams was to
put it in 1952:

‘Apart from one or two members of the Convention Peoples Party,
their leaders and supporters are the flotsam and jetsam and the pop-
pinjays of the country, men who had suddenly loomed large into men
of substance ... It is therefore the bounden duty of every well-
informed citizen to unite to save the social and political order. . . .’

The ruination of the country had come about, he said, through
‘the unfortunate adoption ... of universal manhood suffrage at the
threshold of Parliamentary self government in the country’. These
intellectuals wanted a Legislative Assembly of the British type but
the House of Commons before 1867 was their model.

For me the Halaby case was perhaps the best introduction I could
have had to problems of justice in the Gold Coast. British legal
thinking applied to criticism of what is happening somewhere else
in the world is almost entirely procedural. The criterion may be,
does the accused get a fair trial, but by a fair trial what is meant is,
were the same formalities gone through as in Britain? Perhaps the
absence of a jury may be excused but the Judge must at least be
irremovable irrespective of how he conducts any case which comes
before him.' What is asked is, were the English rules of evidence
observed? Was the accused cautioned? Was he allowed a lawyer ?
Did this lawyer have access to all available information possessed by
the police? No one in Britain would start from the other end and
say, ‘ “So and So” is in prison. Is it just or unjust that he should be
there, irrespective of the legal process by which his imprisonment
was determined upon?’ The test applied is quite different. If
British procedure, with perhaps minor modifications, is followed
and the man is convicted, then he deserves to be in prison. But if he
has been put in prison as the result of any other process this must be
wrono- whatever, in fact, he may have done. Students of political
affairs’in Africa have now come round to the view that the British
Parliamentary system is not necessarily exportable. The same
question has not been asked about the judicial system. The Halaby
case convinced me that, even m Colonial days m the Gold Coast,

64 REAP the whirlwind

neither the judicial system nor the police service was capable of
dealing with ordinary, let alone political crime. Yet looking at what
happened in this case, what was the substitute? It was one of the
misfortunes of Ghana that this was never really effectively worked
out.

The facts of the Halaby case were these. On the morning of the
16th June 1949 Rafik Halaby was found shot in his room in the
Halaby lodgings over their store in Kumasi. Neif Halaby, the dead
man s brother, in the first place called in, not the police, but as was
natural in Gold Coast conditions, a representative group of the
Syrian community. One of these, a certain Mr Azar, moved Rafik’s
body, a factor which introduced complications into the case, since
at first he told neither the doctor nor the police he had done so and
t eir su sequent evidence appeared to have been based on the body
avm 0 a en in the position into which Mr Azar had moved it. He
also came mto possession of the dead man’s keys to his safe. ‘Some-
tmc giTC em to me, he told the Judge, ‘I cannot remember whom.’
, , ti e agamst Neif Halaby was that he had quarrelled with his
brother, and, indeed it was clear he had made a number of wild

rnnu\ 0nS fi a ° a i n f : t ^ t be ba< i possessed a .22 rifle which

Dolice 6 1 6 ^ 1< ? t ^ e d Rafik and when asked by the

surrenfWpH ^ i° ^ murc * er w hat weapons he possessed he
capable nf P lstc ^ a nd another .22 rifle but not the rifle which was
that he tried r- e 3ta bube ?' Edition to this it was alleged
bv Drodnrino- *1 ireCt P°^ ce investigations into wrong channels
£ S3 etter Sent t0 ^ and which, though written

intrime°whic-h , ngua S e > possibly threatened Rafik in regard to an
wS ' Sed ‘ r ha ™ S "' ith » Gold Coast

assailant having shot him fin & ? g ”” st Nelf depended on Rafiks
NeR had she opportunity U ‘ ™ S °'

he had moved theTd g0 ^ ce > avhen it was discovered that

he said the bodv hid h ’ P ° SC f as tbe cor P se in the position which
which fcmok > “ T" 1 bef0re he hld m °ved it The position
door when he was shot’ Th sugge ? Eed that Rafik was facing the
pictures of Mr Azar m tin-' lhe °® cial Police photographer took
showing the bodv in tin pos u c an( i these were added to the pictures
moved it. All this j £ 0 , r Position to which Mr Azar had
hlS 3dded t0 ^ confusion. It was never clear from

GOING TO GHANA

the record, when expert evidence was given based upon the alleged
position of the body, which alleged position was referred to. In any
case, Mr Azar’s second posed position did not correspond to the
position as described by those who first found the body nor was it
consistent with the blood stains. Mr Azar’s odd activities may well
have confused the police and genuinely prevented them from draw-
ing the conclusions which were apparent from the position of the
body, if it was originally in the position that the other witnesses,
other than Mr Azar, said it was. What seemed to me much more
difficult to understand was how the police came to overlook other
evidence as to where the shot was fired from.

A railway engine driver, who slept on the veranda of his father s
cafe across the road from the. Halaby store, was awakened in the
night by a shot fired close to him and which so alarmed him that he
went and woke his father, the cafe proprietor The Halaby’s maid,
who slept next door to Rafik, was also wakened by a shot and to her
it seemed to come from outside. She heard no one leaving Rafik’s
room or his door being opened or shut or any movement in the house
afterwards and she was positive that the sound of the shot had not
come from inside Rafik’s room. Indeed, it a rifle had been dis-
charged inside the house it was almost certain that one of the many
African lodgers on the premises would have heard it as the sound
would have been accentuated by the confined space.

The murdered man’s skull was in Court and from time to time
was passed between Bench and Bar. Colonel Cawston, who sat
himself beside me at the hearing, had with him a thin brass curtain
rod and every now and then, to emp ^size argument on the
angle of the shot, he would piunge this through the bullet holes in
the skull and put it in my hands, thus suspended. It was clear that
the bullet had entered through the ri 0 ht mple and had made an
exit hole in the base of the skuU though it was said not tQ ^
penetrated the scalp and to have been fo d by the doctor in the

It was the prosecution’s case that ^ “j^ge used was a high
velociiy one and thus stotoj £“ hM , vas that he

had in his possession. It so an at close range, it

was strange, to say th " was more consistent ^

stopped bv the scalp. The n tei J t . with the use

of a low velocity propellant an 0 ^ 0 thirty yards. In

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

any event, as Colonel Cawston’s juggling with the skull showed, the
angle of the wound was inconsistent with the murdered man being
shot from inside the room unless this was done when he was sitting
on a chair or his bed. This could be ruled out. The body was near
neither bed nor chair in any version of its position. Therefore the
only way which the angle of the wound would be explained was that
afik was looking out of the window when he was shot. This was
oun open and the curtain which covered its lower frame had been

T ? 0 | )e ° ack 0ver tbe curta >n rod w'hich was at least consistent with
Kahk having pulled it aside to look out.

Opposite the house was a disused parking lot surrounded by a
ve oot wall and the assailant could have entered this in a car
wi out attracting notice, taken cover behind the wall, rested his
e on its top and shot Rafik as he came to the window'. As the light
as on 'n is room and the curtain rolled back he would be a perfect
t r ff ' . e ad been sbot from this position it would explain why
sound j' 1 ” 11 ! 6 , rivC j on tbe ver anda of the nearby cafe the shot

that rK d S ° T and W ° uId also a '° ree "ith the maid’s recollection
that the sounil seemed to come from outside the house.

fired frn^ Tf 0n 0f th r murder depended upon where the shot was
at least a o- • ^ Ca M C f r ? m " ‘^n the house tltere w-as a case of sorts,
22 Halaby. He was on the spot. All sorts of

could have hee e 2 C " cd j nd 116 bad a rifle with which the crime
from outside ° n 1116 other hand, the shot was fired

in it Whv shn m, enCe Was stron gly against Neif being concerned
SiSii t'rifle w £f g ° ° Ut WhEn hE ran the nsk of being seen
if he had shot his ", atcbman of tbe store or by a passer-by and,
dispose of the rifle them 1 *d ^ circumstances > why did he not
fired a shoXfr to ~ , “ No one in his senses, having

house attCntl0n > would then walk back to his

Neif was not rive^f t0 S that the police evidence against
business is conducted g °°i ^ aitE but * n Africa, where almost all

Party, misunderstandings ofTsonV^ ^ “ “*"1

can arise. Neif Halahv did ? , " ever . appreciated in England

the Police Servant 1 S £ eak En S llsh well. It is certain that

possessed w'ould also 1 ^ asked him about the firearms he

not fully have aDDreriat P er ectl b r understand it and might easily
7 appreciated what Neif replied. Neif Halabv’s subse-

GOING TO GHANA

quent explanation had been that he did not at first produce the
second rifle because it was not in working condition. He thought at
the time, he said, he was being asked for all firearms he was then
using. This explanation was at least consistent with his later
producing the rifle when specifically asked whether he had any
other licensed firearms. What is certain is that when this second
rifle was produced it was in two halves and the locking device, which
secured the stock to the barrel, was missing. In fact it could be used
though it might well be dangerous to do so and the aim was likely
to be impaired. Halaby admittedly possessed two rifles and if he
wished to commit a murder with a rifle it is difficult to see why he
should have chosen the defective one to do it with. In any event,
the furthest the prosecution expert was prepared to go was that there
was a general similarity in the bullet found in the skull and the
bullets he had fired from the second rifle, but there were not suffi-
cient fire markings positively to identify the bullet from the brainbox
as having been fired from the second rifle and that this fatal bullet
could, in fact, have been fired from a rifle other than the second
rifle.

These were all issues which, one might say, were soluble by
British legal methods. Though the police might have failed to
appreciate the significance of where the shot was fired from, there
was, perhaps, just sufficient evidence against Neif to put him on
trial, and his conviction, though wrong, did not show that there was
something fundamentally the matter with the Gold Coast judicial
machine. Yet I experienced in this, the first of many cases I took
part in in the Gold Coast, a feeling that no one, not even the police,
were telling the whole truth as they knew it. Legal machinery whose
efficiency I had taken for granted in England, seemed clogged and
unworkable in the colonial climate.

It was not only that I was convinced from the record that there
was no evidence upon which Neif Halaby should have been con-
victed but there was evidence in that record, so it seemed to me,
which, if followed up, could have led to the discovery of the real
murderer. .22 rifles are far commoner in Ghana, where they are
often used in hunting, than they are in Britain. Nevertheless,
possessors of such rifles were a limited class and it was somebody
who owned or who had access to a .22 rifle who had committed the

crime.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

n , ® op his murder Rafik Halaby had gone out on some
erran w ic was never explained. He had taken the family car and
a ca e on some friends but he had left them at io p.m. It was
not unti n.30 p.m. that he was seen by the watchman of the
u 3 ^. St0 , I J c ret Y rn > P af k the car and go downstairs to the store
> • r f , C , ™ s saPe was kept. Was he going to put something in it
• •, ', he f haC ob f. m f d this night’s visit? Why else should he
In riv, 6 S ° rC at t HS ate bour,? Where, in any event, had he been?
easier . " a p Veryone notices car numbers and it would have been
thin it wm ij ^° r tbe P obce to have traced his movements

attemnr t,wi lavc . een ln Britain. They appeared to have made no
before his m° !t°' ^ 6 P obce knew that within a few minutes

it odd that GG ba d unlocked the store did they not think

his cb £ or inT’ mCludl , ng thG St0re ke >' s > werc not found with

tappttrtoi' 5 room; Why did thcy nM ^ taa

diamond smugglmg TW "£!!“ “V ” d bccn e ” 6aE ' d

with inter- Svri an ° r • e ,'I aS a su ggestion that he was concerned

H ' bd ? n °' d a PI»™% » »" “ Ea "i-

in Syria. Certainlv stm °r CC ^ K ^incorporation of the Lebanon
and there was evidenced lngs existed on this issue at the time
Syrian oommnn^had £ S a ™"»>“ * *

by the prosecution’s expert? ^ Were n ° nC ° f these examined

fro^ a Se y rerord. h In th^r w ? teial k was difficu lt to discover
never a shorthand report As usi°T G in Ghana there W3S
was the longhand notes mirl t ? a ’ T therefore, all we had to go on
General I tried to have r ^ the Judge. When I became Attorney

CU«f Jnsdce ,„ At A Sr,‘r 0rthand educed.

High Court Judges werebl C ° Urt ) VOuld have hked it but the
have greatly restricted their freldn” 1 3 change which WOuld
control of their conduct in court Tt 3nd made Possible a stronger
ever, not through the onnncM ’ c , ^ ed0rm was prevented, how-
Civil Service system It was an^ll° ^ -J udges ’ hut by the Ghanaian
tp come acros^ The Es ab ™ * 3tl0n of a Principle I was often
the employment of shorthan^ 111 ? ecretar y’s office did not forbid
declared they must be paid at th m the Courts > it merely
Government office. Experience ” te as C( W typists in a

th Parliamentary reporting had

GOING TO GHANA

shown there were many Ghanaians capable of taking verbatim
notes but when clerical staff was at a premium such skilled workers
were hardly likely to consider the terms offered for Court reporting
by the Establishment Office.

This absence of an impartial record of what took place in court
had a number of side effects, by no means all of them undesirable.
Judges could, as indeed one Judge always did, conduct the criminal
proceedings themselves with only the most nominal reference to the
lawyers appearing for the prosecution and defence. The Judge I
have in mind, who was the most consistent exponent of this system,
had reduced it to so fine an art that the counsel prosecuting had to
be very adroit if he was to succeed in asking the witness his name.
Usually before he could say anything, and indeed before the witness
had got into the box, the Judge would start a dialogue which went
something like this :

'Judge (as the witness enters Court) What are you doing here ?

Witness Sir, I was asked to give evidence.

Judge By whom ?

Witness The police, my lord.

Judge Then why don’t you take the oath ? Give your evidence and
get it over with. What’s your name ?

1 Witness Opoku Ware, my lord.

Judge Oh, you come from Ashanti, do you ?

Witness No, my lord, from Accra.

Judge Why are you called Opoku Ware then, it’s an Ashanti name.

Witness My family, my lord. . . .

Judge The police didn’t ask you to come here to tell me about your
family. They have told you the evidence they want you to
give, haven’t they ? Well then, take the oath and get on
with it.’

While at first sight this system of examination may not fit the
theoretical pattern of British justice it had much to commend it in
Ghana. English criminal procedure is a kind of legal cricket with the
judge as umpire. It is not his duty to discover the truth, it is merely
his task to see that the prosecution establishes its case in accordance
with the illogical and archaic rules of evidence which we have
inherited from a past where it was assumed all juries were illiterate.
In a developing country like Ghana where lawyers were few and

7 ° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

eommanded high fees a prisoner was not necessarily certain to be

e ective y defended. Where all prosecutions were undertaken

lre ^ 7 y the Attorney General’s Office the uncompetitive

stan ar sa ary paid by the State to the lawyers it employed was not

1 'e y to produce the most able prosecutors. Therefore when a

Ju D e con ucted the trial himself, as he would in, say, a French

Tn ’ 1 . e , re f Ut m 'Sht well be fairer. To be just to this particular

,” C ’ " ' C ie determined to allow' no criminal to escape, once

VaS conv mced of the innocence of the man in the dock, no one

nrnsppi ™ oren S° rous cross-examiner of the witnesses for the
prosecution than he.

slimv^i'n 1 Ver , batim re P°tt of the proceedings w'ould have

EmrlinH tli’ U KK conducted himself in a manner of w’hich in
disapproval^ Appeal has often expressed its

obliged to foil ° T ( “ 0urts ' n Ghana would have felt

obtained Sin/T ^ lsb rubn g and to set aside verdicts so
proceedings li C 10 " e . ver tbe J u dge also made the official note of the
was seldZ if p V p°T ed “ S ° th3t dan S cr did not arise and it
fairer than if the r, i 1 "u S UpSet ° n a PP eab The result was probably
Enriish pattern 6 Tl* S* C ° nduCted followed the more orthodox

carSorLlis^Lr f3Ct that Pr ° Ceedi ^ S “ Uld bC

Neif Halaby’s case did a PP ear . ed before him, the Judge in

judge must form an onini C ave , in thi s fashion. Nevertheless, any
wffiich he thinks it imnnrt °? as . tb ? case proceeds and the matters
he thinks it desirable to n^t- t0 mc . ude ‘ n his note and tliose which
this opinion. For this reason v mUSt be subconsciously influenced by
view in Neif Halaby’s case *tvl S dlfficult to come to any final
the last one and a half hour* tv P? sslW y happened was that, in
personal or business assignation S ‘ f \ Rafik Hala by either made a
this account followed him hn • °, me h°dy, probably a Syrian, on
lot and W'aited for him to ren ^ m J? ls ca r, turned into the parking
more to do with it than ever Ppear ‘ ^haps the Druse question had
the other hand that Rafik wnc . PPeared ln t h e evidence. It may be on
matter or someone with whom ?fPf ctm S some °ne on some business
with whom he hoped to have a personal meeting.

GOING TO GHANA

Whatever it was, it would seem he went to the window of his room
to look out. Maybe the murderer called to him. What seems almost
certain, from such medical evidence as there was, is that he was
shot as he was looking out of the window.

This reconstruction, as can be seen, is something more than mere
speculation. In a general examination of Gold Coast conditions of
those days what is of interest is that it appears never to have been
seriously investigated by the police. Whether this particular
reconstruction would have been substantiated by evidence is of
course another matter but it is clear, at least, that Neif Halaby
should never have been convicted on the evidence produced and
this was only possible because there was no thorough investigation
of the alternatives suggested by the facts. Police are one of the most
important of all the elements of society. Yet their role is the most
difficult to assess scientifically. All our approaches tend to be
emotional and personal and those who have the most experience of
the police, from the very nature of things, are the least objective.
The week before I had dismissed Colonel Cawston’s strictures on
them as the prejudice of an amusing eccentric. With the Halaby
case I began to wonder and in all my time in Ghana with my many
opportunities of getting at the facts, I never came to a positive
conclusion, but it is certainly one of the fallacies about Ghana to
suppose that the Colonial legacy included a completely efficient or a
completely incorrupt police force.

That Halaby should in fact have been convicted explains what is,
I think, often unclear to those who study African affairs from afar.
Procedurally the trial followed all the normal British rules, except
of course that there was no jury. The Judge sat with Assessors,
only one of whom was in favour of conviction, the other two being
for acquittal, but he was not bound in law by their views and the
verdict was his own. How did he come to it?

Even in the rarified atmosphere of the Appeal Court one could
almost sense the universal and irrational feeling that Neif Halaby
was guilty. It was illogical — nevertheless it was all-prevailing. At
the Assizes it must have been the dominating impression. All that in
fact the trial did was to give judicial form to an almost universally
held belief. It was my first example of a principle with which later,
as Attorney General, I had to contend. English justice, when
transplanted into countries at a very different stage of development,

y2 REAP the whirlwind

^ Un , Ct * 0n as . **• does ^ England and the existence of a

rerlnp fn™ 00 ma y guarantee a just result at home is no

into i rlnii> e f Unn ^ • 2 S3me resub abroad. It can easily degenerate

viction hv ° r t ^ ie stam P °f legahty to what is in fact con-
viction by rumour.

mv^ioh t [v!c Started ° n tke I ^ tla January 1950. Technically
African Conn r°f le c ° m P^ ex * t J r as I had to convince the West
regard to the °,i ppea jhat the verdict was unreasonable having
a ?anv I;? * tWs " 3 f0rm of ! VPeal which in England^
even- possible^r/ ° m succ ^ eds - I wanted to make sure that I put

three days addressing 'tfr* 111 in conscquence 1 took nearl f
the iqth that thev ° 1 ^ " as not until the afternoon of

was quashed Hoi ^ C 1 j Clr decision. Neif Halaby’s conviction
Plan? ” U E o" ta S?" 11 ‘ h!ld “ ««* 1 * evening's
car to go to the airoo’rt T Ep P Uttmg m >' baggage into Deller’s
re-arrested and was about f^k ^ my Unfortunalc cIient had been
remained in the Gold C ° ^ deported on tbe grounds that if he
Indeed this latter tuid 2UC ™ ptS on his Iife would be made,
from the LehSn Z ^ ^ . T " ice he "as sent poisoned food
which exploded ^rS “ * * lrd occasion . a bomb in a parcel
it- The police at S , 1 ‘Tl 1116 poIi ™ was checking

my duty to my client w-id^ und crestimate the Druse tradition but
time tlic argument was ov ° . matter reconsidered and by the
Wt end, >■> s “y .he plane tad

Accra. not > I had to spend one more night in

It was almost the fiml i;„i- . ,

the event occurred vhich t'* 1 dlC cka ‘ n °f chance. That evening

determined my subsequent ’careeHiJGhana 0 ^ anythi " g C ' SC ’

CHAPTER THREE

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

With no one to talk to and nothing more to do I sat in my bedroom
at the Avenida thinking about the coming General Election and
trying to draft my Address to my electors. Then almost an hour
before curfew, I heard the sound of gravel being thrown up against
my window. I looked out and there was a group of four or five
Africans standing below, beckoning me down. I went outside to greet
them and their leader introduced himself to me as the man I had
met in London and with whom I had spoken about the Aborigines
Rights Protection Society delegation. With Kwame Nkrumah were
a number of other then leading members of his Party. They would
like, they said, to have a talk with me. They were all expecting
arrest and wanted first at least to put their case before a British
Labour Member of Parliament.

I was afraid that if we went upstairs to my bedroom it would call
attention to them and suggested it might be better if we walked
boldly into the bar and sat down at a table among the Syrian Special
Constables. At this time of night it was their custom to have a few
drinks before setting out on their patrols and, sure enough, my
friend Fuad Taymani was there swinging his baton, arm-banded
and ready, but he had at least, he said, time to entertain my friends.
Fortunately among Dr Nkrumah s party was a relative of Albert
Heward-Mills, the lawyer Thomas Hutton-Mills, the son of old
Thomas Hutton-Mills who had helped to found the Aborigines
Rights Protection Society, and I was able to pass off the party as his
clients who had come to consult me. We sat down, outside, we
thought, of the earshot of the special constables. Nevertheless, now
and then one would catch a burst of their conversation and hear
Nkrumah’s name. Any moment, they were saying, they would pull
him in. Kwame Nkrumah’s appearance was distinctive and his high
forehead already well known. The African staff serving us must have
recognized him but nobody said a word. He talked freely, not
bothering even to lower his voice.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

. i vv niftLYVHNU

So it was in the Avenida Hotel bar, surrounded by the Syrian
special constables, I had my first serious discussion on politics in
rica. he immediate issue was the joint ‘Positive Action’ cam-
paign by Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party and the Trade
nion ongress which had resulted in the general strike and in the
ec aration o the State of Emergency. Their object was to force the
o oma a ministration into calling a Constitutional Convention
o reconsi er the recommendations of the Coussey Committee on
onstitution eform. A. remarkable document, a political and
erary ac nevement the like of which has never before come out of
R prf'nt i" aS r i ? °® c ‘ a ^. British description of the Committee’s
merely t] Ut 1*° * 10S r t0 me b was ‘fraudulent and bogus’—

1C atCSt ', ie many Pa ? a des behind which the reality of
British power was to be concealed.

classic a , S .,°^ v * 0us ^ iat Nkrumah’s Party had been caught in the
constitution -!!^ 1 h a T n ( on ~ revo ' ut i°nary organization which has no
the Govcrnn ° U T ln tbe P ast , the Party merely bombarded
S«retary of State for the Colonics with

tutional frrounrfth ^ 5 ! es ® could be ignored on the good consti-
nizcd body The GPP 'ifco wT fr ° m any official 0r recog_

genuinely Representative Its n M n °F pr ° Ved that h WaS

posed of VnnH u s opponents had said that it was com-
absele ofS: n ceS e and ^ ™P- d agitators’. In the
claim they were entitled the Colonial authorities could

other hand the CPP l ^ ^ Wci S ht t0 thi s view. If, on the
they could call workers out on'Tr Strength b >' showing that
stration then they were nrti and P ara lyse the civil admini-

Colonial Government w^ ' !f S i? y ' 0nce they had done this the
demands, however reasonable deb: ! rrcd from considering their
be compelled to yield to unm' ^ grounds tha t they could not
had been thus transforme i r nS pressures. The argument

CPP was asking f or was reas !?™!!^-^'^ 011 ° f whet her w'hat the
- n g for the question ° f whether

a , foretastc ° f thc

raised and which I believe rskrumah s subsequent policies
to sohe the wider issue the mi ? s . e answered before it is possible
Poor. Can it only be ended , polarizatIon of the world into rich and
' dcd by a root a ud branch destruction of the

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 75

existing international and national structures springing from an
inevitable armed conflict between ‘the have’s’ and ‘the have nots’,
with men divided by the pigments of their skins, or is constructive
cooperation between the wealthy and impoverished nations just
round the corner, prevented only by a failure on both sides to devise
the appropriate machinery? Is there in fact a definable peaceful
solution ? In Ghana these alternatives, as in the world at large, were
to appear, time and time again, in different guises. The value of
studying in detail what happened in this small African country is
that it may be thus possible to separate local mistakes, deviations
and betrayals from the theory intended to be followed and then to
assemble those facts which enable a general answer to be given. Is
co-existence possible?

In the forefront of his pamphlet Towards Colonial Freedom which
he had written three years before, Kwame Nkrumah had set a
quotation from the founder of German Social Democracy, Wilhelm
Liebknecht:

‘To negotiate with forces that are hostile on matters of principle
means to sacrifice principle itself. Principle is indivisible. It is either
wholly kept or wholly sacrificed.’

But what if the principle is compromise ? If the aim is co-existence
can principle be sacrificed for principle?

Co-existence involves two presumptions. First there must be
sufficient mutual trust for negotiation to be possible and secondly
a convention must be accepted that when one side or the other has
shown its strength this must be treated as the reality without putting
it to the proof of action. Here, at the start, in the last days of the
colonial Gold Coast, co-existence had already broken down. The
CPP slogan had been ‘Self Government Now’ but in practice they
were prepared to compromise on self government in a defined
period of time. The Party’s quarrel with the Coussey proposals and
the Colonial Office response to them was, basically, not that they
did not give ‘self government now’ but that they were, by design or
accident, so contrived that they would perpetuate colonial rule
using, as before, the chiefs. Thus in practice the dispute arose not
over the idea of a transitional government as such, but over the
details of its constitution. Either the Coussey plan had been drafted
with the deliberate intent of preventing further progress, in which

7^ REAP THE WHIRLWIND

case there was no basis for cooperation, or else the Colonial authori-
ties genuinely desired progress to self rule but had been misled into
acce P^S P ro P°sals which could not achieve it. By ‘Positive Action’
, e lad P rove d, according to the rules of co-existence, that
t lej must be reckoned with. Were the colonial authorities prepared
to iscuss modifications in detail to the Coussey proposals which
wou , in t e CPP s opinion, transform the Committee’s scheme
into a genuine step towards self rule?

„ ,T be . CP1 ’ in conjunction with the Trade Union Congress had
nf H . t0 ^ Ct 1Cr a Ghana Representative Assembly’, a mass gathering
6 e f atCS r ° m fift y organizations including trade unions,
- 1V f S0C3etles > farmers’ organizations; educational, cultural
mef>fi'n° C1 n a ° j CS ’ j nd women and youth organizations. This
Constioitiri CI i ° rSed , a Memorandum outlining, not an alternative
Coussev p 11 ’ Ut "' hat were ) essentially, modifications to the
DroDosak ° mmittee s recommendations. Looking back on these

A SeeonTri, 0116 , “ hy ** extreme Oration,
on the Cnnc T ” lad becn recommended by a majority of one
GovtnSen ‘Tr ^ , “ ee -i Ut had bcen Reeled by the British
Secretary kerin T" a’ Said -Mthur Creech Jones, the Colonial

Legislature by iso'btinffln^a cT efficienc y of the Central
limited funrn'nnc S n a Chamber, exercising comparatively

in the Legislative Assembly ’ H* W ?\ 0Se services arc needed
Office still beliVvpH ^ ere was evi hence that the Colonial

ments, die chiefs and the fTu ^ ap P ro P riate . electoral arrange-
The CPP nronnc:al intellectuals could be installed in power.

Tl,ey - back f ,he

public life to those who had , h be , r in ord er to give a place in
dominate Gold Coast politick At St,U ’ Up dI1 I95I > t0

of opinion about the need for a , sta g e there was no difference
the government The Hk associ3tlia g the intellectual elite with
though, ,h” by s „tt„ PUK r ar0 v. bccaus ' *' Colonial ttuthorities
aitc L StSf C°»U ge, enough of ,hc
othcnvise. Legislative Assembly. The CPP knew

Secondly the CPP ouerieH „ . .

proposal for cx-officio Minkrerc . ConstltutI0naI grounds, the
Assembly. There was nnrl ’ n0t responsible to the Legislative
suggesting this It harl P 3r ticularly revolutionary about

S s. It had already been done by Dr Danquah and seven

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 77

other UGCC supporters on the Coussey Committee who had
submitted a minority report outlining exactly the difficulties which
subsequently arose with this system and making alternative pro-
posals more extreme than those put forward by the CPP. The
CPP had already agreed to, at least, an ex-officio Minister of
Defence while Dr Danquah and his associates would only accept
that there should be a ‘Defence Adviser’. Here, at least, was a
matter for discussion. The existing proposals were that Foreign
Affairs, Defence, Internal Order, Justice and Finance should be
administered directly by the Governor or by ex-officio Ministers
not responsible to the elected representatives. It could be argued
that in an interim Constitution, external affairs, defence and perhaps
internal security were matters which any Colonial power, however
graciously retiring, had, from pure prestige, to retain but finance
was in a different category. The intermediate stage had to be a
genuine preparation for self government. If finance was withdrawn
from African control how could there even be tentative experiments

with economic planning ?

Thirdly the CPP asked for a directly elected Legislative
Assembly in place of the largely indirectly elected and nominated
one proposed. Since elections on the basis of one man one vote’
proved practical and simple to organize four years later there could
have been no technical objection, at least, to entering into discussions
as to how far the proposals of the Coussey Committee might be
modified in the direction of democracy.

Fourthly the CPP proposed that civil service promotions and
control should rest not with the Governor but with a Civil Service
Commission. Again, this is what the Coussey Committee had
recommended and was in line with a re orm to be carried out a few

years later.

Finally, so far as Local Government was concerned, the CPP
proposals, broadly speaking, supported the recommendation of the
Coussey Committee. Their Memoran um merely objected to
the idea that the detailed provision for it should be decided prior to the
election of the new Legislative Assem y an y the old unrepresen-
tative Legislative Council which, it was apparent from the Dispatch
of the Secretary of State, was what was now intended.

The CPP had never even argued that their proposals, where
they differed from those of e oussey Committee, should

R£ AP THE WHIRLWIND

necessarily be accepted. All they were asking was that they should

Constitutional'convention! ‘ h ' C °“ SSCy Committec ' s R 'P“ rI b) ' 1

to m.' tT t * me ’ 3S V ’n c h scussed things in the Avenida bar, it seemed
hid i nr/ Se " Gre a n ®S°tiable matters. Indeed, by chance I felt I
for the p'm ' 0 °PP ortuni | t y- I could be the honest broker. I was still,
davs to mn K1I a t lU t ,° wb ' c ^ ^ had been elected had yet in law a few
mv denirti! ** k™ er o ^ t ' le House of Commons. I would postpone
Tminfom T day and the «*• On the aircraft

Colonial Ad ‘ & 12 bed Wldl a British official in the Gold Coast
was either the lnl ^ tratlon > a Mr Sydney MacDonald-Smith, who
Ihe time I hidL 3ntlVe ° r acdng Secr etary for Native Affairs at
reasonable he CCn * m P r j' ssed > not only by how well informed and
K r t0 ab0Ut Gold Coast affair* hut also by

somebody with whom Twuldtdt aSpirati ° nS ‘ Here W3S

had only spent a C nmn I H IS ^° I u^ POrt bad been writ ten by men who
facts and figures all thea, ^ C ^ lony yet the y had challenged, with
where had they derived ., CCC P tcd P rem ises of Colonial Rule. From
seemed to be the clue Th F '"/^OOne sentence in their Report
Colonial officials Svhn ^ lad ’ t ley sa * d > found many British
perienceh " th I p P re P ared to write off the past as ex-

which, they said thev ‘hTd T !? ad <3n ex P ositi °n of liberal ideas’
mendations’. Here then , ^ hesitated to adapt to their recom-

stood what was needed ^Oh t SeC ^ et ' Tbe man °n the spot under-
Colonial Office in LondMOn ^? 011 ^ pro S ress came from the
would be able to argue out rlT * WaS f ° rtlfied b y local support I

^t ^ Creech Jones

morning to talk things ”''' arrant ^ optimism that I set out the next
if all went well at the interview ^ • ^ ydn ^y MacDonald-Smith and,
prepared my points on the h ’• Wlt ’ J hoped, the Governor. I had
their findings could be shown *' 15 f * 16 ^ atson Report. Many of
if the CPP were right in thT ? faCt , t0 su PP ort the CPP case and
them there seemed everythin^ lng ^ey^ had the country behind
Constitution at the earliest tL,° / gained b y getting an agreed
elaborate arguments. ‘The Wm- 6 ’ ~ CVer even launched on my
Donald-Smith, ‘why that’s wh?° n C ° mmissio V said Mr Mac-
y. that s what started all this.’ Thus it was that I

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

came stumbling towards what I believe now to be the real secret.
The existing order, the progressive Colonial Civil Servant con-
demned, but the sodden bulk of past policies blocked every road
forward. There had been no steady march towards self government.
All was a patchwork of opportunism. Democracy might, in far
away Britain, seem desirable, but subconsciously the experienced
Civil Servant knew there was no machine available in the Colony to
administer a modern Government. Law and order depended upon
preserving the old methods of rule, illogical and outmoded as they
were, for there was nothing prepared to go in their place. When I
talked with Sydney MacDonald-Smith that morning, though I did
not fully realize it at the time, there was a wall of a hundred years of
history which came between us.

Though the British had been established on the West African
coast since the early seventeenth century, the Gold Coast had only
recently attained its 1950 extent of colonial organization. The early
British merchants dealt in slaves and gold and did not seek to
provide government outside the area of the Forts, which they, the
Danes and the Dutch, and before them, the Portuguese, the
Prussians and the Swedes, maintained along the coast. It was not
until 1844 that the first formal instrument of Government was
executed, the famous ‘Bond’ of that year which, like Magna Carta,
though conceived for very different purposes, provided historical
justification, on the one hand, for subsequent Colonial regimes and,
on the other, for the claim of independence. It had been drafted by
George Maclean, no longer Governor but ‘judicial assessor’ to the
Chiefs, in fact a kind of early type of Political Resident. The ‘Bond’
was typical of other African early nineteenth-century agreements
and was designed to regularize commerce and justice between the
coastal Chiefly states and the British administration in the trading
posts and castles. In language perhaps deliberately vague, the
independence of these little states was acknowledged and their
‘Kings’ recognized. British sovereignty was nevertheless asserted.
Not unnaturally, ever after, anyone on any side of any political
controversy alleged he was acting in conformity with the ‘Bond of

i 844 ’- ‘ ’ '

In 1871 the Chiefs of these small tribal kingdoms, inspired by the
growing class of African intellectuals, came together under a
remarkable leader, King Ghartey IV of Winneba to form a united

KUAP till. Will HI, WIN'D

state, the I* anti Confederation. There is no evidence that these
c tie s or t lcir African professional class supporters w ere inlluenced
} t ie\er} similar movement which tool, place in Japan at around the
same c ate, but those w ho overthrew the shoguiiatc in Japan and those
who founded the Fanti Confederation in the Gold Giast liad
man} i eas m common. In both cases there was an attempt,
succ<^sfu m Japan and unsuccessful in the Gold Coast, by a section
build' I," I ^ CI10U . S ru m g class to overthrow the old feudal order and
federal T?®" 1 upon W,ater « Hues. Though the Con-
territories u'h? f ? r "p ■ * n , part t0 °PP oi *c the Dutch who exchanged
the powerful A ? nd t0 P rov j dc a military alliance against

liberal in tin- n’!* I," 1 * m S dom °[ dlc interior, it was reformist and
provided m I1C C ? IU 1 '5f ,Uu D European tradition. I tsconstitution
dent’ There w S ^ f ° r a ^ under a ‘King-l>resi-
powcrTfcxerrir- 3 ^ prcs ® ntaliv « Assembly’ which was given the
Li of tLation R th * funct, . ons ofa legislative body’, including
aristocracy— -‘men f aS | t0 a PP 0mt a Cabinet from the intellectual

and P 0iilio "\ as the Constitution
head of WrCSidcM " h ° “> ^ the executive

tution, have Cte cv°cm t tod COnfCdi:ratl0n ’ aS Iaid down in its ccmst ‘-
among others were to ‘devi ? cunt ? u ^>' modem ring. Its purposes
and other r^ sJu ^ ces of tt ^" d faC,1 “ atC lhc WOrkil * ofnM
stantial roads .R^nnectimr virlrf^ ' - l0 ™ k ‘ good and sub-
another and with the sea coaci pr0V,nccs or dlstnc ts with one
industrial pursuits and m nnrt' ' ' ' t0 ,P r °motc agricultural and

- ^b’^r/".try;;sr such n " ph r

country ... to eren u ° P rollta ble commerce to the

cation of all children within^' Conf^ 1 ' 51 ' SCh °° 1S f ° r tllC cdu "
service of efficient schoolmasters 1 ^, fcdcrat . 10n and to obtain the
sufficiently established ‘H ip d 1 ^ here missionary schools were

eight and Lrte “ as 5'^ of all children between

The Confederate “ J r ” ^1™-
provisions of the Bond w ^® Penly 1 an “““-British move. The
of Africans or Europeans m ? Scr . u P ulousl y observed. The right
decisions of the Chiefly nn ^P ea , . t( ? tkc British Courts against
was made a constitutions? n’ v’ ^ lch dlC Bond had stipulated,
Colonial authorities rightly reco^R N £ verthelcss > t!le British
g ‘y reco S ni zed the Confederation as a

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 01

challenge to any expansion of Colonial control. This dangerous
conspiracy must be destroyed for good or the country will become
altogether unmanageable,’ the then Administrator of the Go oast,
Spencer Salmon, told the British Government. The Ministers of
the Confederation Government were arrested and the Confeder-
ation declared an unlawful organization. Then in 1874, to ma 'e t e
British legal position plain, the coastal area was formally constituted
into a separate British Crown Colony. Any further attempt by the
Chiefs to combine was sternly resisted. Whether the Confederation
could ever have provided the foundation of a modern state is
arguable but the avenue towards self government that it opened up

was blocked and never could be reopened. T

The Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society, which!
had encountered in 1935, was created to revive the union origina y
established at the time of the Confederation between the tra ltiona
chiefly rulers and the African professional and intellectual classes
but in a form acceptable to the Colonial authorities of the ay. o
long as these two groups could hold together, which they di or a
quarter of a century, they could to a large extent influence an
control the colonial administration of the so-called Colony , t at is
to say, the coastal area which was formally annexed as Bntis sett e
territory in 1874. The Gold Coast Colony had, from an international
point of view, however, become in this period a much larger entity
and the forces which could effect policy on the coast were not
powerful enough to extend their influence through the rest 0 t e
territory.

Ashanti had, from the early eighteenth century onwards, been a
powerful military state, built up through the control of gold sa es
and by the slave trade. The African climate is no worse, from a
European point of view, than that of Central and South America
and it was the strength of the African states rather than their
malaria and yellow fever that saved them, until almost the opening
of the present century, from that type of European rule which was
imposed on Central and South America from the sixteenth century
onwards. It was not until after a series of Ashanti wars that finally
its territory was subjugated and annexed in 1902. Unlike in the so-
called ‘Colony’, no pretence was made of introducing English justice
which had been the publicized reason for the conclusion of the
‘Bond’ fifty-six years before the annexation of Ashanti.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

influence of the coastal intellectuals was now deliberately
f XC u p J. a"jcrs, who were regarded as the most dangerous mem-
ners ot this class, were prohibited by law. The Ashanti Adminis-
ra l( ? n . r 1 i 1a ” ce I 9 02 provided that ‘in no cause or matter,
°^r? 1 ' 1 1 sba * tbc employment of a barrister or solicitor be
‘ 1 ; C - ■ ,' 1S , awlc . ss type of law might have continued to be

1 • * S crcc "tflehnitcly in Ashanti had not an English medical

• * i • 10ne r r> a r Knowles, been charged and convicted of murder-
.. c ’, es P lte the fact that Airs Knowles, who did not die

whom ^ ta V S a f tCr sbu " as s h°t, had told everyone with
accidental ° ' ? at tbc revolver which shot her, had gone off
from rim, l' ^ mCC U ,\ Vas a ° rcccl that she used to fire this weapon
bv him n r° !, mc and had 011 one previous occasion, being annoyed
reasoX nn V - 0t “ hcr husba " d . this appeared at least to be a
Judicial Comm'tf 1 '''V? lbc cnd > * n 1 93°» the case came before the
in SnSr r° f ^ Prh T Council. This Court of last resort

lack of qualificttio^ofthcT 11 ! 101 " '’T thc abSC11CC ofa i u ^> the
lawyer was ar tlc .J ud S c or the absence of any defence

asiZe however fnr?| d f ° r f “ mg asidc the conviction. They did set it
rejected the dvinn- T 7° ' mCa * rcason that thc Acting Judge, having
kSJ T idS' and ° thcr siniilar statements by Mrs

manslaughter Still Hie 7 W ? etllc t an y"’ay it might only have been
secured X no i'H.i . ' ° r Knowlcs ’ case made * Britain
achieve and lawyers ° n ' 7° ^°* d ^ oast Bar had been able to
Ashanti. ‘ 3 e subs cquently allowed to practice in

was no questioZ^f CS H° n ^ Prb ‘ sb standards stood alone. There
Ashanti to the Lerrislarlv^ 11115 ,? ven nominated members from
the Gold CoLt con t nn H nCI ' DoWn t0 j 946 the Governor of
which law was made bv his rt° ™ 6 ,7 aS a C0nc iucred province in
the Asantehene ks IGn, At the “me of the Ashanti wars,

in Britain as the nrotorvn’r^'f u? sub °rdinate chiefs were regarded
they were exiled to the 9 ° , arbltrar y “nd brutal African rulers and
"Stored to become £ fnT "" Isl “ ds ; W35 they tad been
bntUy progress Inwards deJornn* ° f Bnt ‘ Sh = 1,v< -' rnn " ;l,t - l! «
At the same time that Act,

established over the NnrtU ^ W ? s annexe d, a Protectorate was
treaties with local chiefs ,17“ territories of the Gold Coast. The
chiefs under which this was done were negotiated

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

on behalf of the Colonial Government by one of its most able
African civil servants, George Ekem Ferguson, whose forebears
had been among the intellectuals who had supported the anti
Confederation. Despite the fact that it was a member of this African
coastal intellectual class who organized the take-over in the 1 ort i,
the convenient colonial theory was later established that t c
Northerners were antipathetic to Africans from the Souttanc
therefore must be protected from them. The Africans of the i ort
were not allowed to come South or those from Ashanti or rom t le
old Colony to go to the North. The illiterate and poor Northern
Territories were administered as a separate province and, even un er
the 1946 Constitution, which admitted representatives 0 l aan 1
the Legislative Council, the North continued to be exc u e •

Finally, after 1920, there was administratively adde to t e
Coast one half of the former German Colony of Togoland. Uurig
the first world war this Colony had been occupied by troops

the Gold Coast and indeed the first Commonwealth soldier ever

fire a shot in the 1914-18 world war was an African e ‘
fighting in this campaign. From 1914 to 1919 Togo an ' r

as part of the Gold Coast but in the peace settlements, in re
concessions by France in Samoa, it was partitione an , , The

the former German Colony was handed over to ae Deop i cs

Ewe people who lived in its southern part and the ‘ p ^

who lived in its northern areas global strategy

as those inhabiting the pre-war Gold Coast 0 5

of the time took no account of their h 0 f a u other

Indeed all frontiers of the Gold Coast hke those ^

African Colonies, partitioned to suit a P tidcation and their
had neither geographic, economic no theory 0 f rule. For

illogical boundaries refuted the m frontiers w hich divided
international reasons Britain ha P had the same historic

peoples who spoke the same o S’ chief Ye t within the
traditions and even acknowle ge ^ entity was considered

territory thus artificially crez Rule As a resu l t of these

sacrosanct and formed the bas t codes of kw existe d. One

conflicting considerations whic h had a Legislative

system was appl'ed *nEheoMCo|o^y^ ^ ^

Council that enacted t d which Britain administered,

Another system applied to togoi

^ Kl-AI* 7 HI WJIIHl.V. |Nt>

first, under a League of Nations Mandate ami, later, ns Trusteeship
erriton under the Lnited Nations, though, in practice, it was sub*
divided, one area bcinu treated as part «.V the old Colony and the
ot ter as part of the Northern Territories and it was thus further
r isintegratei . i he Northern Territories, like Ashanti, were
gen erne directly by the Governor hut laws which applied in

Vn' 1 "'! • U - IUlt ncccvur ‘l> ->pply in the North and often in practice
i > kred tn important respects from the law in the old G.luny.

• C ' L 7 l K tsS ’ I ,° ^ 1C Gold Gust as a whole one overriding
ronr ‘ P C "f. a ITl'cd~th.u of ‘Indirect Rule’. So far as Africa was
Lmnrd ll 1 '| 1S r/ SU ', IU ) lu *. * K y" "orbed out and perfected by l.urd
Nigeria m'? j U \ f * ,C - K Ti»ning of the century conquered Northern
years as C v "c Go \ crnor lm,il After a break of five
both North tTnUr ? ,{ UU ' U ^ W11 K he- returned, first as Governor of
io jq “ d Nigeria and then, from , 9M until

Indirect Rui * °' tTnur *Generai of the united Gilonv. Originally
S r 1 ’ 011 Lu >'- lrii «l« exigencies of the

the status of * u '. lounJ . ,1 ' [ nscli, but he was later to raise it to
supporting the i )r , lnci !’J c - 1 " Northern Nigeria this meant
3 2 om ‘ I ' Ub,,i c ! licfs V- ho were the heirs of rulers
conquered the Ilausa 'inM' |1UnUn r Isbmic . people and who had
rulers in the eirlv ' • 113 ’ u ' lnts l *’e region and deposed their

made ™‘';“ “a Z“;r 1 “"T: i 1 ' 1 '- '••ubni Mrs » OT

system of taxation t i • • L to ! on,a * government. 'I he same

conquest was maintained' V ' lllcI . 1 cx,stcti before the British
British authorities took 1C °" *•' t!lf]crcllCc being that now the
taxes and exercised a Proportion of the yield front fines and
criminal cases. S ° mt surt supervision over individual

Gold CoLl° There' haT h n . ladC ‘° cnforec ‘ Indir cct Rule’ in the
chiefs to trust them T' t0 ,° ! n ? n -’ " ars against the Ashanti
been too long established * 1 T a ^" Hn ' stral ion and the British had
•0 0U Colon . v f » dlcrc be any need

until Sir Gordon Gnocisbcn. !k; Sttm . dld 1101 bc b'iii lo bo applied
Coast in 1915. Like Lord T ^ | S a PP 0,IUc< I Governor of the Gold
was not a Civil Servant w,10rn ile modelled himself, he

career as a Government a , s °ldier who had made a successful
‘political officer’ as the C ? n ®! nccr without having ever been a
the Colonial administrators were then called.

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

The son of Swiss Jewish immigrants to Canada, he managed to
obtain a commission in the Royal Engineers and to be seconded to
the Gold Coast Public Works Department. Transferred from there
to Nigeria he worked for Lugard as his Director of Public Works
and acquired a belief in the principles of Indirect Rule. He had
married Decima Moore, a famous actress in Victorian times and a
member of the original Gilbert and Sullivan cast. Her circle of
friends included Lord Curzon and Lord Milner. Guggisberg had
distinguished himself in the field in the first world war and had
become a Brigadier. He met and somehow convinced these two
staid figures of the Establishment of the practicability of his plans
for African development. Milner was then Colonial Secretary and
appointed him Governor of the Gold Coast.

He proved himself to be the greatest of all of them. He was the
first of the Gold Coast Colonial rulers clearly to see that given
communications, education and health services the Colony could
become one of the most prosperous of British territories in Africa.
To his initiative was due the first real road system. He pressed ahead
with railway construction and built Takoradi harbour, the first deep
sea port in the Colony. He understood the importance of an edu-
cational system geared to the needs of the country. Achimota
School, near Accra, which he founded and where afterwards Kwame
Nkrumah trained as a teacher, had a curriculum which included the
study of African languages and customs. Its first Vice-Pri nc j pa j was
Dr Aggrey, a leading Cape Coast intellectual whose father had been
one of the imprisoned Cabinet Ministers of the Confederation He
started a state hospital system. Indeed the subsequent develonment
of the country under Dr Nkrumah s Governments adopted manv
projects of Guggisberg, which his orthodox successors had aban-
doned. Thus, in no sense, was he a traditional colonialist. He was
anti-racial and he not only believed in the Africanization of the Civil
Service but worked out a detailed plan to achieve it which T
followed up by his successors would have provided independent
Ghana with all the African technical and administrative personnel it
needed. It was only when it »=CZtWs

limitations were apparent. He P , q te Uncriti ca Il v the
doctrines of Lugard and, with his grea a 1 les, set ab 0ut t j^ eV e
them without sufficiendy realizing that the chief i n the
was very different from the chief m Nigeria. Cold Co

86 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

In the first place in the Gold Coast there was no uniformity of
chiefly practice and nowhere had chiefs been absolute rulers as they
had been in Northern Nigeria. Even those of the Northern Terri-
tories who superficially resembled the Fulani rulers were, in essence,
different. Only a few were Moslem and none came from a dominant
race, as did the Fulanis. Among the Ewes of the former German
o ony of Togo and of the Eastern part of the old Colony, chiefs
were very often no more than heads of an extended family and the
population of their individual states could be counted in hundreds
rather than thousands. Among the Gas, while theoretically the Ga
Manche exercised supremacy in Accra, his power was essentially

rC ? nd been eroded in the centuries of British, Danish
and Dutch rule.

The Akans, who included the Fantis of the coast and the Ashantis
o t le interior, had by far the most developed chiefly system broadly
,,°f P°P u ^ ar consu ltation. The chief himself was elected to the
j ro ™ a Wlde circle of ‘royals’ and could be, and often was,
n ° SC l° r i e ' St l °° led his policies were unsuccessful or if he did
mnrlp H, lee e°i e t1 Y lew ? his Council. His official statements were
coulrl J 1UBuist ’’ ? hold of embryo Prime Minister, who
was nmrr a ? < i i OI IY movcd what he proposed in the chief’s name
were hn e ^ a ° *e sub-chiefs who composed the chief’s Council
who in tw, COnSU ! t their own Councils of lesser chiefs
called ‘vnmX Um ’,T SUlted " hh their Councils of elders. The so-
had their nl-f men l’ •* 3t IS to say t h° se who were not ‘elders’, even
companies ami th th Jf. " ization - They were combined in ‘Asafo’
it is uue even in Y chlef had to take their views into account. While
people particin-n democrat ic phase only a minority of the

ago political nmv ^ an chl ? fly government, a hundred years
among the British m ° re dlspersed among them than it was
the ? that date ’ even into account

Reform Bill of 1867 ranc 6 lse secured in England by the second

democratic P orSzatL^ U Arth S SyStCm - destroyed this P rimi “Y. e

from the intellectuals The Same tlme 11 divorced the chiefs
who could take over "the „ ° Pportunit y °f creating an African elite

Colonies, was for ever lost k did . Iater in the Fren . ch

more foresight w,. „ ' 1 ne oritish administration could, with

° ’ a ' econstr u cted in the Gold Coast the model neo-

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

8 ?

colonialist state. A form of government in which Britain ultimately
controlled foreign affairs and defence and then kept, in practice,
the management of banking and economic policy, would have suited
the Aborigines Rights Protection Society. Their aim was never for
anything more than the type of Home Rule that Parnell had deman-
ded for Ireland and which Gladstone had been prepared to grant. It
was Joseph Chamberlain who played a leading part in preventing
the creation of Gladstone’s neo-colonial Ireland. It was he who
began the policy of eroding the influence of the African intellectual.
It is not a coincidence. Chamberlain believed, perhaps right y, t at
there was no halfway house. Resigning over the Irish Home Rule
Bifl, he had written in 1886, ‘It is certain any scheme of the kind
attributed to Mr Gladstone will lead in the long run to the absolute
national independence of Ireland.’ When he became Secretary of
State for the Colonies eight years later, he set his face against a class
of Africans who talked even in terms of limited self rule.

In Northern Nigeria the conquered Emirs still remained a power
with which to reckon and without a considerable addition to his
military forces, Lugard would not have been able to have ruled
except through them. On the other hand, as a consequence 0 t e
Ashanti wars and the banishment of the ruling families of Ashanti,
it would have been possible for the British administration to govern
through an African elite in Ashanti as well as on e coast. r | can
intellectuals like Ferguson and H. Yroom, the senior of the African
civil servants at the time, could have administered the North and
indeed had proved their capacity to do so by the treaties and
arrangements which they had concluded wi its ru ers.^ n ir ^
Rule— governing through the illiterate chief— was the inevitable

corollary of ‘distrusting the educated native .

The problem of Guggisberg and his successors was that unlike
Nigeria, there were few outstanding chiefs and they therefore had
in a fashion, to be invented. Indeed only one such chief came easdy
to hand. In the rural area behind Accra were a S r0U P ? f ,
chiefly domains. The largest of these, Akim Abuakna with then a
population of around 100,000 was ruled by an educated and
ambitious man, Nana Ofori Atta I. He and Guggisberg entered into
an informal partnership against the intellectuals which was con-
tinued by his successors. A Governor who followed him recruited
another chief from a small and insignificant state, who had o

88 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

been a junior civil servant. These two, knighted, feted and decor-
ated, Nana Sir Ofori Atta I and Nana Sir Tsibu Darku IX, had
become, by the time of the second World War, die managers for the
colonial administration of the African apparatus of government, at
least within the old Colony.

For Ashanti somediing different was required and Guggisberg
egan the process by bringing back, after a quarter of a century of
exile Kwaku Dua III, the last of its independent Kings, and
installing him as Prempeh I, the ruler of its capital, Kumasi. His
successors continued the process and the office of Asantehene was
re-established with Prempeh’s successor, another knight, Otumfuo
r A Sy em an Prempeh II, at its head. The Ashanu Confederation
was revive and with it, the old antagonisms of the Brongs who,

n! <1° pre-B ” tlsh days, had been included in it by force. In
ac n irect ule in the Gold Coast was crippled from the start
‘ ln ’ ler contradictions and doomed to failure. Yet only
les^ 1SCrC ltC COasta ^ intellectuals saw this and they were power-

e X N,S 4 ? Ugh Tho , maS) then Chief Secretary for Native Affairs,
<Experience ^ other parts of the Empire
be carrierl m Te SS are -necessary for salvation if indirect rule is to

punish mnet k 6 trat lt: ional power of the chief to control and
necessarv fun/ prcserve ] < ^ an d Bie native authority must have the
entrusted to S / ltS d ls POsal.’ But such powers could not be
assum/L ril CtCd “ ^ Government was forced to
they were to bp i/* 1 pr , actlce t0 appoint and dismiss the chiefs if
‘De-stoolimr’ o/ ° WC 1 ° ^ xerc * se these powers over their subjects.
reconcUed with h “T 1 ° f \ chief * his Ejects «uld hardly be
vain that Georce ij/ mg ^ j be a S ent °f the Government. It was in
heard i SiST Bu ™ in 1944 what I had
the chiefs but in ffirneol n / d i! n I935 ' ‘Sovereignty is not in
sovereignty from o'm^ ■ 9 an d the people have exercised tliat
deposing chiefs accord lmmem °rial in electing, installing and
said of Governor BuriW t0 natlV ^ Iaw and custom. If this Bill,’ he
powers of the chiefs Sc pr0p ° S3bi P° r further strengthening the

that sovereignty of the neon? Sed ’ that inherent ri S ht , that power,

made no impression Rv P 6 t0 th . e Governor.’ His argument
to believe that the ib/ n ° W Colonial administration had come
the absolute chief, whom they had invented as a

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

convenient political fiction twenty-five years before, really existed.
To give one example:

In 1945 a delegation of cocoa farmers which included some
individuals who were later to be prominent in forming the Con-
vention People’s Party came to London to protest against the cocoa
price which was then £23 a ton. They argued that this bore no
relation to what was the potential world price. The delegation
members, Arthur Creech Jones told the House of Commons, had
been deceived by an American cocoa broker who had made certain
lavish promises about the price levels and what could happen if the
controls were to be removed’. When in fact the controls were
removed the price rocketed and by 1954 had touched £562 ior. a ton.
But Creech Jones did not base the reasons for the Colonial Office
refusal to receive the delegation on any economic argument as to
what might be the right price for cocoa. It was sufficient for him
that ‘the delegation had been gravely discredited by a clash which
they had had with chiefs on the Joint Provincial Council of Lhiels
... The chiefs in the Gold Coast refused to give them the authority
which they sought.’ They were turned down, like the Aborigines
Rights Protection Society ten years before, simply ecause t ey 1
not possess the chiefs’ approval. But the approva o t . e c e s was
given or withheld as a result of pressure by the Colonial authorities
on the spot. The Labour Government of the day had, no more than
its predecessors, any means of knowing what was opmion on e
Gold Coast. . . , a r ■ • u a

The Government’s system of determining die African view had
degenerated into a system of consulting itself without xejhangit
and Indirect Rule had become a circle of self deception The chiefs
believed what they said because the Colonial administration had
told them to say it and therefore it must be true. The Coloma
administration believed what the chiefs said because it was a cardinal
principle of Indirect Rule to accept that the chiefs were always right
The British Government believed what was said because both
chiefs and the Colonial administration each said the same thing.
Even in the conditions before the second world war such a jstem
could not have long endured. It was hopelessly inadequate for
dealing with the economic position which arose out of that war.

The Gold Coast economy depended upon one cash crop m
world demand, cocoa. During the war, when Britain was starved of

9° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

hard currency, the idea was conceived of purchasing cocoa for
sterling at a low controlled price and selling it for dollars at as high
a price as it would reach. This was done through a Gold Coast
overnment Board, controlled by the Colonial authorities, who
an e the profits with Britain under an ill-defined obligation to
repay at least part of these at some future date. After the war there

" "a a IT’ r c egarded as ‘socialist’, by which cocoa was both bought
and sold at fixed prices below its real market value. Yet while the
price at \\ nch the principal Gold Coast export product was bought
v as strict y controlled, no similar restrictions were put on the price
imports piece of cotton print which had sold before the war for
, JL' e S V mSS C0St n ' net > r shillings by 1945. In addition, absolute
0 ,™P or A ^ ^ ed t0 black marketeering. In terms of purchasing
C - , AfnCan pound was weI1 below its pre-war value but
did nothin^ overnmen t, assured by the chiefs that all was well,

The nr!!* 1 / Sltuat ‘ 0n new' political forces were bound to emerge,
the nlare 1 ”,? ng * nadng a new r political organization to take

K prolr e S c tlUexisdng . but almost moribund, Aborigines
otScs h a d Tl So ? et >’ " s a timb " from Arim whose

WGmm oS ,hose ° f “>»»■ George A. Gran, or

African business mm 'a 1 '"°"'"’ VP'ral of that class of
of the (Treat mm • °- r ! ad b ecn squeezed out by the competition
Indirect Rule an , pan , Ies ' Twenty years before he had supported
had organis'd a b„™ ?l A1 T

allowed himself to he n • ^ ^ ecUons m protest against it he had
tivc of Sekondi m 1 • ominated by the Governor as the representa-
despite the fact that th^rm'r t0Wn t b en being built at Takoradi,
did not live there and C lieP P ro£es tcd to the Governor, that Grant
were very different and ^i.? thc area knew him. But now things
misfortunes Hie t, n 1C b' ame d on the chiefs his subsequent
summed up in L S”*” pol , itical Philosophy can be best
mission: CVldcnce " hich he gave to the Watson Com-

* Wc ^

the import of goods a r ' g bt, we were not getting thc licences for
Protection Society vhn " 1 ° nC t .' me " c h at l the Aborigines Rights
the> were pushed'out and' tal ‘ lng C3re of th c country. Later on,
out and there was the Provincial Council of Chiefs.’

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 9 1

According to ‘Pa’ Grant this was the source of all the trouble.

‘The chiefs go to the Council and approve loans without submitting
them to the merchants and tradesmen in the country. There y

keep on losing.’

He wanted therefore an organization which would maintain the
Colonial relationship but substitute the African mere ant an
professional man for the chief as the Governor’s partner m rule. P or
this reason he took the lead in setting up the Unite o oas
Convention of which he became the President.

Those who associated with him in this scheme were r ^ n ^ IS
Awooner-Williams, the lawyer advocate of the restoration of the
mythical age of the African merchant prince, R. S. ay, a awyer
friend of Awooner-Williams with only slightly ess reactionary
views and Dr J. B. Danquah who was by far the most experienced
politician in the group and one of the most interesting an C0 ™P _
of West African politicians. I was to get to know him well. Wh
after independence, Dr Nkrumah appointed a group o
personalities to found the Ghana Academy o c TTrfp . .
were among them. To him conspiracy was the breath of life and he

had an eighteenth-century disregard of the staid .
proprieties of a later age. The Watson Commtsston disused hun
as an opportunist. Admitting he was the creator and the drtv g
force of organized political opposition until the arrival of Dr
Nkrumah, they went on to say:

*P. r Danquah ndgh, be

r -1 J W foe flip accident of birth might have been a most
Coimcd and bu intelligence but suffers from a

notable chief. He is a man of very F ^ ^ ^ and recognized
disease not unknown to politicians , S
by the generic name of expediency.

rp, . , • , r : There was much more to Dr Danquah

The judgement is unfair. ihe ofNana sir 0 f or i Atta I and

than this. It is true he wa gateway but he was a genuine

entered pubhchfe through th TS J Like John Mensah

intellectual of the Ab °, r | g '" instituti o n s an d on African Law and

cti it - he who popuIarized

9 2 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

the idea that the people of the Gold Coast were an offshoot of the
great Southern Sudan Kingdom of Ghana which flourished in early
medieval times and it was he who first proposed that when the Gold
Coast became independent it should take the name of this ancient
state.

No subject of public concern was outside his province. Later
when he was to be detained in prison by Dr Nkrumah’s Govern-
ment he still continued a vigorous and outspoken correspondence
Wi e President s office in furtherance of his campaign against a
regu at ion that taxi-cabs should have yellow mudguards. In so far
as re a ered to any fixed beliefs on colonialism and nationalism
ey were those expounded by Edmund Burke, not as regards the
American colonies but as regards India. Like Burke he believed that
ancient institutions restored in their proper shape and redesigned to
sui new wor d conditions would be the engine by which those
ncans estined by nature to rule could reassert their position. He
^ f G p C ore OHginally supported the chiefs against the Aborigines
Ynntti r ™ ectl0n Soctety and in 1930 reorganized the Gold Coast
the drip ercnce as . a bod y designed to enlist young intellectuals on
Borne’ rv, , C tr . a d ltl0 ’ la l rulers. He enthusiastically welcomed the
an Afrinn" S Uut l 0n . 0 ^ z 94 b which provided, for the first time, for
of increneln^^i 0111 ^ m tke . Legislative Council but only on the basis
over thnen rfn proportlon oP members nominated by the chiefs
the chieflv e , ecte d- So closely did he then seem allied to

appointed hv ? v ° ne ° f Ae *"> ^-chiefly members

his close faiily ties^vith the^f C ,° UnciL Possibl y because of

ritual murder rd i 1 ™ e ® Porz ^ tta S and his concern over the

intellectual motives^threTin' h^ bly > I , think ’ for more
and business men from the old fl 0t 3 Sr ° Up ° f Pf of “ s ‘ ona l
the chiefs to nlnv . Colony who repudiated the right of

c™, td 0 , P polite. 'The chiefs’, declared Ta'

Imperial power, neithc/ coTn" a ”*”“ ous collaborators with the
swim with the’nennle uld make up their minds whether to

Danquah’s tragedy that he ™ Im P e f iali ^m.’ It was Dr

either. u d not make up his mind on this issue

one thing he saw '\ 3S °/ tCn conPuse d and vacillating but

of the slump iTtSt? ,h “ * B - As a result

' imcr-wa, years and the rationalization of business

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 93

under war time government control, the six great Companies (in
eluding the Commonwealth Trust of which I have written ear ier)
had come to dominate the commercial life of the Colony. oug
their organization, the Association of West African A ere an ^, ey
not only fixed prices but controlled the allocation of imports. o
sale and retail trade was now in the hands of an expatriate oigopo y
and there was no longer a place for African merchants o e c
from which he came. He realized that this situation cou n ^ v< !
come about but for the political ineptitude of the c le s an
that their views were in practice dictated by the co onia au
He wanted to remove them from the Government entire y an _ m
consequence on the 20th September 1947 at the rst ° . ,
executive, or ‘Working Committee’ as it was ca e , 0
Gold Coast Convention, the organization reso ve

‘That the Convention is of the opinion that the contact of chiefs jnd
government is unconstitutional, and that in consequence their pos
tion on the Legislative Council is anomalous.

Dr Danquah certainly, and, possibly, at least two other me

the Working Committee with Ofori Am eonnecnons Eno Atato

Addo, the old chiefs mSr - 5

could never accept such a policy, i n y . • r t dmv

Gran, to defeat governor Burns adM >n ««« ' ££*
wanted to do it in alhance with the chiefs. y rem0V al

balance those in the UGCC whose prmcip ec0 ,. r tbe or g a niza-

of the chief from politics they needed a new policy for the orgamza

tion, and allies from the outside to bac 1,; - ,r

The Convention in its constitution pledged itself

‘To ensure that by all ^^^^toXTatSof the people and
and control of government should pass uuu

their chiefs in the shortest possible time. .

If this particular aim could t L chiefs since the

then there could be no 9 u ? stl h f independence if this was
chief was an essential ally m ^ but in order to

to be achieved ‘within the s> P object its membership

force the UGCC to make “ w J e p rin cipal_ concern

had to be broadened by attrac » h called in Dr Nkrumah
was ‘self government now . L*

94 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

becau se he believed that through nationalism he could save the
tti 'Virrr 1 Nkrumah accepted because he believed he could use
, e G not onl y t0 secure self government for the Gold Coast
pUt t0 carry out the dream of Samuel Wood, my Aborigines Rights
Protection Society friend of 1935 and of many other African
ea ers o t e inter-war years, and secure the union and indepen-
dence 01 the then colonial territories of all of British and French
West Africa.

The alliance between J. B. Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah which
A C P n y a ew months, from Dr Nkrumah’s return to the Gold
fn tri r m ..® ce f n ^“ t 947 to the riots of 1948, largely determined
rpp P ,° 1 . Uca I adiances - The policy issues which divided the
in nln n c u and die subsequent various parties formed

thl“° f ? U(aCC > hemmed from the fact that Dr Danquah,
intellectual lv!,i h * shot ' gun wedding between chief and

snatched V 1 Kl t le wea P on which he had held to their heads,
unhannv * * ^ Neverthele ss thereafter the parties to this

which neifhp 1 ™^ j Und t ^ lemse ^ ves bound together in a union
political death Y d ® sl ^ ed but which could only be ended by the
the Ghana ? ° nC ° D them ' A11 the subsequent opposition parties,
Nati onal Liherr S L Party which ^ht the 1954 election, the

United Party wS^foSIT^ 1 ?? 1 f ° Ught that ° f I95<3, ^ ^
were never nnhV 11 .°™ ed t le Opposition after Independence

with the intellect i yV1 ! b C beC3USe the y tried t0 reconcile the chiefs

At the timi u prof b ss ‘°nal classes.

Danquah and'his'^ 61 ’ ^" wame Nkrumah must have seemed to Dr
In Gdd Coai^dT 0 ^ b the UGCC what they wanted,
who had come from WaS n ° b a ndicap to be a self-made man

quah’s poSt of vkw family and k was > from Dr Dan '

from a chiefly famil V* tkat k>r Nkrumah also was descended
biography had twJ and ’ as he ^ter pointed out in his auto-
stools of two small fi * ngbt t0 cons idered for election to the
Gold Coast whTchetra 7 the ext ™ South-west of the

Samuel Wood and man Axim >. t be home town of ‘Pa’ Grant,
men. Above all Dr Nt ^ 0t ^, er 0 d 'V m e merchants and professional
and a scholar with at least ° r Danc l uah > an intellectual

growing reputation He V, a Atro ~ Am erican academic circles, a
University the arguments nf A aupported successfully at Howard

African cultural survivals in the New

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

World, then being advanced by M. J. Herzkovits a non- egro
anthropologist, against the conventional views champione at
Howard by its leading Negro sociologist, Professor Fraser, an e
had been voted in 1945 by the student body of Lincoln University,
where he lectured on Negro history, ‘the most outstanding pro-
fessor of the year’. . .

He had come to England in 1945 and was nominally stu ymg aw.
He was in fact almost entirely engaged in African as oppose to
Gold Coast politics. Indeed he first became politically known as one
of the organizing secretaries of the Pan African Congress e m
Manchester in 1945. This Conference, it is significant to note, even
when the trend in the British Labour Party was stall or cose
co-operation with the Soviet Union, adopted a firm po 1C > ° I \ on
alignment. Dr Nkrumah, like many other f utu te rican ea “
then in London, was influenced by the writings of eorge a ^ m ,
an Afro-American from the West Indies who, m < ^ I 93 ° s -
been a prominent Communist but had broken wi t e arty,
the time of the Congress and for many years to come he was str g I y
anti-Communist. His views were reflected at 1 anc es e .
subsequently wrote of the Conference :

‘After hearing reports on conditions in the Colonies the Conference
rejected both capitalist and communist solutions to t e rl
lem. The delegates endorsed the doctrines of Pan-Afncan SoaaUm
based upon Gandhian tactics of non-violent non-coopemuon The
Conference also endorsed the principles enunciated m the Umvers 1
Declaration of Human Rights and advised Africans and peopL of
African descent to organize themselves into political ^ parues
unions, co-operative societies, farmers associations in support of their
struggle for political freedom and economic betterment.

B„ t for African

thcy could fight ,hcir

battles divorced from ‘raid war issues^ ^ importancc t0 them
Communist analysis vas n conncction with an ti-

particularly when those nQtc that the nv0 British
colonial agitation and « for praisc in Dr Nkrumah’s

Communist theoreticians sm^ d and P Emilc Burns. Both had

autobiography are Rajam raim

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

backgrounds of Colonial experience. Mr Palme Dutt, though born
^ri v U ? at . e ^ * n England, came from a distinguished Indian family
an is atherUpendra Krishna Dutt had, as his son has recorded,
aiij, it im the beginnings of political understanding — to love the
n tan people and all peoples struggling for freedom’. Mr Emile

flu S n , r been James Burns, a progressive Colonial Treasurer

ot the Brmsh West Indian Presidency of St Christopher and Nevis,

• ' S t r0t j Cr ^,' r ^ an Burns > wa s during the period Dr Nkrumah
was in London the Governor of the Gold Coast.

T I95 J Ur Nkrumah was to invite both brothers to Ghana for the
resemiT cncL ' C(de brations. Not realizing how close was their facial
sullv t anCC l WaS P uzz Ld to hear one British civil servant say
v n ° m aS EmiIe Burns walked past, ‘Don’t you think
ment Hn 5 W °h d been better if he had been sitting in Govern-

which it was asked St it'T rS ? ' DeS ? ke the . : misapprehension under
answered ’ s a question which still remains to be

CommunUr f SUSplcI0n ofDr Nkrumah’s part in some world-wide
^ frica > held by the Gold Coast

from his assorinri by . tbe Colonial Office at the time, did not arise
having been the* 011 l lC Iate Gove mor’s brother but from his

° fficer of the West African National
ideas canvassed in rhe essentla d) r . merely a revival of the old

as Joseph Casclv Hnvf T"^ y c ears by SUch GoId Coast P oliticians
staicesof posS 5-- and Samuel Wood, but in the circum-

munist’, not because^ tlmidl ? C U T- * WaS rcgarded as <com '
it attacked a supposedly su PP orters > hut becausc

Stability, the disnn;,, !r Ar d mental instrument of European
degree of African unin • nC3 ' *^ ttem P ts even to achieve a limited
Soviet Union as a mn^ assume d to have been inspired by the
bne of reasoning stands^ e power politics of the ‘cold war’. .This
Report. Dr Nkrumah they sa’d ‘ n tbe Watson Commission

have become imbufd'wiU, t0 bave lla d Communist affiliations and to
expediency has blurred It ^ ™ mun ‘ st ideology which only political
the West African Nath 'l c,° ndon j le ' vas identified particularly with
jects the union of all U' 02 , , C . rctadat , a body which had for its ob-
West Afncan Colonies and which still exists. It

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

appears to be the precursor of a Union of West African Soviet Socialist
Republics.’

It is only necessary to examine the personalities concerned with
the movement in question to appreciate the absurdity of the final
deduction. The premises of the Secretariat were in the London
offices of Koi Larbi, a typical conservative Ghanaian lawyer who
was later to appear on behalf of the opposition in a number of
important political trials and the three other Ghanaians concerned
were of equally uncommunistic type. Awooner Renner was a
believer in Islamic, rather than African unity, and was later to be
a founder of the Moslem Association Party and was to oppose the
CPP on a tribal and religious basis. Ashie Nikoe, after a short
period in the leadership of the CPP threw in his lot with the Ga
Shifimo Kpee, a tribal organization. Kojo Botsio, though he
remained throughout with the CPP was, of all those in its leader-
ship, the one who most closely followed the teachings of the British
Fabian Society and the conceptions of the British Labour Party.

The French side represented a similar political spectrum. The
African Deputies in the French Parliament who supported it an
were, by implication, charged by the Watson Commission with the
intention of setting up a Soviet regime in West Africa were Leopold
Senghor, Lamine Gueye, Sourou Apithy and Houphouet-Boigny.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, now President of the Republic of
Senegal, was already known by the time of the a ^°t* ? m ™ s ^
for his careful middle-of-the-road attitude. a o ic
predominantly Moslem country he had spent mos o
France and was at the time of the Commission s sitting, still
officially a member of the French Socialist Party ^ ™

soon to break away from it to form anindependentSenegaleseparty,
having refused i/1946 to join Houphouet-Boi^^

ayor of Dakar, stoo vearshad seized as a colonial official and

lawyer who an the m ^French Parliament owing ,0 hit
y 1951 was to los p renc h politics. Sourou-Migan Apithy,

over-close associa ion sma ll state of Dahomey, which lies

W ’xZ'an dSA - — ° f ‘ h n

other Two fn that he was prepared at first ,0 cooperate w,th

9 S kkaj'ihj uim;i.wiNi>

Houphouet-Hoigny’s RDA but he too, shortly after the Watson

Keport was issued, lull broken away. Felix Hiiupltmicl-Ikiign),

10 *!• ,^ su!c !" ul 'I 11 ' ^"ty Oust, Ghana's immediate neighbour

to t ie cst, m lyqS might has e been described as someone with

Uinniunist leanings in that up until October 1950 his party, the

, n . 13inUu ^' d a » alliance with the French Gunmunisi i'artv,

Utougn m 1951 1 louphouct-lloigny was to declare, 'We arc not and

we neser ia\e been Gumminist.s . . . first because Guwmmism is

{ • , U i. pu 0 lbc and .secondly, because the class struggle

■ C * , lv ? at 1 lc . Ui ‘ s of Oinimunism has no basis in our classless

nm G V ' . ‘ r i* S "t hc - s ’ lil1 at ‘ h «' »«»«, ‘c« make Africa the

Hi-fnr .‘Y'!' *■ | 3IU l , le lnosl b >yal territory in the h’rcnch Union’.

F nnr. lc mH '05° s he had come to believe that his place v.as in

COM ni” m ’I* 1 1C J ' St *"■ - su PI K ' r *cd the maintenance of the Colonial

of,],., i,- Y I o Uas a ,nci »bcr of almost all the later governments

hundi?, f epU >I,C a,Hl "* ls in «he Cibinct of Guv Mullet which
launched the Sue/, invasion.

anticirmlYY" . < '' <J,niULVSU ’ n can not, of course, be blamed for not
supported di U \V Ull ! r 5 : .‘ Jcc * arat ' uns of policy bv tliose who then

N:Ui0na! but c\cn on the

it should it 1 VY C ,n , JU,,C "* len l * lcv " r(,[ e their Report,
unity 0 was'insmh T bwn ^ ,hat "««cn«nl for African
Which « ^ 3 .W ^f diverse political forces all of
to outside political' Y " Uim •^ r ' ca itself and that it owed little
TKa£??l;‘ fl “ , ? Ce * at lcast d* Soviet bloc.
Nkrunuh’s decision 'toYem " JS ’ l ! H "^ vcr * t0 t,lis dc b' rcc ri t ,|lt - Dr
interest in African unitv 7i' !° *. * C Gu,d G,ast arose out . of ,us
prospects of ‘IV r a . t t lt 7 1 ,an from hi.s concern with the
Original view V'”^ G ° Id G ’ a “ Convention. His

quite useless for him tS Yssoci Y 'r auio . bio S ra phy, "as that it was
almost entirely ^ h, ™ icl ‘ " lll > ‘a movement bached

ants> . It was orSy after .TY’ ^ ^ alld n - ch “

National Secretariat rlnf i “ ,scu ^»ion with the West African

bc r 1947, he arrived in the Gold C h ‘ S "'"Y' S ° k " aS > in Dcccn, “
leadership of the Cnnv, ,• ° d Coast and took up his post. The

PotentiaYmembeYsWr;" ^ IT ^ b ut itS

Danquah, he set out to orcraniY. anU Ulese * " ith the licl P of Dr

The United Gold Coast fnm'

st Convention was by no means the only

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 99

organization that the economic and political situation of the day
brought into being. There were various ‘Youth’ organizations, not
necessarily composed of young men but ‘youths’ in the sense that
they were opposed to the traditional ‘elders’ and there was an Ex-
Servicemen’s Union, the militant organization of the returned
soldiers. However, it was a reversal of the traditional chiefly system
that occasioned the explosion which proved how easily the Colonial
structure could be blown apart.

Fate appeared in the person of a self-made businessman, Kwam-
ina Taylor. His father had come from Sierra Leone as a customs
officer and had married, if his son’s autobiography is to be believed,
‘Awula Minna, daughter of the late Governor and Aunt of the late
honourable barrister T. Hutton Mills of Temple House’. In the
social conditions of the time it was not impossible. His son Kwamina
obtained only the most elementary education but, as a steward boy
to European merchants, he somehow picked up the intricacies of
West African trading. He set up as a contractor and then boldly
adventured into Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan in the Import
and Export business. By the end of the second world war he was a
wealthy man living in a huge house, ‘Rolyat Castle’ — Taylor spelt
backwards — and he decided to enter the chiefly business. He
secured election to the Stool of the Alata quarter of Osu, the town
built around Christiansborg Castle and which had originally been
the Danish capital but now was merely a suburb of Accra. There
was some dispute in chiefly circles as to his right to the title of
‘Manche’ or Chief in the Ga reckoning, but Kwamina Taylor, by
a remarkable piece of genealogical research, found that he was
descended also from the dispersed Brong people whose capital
Bolo-Mansu, a hundred miles north of Kumasi, had been established
in a.d. 1295 an< I had been a great and literate cultural centre before
its destruction by the Ashantis in 1742. Mr Taylor secured appoint-
ment to one of its surviving Stools and thus began his career as a
chief twice over, once as Nii Kwabena Bonne III of Osu and again
as Nana Owusu Akenten III, Oyokohene of Techiman in Ashanti.
Since the Asantehene himself recognized the latter title, the Ga
Chiefs had to give way in regard to the lesser office. Nevertheless it
is as Nii Bonne that he is known to history.

No sooner was he enstooled than he began reorganizing the
chiefs. He saw, which they did not, that the traditional rulers must

100 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

come out dramatically on the popular side if they were to retain any
influence and he set to work to challenge the great trading com-
panies, the United Africa Company, the Swiss Union Trading Co-
pany an die other great oligopolists who were organized into the
Association of West African Merchants. An admirer of his, in a
memorandum to the Watson Commission, thus described his

terhnimip*

,. 11 onne stepped into the scene with his Anti-Inflation campaign
T 1C ,. e P ersona!1 y financed and waged to a successful conclusion,
US q C | 1CVln ^ tbe mass °f common people from economic distress
' V, 6 m6tbocl a d°pted by Nii Bonne was very simple . . , The
orn resistance of the firms did not deter him. He successfully
a PP ie our venerable Native Law and Custom which out-manoeuvred

1 tt C i atl ° 1 ^ English Law. Nii Bonne needed no special legis-
lation to do this.’

to use rbp C M f 1-1 0 r nnC dld was t0 turn Indirect Rule on its head and
had endmverWiT 6 " ltb wb ' cb the Colonial administration

take Dart in b' nc s \ t0 . prosecute and fine those who would not
to the Com v adm her Aus continued his explanation

average c ™r° n Y h ° W Nii Bonne addre ^ sed <the

four shilliruj 5 ^ WaX b ' ock P r ‘ nt ] sold by the whiteman at eighty r -
ple cot S rb Per , P ‘ eCe ^ S ° Id at the black ™rket for six pounds per
d ays if u- hlteman ab0Ut fort >' shillings landed here in these

tuning taking away your moneyTr nSin™' * ^ Whlteman ^

1 he people will renlv “v PQ , . . ,

- .he oath JZfZZZZZr?-? “ bUy ' If th ' ) '
Swear the oath of tli? Dm. i

forbidden words and rW 11116116 on them’— speak, that is, the
brought before the Chief 1 en ^ a ® ec ^ hi conversation must be
broken. Thanks to the rA t0 ex P^ a ^ n why the taboo had been
Power to imprison and^°fi 0nia vernment > the Chiefs’ Court had
Pnson and fine and the Administration’s carefully

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE IOI

created tribunals were thus legally equipped to punish the cus-
tomers who visited a British shop. Here indeed was the writing on
the wall. The chiefly leader was no longer the dignified illiterate of
the past. He had become the agent of a business man turned sub-
chief. What else could be expected ?

In a book written shortly afterwards Nii Bonne described how he
manipulated his chiefly superiors. First he ‘complied with the
constitutional process’, that is to say he worked through the Native
Authority which the British administration had installed for the
purpose of the Indirect Rule of Accra. Fortified by their support he
then secured the approval of the higher body, the Joint Provincial
Council of Chiefs, the so-called ‘natural rulers’ of the old Colony.
With this backing, on New Year’s Day 1948, he addressed an
inflammatory message to his fellow chiefs calling upon them ‘to
fight and die for the liberty and freedom of your country’.
‘Strangers,’ he said, ‘had come to the Gold Coast not for love of its
people but only to take away the riches of the country by all possible
means.’ Had such a statement been made by one of the leaders of
the popular parties the speaker would have been prosecuted for
sedition. But such was the fascination which chiefly office still held
for the Colonial administration that even statements such as this
from a sub-chief as unorthodox as Nii Bonne went unchecked.

The boycott, called for the 26th January 1948, worked well since
the chiefs had a legal machine at their disposal to enforce it. Once
however it started, neither Nii Bonne’s organization nor the chiefs
were capable of controlling it. They negotiated with the Govern-
ment and with the merchants. A reduction in prices was agreed on
and was to come into effect on the 28th February and the boycott
was to be called off. On the same day an unarmed deputation from
the Ex-Servicemen’s Union going to Christiansborg Castle, the
Governor’s official residence, to present a petition were fired on by
the police. A former army Sergeant was killed and other demon-
strators wounded. The price decrease was not operated or super-
vised efficiently and the crowds of shoppers who had anticipated a
much larger reduction, exasperated by the news of the shooting,
took first to looting and then to the burning of the shops of the
European companies and the Syrian merchants.

No doubt Nii Bonne and the chiefs were genuinely horrified at
what had happened but they were powerless to stop what they had

102

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

started. The rioting spread to other towns and the Colony was in
e ands of the mob ; £2 million worth of property was destroyed
3I ! 'fF HUed. A State of Emergency was declared and Sir
an urns successor, Governor Sir Gerald Creasey, announced in
a roa cast that a Communist conspiracy had occurred but that the
Government had arrested the leading Communists.

, T? e c mt . e Coast Convention had little connection with

Irn m ? en ’ S Union or with Anti-Inflation Committee
u r e - ^ ttle dl<1 ^ anticipate riots that at the time at which
ej ro e out Dr Danquah and Dr Nkrumah were at a meeting in
P-r 3 ,?™ some sixt y ^les from Accra. It is the measure of
rtnf i] aC ()1 1111 ^standing of African political development

v .• C , ° in !!’ U , n !p s a f rest ed by the Governor were the Con-
William 5 a f^ a ’ P 1 ] J - danquah, Eric Akufo Addo,

Nkr 1 ? n , tta ’ Ab ° Adjei, Obetsebi Lamptey and Kwame
names \ t C ° me ol tlle i r arrest die only two of the six whose

Danouah a C n ? L™ the Gold Coast were probably Dr J. B.

conspicuous , " ame , Nkrumah but the odier four were to play
Obetsebi To 1 Vane partS * n Ghana’s subsequent histor) r .
a Ga arisrnrrar-PI^K ''P self-made man though he had the air of
the outskirts of A° "“u lghts wh ose house were a landmark on
provincial and r -jTi™’- ^ Was a P rom i n ent lawyer but essentially
d noun?J ’ al T m ° Utl00k - A later he was publicly to

oSA°L N tTlT a — from *>

meeting in the' r 9 a ’, bad no n ght even to address a public

Ale “"t" °i Acm - T » P I0ve ^ Point” with

three vears later t u mon S ^ SLX as his running mate, he was
,0 i. Dr **"»”»<■ »t the polls in Accra,

Aon, Sis , *4S d L b :,“" >»' the W, obtaining only
Nkrumah’s 20 780! Bur ,1„ , t ? ra ' c , ; '^ 3 ° votes against Kwame
decisively defeated bv .t. a " ' ^ ls m bs!is(ic appeal was thus to be
was to spend the rest of his ]; r na ° Cratlc P rocess > Obetsebi Lamptey
He was to join three orW t ? ng t0 pr0mote k other mcanS ’
Akufo Addo and William AforiAtta to T* ^ ^ Da ? q - Uah ’ EnC

sition party to the CPP rt, <rv, cta t0 torn t a new coalition oppo-
Busia as its leader but Con S ress Part y’ with Dr K. A.

Ga tribal association whirl, t, ° Spllt Wltb 1116111 a l so and to form a
based Party the Natinnni t u!. aS t0 mer S e l ater tilth an Ashanti-
tNattonal Liberation Movement and again, a

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE I0 3

year later, he was to become with Dr Danquah a member of the
executive of the United Party in which all opposition groups were
to be combined. In 1961 he was to go to Lome to organize the
violent overthrow of the Republic, was to return to Ghana clandes-
tinely, already wasted from the cancer from which he was to die. He
was to be arrested, released as being too ill to be jailed and later,
when conclusive evidence brought to light his involvement in
terrorist activities, again to be detained and to die in a prison
hospital. His undoubted part in conspiracy was, from 1962 onwards,
to involve, in one way or another, three of the Big Six , Dr Dan-
quah, Ako Adjei and William Afori Atta and his career as a con-
spirator was, by the suspicion it cast on others, to have a crucial

effect on Ghanaian politics. . .

Ako Adjei, though Ga, was nevertheless of very different ongms
and character to Obetsebi Lamptey, his running mate in the 1951
elections. He and Dr Nkrumah had been fellow students at Lincoln
University in the United States and afterwards at the London
School of Economics and he had been President of the West African
Students Union in Britain. In 1947 a thirty-one-year-old lawyer,
young by the Gold Coast standards of the time for qualification m
the profession, he was offered the paid secretaryship of the United
Gold Coast Convention but he had declined and it was he who had
suggested to Dr Danquah Kwame Nirumah’s name. Nevertheless
for a period he was to become most hostile to him and was to found
an opposition newspaper The African National Times, of which a
leading contributor was to be a young Ga civil servant and militant
opponent of the CPP, Tawia Adamafio by name. In his ‘Jotting’s by
the Wayside’ in another opposition journal for which he wrote and
made famous, The Daily Echo, Adamafio described the CPP as the
party of ‘fooling and thieving’ and called for the country ‘to be saved
from a one party evil, the evil of dictatorship . .

Yet by the time of the 1954 election Ako Adjei was, with his friend
Tawia Adamafio, to have changed sides, to have been elected in
Accra with the biggest majority in the country and to have become
immediately a CPP Minister while The African National Times, like
The Daily Echo, were to have disappeared through lack of support.
Thereafter until he was to be arrested for treason m 1962 he was to
remain in the Cabinet, for long serving as Foreign Minister. He was
not to owe his position to his talents. His most notable quality, it

104 REAP THK WHllU.WINO

•ilwajs seemed to me, was iiis ability to concentrate upon the
unessential to the exclusion of everythin- else. He was to hold his
post ion iccause he belonged to a class under-represented in the
, ,' c tra ' c ed intellectual. It was to be his destiny to be
f. riled as a link and a magnet to bind and pull to the CPP that

fvniKw 1011 . 3 - midd!c ' cl:lss dement Which it lacked. His very
. 5 ! 1 *, . 0r 1 us purpose was tu involve him in a web of suspicion,

mn.il? 1,ls . ass « c «t ,un with .Obetsebi I.ampley in the past and his
AdannfirH' 11 S 11P , "“!* b ‘ s * c *low -Minister and convert, Tawia
acain tn l C " JS U> tncd Por trcaM,n i to be acquitted, to be tried
and to dcalh ’ 10 bc reprieved by Dr Nkrumah

and to fid ’ CaiC i rUn - 1 P rison b y the National Liberation Gnincil
Eric Mu O A ?? CUn l aS a magistrate in Cape Gust,

iudees who • t 0 " ,IS Pourtc en years later to be one of the three
ing his icauitil i\ 31 ^ ‘° Atl i c ‘’ s first trial and to join in support-
Aua I ifi ' n , ,arncd t() a daughter of Nana -Sir Olbri
Atta’s son Willi lUS I c ‘ at . cd 10 1)r Danquah and to Nana Sir Olbri
i At,J ’ ,hc ,asl ‘ )f l! ‘ c ^ He was certainly
able advocate in th Hi 'r* ainons lllcm and P«sJ»ibIv the most

and-NkS ' "ctS" ” "" ' i '“- 1 k '» - »

Elections It wis i ' i 1 t lC ‘ 95 1 * ‘954 and 19^6 General
S h ° USC that ’ in Dr E)anquah’s words,

Conv^nd? 1 o? t ?t th f C M°- U . nS Con ’ mittcc of the United Gold Coast
was burning and the im, "^r ° f d ' C a8th I?cbr uaiy i94 b "hen Accra
Ghana, sat together on 1 agcms had s P i,t ‘he blood of men of
‘hat day’s JSll, VC ? ndah ‘ ‘ P> 3 » to take advantage of

for the liberation of Ghana" th3t advan,a S c 3S 3 fulcrum or lever

of the Legislati\?AsscmWv'u-c ycars latcr > the opposition members
the debate on Independent . C £ ° , SU ^otber to plan to boycott
it. After Independence Akufn A t ° abstain from 1 voting in favour of
involvement in politics Ac '^1° " as . t0 "‘tbdraw from open
with the pre-indenendenr P3ft 3 P°h c y of healing the breach
Korsah, L Chief Justice, Sir Arku

as Attorney General and rh‘ rUlna 1 ‘hat he should succeed me
sidered. Instead he was tn t, 1S J? ro P osrd "’as to be seriously con-
Court of Last Resort 'the 9 ° fferCd a J ud Bcship in the Republic’s
t> the Supreme Court, which he was to accept.

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

I0 5

It was in this capacity that he was to take part in Ako Adjci’s trial
and pronounce a judgement condemning the activities of Obetscbi
Lamptey. He was subsequently to be removed from the Bench in
the purge of Judges which followed the amendment of the Constitu-
tion m 1964. After the coup he was to be appointed the new Chief
Justice by the military regime. This lawyer believed that his country
should be ruled by an elite controlled by lawyers and when after the
coup d’etat, he was appointed Chairman of a Commission to draw up
a new constitution he was roundly to declare, AVe do not subscribe
to the sovereignty of Parliament. We subscribe to the sovereignty
• of law. Yet he was to watch without protest the new regime to
which he was to lend his prestige and authority, dismiss judges
wholesale and transfer to courts-martial the trial of all '
charged with ‘subversion’, ‘treason’ or anv other „„iv ^ , 5 1V1 I3nS
William Ofori Atta was the antithesis of his b rX ? ,

Addo the careful and circumspect lawyer.
were the only members among the ‘Bix Six’ he 1 * j 3nc l ua h
UGCC ticket at the 1951 election and he, like Dr ^

also to be defeated in 1954 when elections were t, P i ] V ^

suffrage basis, but unlike Dr Danquah, he was a radi ^ a ° u C
would have supposed would have been far more W " om

one

»» uuiu uavL ~ more at . _

CPP. Indeed he was in terms of European politics °T C w- c
his brother, Kofi Asante Ofori Atta, the CPP Ministpr 1. j °*
Dr Danquah, uncle to them both, in the ig?, e j 0 defeated
autobiography Dr Nkrumah confesses that it was th IOnS *

William Ofori Atta on the Working Committee of the Tjpp SCnce .
was one of the factors which led him to accept the no t cc W ^' C ^
General. William Ofori Atta was to make his nal 7 mtary '
speaker and one of the ablest Members of the jq- S j e ^ttiest
Assembly. He was then to go to London to study if 1 ^ e ^ s ^ a d ve
return to Ghana, to resist all efforts to persuade h‘ 3nC ? Y ,as t0
CPP, to be detained for a period of time and i n 1 ? t0 i oin the
appointed after the military revolt in 1966, Chairm an e f en ^ t0
Marketing Board, the post previously held by that n -i, e C ° coz
establishment, Nana Sir Tsibu Darku IX. ar of chiefly

Such were Sir Gerald Creasy’s Communists and st
the Governor’s Communist theory was at first acc e n n ° e f° sa}
question by the Labour Ministers and the Colonial Ogj e< ^ without
question of the disturbances was raised in the Hon Se . C r'^ en

ot Common^?

io6

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Lord Ogmorc, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary, was convinced
that the riots had originated from a Communist plot. Willie Gal-
lagher, Communist Member for West Fife, had asked whether he
"° u . cons >_der sending ‘a deputation of responsible trade union
° eta s to investigate’. ‘We will not send such a deputation,’
rep ie tie Minister. ‘A full investigation will be carried out— a
lormal inquiry by the Government— and then the facts will come
to light and I will guarantee that when they come to light Mr Gal-
agieriM not like them.’ Indeed he appeared almost to be endorsing
e suppositions of Lord Wintcrton, by this time the sole survivor
m C 1C a ° USC tbosc Conservative Members who had been
re urnc as supporters of Joseph Chamberlain’s tariff reform and
? P ‘ r< ; development. ‘Arc we to understand,’ Earl Winterton had
6 ’ , at 'V len 3 kub . investigation has been made into the political
iscs, ie Minister will place a statement in the Library so that we

Th i rrl 0 t"(- " 1Ct - Cr ? r ” ot ' s duc to the Communist dupes of the

countrv V ^ rn ^ tl ° na i> including the Communist Party of this

commnnief 1 16 ^| nist< ^ r replied, ‘There was almost certainly

Libra rv wli lnc . ltem ? nt m this case. I will place a full statement in the

and was nl n '• ,^ len ultimately the full statement arrived

filled and if T m * C jl ^ rar 3’ Lord Ogmore’s guarantee was unful-

m ent who ZZ but the Colonial Office establish-

mem who did not like the findings.

after its Cb ai '' U i u ' r ^ Promised, known as the Watson Commission
memt fn’ * Z Andrew Aiken Watson, K.C., had two
Oxford collet t • C1 f 1 Alurra >’ as ke was then, Rector of my old

officer Ai r f the late Andrcw Dalgleish, an

General Workers tZ » ad been > of . the Transport and

liantly written anrl u ° T beir Report, detailed, compact, bril-

of colonialism not onEffi the gS outstandin S anaI >'f
cation, in the whole of BritS r °t C ,T but ’ by necessaiy im P h '
equated Commnnic Sb Colonial Africa. Its defect was that it

.o p.iS™ u sr “ ideob6i “ i » p° ia “ tot

munistic the attemDt hv Af • CommissI °ners considered as com-
ations modelled, not on thnlZZ Z Up P olitical P art y organiz-
but on the accented ™ e °f a European Communist party,
facing the issue ^ Th “ Britain ' Thus ^ey avoided

necessary. Thev if y ? aw cLarly a new social system W'as

y ney avoided, by their preoccupation with organizational

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 107

politics, any consideration of the philosophy by which it could be
achieved. Dr Nkrumah accepted the Marxist interpretation of
Colonialism. His pamphlet Towards Colonial Freedom written two
years before was evidence of it. On this basis they could have
argued that he was inspired by Communist ideology. Instead they
sought to prove it from documents and organizational instructions,
which, if anything, proved the opposite.

For example, their Report spoke of Dr Nkrumah’s ‘avowed aims
for a Union of West African Soviet Socialist Republics’ and to
substantiate this they printed, in an appendix, the constitution of a
propaganda organization called ‘The Circle’ though they admitted
‘there is no evidence it ever became a live body’. In the document
that they reprint the word ‘Soviet’ never occurs. Its inclusion in the
body of the Report is a physiological slip significant of their attitude
of mind. From this document it is clear that what was being advo-
cated, in theory, by Dr Nkrumah was not ‘A Union of West
African Soviet Socialist Republics’ but a ‘Union of West African
Socialist Republics’.

India, already independent, was on the way to becoming a
Republic so there was nothing particularly ‘Communistic’ in
advocating that independent African States should follow her
example. That the proposed republic should be ‘Socialist’ could
hardly be objected to by a Commission appointed by a Labour
Government which had described its intention to develop the
African Colonies in accordance with ‘Socialist principles’. Even Sir
Gerald Creasey could not condemn the idea of African Unity, for,
immediately prior to his becoming Governor, he had been Chief
Secretary to the West African Council whose official object was to
develop the unity of West African Colonies. Nevertheless the Com-
mission found it ‘significant’ that the United Gold Coast Con-
vention ‘has so far taken no steps to dissociate themselves from’
Kwame Nkrumah because he stood for a final goal, according to the
‘Circle’ of a United African Republic in West Africa based on
Socialism and to be obtained by non-violent means.

If this example of ‘Communism’ had stood alone it might have
been attributed to a mis-reading by the Commission of Nkrumah’s
proposals for the ‘Circle’. The Commission however goes on to say,
‘In a working programme circulated just before the disturbances
we have been inquiring into, Mr Nkrumah boldly proposes a

I0 ^ REA P the whirlwind

programme which is all too familiar to those who have studied the
ec ique o , countries which have fallen the victims of Communist
ens av ement . Once again to prove their point they print two

1S r °i m tb ' S wor ^' n B programme’. The first of these is a
a ement, a most word for word, of the plan proposed by Earl

e v len ie first became Leader of the Labour Opposition in
the inter-war years and it read :

he formation of a Shadow Cabinet should engage the serious
• . n , ° n ° 1 e " or hing committee as early as possible. Membership
■ C c ™ n P 0St; d of individuals selected ad hoc to study the jobs of the
cnnnfr!. ’ nistnes t ^ lat would be decided upon in advance for the
stall " Cn " C ac ' 1 * eve our independence. This Cabinet will fore-
ment h' Un i lrc i )arci i Ilcss on our part in the exigency of self Govern-
ment being thrust upon us before the expected time.’

menTar t vmm 0rd f/'' 0rk i n f committee ’ there is substituted ‘Parlia-
government’ th ^ an ^/°F words ‘our independence’ and ‘self
what the then TV? * S ™ bstltuted the word ‘office’ this was exactly
in me ,1Illstc r of Britain had urged upon his part}'

too familiar'to ^^^Ph of E)r Nkrumah’s suggestions cited as ‘all
well have come fro?? 10 ? ave studied’ Communist technique might
Fyfe Report on r noth< : r contem porary document, the Maxwell
proposals to the Party 0r S™on. Dr Nkrumah’s

Commission, dealt with* ‘The? 11116 "- 1111 - 5 h f d> aS quoted by ^

the platform nf n or S amz ational work of implementing
ordination™. S' Convention ’: This involved, he said, ‘Co-
and women’s va F 10us political, social, educational, farmers’

Unions, “ "" U , 3S S„cierii

affiliate to the Conv P v C > et !^ S ' * • who ‘should be asked to
Working Committee that°‘r ° r ? krumah had advocated to the
each town and village tf, m ° nven tion branches should be set up in
Territories and Togoland^T??-? 6 C ° lony ’ Ashanti > the Northern
be said to be even to the ’ u° ? 1S be added a proposal which might
thought. The Consent? £ p contem P°rary British Conservative
against, as undemocratic arty .^ ad pronounced themselves

local association to the’ c 6 automa tic offer of the Presidency of a
inhibition. ‘The Chief r, rwri lre but Nkrumah had no such
Chief or Odikro of each town or village should be

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE IO9

persuaded to become the Patron of the Branch’. Then Dr Nkrumah
had gone on to suggest ‘The opening of vigorous Convention
Week-end schools for the political mass education of the country for
Self-government’. There should be, he had suggested, ‘constant
demonstrations throughout the country to test our organizational
strength — making use and taking advantage of political crises’.
These activities in the final period should, he had proposed,
culminate in:

‘(a) The convening of a Constitutional Assembly of the Gold Coast
people to draw up the Constitution for Self-government or
National Independence.

(b) Organized demonstration, boycott and strike — our only weapons
to support our pressures for Self-government.’

Except for the activities listed under his sub-paragraph (b) there
was nothing in what Dr Nkrumah was proposing which was not a
commonplace activity of all British political parties of the day.

The departure in paragraph (b) from British political methods
merely arose from the absence of any constitutional alternative. The
Burns Constitution had been so drawn as to give the Legislative
Council no control over the Executive and to limit the number of
elected members to five out of a total membership of thirty-one.
There was thus no Parliamentary method open to a reforming party
and their only weapons were in fact ‘demonstration, boycott and
strike’. The Watson Commission might well have been answered by
the words addressed by Joseph Chamberlain in 1884 to the voteless
agricultural labourers of Britain :

‘If you were turbulent they would say you were unfit for liberty, and

as you are orderly and peaceful, they dare to say you do not want it.’

Why should the type of activity Dr Nkrumah was proposing be
labelled in this way as ‘Communistic’ ? It can only be explained if it
is assumed that even the progressive Watson Commission accepted
that the only persons entitled to prepare a colony for self-govern-
ment were the colonialists. If the inhabitants themselves organized,
whatever the type of organization, this was ‘Communism’ and, as
such, had to be suppressed. Dr Nkrumah is not attacked for his
Marxist analysis of Imperialism. Towards Colonial Freedom is not
even referred to in the Commission’s Report. He is a ‘Communist’

REAP Tut; WHIRLWIND

be adorned ? C *'° catcd , t * lat a Western type political machine should
orientated 'r ' IUtcd Goast Convention, a conservatively

orientated nationalist organization.

Commission f n ! vc Cold Coast colonialism. The Watson

formulated anV-" 3 ' 1 - 1 ^ tbat tbe r °forms required should be
might nrofF c,lrrict *. out by the Colonial Government. Africans
support . SUB “T SU ° n , S . bul if ‘ h «y attempted to rally mass
the system w^ Lin ’ i t | K 'i 1 * ,,S " as Conununisin. The bankruptcy of
not the abili'tv r” °r ^ rcVca * ct '- The Colonial administration had
Service mi d rcform * P' Progressive wing of the Colonial
nothing to ofleHn'thei^plac^ Cfr ° rS and t)m >ssions but tliey had

Burns Coimku t bn 0 ” 11 ' ^ ti' t,lrou gh the sham of the current

birth . . .’ This wnc ,i.‘ ' ... ? 94b. Constitution was outmoded at
ment to realize i llV UC -’ < ' C ,- V ‘ m plied, to ‘a failure of the Govern-
litcracy and a r | n c! '' Ul *hc spread of liberal ideas, increasing
parts of the world tl COntacc ' v ‘th political developments in other
wane’. They found . c star .°‘ rule through the chiefs was on the
the chiefs arc being us'^l f . ! an lnimcnsc intense suspicion that
die delay if not for rU . C ^ 1 . Government as an instrument for
people’. L suppression of the political aspirations of the

Bhc inefficiency of die Tr .1 • 1 , . .

equally plain to them ‘Tl °, . . ^illustrative machine was
the purposes of modern ^ a .’mistrativc machine was weak for
co-ordination between i CCOnonilc planning.’ They noted ‘a lack of
There was ‘an almost f .„ r ^ ) '! nrn 1 cnts c °ncerned witlt development’,
successful administration nf^ 3Cb °^ tbc statistics . . . essential to
yiew many of the then Vm 3 COm P' cx soc iaI organization’. In their
if more statistical data It,!i°I! 1IC ° lsor dcrs could have been avoided
ability of the Colonial autim v**” ava 'lable’ but they doubted the
bad the tools. Speaking of M"r» t0 uncierta ke anything even if they
unable to absolve the Govr^' B ° nne s b °y c °tt they said, ‘We are

strongest criticism ffir thC G ° ld Coast • • • hom the

mam support. ‘The great ™ ° n .‘ ‘^‘culture was the Gold Coast’s
noted, ‘are dependent, directlv^ °0- tS P eo Pl e .’ the Commission
uction for day to day food fr ' i° r ln< h re ctly on agricultural pro-
revenue which has to provid T le . ^ Payment of imports and for the
Yet there was ‘ample evidence’^if^l 1 SCrvices as the >' enjoy.’

show how it was neglected and

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

III

they quote from the Report of the Director of Agriculture in which
‘this neglect is eloquently reflected’. There was too small expenditure
on agriculture relative to the revenue derived from it and the value
of agricultural exports. They noted ‘the almost complete disregard
of agriculture’ in education and ‘the lack of interest in technical
problems shown by many members of the administration’. The
Colony had never been ‘provided with the machinery in the form of
staff, buildings and experimental stations to provide for the basic
needs of its agriculture’. Housing was neglected, education was
inefficient, law reform was needed. The whole system of supplies,
prices and distribution required overhaul. The checking of the
dread disease of cocoa, ‘swollen shoot’, on which the survival of the
Colony depended, had been mishandled.

Their catalogue of Colonial shortcomings was without end. Yet
they failed to understand the basic problem — the Colonial machine
lacked the will, the ability or the means to reform its shortcomings.
The Colonial authorities’ only way out was to deny the central
premise of the Commission’s argument. Their case was that, far
from chiefly rule being on the wane, the Watson Commission
Report was a travesty of truth because the Commissioners had not
troubled to go to the chiefs and learn the facts.

In a tart comment on the Commission’s recommendations, the
Labour Government said in a published commentary issued simul-
taneously with their Report :

‘In the very short time available to them in the Gold Coast the
Commission were not, it is understood, able to travel extensively in the
rural areas, and they can therefore have had less opportunity of hearing
evidence from representatives of the rural communities which form the
great bulk of the population of the Gold Coast. His Majesty’s Govern-
ment therefore feel it necessary clearly to state that, while they attach
the greatest importance to modernizing the Native Authorities and
making them fully representative of the people, they regard the Chiefs
as having an essential part to play. In general the Chiefs of the Gold
Coast are the traditional leaders of the people. Their functions in
regard to local administration are based on popular support; and the
transfer or delegation of any of their functions would require popular
sanction, since the position of the Chiefs affects the whole system of
relationships on which community life is traditionally based. Increasing

1 12

heap the whirlwind

numbers of Chiefs recognize tlie need for modernizing their insti-
utions an in this every encouragement is given to them by the Gold
ast overnment and their administrative ofiicers.*

rI!!,;“ n ' ment ,i S al ! the morc remarkable in that as the Watson
rinn; In n° n 1U f ^ poimcd out the boycott which precipitated the
cstahlich! LCn i 1C l * lc use of chiefly ntachincty of justice for

this rim/a a Cg ?’ r 3S ' S ^ 0r aiu ''o 0V ernment agitation. In fact at
their insfir/f"^ C UC ^ S "* 10 rcco ? n ' zc d the need for ‘modernizing
those IaterTr. 5 "' C ™ a,rcad >* sillin S with the CP1> and, among
most ' . C ini P nsoncd with Kwame Nkrumah was one of the
IV a vnmi'lT representatives of this class, Nana Kobina Nketsia
University £ . Ut dl stmguishcd anthropologist to whom Oxford
begun iiMirisn fC ^rtvards to award a Doctorate for his work,
ous religion Fv’ 0I i 1 1C mducncc °f Christianity on African indigen-
had been getting- ?”r tllc a PP caran ce of the CPP the people
the Government T ° ° UC [ S " dl ° ad ' cd themselves too openly with
reported that d ” ^t 2 t lC dlcn Governor, Sir Alan Burns, had

chiefs had been A ! 9 ° ony> no ,css titan twenty-two of their
in order “"if rfl ““ * f “'"“r tad abdicated

seven stools were vacant f At thc 11 mc ,llc Governor wrote,
Paramount Chief has a f? lly StatCS,> hc con "nentcd, ‘no
stool for more than a very sh^ ti™ ^ ^ ^

Aij-r Creech Jones’ reply to the
the only people whn m 1,1 fC ! ad t0 re f°rms then the chiefs were
was to re-establish tbf>; U t } lcm - All that was necessary to do

Sir Gordon dCStr ° ycd b) '

‘required detailed eraml CC ° nim i endal i ons ’ > cont ' nu ed his statement,

the existing constitution and of rt/ rVv° ba ” nS prccise knovvlcdsc of
mic conditions of the rK- e dlffercnt cultural, social and econo-

Majesty’s Govern ntnZTTl G ° ld Coast ' I» the view of His

mission’s proposals must first G ° ld Coast Government, the Com-
public in the Gold Coast its If COnsidered by representatives of the
that, subject to the agreement^ ^ th '. S P ur P 0Se ic is suggested
sentative committee should be cet ° , Cg ' slative Council, a fufly repre-

up locally as soon as may be possible

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE

113

to examine the proposals ... of the Report and to consider the
extent to which they can be accepted and the manner in which they
should be implemented.’

‘Fully representative’ meant, of course, fully representative of the
chiefs and intellectuals. The Coussey Committee, so named
because it was under the Chairmanship of Sir Henley Coussey, an
African Judge who had held himself aloof from politics, consisted
of forty members chosen by the Governor and the three Regional
Chiefly bodies. Eight of its members were actual chiefs and it
included others, like Dr Nanka-Bruce, who had always sided with
them but the old leaders of the Aborigines Rights Protection
Society were also fully represented and so, in theory, was the United
Gold Coast Convention. In fact it had already split into two wings.
The ‘Youth’ organizations, which Dr Nkrumah had enrolled, were
thoroughgoing opponents of the existing social system. Unlike their
intellectual leadership, who wanted only to replace the British strata
at the top, they aimed to reform society from the bottom up. They
were concerned, not with high politics, but with day to day con-
ditions on the cocoa farm, in the village and in the working-class
districts of the towns. This section of the United Gold Coast
Convention was not represented in the Coussey Committee nor were
the Trade Unions and the ex-service men. All suspected radicals
such as William Ofori Atta and Ako Adjei were excluded, as well as,
of course, Dr Nkrumah.

After die 1948 riots mutual fear of popular forces brought the
chiefs, the merchants and the professional men once again together.
Dr Danquah’s policy of cooperation of intellectual and traditional
ruler was vindicated and the presence of a mass radical membership
of anu-chief rank and file within the Convention became an em-
barrassment. The executive attempted to rid themselves of Dr
Nkrumah. They did not succeed. At their Conference in August
1949, just prior to the issue of the Coussey Committee s Report, the
Convention broke into two groups. Dr Nkrumah formed a new
Party, the Convention People’s Party, asserting by the use of the
tide ‘Convention’ that his party was the rightful heir of the old
organization. The other five members of the Big Six stayed with
the old organization but the majority of its branches adhered to the
CPP.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

. Coussey Committee, not unnaturally in view of its compo-
1 I ™’ ca . me t0 the rescue of the Colonial administration. ‘Contrary
e V1C 'J cx P res sed in the Watson Report,’ they said in their
in mmen atI ° ns j we believe that there is still a place for the Chief
new constitutional set up.’ Nevertheless they were too realistic
4 ; ^ St 1 lat ! he chie % nominees should remain in their former
that in' 1 P os ition and the furthest they would go was to suggest
should ni ^ n C " e f ls ^ at ’ ve Assembly which they proposed, they

should choose one-third of its members.

BritislTr C ^° rt ’ ^ ub Ii sbed in October 1949, was accepted by the
its recnm Vcn ™f nt - ^his however did not prevent them distorting
tution ““ end , atl0ns beyond recognition. When the final Consti-
members ’ instead the chiefs choosing one-third of the
five memVip ^ '1 616 now t0 e ^ ect thirty-seven as compared to the
thirtv-thrpp u' 10 WCre t0 be c hosen by direct election and the
colleges In nddV WCrC , t0 be c h° sen indirectly through electoral
to be two vnt" * '°r t0 t lC mem hers chosen by the chiefs there were

ecu d speak Tut Lf r ° P f n members ^ vith four subs “ wh °
the Chamber V ° te) re P resent ing the Chamber of Mines and
appointed bv tb ™ merce an d the three ex-officio British officials

C o„V„f theT” 0 ;- Th r.' ev “ if a P»P“'” P-J- 10

would not command ^ ! ndlrectl y elected seat3 , they still
chiefs, the Euroneanc a J° nt y m the Legislature provided the
CPP denounced Jw and ***? ° ffidals voted together. When the
accused of trvimr t ^ ro P osa s as ‘fraudulent and bogus’ they were
experiment’. In such rlrn? ° tage * car ® fu Uy planned democratic
CPP to implement ttm mst ances nothing remained except for the
to the United Gold rr f r °f^ amme which Dr Nkrumah had proposed
and which had been rT vention’s Executive in February 1948
programme wffichTaflT 1 ^ ^ 1116 Watson Commission as ‘a

technique of countries u- an J' lar to those who have studied the

enslavement’ to organ - ' ^ m ' e fallen victims to Communist

when all else failed m ° n , a . mass basis, to demonstrate and,

„ Such w the sitSoS " rA* b t 3 S ” fe '

Avemda Hotel. I was stri t- u ta bed that night in the bar of the
was fortified with the ve ° ’h Z’ 3nd ' C was an impression which
the need of continuitv Nn Nkruma h’s preoccupation with

nature of chieftaincv but t, ° nC . new better than he the reactionary
3 bUt he Wls hed to reform it and not to destroy

THE COLONIAL COLLAPSE 115

it. The aloof intellectuals of the Aborigines Rights Protection
Society were needed to provide professional and technical skill and
he must therefore win them over. He deeply distrusted the economic
conceptions of the British Civil Servants but he had come to realize
that it would be impossible immediately to replace them. He must
devise a policy under which they and the CPP could work together.
Above all he wanted to begin the struggle for independence from
the basis of a Constitution which was agreed by all groups of the
existing Gold Coast society. To him law and order ultimately
depended, not on the control of the military or police forces, but
upon the existence of the system of Government which was freely
accepted.

If the chiefs and intellectuals had had any understanding of the
extent of popular support in the country for the CPP they would at
this time have negotiated with Dr Nkrumah a compromise which
could have been favourable to them. As it was, they overplayed their
hand and the division between a great section of the intellectual
class and the popular movement was widened into a gulf never
subsequently to be bridged. The Aborigines Rights Protection
Society, which for over twenty-five years had fought against
Indirect Rule, would have nothing to do with the CPP type of
agitation against it. Sir Tsibu Darku denounced Dr Nkrumah at the
Joint Provincial Council of Chiefs and Dr Danquah who, two years
before, had been imprisoned as a ‘communist’, came out in favour
of the Colonial authorities. ‘It is my opinion,’ he said, ‘that those
who go against constitutional authority must expect to pay for it
with their neck.’ It was at this stage that Dr Nkrumah made his
famous speech about the chiefs in which he said that if they did not
co-operate with the people the day would come when they ‘will run
away and leave their sandals behind them’. This graphic phrase was
to be quoted again and again by the opponents of the CPP. In fact,
the chiefs had long before he spoke run away ‘leaving their sandals’
— the traditional mark of their status — behind them. They had done
so when they abandoned the ideals of the Fanti Confederation and
sided with the Colonial power.

At this time, on my first visit, I certainly did not understand
either the implications of Gold Coast history of the past or what
would be their likely reflection in the future. Had I done so, I might
have put up a much more convincing argument to Mr MacDonald-

Il6 R EAP THE WHIRLWIND

Smith. He too might have listened more sympathetically, if he could
ave oreseen the future. When I met him again he was one of the
most senior of Civil Servants— the Chief Regional Officer of the
or tern crritories. He was then working for the last of Dr
■ uma s pre-mdependcnce Governments and I was Consti-
lona user and had travelled to Tamale, the Northern capital,
aS , t0 consu t; Tactfully, I tried to lead the conversation
Tntn • ? ° Ur P revi ° us meeting which had so influenced my views on
Thp ^ rs j ^ was not that he did not want to talk about it.

The mcident had completely passed from his mind.

Cnnrr , ,u° m , eet dle la ')? cr Thomas Hutton-Mills at the Supreme
Mr Miln ^ rC u ''? s .'y aitin S to take any message I might have from
wi„ j 0na ^Smtth to Dr Nkrumah. He told me he would be in
from nnr° Wn 1C ^ W ° U ^ bc ’ ke was firmly convinced, a protection
concern n ! T ^ !° ng 25 he wore them. It was in this great
of its nerinH' C l aSS n a b “! ld!n B> typical of the Colonial architecture
trousers bewia° ? d Ga aristocrat in black coat and striped
mission ' Tli uPi a » d gowned, that I explained the failure of my
S h K d ? “?'«'<! it- The last I saw of him was in the
sanctuarv to o S . V Iscar ^ his protective clothing and quitted his
•nd

Gold Coast fbr’jf atL ! rda ^ the 2Ist January, I left. I had been in the
very wrong but I had 611 dayS ' By now 1 knew that something was
dteVoiau'S “ Ti C “ !?“ 0f !“"' “ r« h than
police truck Dulled w ' V s * Was beln B driven to the airport, a

Something diverted thTLr^ 3 P risoner was taken out ofit '

It was Kwame of hls *** a *d ^ waved to me.

to begin with a sentence of thrf ^ ^ “ C(>existence wa s about
nee ot three years’ imprisonment.

CHAPTER FOUR

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY

By chance again, some five months after my first visit, I found
myself once more in Accra with time to spare. In 1950 I had been
appointed King’s Counsel and it happened that a large commercial
concern had some legal business in the Colony capital. Their
solicitors were instructed to find a KC who was also a member of
the Gold Coast Bar to discuss it with their local lawyers. At the
time, I was one of the few KCs in practice who was so qualified, but
again, it was a lucky chance since all one had to do to become
enrolled as a legal practitioner in the Colony was to present a
Certificate of Call to the English Bar and pay £30. Had this been
more widely realized it is probable that someone with better
experience for the particular job would have been chosen. However
this may be, this lucky assignment gave me the chance to spend the
whole of the 1950 Parliamentary Whitsun recess in West Africa
and, since the work involved only took a day or so, it gave me time
to visit the Gold Coast generally and talk with a cross-section of
officials, politicians and chiefs. It was then I seriously got down to
studying West African politics and began, I thought, to understand
something of the situation.

Among the odds and ends which survived from this trip is an
envelope on the back of which I see I have scribbled CPP compare
with Jacobins’, ‘Asantehene— Freemasonry and Anthropology’,
‘The Royal Labour Party’ and ‘Lugard— The Ulster Volunteers’.
Perhaps they were notes for an article which I never wrote but I can,
from them, I think, reconstruct what I must have thought at the
time.

Dr Nkrumah was in prison, as were most of the others who had
visited me at the Avenida on my previous stay. At the Accra head-
quarters of the CPP I found only Archie Casely-Hayford, one of its
few leaders then out of jail. It was this meeting with him that first
gave me the idea of making the Jacobin comparison. Up till then I
had looked upon the CPP as a kind of Labour Party and ‘Positive

117

ii8

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Action as if it had been the General Strike of 1926. After talking
with him I saw it differently and, looking back on events, perhaps,
in a sense, correctly. One could make a comparison between Dr
Nkrumah and, say, Harold Laski. Both had come to politics from
an academic background. Both were Marxists. In general however
the CPP leadership had been thrown up by social pressures
entirely different from those which had produced the Labour Part}’.
1 heir leadership consequently had an attitude to politics to which
it was not possible to find a British Labour parallel. The British
General Strike had been an attempt to use industrial action for a
limited political purpose, to force the Government of the day to
reorganize the coal mining industry. Superficially Positive Action
uas a similar attempt to gain by a non-violent disruption of civil
life an equally limited objective, the calling of a fully representative
Constitutional Conference. Neither had attained its purpose. There
^ as t us t us similarity, but the carefully organized British General
, " ? ", as ’ 111 reaIit y. otherwise entirely dissimilar. Its leadership
a ou ts as to its constitutional propriety and its failure to secure

rnnrrTcf ani * .^'spirited the Party. Positive Action, in

Cnlnn' S v 3 - a ^' sor S an ‘ ze d but a violent protest against

immam i h3t 11 did n0t sccure its ^mediate object was

Cpp'v i ' S on £~ term effect was to create the conditions for the
cantm-p nf C M, Ct0ra . victor )'- The better comparison was the

which nrule lT* ?' lkar ' lly no importance but a gesture
strath w^?.l de3r t0 the ruii "S class that a new force, of a

order in dissoluZ * 1 Cy . I ? ust rec ^ on , had entered politics. The old
El ^dc^: S nC "' CCmrC ° f P— anS * ^ gravitated

Kwame Nkrmml ^ asc b'~Ha} ford was the antithesis of

mXionan Z n i C aristocrat >’« a man born to be a

grandfather had if * lc ® ad b' an d reluctantly iicccpted his role. His

members "of the *£ ^ H ^ ° f thc

authorities had arr,.ct t i 1 ^ t ' ratl0n Cabinet whom the Colonial
founder of the West Africa' 5 s/ ^ r ’ f°! 5 ph Casely-Hayford, was the

wrote George Pad mor oTh u 1131 ‘ In man >' rcs P ccts ’’

preparing the ? or ! hc * as a *°« of John the Baptist,
terms of his sociafbacl-T " atlonall st leaders ... Judged in

worked Caselv-Havforf r0Un an ^t lc P er *°d in which he lived and
uas undoubtedly the greatest national

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNE

poHdcal leader and social Se' To prepare

Educated in an English public sc . j aw an d economics

Clate College, Cambridge, taking **«» “_7, Cambridge MA
and— typical touch of the F ^ clmvn payment without

procurable, as those from Oxfor yj d, [ ie returned to public
examination. Called to the Engl.* as j senior magistrate,

service in the Gold Coast and by >947 ' “ ” sen
Nevertheless the family tradition wa Ho su J. he

When die United Gold ^‘^“ganiaation split he had
resigned his office to join it an t 00 res p e ctable a

no hesitation in throwing in ta lot the Led. 1 V
figure of the African establishment . to be ^ J thth e working
authorities he nevertheless me ° i J for Vi , hnm he rushed from
class and peasant rank and he without fee when they were

place to place in the Colony to defend ™*°f moment of Indepe „-
charged with political offences. Krobo Edusei addressed the

deuce, Dr Nkrumah, Ko,o Ilotsm and Kmbo t p <, _,p rlson

jubilant crowds wearing prison caps beside the m,

Graduate’-Archie with the

wearing a kind of Boys’,

initials D. V. B.-‘Defender of the V the belief of the

Yet he was revolutionary 1 c nc ; a h s t nor had he any clear idea
necessity of revolution. He was n order. About one thing

of what should be substituted for^ ^ ^ and must b e

only he was certain, die sacrifice prestige, position and

destroyed and he would, sensitive and too considerate,

fortune to achieve it- Altogether t ^ advent of the first Nkrumah

though always in the Cabinet, f never seemed to be

Government until after held. In the end there was

successful in any of the ^ 1 ., reputa tion to cling to office. Once
no question of his using his tamiy ^ he quietly resigned and

he was convinced that he ' q^e harsh reality of events after

returned to practice m the L-oU m reyolutionary dreams and

Independence destroyed h s ro oyerthrew President Nkru-

when the National Libera of wors hippers to the Anglican

mah he headed the P r Qod for tbe deliverance. The parallel
Cathedral who came to than

121

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY

nection would otherwise have given «"> ‘"M" ^"i n Sc^

Archie Casely-Hayford, he '' a ^°^" CC t i ona i an d constitutional
dence could never be won by the con

methods which had been attempted and F ”^ d . JJ 1 . P f ^ 0 i d
Asm.. Ofori Ana had no faith in the ability ° : ■«<

style chiefs. National independence to him cotdd^only As

removing them from any real p , , ^ dence he was able to
Minister of Local Government af P fc • c had done in t h e

manipulate chiefs as adroitly as th hinftoo, there was no

past but with much greater effect. For him too,

parallel in the British Labour Party. ^ ^1. Halm, then the

Typical of another section of theCJ^^ ^ ^ United States

Party Treasurer and afterwards of Ghana . He had started life
and ultimately Governor of the he branched out on

as a storekeeper for a European fir a CTen eral merchant. He

his own account as ^^ f °G tanatan (rate who felt dm. his
was an example of that class u of expatriate tradmg

business was being strangled f aw yers and intellectuals

monopolies and he had no confid riaht. He had been

of the United Gold Coast Convention ^ >P*^ sn | when the split
treasurer of die Accra Branch of die UGCC ^ ^ ^

Simet rftt- ^ *“* ' >i,h

Kwamc Nkrumah. als0 in prison at the time of my

Krobo Edusei on the other hand a ^ cu]!otte of the

second visit to the Gold Coast, ^ ° ^ntr-dass origin and in his
eighteenth-century mould bot in ^anti, he had existed on

opposition to sociahsm. A P°° a ovi ncial newspaper and

the verge of povertyasa deb ^ drugs . He had been m i 9+7

as an itinerant pedlar or anu Youth Organization aimed at

one of the founders of the ^Ashanti Confederacy; and during
opposing the feudal power o ^ ^ ad set U p his own Courts to
Nii Bonne’s boycott campaign ■ pjjs supporters were essential

enforce it in opposition to f. f 00t hig in Ashanti. They' were
to the CPP if they “ obtam l‘ lm g ,0 the class of ‘Elders’ or
drawn from all those nho r hiefs and sub-chiefs were chos<

122

K LAI 1 Till. WJUKt.V, INI)

and the Noting men in tiuir As.ifu companies had nude and unmade
the chiefs ol Ashanti. I lis ambition was t<> destroy the feudal system
nl the Gold Gust and to suhstitutc a regime in which careers were
open to all the talents. In eighteenth-century h'rance he would have
done well out ol the Directory, lie had no particular heliei in
Parliamentary democracy and no rooted objection to the use of
force hut lie was a sincere egalitarian, and liberty, equality and
fraternity summed up his political philosuphv. Hut the equality he
supported was an equality ol opportunity and not of income, lhs
wiles Golden lied’ was the retort of the former under-privileged
Ashanti to the mystic cover fur feudal exploitation which the
Golden Stool had come to symbolize.

1 odas 1 would qualify considerably my Jacobin comparison. In
essence the Jacobins were a Party with a nineteenth-century liberal
ideology, supported In a city population of workers and small
tradesmen. I he GPP was, in its final analysis, a peasant party,
.u ropean experience always leads us to suppose that peasants
everywhere are conservative hut this was not so in the Gold Gust
lor reasons which apply in other parts of Africa also. In the first
p ace, there was no land problem as such, in that there still existed
areas of unoccupied and unused soil, though this could only be
brought into cultivation by coninum.il ctfort in clearing and planting
u. In the second plate the peasants had evolved their own com-
munal organizations which sought to inlluencc politically the central
ac ministration and the local authorities to provide them with feeder
roads, water and the other amenities nccevurv to develop their

l.irnic - 4

1 lie Gold Giast peasant did not look upon the Government as a
potential enemy but as an organ he must be able to influence if he
t *•? P r(3 o rcss * mure important, there was not in Ghana any
; . 1 10 ! ia l - * lc farming which, from its unchanging nature,
turc ;« n a t C ° nSC |-' al,V - e oul * HO ' ; - 1'bc history of Ghanaian agricul-
oftemft S °r' ° < i ont,nuc<1 adaptation of new plants and cash crops
more nrofunfl^n S r-' C l 'T c °/ cultivation for another that proved
included n C • - 1C , Coastuution °f the Fanti Confederation had
plants ns US ^ ,,ccts 1 * >C endeavour ‘to introduce such new

the coiintrJ ,a 'Vi' C . rCa i tCr ^ LCOn . lc sourccs of profitable commerce to
the ni-nriiml • 1C i* U scc l ucnt introduction of cocoa is an example of
"or ln S out the policy' they had advocated. It was

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 123

brought to Ghana by an African h’ack-smi'h
shie, as recently (from an agricultural point of % m ) _ / 9

than thirty vears it had overtaken rubber of wh I
Gold Coast was the largest British cobmal prodt » • •

rash cop; . reliable feu wta *£ taring

Tcttch Quarshic s first beans seven \ •

"His innovation, in ,he ft*

revolutionized farming in Ghana. In 9 ^ fitnirc was 33 . 2 pcr

3.2 per cent of Gold Coast exports. \ 9 ^ ^ aU cxports an d the
cent. By 1920 it had risen to 8- P £ worfd * s requirements.

Colony was supplying over onc-th most 0 f t h cm illiterate,

This was achieved by an unaided pe. . ■ - > ant j on 0 f a crop

who had to learn the handling, g ra mg • t Indies had been

whose expansion in South America an . j opposition of

slow and uncertain and this they aoh.'vcd aptnst t ^ IP ^ ^
the Colonial administration of the a >- tQ discourage further
Colonial Director of Agriculture was - ^ dangers of over pro-
planting and could say in his Repor , m y department for
duction ... which has been pt cac C > \\'hat he considered over-
years ... had dawned upon the far ™ er ’ hc crop which ultimately
production amounted to only a 9 uar e r mo mcnt the farmers,
Ghana was to produce. Indeed at , erte d to his restrictionist

whom the Director assumed he ia ut ec0 nomic policy of

policy, were embarking on a °

planned expansion. . «. frnc nt as there is an interval of

Cocoa farming is a long-term invest ^ ^ theIr bearing. No
many years between the planting 0 Q>p came to power in

reliable statistics were kept unti a at x q6o prices, the value of
1951 but it is possible to estimate > ^ ^ time 0 f this second
the capital investment in cocoa 1 |\.j Pon or 0V er one-quarter of the
visit of mine, was at least £225 s later the figure was £361

total capital stock of the country. to t a l capital stock of Ghana,
million or nearly one-thir ° undertake such an investment
Farmers who had the foresign ervat i ve supporters of existing
with a new cash crop were n ° j ia d organized themselves politi—
society. Even before the war xny a i oW cocoa price, they

cally to the extent that, m P , e crop from the market. In fact
were able to withhold almos

ill. A l* Till. V. JUKI. WIND

farmers were better organized for coliectiv c action ami more ready
for it than were the industrial, minim; ami transport w others who,
in any case, formed only a small proportion of the population.
Politics in the Gold Gust and in Ghana alter Independence v.as a
struggle lor the allegiance of th.c peasant.

\et to speal. ol ‘peasants’ is to beg the question. There were large
and small cocoa farmers. Among their ranis were absentee landlords
and tanners who employed numerous hired labourers. There were
many peasants in debt to money-lenders but then there were almost
as many larniers who were money-lenders to their less turtunatc
neighbours. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the cocoa farmers
were in no sense a heterogeneous class they all considered them-
selves oppressed by the Colonial machine, it neither provided the
technical education nor the scientific services thev required. It
asserted the political right to control the price of their produce and
yet refused on political grounds to control the prices they were
charged for goods they bought. It maintained and acted through a
system ol chiefs and sub-chiefs, the old democratic control over
which it had deliberately destroyed, and who now made use of their
absolute rule to exploit and milch the farmer. In pre-war years,
when cocoa beans were bought for around ten shillings a ‘load’ of
r° lbs, chiefs were imposing levies of up to ys. qd. a load.

t .v . ? f rmcl ^ Ruih C0,,1L ' to challenge all tile old values. They
)c icve t lemselves, on the basis ol the experience of what they had
achieved, capable ol self government. It was thev, not the British,
who had created the cocoa industry. Vet it was the British who now
tried to take the profits. Gdonial administration gave them nothing
culturally, economically or politically. A continuation of a similar
system under African rule with the chiefs still in power, which was
Si i USS ?’ r Con V n,,tcc Rc P«« proposed, was to them
thereto ? ,1 lbcir as P‘ ral ' ons - It was by no mere chance

one ml!, • , r Mrumah should be the unchallenged leader of the
release fro " ' C °. U 1 coninia, ul mass support. When, after his

•* sq < m ^ ni ? n m *95 Nkrumah proclaimed himself once
i.„ 3S o n , on , cno j , ]inational Christian and a scientific Marxist’
abou lei ‘ d M Wh, . ch thc T "-anted. Thev might not know much

tsc~ Marx f m ’ but at k>ast toy knew from colonial

munists vver^tG^ 111 ^ tbat ,Mar -\ istJ >’. socialists and com-
>e enemies of the chief and opposed colonial rule.

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 125

This was for them sufficient credentials. As for non denominate
Christianity’ this did have a revolutionary 1111^ European

Christianity as a religion of revolt t lsS ° r e C s unnoticed. Yet it was

conception that its impact on Africa g the Marxists who

the non-denominational Christians an ti-Colonialism of the

had provided much of the ideology ig that 0 f an oppressed

previous generation. The stoiy of soc i e ties, had a past history

people who, like so many African ilderness an d who found a

of migration and wandering in tn i east spiritually, over

moral code rvhich m the end L jk the

Rome, the greatest of the Impena p a j ea der within their

Israelites, were the Africans not destine would lead them to

own ranks who, under supernatura gu | 0( j where the chiefs
the promised land? In the au th Q rity the language of

symbolized both spiritual and s wonder the language of

politics and of religion were the sa ® e " .1 at pj r Nkrumah should,
CPP propaganda had its biblica ec 0 j u tionaries, have used a

like the seventeenth-century European The important

scriptural phrase to give point to nQt wb ether this direct
question from the historical aspe , ern nee ds was offensive to
relating of religious phraseology 0 conveyed was politically

Western ears but whether the thought tn

viable. . Dr Nkrumah had said,

Visiting Northern Ghana m political Kingdom and all

‘Wherefore my advice is “seek ye nrs ^ a mistaken order of

things will be added unto you ' , - ns being repeated. Had the

priorities? Was the error of the jae over i 00 ked by paying too
danger of the ‘whiff of grapestiot r ofthe word so above

much heed to a faith which P a Nkrumah be still m office if

that ofthe sword? Would m taci 1 denominational Christianity

he had forgotten the part . abo t Alternative ly, should he have
nek to scientific Marns • concen trated on building a

given up any idea of socialism ^ ^ of non-denominatic '

and stuck ro suenu** . .. n( j concent — — — - — — .. 6 a.

given up any idea of sociahsin ^ of ^denominational

community inspired by th NeW England Colonies of the
Christianity as had inspired 1 ies- So to pose the question
seventeenth and eighteenth cen & subconsC ious attempt to lay
underestimates the pr° bk f d one without appreciation of the
down what should have bem that Ghana, complete with the CPP
objective situation. It is assu

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 127

Indirect Rule. In the Gold Coast its adherents numbered perhaps
ten per cent of the population but they were mainly ' “A

North and to .he working-class quarters

lived in tvhat were almost ghettoes. the so-called Moslem Zongos
Christiantty was a Colonial importation but it ha l« “
provide that Colonialist ideology which m the P® l« f ^
occupation of Africa and the assumption y the religious

burden. In the Gold Coast of : 1950 theAngh. can^ a ■

°h^“dhS ^ f a tota, population “3

five an/ six million. ^ a 'l^^j^^^/]rreiml/coloniannfluence
in the previous century Catholicism a • Uganda

went hand in hand. There had even "//"nd'thus

in which Lugard had f ™ g ’ t 0 " T1 . Gald Coast Catholic clergy

secured the territory for Br®.m ^ ^ ^ only 30 we[e

were largely European. Of IB 24S : ( ' Qnada and France were

African but its missionaries from ’ ■ • , Colonial rule than

not necessarily more mdu J e ^°^ s0 a l s0 of the Methodists and
those they sought to converu Th ^ largdy African-

the Presbyterians whose church rnncernec l they went back to
run. So far as the Presbyterians w brought to the Gold

the Basel mission which had 0^^^^ from Switzer land and
Coast by the Danish Cotaa ' 0 f Colonial thinking. From the

they had never accepted the pr African languages. They used

firs, .hey had taught and 1 ^,^ as as .857. L «
scriptures translated into an P for those alrea dy associated to
true the other churches only nce j n that their services and

some degree with the ^ lish (except for, of course, the

teaching were almost entire Y , f the Methodists worked m the
Catholics’ Latin liturgy) hu , & anti _ colon ; a i. The greatest of

colonial tongue, their orl S) n - es was a ma n of mixed African
their nineteenth-century mis ^ believed that a European name
descent, Francis Birch Freeman. com memorated, if in nothing

was an ingredient of salvation a n0 English blood but who

else, by the numerous fami . surnam e. Yet he too was no
have adopted a British or

enthusiast for white rule. ^ad at j eas t their British counter-

Outside these churches, wn u d c Zion i st ’ an d ‘Ethiopian’

parts, there were a number of the so

128

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

communities which had in Central and East Africa in the inter-war
years been the centres of anti-colonial agitation and open rebellion.
In 1952 in the Belgian Congo there were 3,818 members of these
sects in jail on account of their political activities. The Kitawale —
the name is an Africanization of the ‘Watchtower Movement’, the

missionary arm of Jehovah’s Witnesses — was officially banned in
Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Katanga, and their leader
Mwana Lesa (meaning ‘Son of God’) was hanged in Southern
Rhodesia in 1926. John Chilembwe, who led the Shires Highland
Rising in Nyasaland in 1915, had belonged to this same group of
churches. In Ghana they w’ere not so important either numerically
or politically, yet the Musama Disco Christo Church which accepted
polygamy and equated its head to a Chief had a membership of
almost half that of the Anglicans.

The importance of Christianity was not its numerical strength. Its
nominal adherents were not greatly in excess of the Moslems and
nowhere numbered more than one in five in the population. In the
Gold Coast, unlike other parts of Africa, it had no record of militant
anti-colonialism. Its value was as a coherent alternative to the con-
use mass of animist faiths w'hose basis had been shattered by
Indirect Rule. Originally the chief had been the religious leader of
is people and he enforced secular law by spiritual sanctions.
Colonial officials accepted without question Islamic belief in the
same way as they acknowledged other Christian faiths to which they
emse ves did not subscribe, but the practice of animism, in many
ways more ethical than Christianity, they dismissed as barbarism,
is sacre ro e m the community, the chief w'as told, was best
e ega e to the background if not abandoned altogether. His
!w St ^ P 05 ’ ltl0n > a ^ rea dy thus undermined by his masters, w r as
1 r °y e a t pS et: e r when he was forced, by the close connection
.f 11 f r , lt r ai \ customary law and religious belief, to use the

had E f 115 faitla t0 enforce Colonial dictates. African religion
nad therefore to seek new outlets.

a ^ al \ ce f° r African private enterprise. In the inter-war
sionallv ^ S ° so_ c a ^ e< i ‘new shrines’ were established, occa-
a Dersnrnl n endeavour, but generally by individuals on

of these n!T 7 ma ^ n o basis. During and after the war the number
grew tn ^ nanc fd spiritual and temporal advice bureaus

° gigantic proportions in response to a need the old chiefly

interregnum of lost opportunity 129

religion could no longer fulfil and sS^o^pV

sionary churches lacked the sympathy or^ersten rf ^

Later the Government attempte ^ practitioners of native

owners by making them register as ‘private “ qot of these
medicine’.. By the time of Independence ’ and Ashanti

practitioners had been licensed m e 5 . tors 0 f ‘ ne w shrines’

alone. Not all of them would have been p , f P ld be Contempor-

but it might be fair to say that ‘mcWTj ^ on l y 407
aneously in all the Christian faiths

ordained clergy. . , , p t0 see k advice on the

To these ‘new shrines’ pilgrims wou j n trans ition. They

many problems which must arise m a would be granted

would ask for protection and b & ' n steal commit adultery,

conditionally on the suppliant agreeing Above all, he had to

bear false witness, or curse, anot er P magic against others

agree not to possess bad talismans, m provide sustenance for

nor engage in witchcraft. Fina Y> ® ^ - n or ru m. The ancient

the deity, usually a sheep and a sneaking, unexceptional;. but

virtues, thus enjoined, were, genera y .Jems 0 f t he new society,
they were not expanded to cope wi , - est recounted by Dr

as one short success story of a ‘new stone rf rural Ghana,

Margaret Field in her ethno-psych of which sh e made a

Search for Security, shows. servant who, despite his goo

field study had as a client, a “ s 0 f life:
salary, felt he was not making

“T can see no prosperity for you in your
‘The possessed priest said, fortune for you only if Y<> u Re-
present work; there seems to be go to , g ^ of the lowliest

come a palm-wine tapper. . No , P .. P comc -down for a scholar
and least lucrative occupations-^^ However on the way home

—and the suppliant went away tools an d on arrival gave in 1

he reluctantly bought palm-tapP Less than a year later he

resignation and started the nev wld his tale, as follows,

appeared again at the shrine amto* by a snake He ran

One day when at work m the Just as he reached it the

at random, towards a nearby^ momC nt a lorry sp«* fast. Out of
snake gave up the chase an^that r> fc „ a large suitcase

the back of the lorry, « nnot ‘ CC j J thousan ds of pounds-worth.
crammed full of treasury notes

130

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

When later a dispute arose between the police and the army over
the investigation of the first bomb attack on President Nkrumah, I
was called in as a sort of impartial arbitrator and came across a
similar case. A Sergeant-Major Tettch in charge of the central army
ammunition depot was suspected of providing the grenades for the
attack. When he was being questioned at the Central Police Head-
quarters he fell from a fourth-floor window and was killed. The
Army were, in private, accusing the police of having murdered him
to cover up their own complicity and it was essential to get some
urther evidence about the character of Sergeant-Major Tetteh in
general. In consequence, it was decided to search the files at a ‘new

S n'T w ^ ere went f° r advice. We found the Priest’s case notes
which set down his problem and the advice given him. They did not
help us over the grenades but they did show that Tetteh had been
systematically stealing from Government stores. The Priest’s case
oo s owed that Tetteh had come to ask the deity to ‘protect’ his
accomplices, who included a senior officer, and ‘catch hold’ of those
on ns trail It was the close association of the army with shrines of
is s °rt which facilitated the organization of the mutiny. Suitably
rewarded priests pronounced mutiny to be a duty and warned those
who would not take part that the god ‘would catch them’,
tin on T cllllon among the new shrine proprietors led to the inven-
0 oiore an c more powerful deities who would condemn an

nrnpp« n ti! °f! a cut rate ^ ee - Dr Field has thus described the

infliipnnp ft °r S oc ^ s who had been ousted through the

with nnsit? n ir£ - Ct ^ e \ s ^ e points out, ‘were concerned mainly
beintr’ essm 2 s ra ' n : health, fertility, tribal peace and well

other ritec Wr P n< ~ sts practice was to offer ‘dignified prayer and
on behalf of 1 ; 0 °? behalf of the tribes’ annual festivals but also

these Driest*; e Ua ^ sou ght help in sickness or trouble’, but

approachinsr vi r ,^ le ^ notes , by the time independence was
approaching, considered inadequate for modern needs’.

summed^sTp n bytyinr<Vf Ul ° gi2inS **“ deity Mframa ’

because Mframa can kill” Tbf™™ than the ° W ° n f S ’

whose estahlict, r " name chosen for another new deity

“ 1 ***** “Kofi the Lion tvho Kills
a name calculated to attract flocks of customers.’

t was against this background that the CPP’s expressed adulation

interregnum of lost opportunity 131

of their leader, tvhich Western sympathies ° c 5engi

must be judged. ‘Nkrumah will never ess j t W as a declar-

to the ‘new shrine’ proprietor s pre en P . t h e p ar ty had
ation, in language understandable to his daMg;
a Leader who was impervious to magic shrines’, the

Nevertheless, however much nee ds

old national religions were a pa fai i e( j t0 meet. At their

which mission-taught Christianity not an

best they presented a world philosophy p ™^ hrough it of his
individual but the servant of his ami 7 0 -y e j^Ian could only
community. Personal salvation was impossible.

logy and the superstitions of the ne T[ lyes f or converts to tackle
were too busy competing among . eenera l 0 f Christianity

the greater problem of the reconci shrines ’ which won.

and African belief. In the end revolt my wife saw carried

When I was in prison, after the military effi( \ es y of Dr Nkrumah

through the streets of Accra S r ° displayed, being taken to

dressed in European clothes an From the Methodists alone

mock burials in the Christian cen J e . r t hi s a dvertised surrender
came any really forceful denunciation 0 styl e witch-

b, the missionary churches to the

craft. _ f on my envelope referred to my

The next two pencilled comm -p| ic first of these ‘Asante-

assessment of the opposition to , ose f remember, from a

hene-Freemasonry and An tfe Chief Justice at the
cocktail party given by Sir 1 , j n his vouth, had served m the

time. He had been a brilliant scho ^ bccn an international

Flying Corps in the first wo * who tried Halaby’s case,
rugby player and belonge , 1 ; n the British Colonial Civi

to an important and distincti ? ion _ Hc had been an under-

Service, the Irish P^f^bUn during the Sinn Fein struggle for
graduate at Trinity Colleg treatv negotiations between the

independence and the ^^“'d it /l got the strong impression
British and the rebels whic t0 scc t hc same thing happen

that he had not come to the Oom

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

there. It was at his home that I first met Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman
Prempeh II, Asantehene and a direct matrilineal descendant of the
family of Osei Tutu who founded the Ashanti Empire in the early
eighteenth century and to whom that famous Priest and patriot,
Okomfu Anokye, had delivered the Golden Stool which contained
the spirit of the whole Ashanti nation. The Asantehene was in a
dinner jacket and very much at home. He had come to the capital to
attend the Lodge meeting of Accra’s Freemasons. Why not?
Perhaps in this white man’s ‘new shrine’ he would find among its
European juju the synthesis of culture and superstition which he
sought.

The Asantehene had been born in 1892 when the old Ashanti
Confederacy was still in existence as an independent state but in the
last stages of its dissolution. As a child of four he lived through the
last of the Ashanti wars, the invasion of his capital and the des-
truction of its sacred groves and the capture, imprisonment and exile
of his predecessor in office, his uncle Nana Kwaku Dua III and
other members of the Prempeh ruling family to which he belonged.
As a child walking through the streets of Kumasi he must have seen
t e piles of human bones that still littered the Ashanti execution
ground and photographs of which, to emphasize die superiority of
British rule hung at the time of this visit of mine in the office of the
0 oma hief Regional Officer. When he was eight years old he
witnesse the last attempt by the Ashanti people to dirow off
rms ru e, a revolt led by an old and frail woman, Yaa Asantewa,

r° cr . °| tke sma H Ashanti state of Ejisu, whose grandson,
its chiet had been deposed with the Prempeh’s. Her troops
esiege t e overnor of the Gold Coast for two months in the

anc i for nearl f a y ear > Ashanti reasserted its indepen-
1C , antehene had seen the subsequent annexation of his

aristocracy ^ rem ° Va ^ P ° Wer of dle remainder of the Ashanti

andlll™ t0 ''V recentl y opened Wesleyan School in Kumasi
elementm-v^H St0I ! eke ®P er ' Denied anything but the most limited
federation^ i? < n ^ ^ gasped the secret of the Fanti Con-
Chief anri i t n 6n ^ ^°D n ial domination, the partnership of
Asallo nT TT tUaL In ^ l6 he Was °»e of the founders of the
object was ° nominall y a hterary society, but whose real

) campaigning against the then Colonial opposition to

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 133

traditional role in ^hanti- When .01925, “ Rvata

Seychelles and was once again “ of town of
position, as Prempeh I, Kumasmenc,

Kumasi, it was, in ^anTwars were too recent to allow the im-
The memories of e Ashant i Confederacy; but gradually,

mediate restoration of tration re-created in the interests

piece by piece, the British adminis demolished a

of Indirect Rule the old feudal structure they had

quarter of a century before. Whenin ^ 3 * domship of Kumasi who
was made for a candidate for t ^ of j n di rect Rule than

would fit more appropriately int ^ M{ Qn hig

did the exiled warrior mg. as Inc lirect Rule developed,

storekeeper nephew. Four year , j Con f e deration and

the British Government restored ^ ^ ^ he

Osei Agyeman Prempeh becam were revived in make-belief,
was knighted. All the old milita Y hosts was re - C reated.

The old order of battle of tbe Jf ba ^J mand er of the advance
There was the Abontenbe p nC Comman der of the ring wing, and so
guard, the Bechunhene—the Ashanti the symbol of

forth. The ‘Golden Stool’ rit soleuudy m ite ^

unity and the Asantehene could one ^ D ^ onstituted ^ chiefg ^

his council of war, cons 3 ™® Executioner was revived if only
Kumasi. Even the office of the Asan tehene could no

m a nominal capacity. L ? n ^ KiUs Thousands’. Still, all
longer compete with ^ on “ . , were t he troops and perhaps even
that was lacking m make-b ^ Asantehene was ap po i nted

this was put right m *94 Comman der of the Home Guard.
Lieut.-Colonel and made tj. by rhe slightest indication

He kept hsoivn r ’* e saw tough man, of ,heabsu rd "

that one could see that, may ’ Rule . In 1942, Governor Sir Alan

ties and contradictions 01 11 h ; s Executive Council The

Burns wished to appom ^ ^ Governor Burns said ‘‘I can
Asantehene refused tor r ,^ whatever they were, they have

well appreciate and und * ukely that the Asantehene made
never been pubtahri « o ««^ ditioI ,al office of Chiefg

c * nial sovera eh he had a

*34

HEAP THE WHIRLWIND

strong understanding of his traditional role he had an equally strong
sense of history and believed it to be his duty and his destiny to
bring his people free and independent into the twentieth century.

ut how? The ready-made aristocracy with which he had been
provided were a shabby lot of absentee landlords, money-lenders
an speculative builders. Dr K. A. Busia, afterwards to lead the
opposition to the CPP and himself in theory a strong supporter of
c le y rule, in a book published in 1951, has thus described them:

The most noticeable thing that struck me when I began my
inquiries in Kumasi in 1942 was the considerable intrigue that went
on regarding constitutional disputes that came before the Con-
e cracy Council. Bribes were given and received in all such cases. It

" as so common that everybody knew about it, and everybody talked
about it.

A J hC ,^ ante , hcne had suc ceeded, not to the grandeur of the old
*- n ^ 1™ j Ut mere *y t0 * ts squalor and oppression. Politi-
S-.L C f cd and turned t0 fi nd a way out and, among his fellow
1 ' T ? S an . 011 1 e B°lf course, sought guidance as to what he should
lie tnicTV 3 i?° ! , IU )t dlat ^ rom ma ny of the British officials whom
cnl! ii C ., a VICC Was t0 resist with all the authority at his
the wei i he t4- Va c CC of f adlcalism and the CPP, and for this he had
destoolmcnr r' S n ^uuncd could control the enstoolment and
chiefs contrnll, A .1 su fi° rd ‘ nate chiefs in Ashanti and since these
power When p • C °a a . courts “ was a position of considerable
ubliciv denn, P0S1 l l - C o CUOn Was ann °unced by Dr Nkrumah he
he was caught * t " deucefonvard until well after Independence
Kumasi State C m °.^ 0Sl tl0n movements and the machinery of the

Independence 1,, U f who darcd to support the CPP. After
the CPP as he h ar °und and became as open a supporter of

pcriS, ^ t’tw'S ° d f ° PP f n K ntS k dlc pre-independence
liimself, the Ashantchene i ^ } °. f thls advance his objective? In

a S<--. A Christian Methodist b!° T™ - 11 ^ contradict 'o ns of his
head of an ancient an' • r u Pfi nn S'ng, he found himself the
tools to ffis hand r m ' n , f f V Ic " as a Conner and yet the only
The bearer of a tradi?" 'i . r . 0 ^ cn f^'cs of discredited feudalism.

denceand resistance to'ff 13 - Ut ° stood fot national indepen-
resistancc ,0 foreign rule, he had been raised to power and

interregnum of LOST OPPORTUNITY 135

maintained there by those who had looted his capital, destroyed rts

sacred places and exiled his pre ecessor. visited him in

A few days after the Chief Justice’s . place

his capital. I wanted to talk the tradrnonal nder an ^ ^ ^

in the new society but he would ^ talked about anthro-

think back on it, how could he. - whose books on the

pology. He had worked with Eva 0 y 0rigin are

Sacred State of tne Man and an ctudies 0 f West African

among the most scholarly of all Eu p Town Clerk

culture. He spoke now of a young man soop . tt be , the ^

of Kumasi who would thereafter, he ope , ^j stor y. The truth
over the scientific study of Ashanti c ^ s 0 ,,, Q f tbe past. Some-

must lie somewhere if one could read the nddle ot the p

where must he the secret of the uture. g onne ’ s _ He

‘The Royal Labour Party ^ 1S ? V3 1 tebene and convinced he

was as concerned for the future as j^nte ^ Nu Bonne whose
had as big a part to play m it as e. n ’ of £Vents that led to the
boycott had set in motion the a certain, know who to

new constitution. The people wou , ^ tbem the right pro-

return to power if only he cou the British Labour Party but
gramme. His plan was for a La ty of the c hief was acknow-

with a constitution in which tn p chieflv connection it must

ledged and entrenched. To en JP ha “ p rtv ’ Would I help him to
therefore be called ‘The Royal Labour Party -

draft it? his autobiography and from its

At this time he was also tmsy ^ has the impre ssion that at
preface, written by Dr K ‘ A ‘ ctuals despairing of the old style
this time the opposition intel q{ . a new kind of traditional

chief, were hoping for the emer = ^ Bonne,’ wrote Dr Busia, ‘juts
ruler. ‘The strong personality^ ^ < an intrepid adventurer with
out like an impregnable tower- ^ ga jd Dr Busia, as he read Nii
acute business imagination . ^^ded of ‘Ulysses’ band of brave
Bonne’s narrative, he was re ^ ^ first c i ear . It was true in his
mariners’. Why he should o dismisses his matrimonial adven-
story Nii Bonne introduces a^ ^ hcr o of the Odyssey but this is
tures with a finality w° rtn > , rcco mmended him to Dr Busia, a
hardly a quality which cd 0 f Churches. His enthusiasm was

lay adviser to the M ° rW , subconscious desire for a chiefly
more likely an expression o

x 36 reap the whirlwind

society without chiefs which so many of the intellectual opposition
were to feel. The Afro-American writer Richard Wright, who
visited Ghana in the pre-independence period, talked with Dr Busia
about oath-taking and the pouring of libation, and recorded:

I had the feeling that he was speaking sincerely, that he could not
conceivably touch such methods, that he regarded them with loathing,
and that he did not even relish thinking that anyone else would.’

Though the Royal Labour Party came to nothing the Joint
Provincial Council of Chiefs nominated Nii Bonne as one of their
representatives in the 1951 Legislative Assembly. He delighted the
lembers by his ability to illustrate his argument with the thought
ot Rabelais expressed in the language of Mrs Malaprop. His sayings
have become legend. One of them, from which unfortunately the
rst e ernent is absent, has been officially recorded. Complaining
itter y m the Assembly of the conflicting nature of his chiefly
duties, he protested :

?JPf aker ^ Bonne here — Nii Bonne there. How can I division
myself into twice ?’

It was the fitting epitaph for Indirect Rule.

fiv T ~^'r U l Ster ^°l unt eers’ was my attempt to establish
C /' E - P°* nt .° re ^ re nce against which to evaluate the existing
inT/f mi, 3 rr } lmStra , tl0n ' incident I had in mind occurred in
M,- • Cn , ,. u ? ar ’ ^ en Governor of Northern and Southern

Northern Ireln C JTT Cnd °^ Sed th . C P ro POsed armed revolt of the
Home Riii t n • , n . 10nists against the Liberal Government’s Irish

Volunteer,l LeS V S a u tIOn - Sp ° ke t0 the rebcl force > the Ulster
the Overseas 1 ^ ^ ^ lnc ‘ denta Hy among them — ‘in the name of
irmed and aSSUred them ^ their projected

r ^ g ****& the Em pire from end to end’
cation^ifhow I* ^ rTT tbem ^ od s speed’. It was an excellent indi-
He was an inden^i^^ regarded the office of Colonial Governor,
sedffious views’ ^ Entitled t0 -press, as in this case, even
employed him. He PP ° Slt . 10n to thc Government which nominally
chose to appoint him ’ 1X l/ acC ’ a Politician. If the Government

accept his policy and h! & G ° Vem ° r oP a Colony then they had to
was entitled to intrigue behind their back

interregnum of lost opportunity 137

with the Opposition or the back mildly

in order to get that policy throug . h ’ ad nQ hes i tat ion m

considering, for his Ulster speec > ° with tbe Secretary of

sending the whole confidential coreep ^ 4J ^ care f u l/ Lugard
State to Captain Craig, the rebel or „ , rp be f urt h e st he had

explained to him, ‘not to retract a wor • ^ < ap 0 i 0 gi ze for the

gone, he pointed out, was, m a pn ’

breach of Colonial regulations . discover how far this

I thought I would begin by attemp j on t h a t the Watson

Lugard tradition persisted, follow up my (Colonial authorities

recommendations had been inspire y | s had been so

locally and try to determine how, 1 > o tate for the Colonies,

contemptuously treated by the Secremj of Statt alI ^

The answer I came to then, and =h ™s to ColonM

advice I subsequently gave, was t a ■ bad been found. Up

Governor was gone for ever but no s on t h e S p 0 t’ dictated

till the second world war perhaps constitutional theory, the

policy. Now, correctly m accordance . Qn but f ro m there they

local official looked to Whitehall ford* ^ ^ neithe r then nor
received no coherent response. ’ was n0 longer defended

later any thought out policy. ! f J Tr x : st i ns Colonial methods of
on principle but merely out 0 a • t bey had been tested by
administration were supported, no ex isted and nothing

any scientific examination but e nt . In so far as there were
better could be thought of for the tQ be t0 resist communist
principles laid down, they a PP® . and rabble rousers an to

infiltration, to keep in check the a D ua .

stamp out corruption. orn nired a new meaning. Resisting

These, in a Colonial context, q n prohibiting any serious
communist infiltration was takei J working in practice. For example,
discussion of how colonialism ' : ourne y Africa— Britain s Tur

I had brought out to read ^ J noted for his anti-com-

Empire by George Padmore 1, at 4 e t critical 0 f economic

munist line. While this k °° sa me time a plea for co-operation and
Colonial policy it was at the

its concluding passage ran . ■

, much to share to their mutual
‘Both Britons and A fri cans » ^ common pe0 ple of Britain

advantage. No Colonial can

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

without admiring their sterling qualities ... a high degree of self-
imposed civic discipline: integrity and civility among public servants
and a sense of fair-play, justice and tolerance, found among no other
imperial race . . . while Colonials might be anti-imperialists; they
are never anti-British. Once the present system of Colonialism dis-
appears, nothing will stand in the way of genuine friendship and soli-
darity’ between Africa and Britain.’

Yet Sir Charles Arden-Clarke’s administration, supposedly’ dedi-
cated to preparing the Gold Coast for independence, declared
Padmore s views ‘communist’. The book was proscribed as seditious
and anyone, including myself, possessing a copy was liable to a long
term of imprisonment. ‘Agitators and rabble rousers’ were taken to
mean anyone who sought popular, as opposed to chiefly, support
or their policies. Thus democracy, while in theory' encouraged, was
in reality frowned upon. ‘The fight against corruption’ in the end
01 \ j™ t0 a sa ^ t i’ first policy against entrusting power to any
new ands in the belief that it must, of necessity', be abused. In the
na resort, the colonial administrator’s attitude of mind was that of
jV 1C -iii' 1 ' ] ^ cnsa h Sabah had complained over forty years before,
we still had not abandoned the idea that ‘aboriginal administra-
°£: • • was mextricably permeated with corruption’.

, 1 ’ owe ' er aU might be, in the last resort responsibility’ for
a went w rong in the Gold Coast and elsewhere in die Colonies in
other '' aS r ? 1 dlat dle Colonial officials but of myself and
Colonial v ,aans 1 C T ^.'T as we who had inherited power over a
it in the n m ^' r r’ 'l ® 1 t ? c l Civil Servants who were paid to administer

the nowerT * 6 ° =l i m ' S 1 Government which we, and not they, had
tne power to control.

Northern . 5 KW l ° ^ Coast I had stopped over in Kano in
export the ne N C T Cntre of S roun dnut collection, on whose

detected n oS P ° f N ° T rthem Ni S eria ^pend. At the time I
and efficient \v" ? Vr0n ®‘ ^ n deed, I was impressed by the detailed

officiate ^f ChtnV^T 6111 b£ing d ° ne * ** C ° l0nial
P. T. Bauer whn h a ^ was on ^ r Y ears afterwards when

myself publisher! IV “l^ ort: ^ e rn Nigeria at the same time as

really been mine- on\ ^African Trade that I discovered what had

stayed in Kano eronnH ° Ur ^ aclcs ’ tile particular year that I
’ groun dnuts were being purchased at the controlled

interregnum of LOST OPPORTUNITY 139

price of £21 4s. a ton. In theory, the ftytvS

Lid price of £,t a ton was •“^*^^„Sted by
by the Nigerian Government and P t f ac t as Mr

the Nigerian Ground Nut Mar et * n S , a ton> a l m ost as
Bauer’s calculations subsequently s 0 > n dnuts, went as a

much as was paid to the farmer w o gre’v , ^ output at

profit to the Ministry of Food m Britain which bought

a controlled price of £53 a ton ’ , no t s top there. Not

The ramifications of the matter, howev ™ Xt amounted to a
only was Britain m practice taking m J the official tax of the

tax of £18 a ton on Nigerian groundnut ^ J ^ surpluses 0 f the
Nigerian Government was on y A 3 • . on eac h ton of

Marketing Board in that year, equiva Nigeria and was lent

groundnuts, was invested in Britain and nom The net

to the British Government at a very , ^ ^ j n Nigeria, the

result was that for every ton 0 St navnient made to their own
Nigerians had, by way of export tax a P bsolute ty or by the way of
growers, £24 ros., while Britain, ^ ^ this a ll. The pressure to

low interest loans, took £30 • unpr0C essed groundnuts for

secure the maximum 4 ua ^. , ta q me nt of local processing.

British manufacture resulted m ^ s 0 f groundnut oil,

At one time, Mr Bauer foun f e ?> s staple foods, was four times
one of the most important 0 o be Ministry of Food,
that paid in London for simI ar . 0 ' . T^ an0 they had no more idea
When I talked with the official dmlt purchase worked out in
than I that this was how the gr ^ that there were not

practice. They were c0 ] nc f rne i ment but it never crossed their
sufficient funds for local ev ® , hut had been spirited away by
minds or mine that the money - su h se quently sometimes been
the British Government. deliberate scheme by the British

suggested that this was par t h e burden of austerity rom

Labour Government to shi peasant and that it was kept

the British worker to the Mr There is no evidence of

secret so as not to arouse ° boo b ; which exposed the working

this. On the contrary, Mr Ba ^ Colonia i office when Arthur

of the system, was commission^ ) ^ Mf Bauer was only ab le to
Creech Jones was Secretary ^ the Labour and the succeeding
produce his facts bcca ”L administration allowed him access to
Conservative Colonial Office

M° iu.ap tiu. win m. wind

their confidential files. Gilonial exploitation, one might think, was
done almost in absence t>f mind.

^ el what happened with Nigerian groundnuts in 1950 was no
isolated incident. It was, as Mr Hauer prosed, part of a general and
consistent policy applied to all British African Colonial cash crops
and 1950 was not a particularly notorious scar in this regard. In
' 9-1 y ~-\h f°r example, tin - Nigerian producers sscrc onlv paid £16 a
ton for their crop while the British Ministry of Food compulsorily
purchased it at £31 181. below the market price. In other words the
British Government, for doing nothing, was making almost twice
as much out of groundnuts as was the Nigerian grower who actually
prot ucet them. 1 his was permitted despite the fact that the grower’s
income in terms of what he could bus with his money, was well
below what he was earning before the war. In this scar,' out of this
one crop done from one Gdony, Britain made a profit of £11
million. I he responsibility must lie with the casual wav those of us
pohtKs allowed Colonial Affairs to be neglected in Parliament. No

, n ImU rr" ! ' Uch as ,l,cw? «»«Scd from the Colonial debate in
the 1 louse of Commons to which 1 returned.

traditional for the Opposition to delate one of its Parlia-
short isf-i 3 ^' S - t0 3 > lbCU!,s ‘ on °f tadnni.1l Affairs— -the only occasion
atrreed rh-ir^?^ !' tbt - '\ crc discussed. It had long been tacitly
about these '?' UaS n , cvc , r t«> be any sufficient Party dispute
to fix this* ColniiG*" k! C ' U '- Ul 3 ‘ b ' b, ‘ un - Thus it had become usual
which Meml UIUa r c . ),llc lor ,bc Tiy of the Roval Garden Party to
SS “ f ,c " ere insited. Though this did not
of Members bei! Cln ,ar , r ''ssment, it resulted in onlv a handful
,n 1 t ,C I C1,3mb(;r * ^ Mrs Phene White

our Colonial friends’ ' Th* l J". forlun3tc ™P«ssion among some of
second visit of mine to the Gold T l ° ,' s h , ,ch 1 returned after this
on a previous 1 , ^° ast R'd, as a result of her protest

Speaker’s Rccention'f to an alternative date— that of the

to her previous con 1^ AIc .™ b , crs, » uhi( -'h, as Mrs White returning

Royal Command’. l?om K icT* n ? Jrd aS bcing ncxt only t0 3
colleagues agreed with h ltcntianci; it was clear that most of her
more Member^ 1, resell, t*!, ’ N ? vmkte . there meet have been
know this because I tried u! ' ' U ’” 10 ' vtrc nailed to speak. 1

The most I achieved «~k int0 tbc debate myself and failed.

o interrupt Sir Anthony Eden to make a

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY W

defence of my progressive Colonial official friends in Northern

^ Thcuiontrast between the House of Conunons aiuitheGoM BritUh
where everyone was waiting for a pronounce ^ democracy

Parliament, was startling. The future shape o mralysed by a

over which six months before the

general strike and through which D of impor tance or

were at that moment in prison, w single sentence by

interest at Westminster. It was disnussc as Colonial

Jim Griffiths, the successor of Arthur ^ee J , he toW the
Secretary. ‘The Report of the Coussey Com . wiggj it is

House, ‘has already becom ^ f a D f^^h but he was alone and his
true, argued for the release of Dr N for ^ Minister 0 f State,

plea was considered too unimport g tQ it in his rep ly to the

John Dugdale, to make a passing become

debate. It was left to Alan L=nnrfoyd, lid pend.nce, to put
Colonial Secretary at the time of Ghanaian
what was in reality the Government s ca .

'i1 ‘attacked the whole conception

‘The Watson Commission, he saw, ion that the African

of Chieftainship in Africa. It n icu neW CO nstimtional forms.

Chiefs had a useful function to “ a ver y good thing that it

It was left, strangely enoug — u \- ss j on composed entirely of
should happen this way to a c . ca j] e( j in the House of

Africans . in a Report that was ^ # considerable

Lords a declaration of faith, to aftr Coast and a big

,o.e for the best queries * ^^L***.-
part for the chiefs » Play ^ self . decei)tioE

Whatever else might have chan^ » s0 when the Watson

remained intact. The chiefs were Committee of Chiefs and their
Commission attacked chiefly ™ termine whether this was justified,
supporters was appointed to e un just it only remained for the
Once they had pronounce t e ver dict.

British Parliament to endorse again unt il the beginning of

I did not go back t0 . the , d chan cred. Colonel Cawston had run
1952. By then everything na °. g bcence t0 practice law in the

foul of the Supreme Court, na ^ Ddler had quarrelled over the
Colony and had left. Tayma ^ Taymani a nd in consequence
cinema which Deller was to mana a

KLA1* TIM. WHIRLWIND

the unfortunate Deller had been prosecuted and deported. The
cinema itself had burnt down and poor Tavmani, being a Sjrian,
was accused of Inning done it on purpose. Now his law hooks were
for sale and he too was no lonuer in Accra.

In the same way as the riots ol iij^S had come as a complete
surprise to the Colonial administration so apparentlv did the result
of the General l.lection. The Ixoumniit's Special Correspondent
reflected the official view when he had written a dav or so before the
poll, 1 he CPP should win all the Urban constituencies and a
proportion of the rural seats . . . they are unlikely to achieve much
success in the 1 erritorial Councils and the Northern Territory will
vote solidly against them. It may be assumed that they will com-
mand about a third of the Assembly. . . Indeed, it was universally
anticipated that the indirect system of election for the rural
constituencies under which the electors merely chose an electoral
co ege must, of necessity, be biased towards a conservative result.

V c niarb of dl e unanimity of popular feeling that even Nana
t'.r. M | >U Jr . landing in his own traditional area, was
, c catc ’ 011 - H ain, ng in his electoral college thirteen votes against
T ^ i' l - onc cast l°r lus CPI* engine driver trade union opponent,
n the former territory of the late Sir Nana Ofori Atta 1 chiefly
influence was still sufficient to secure the return of his brother, Dr

snvdlicr r Ua - " S b0n William 0fori Atta, though only bv the
, ° m , a,0 i r ! 11 ?' But in Asl,ami > "»‘«c Dr llusia stood for the
Convemio, 1 1 t. hl , S .- br o hCr rull;d as ^icf, he was defeated. The
the dirorrl C °i' V * . an ' " crc cveryw here successful in winning
confu on I 3 ^ \ nd l rCC,ly dtcl ‘ d ^ais. The disarray and
tainine a minn”?/ 'r rm) S rcsi, hcd even in their nominees con-
contained onlv7- °. • u su PP ortcrs - In a Legislative body which
two nominated llrt ^~ c ‘Sht elected members as compared to fortv-
Scteen ° nCS ’ U ‘ C CPP fouild themselves in a majority of

been assumertl^thrclL'sev 5 ’? 1 Pan ? t '°" had bccn niadc ‘ h had
continuance of Indirect R, ,e ?T lUU ° n W ° uld l ,r0vidc f ° r ,ht ;
Government Business’ the t’tl ^. 0tler mcans a »d the ‘Leader of
tive Council in chaS of tie J ^ *° dlC mcmbcr E ^ cu “
British official the A^ttn L business in the Assembly, would be a
was thouX I a r 63, Hc would havc thc support, it

8 ’ 3 COalUl0n of ch,efl y nominees, European business

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY *43

representatives and right-wing '^l^^^amount to a vocal
constituencies. The CPP, it was suppo > ^ be disregarded,

minority and would form an Opposi ion a fi enthusiasm

Once this calculation proved to have beat er oneous al ^ ^ 1
for the Coussey Constitution evaporated overn g j J agreed in
came to Accra again the British Governm efsal a( jult suffrage,
principle to new elections on the asis m( j er -which there was
The issue was now to secure a constitu 1 0 f Government,

effective democratic control over t e ; m was effectively

This, in fact, neither before nor after n Nkrumah and

secured and in the end this failure was fatal for Ur

his party. , ter 0 f competing franchises

I had come out on a complica ba d time and oppor-

for United States soft drinks and once d tQ help them on

tunity to talk with the CPP leaders. anc j financial brains

working out a plan to recruit an eco ards t0 London, I was

trust and, as I was going backwar s : dua i s who might agree to
given the job of sounding out the t ^ t ] iat there could be no

act. At this time it was clear to r i unle$s there was also a
genuine preparation for ^dependence ^ ^ immediately

machine constructed which co Colonial Office rests •

on independence being secure - , > stated bluntly that e

The Watson Commission had a ^ purposes of modern
administrative machine was , ou t, quite rightly, t rat any

economic planning’- They ha P nius t depend upon increas

improvement in Gold Coast con effective economic P annl =>•

national productivity' whic rc< l proposed that there s ou
In order to achieve this they had It might h e

appointed an Economic - j would, at least, .

been thought that such a P^f Labo ur Government. On
svmpaihetically considered ^ o * nt \ tuc k. ‘It is not consul ed

contran- it was sub ect to ' . Dispa tch to Sir Charles

S’® Arthur C*«ch Adviser in addition

Arden-Clarkc in reply, ‘to apP^ jn Government on

to the officers already respon d he explained, « th the

economic matters.’! he pt-^r m i 9 4$ "«no« m

original development pr^ram \ ^ bccn in preparation sme

acts\ c process of r— » * $ 0 f day until live years later, dcsp.te

1945 and was not to seetU

J 44 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

continual demands for its publication, even from the old Legislative
Council. At last, in 1950, it was presented to the moribund Council
on tire eve of its dissolution. It turned out to be an eloquent defence
of the principles of laissez-faire and its operative paragraph ran:

, Development is not the exclusive concern of government, and great
importance is attached to development by commercial and private
enterprise and by the masses of the people acting in their own in-
terests. . . . The most important part of development cannot, in a
emocracy, be directed by the Government. The most which the
O' f ; rnment can do outside the sphere of government departmental
actiMtj is to attempt to stimulate initiative, enthusiasm and
endeavour.’

fortunately, m an unexpected way, an opportunity arose to
TlfT?* t0 re ^P en t ^ e d°° r slammed by Creech Jones’ Dispatch.

e 3 tson Commission had found that the total building activity
n £ 3 . 0 Africans \ n Accra during the year previous to their
P , ’ ?' as 1 lc conversion of thirty temporary houses into perman-
rnn m ! C .w SS an .f, ^ construction of one hundred and eight single
that qin" 1 t anci ar i’ buildings. They had commented on the fact
had Lp CC ^ anua D’ J 945 only three hundred and thirty-one houses
matelv nn C T, eCt j 1 , n r the T ca P‘ ta l f° r Africans as against approxi-
anv nnliriral ^ ^ ^°r Ruro P ean occupation. In order to forestall
Dro°Tammi> S" ltlclsm ( or not embarking on an increased housing
authorized ’ ^ °“ tg01n S Colonial administration had, in 1950,

l a b t0 determine Aether ‘^e launching of a

millions of n r ^ nS Pr0Sramme involving the expenditure of
due to material 11 a Tv?' a ^° ravate the existing inflationary tendency

h^the hands'ofdre public’^Th 3 ^ ant ^ '” CTCasct ^ purchasing power
this investio-arion n P m C f.^ le ec °nomists appointed to earn' out
of Overseas Devel ° ^ ? cers ’ * ater a high official of the Ministry
at Oxford and C ^ u 5 3 lecturer ‘ n economic statistics

ford pobtednm a a fell °"' of Hertford College, Ox-

undertakino- a full scale^ ^ COuld not be made w i thout

in the end°the tr ^ of 1116 Gold Coast economy and
physical problems of , COmiTUSSIOnec i to examine the financial and
Report, £ 2 “ i0 “»»>■ eenerally. Their

appointment of an economic admer”' Str0nEly ” faV °“ r ° f

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 45^

Among the few documents which have ? ^diest drafts which I
my papers after the coup d'etat \s one o d t0 t b e employ-

prepared, an outline for a Cabinet pape ^ wort h quoting in
ment of the type of experts we had in • r 0 lonial adminis-

full to illustrate the status of expert re j ec e y uma h was then

tration and to indicate the type o e P
trying to enlist:

‘i. The Report on Financial and Accra, July

Gold Coast (Office of the Government ^ twQ Econo _

1952) has been accepted by the s an d C. R. Ross— were
mists making the Report— Du ey ^ ^ suggest ion of the
appointed by the Minister of

Colonial Office. n i. A07 page 168) u For all

2. Their Reportrecommends(parag p ^ d ]^_ ter m plan and

decisions — the annual programme, government needs an
the long-run economic strategy ^

economist competent to advise it. e j-yi) “We do not

The Report says further (pa^jfj^d usurp the functions of
want to suggest that the econorni . 0 f economic policy
government The decisions on the baknce^ ^ f ust be

for a year, for a planning peno bine t The economic adviser s
political decisions taken by the Ca imply, how much

job is to show what various deasio^ ^ would bring-m
they would cost, and how

real, as well as financial te PJ\y rsW i c k of the Oxford ns u

S as this

calibre required could only be

on contract. A , Worswick has been sugges e •

4. The reasons why ^M ^ were appointed in agreem h

(a) Since Mr Seers and ^ Colonial Office they would be diefirst
and at the suggestion oft* ^ is at pre sent employed m UNO
choice as Advisers but Mr an econom ist m the offices ot

in New York and Mr Ross ck ^ the close associate of these
the British Cabinet. Mr W^ of StatlstlC s and therefore,

mo gentlemen in the u.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

146

if neither Mr Seers nor Mr Ross are available, he is a natural
choice in their place.

(b) Mr Worswick was appointed by Mr Gaitskell, Labour Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer, as a member of the Douglas Committee on
Purchase Tax and utility goods and by Mr Butler, Conservative
Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a member of the Hutton Com-
mittee on Tax Paid Stocks. He is thus an economist whose
abilities have been recognized by both political parties in England.

(c) Outside his strictly economic experience on these Committees,
he has had general experience on rehabilitation of industry as a
member of the Board of Trade Working Party on the Lace
Industry.

(d) In 1951 he was invited by the Government of Burma to head a
team of five experts who visited Burma and advised the Govern-
ment on the problems of economic development.

(e) He was recently offered (and refused owing to his having been
previously approached from the Gold Coast) by the Common-
wealth Relations Office, membership of the Tax Commission for
Ceylon to be set up under the Colombo Plan.

( ) In his published works and in his teaching and research at
Oxford, he has shown great interest in and knowledge of the
problems of under-developed areas.

5. It is therefore proposed that Mr David Worswick should be

o ere an engagement as an Adviser on the following conditions
and terms . . .’

This document, of course, did not stand alone. I myself drafted a
mi ar a *^ et P a per with the object of securing the part-time
r\ ices 0 r Thomas Balogh whom we wanted to assist in the
W< ? r k sett ‘ n S up a National Bank and advising
1 • t 0r l. 6 ^'P e exchange control and other financial
after 1*°^ " * j U ° 3d de neces sary to pass before or immediately
ffieon ?n PC1 1 ™ ny 03565 the Executive Council, in

write tn ! ;r C , P r Elkrumah was authorized actually to
From mv n 6 lvidu p s concerned offering them appointment.
Balogh nnrl w°" ed °, C * ^now this happened in the cases of Dr
had to be r' V1C u L However ) the actual appointment, which

No indivirtn "t C 4, rou Sh the Colonial Office, was never finalized.

a, whatever his background, was satisfactory to the

interregnum of LOST OPPORTUNITY 147

Office and S o finally no outside “ ^d'Sbe
except as recommended by the Co oma p b c h an ce, I was

employed in the pre-independence peri ’ prevented

myself appointed It 'vas f ‘ ^“1° ndenee period

experts visiting the Gold Coast P g and ;! eports ma de by

there were numerous commissio , q being established

experts of every sort. The ban was upon anyone be g ^

permanently in the Colony, having day o y t h an to the

Ministers and having a staff responsi e ^ Itg were produced.

administration. In this period many exc g 0 j t was Ghana

All that was lacking was their imp ei ™y Colonial machine which

found itself at Independence with t* e s a- • nt by the Watson

had been condemned as altoget er in not the fault of

Commission eight years before. This, at least, w

the African Ministers. :^rf»cnnnsibility and lack of

Nothing could better i^trate^^e Govemment ap proached the
understanding with which the independence than this

problem of preparing the G °“ Sdvta tt be appointed. The
refusal to allow an outside economic bHshed the previous

first paragraph of the Seers-Ross Report p

year had read : • wnr d

the Gold Coast economy in one tvora,

‘If we were forced to sum p “fragile”-’

the word we would choose would be S

As the y P ut it: . , . e the Gold Coast economy “over-

‘Considered as an economic mac ’id easily get out of control . .
responds” to any acceleration, a that the earnings of foreign

The second main weakness is, commodity — cocoa ... Its price m
exchange depend mainly on on tQ changes in the prosperity of a

the world’s market is highly sensit . . _ Even the other exports
few highly industrialized c ° hich are similarly limited and

minerafs and timber, bive j ^ ^ they te nd to share the

subject to much the » fl ® t 0I j y foreign exchange, .but also , the

fortunes of the cocoa indus . tr J' the country, depends mainly on these

level of purchasing power msid

commodities.’ Qne - n the Colonial Office ques-

If what they said was true n ^ sential was, as they recommended,

tioned their views, then th

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

148

the provision of technical economic and financial advice which
was, at that time, not available through the Colonial Office.

So far as internal expansion of the economy was concerned the
problem, as the Seers-Ross Report made plain, was in large part a
monetary and financial issue. West African currency was controlled,
not by any Central State Bank, but by the West African Currency
Board which issued the money used throughout the British West
African Colonies and which operated under a system known as the
Sterling Exchange Standard’. By applying this Standard the Board
was required to maintain a hundred per cent cover of their currency
liabilities. When the two private banks operating in the Gold Coast,
the British Bank of West Africa and Barclay Bank DCO presented
sterling in London, the Board issued West African currency against
it. When these banks wished to reduce their sterling holding the
Board was under an obligation to redeem West African currency to
t le extent of the reduction. The whole Colonial economy was
t us geared to maintaining a healthy balance of payments by a
mechanism almost identical with that of the Gold Standard as it was
operated before 1914. The result was to produce a monetary
situation admirable, no doubt, for the promotion of foreign trade
but m no way adaptable to transforming the Gold Coast economy so
at it cou become more self-supporting and less dependent upon
imports an exports. In all political statements of policy the
successive about and Conservative Governments in Britain
1 leir ( ; sire t0 see the diversification of agriculture and
A frJ VC rT ent °a lndustr y * n the Gold Coast and indeed in all
” 0 0 . mcs ' , . t 1 ldie same time they consistently pursued this
itself a ^ P ‘° 1C f W ^ 1C - 1 ** P art icularly difficult in that it was in

locillv 1 , aC j° r ln Siting the working capital available for

nion!i^ n! 1 Pr °, UCtlVC COncerns - If the Colony had had expert
un the teeh ' 1C ? ^ a -954 W0ldd ^ ave been possible to have built
so that at ?i, Ca Sta rec l uired an d made the necessary preparation
Standard could | n0me k nt of lnd epcndence the Sterling Exchange
made nossible k een . ^P^ced by a system which would have

“btLXrivalitS high “ l"' 1 ° f ”•”*>' " b ° th ,hC

prenarations «•<. . ofthe : national economy. Since however no

April 1061 that r< | P oss 'b} e unt il after independence it was not until
Outside evnerr C , s ! cr in S exc hange standard finally disappeared.

P a \ ice was equally necessary in the creation of a

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY !49

central state owned bank and the controlling of the activities o
private banks. They did not lend locally. From 1950 to *95 , •

small proportion of the increase in their deposits were em P
the Gold Coast and in this nine-year period there was on y
increase in bank lending locally of £800,000. ... , < •

Equally serious to the economy was the absence 0 s 1 e
on the management of the Gold Coast portfolio 0 ex r oas t

ments. Prior to the CPP coming to power m * 95 * Ae Gold
external reserves were £113.3 million. I 955 t e y z , - «
£208.2 million. At the date of independence they were ar
million. By the beginning of 1963 they had fallen to £7 d*.

It was in fact at a figure slightly larger than this at w along,

have probably been desirable to have maintame
This figure of £71.5 million was e q ui ^ le nt “ 43 ayerage

average annual value of imports over 195° o • . , tjca a nd

(excluding the two countries with reserve currencies, aroun d

Britain, and the Socialist bloc) was contemporary t b at

46 per cent. The figure suggested in the Seer- *oss ep - e

considered as reasonable and safe by the meri annual

Financial Mission of 1947, a 50 per cent ayerage
imports bill. In other words a reserve of between £ » £» s
million would have been quite sufficient for G ana s e was

The reason why reserves were so much in access o Office

first that the Ministry of Finance, which was : nvest ing in

controlled until 1954, pursued a deli J erat ^?vthat there did not
Britain and not in the Gold Coast and seco y , . L ac v- 0 f
east the planning machinery to organize the ploughs
capital saved abroad into productive use in t e 0 0 W as

The ill-effect of maintaining these excessive ster 1 o ‘ ss j on

three-fold. First by their very existence they gave th mp ^
that Ghana was not likely in the future to ave k ere f orc not
payments problem when the reverse was the ca s • . cy n ce this

until much later was machinery devised to ea ' brought i nt0
machinery was then hastily improvised and su e ^ t b e yi s it

full operation, its inefficiency in many ways aggr ^ own 0 f t hc

Was designed to cure. Secondly the perfectly P ro P e , ment could
excessive sterling balances in order to finance ® t hc huge

, » an d was, represented as an approach to an ’ ’ f t h 0U crh

balance of previous years being contrasted with the

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

150

in fact sufficient, balances of a later period. Thus in a centre page,
two-column article on the 13th June, 1961, on the Ghana economy
the London Times Commonwealth correspondent prophesied the
country’s economic collapse by the end of that year owing to its
policy of spending its overseas reserves. In fact at the end of 1961
those stood at £73.1 million, or in relation to imports, at about the
world average and were, for a year at least, stabilized at around that
figure, only dropping by £1.6 million by the end of 1962.

In so far as Ghana was ultimately short of foreign exchange it was
due in large part to the unskilled management of the investment
portfolio in London and this was only the fault of the Ghana
Government in that it allowed this portfolio, even after indepen-
dence, to be invested through the old colonial machinery. In 1961
when a leading British expert, who today holds a high position in
t e Treasury, visited Ghana he calculated that £ 60 million had been
ost to Ghana through the capital depreciation of the stocks in which
the reserves had been invested. This sum, of course, far exceeds
anything anyone has even suggested Ghana lost in foreign exchange
t rough corruption or extravagance. Yet, though the figure was
quote y the President to Parliament, the Western press scarcely
mentione what was, on any showing, a sensational allegation against
ntis , tec mical competence in the financial management of other
peop e s money. The London Times, whose article on Ghanaian
an uptcy t e President quoted when explaining the question of
° j mi f ! on oss ’ ‘Snored his speech entirely, not reporting a single

PR 6 Se . rl0lls difficulties over the balance of payments which
SU scc l uen dy suffered arose through a number of causes the
nerinH 111 f° rtant ° " was the variation in the cocoa price. In the
1 ° r? the spot New York price for cocoa had an
averase Uctuat ‘ on °f plus or minus 25.2 per cent and an

annual fli.rt ln ~. season fluctuation of plus or minus 40 per cent. The
that for T* ° Ve - r l ^ C P er ‘°d were substantially greater than
rubber wffirR v, C j ma ^ or Primary exports, with the exception of
per cent No & an avera § e fluctuation of plus or minus 28.8
to the evrenr' 0 '^!? ’? 01 ' CVen Ma!a Y sia > was dependent on rubber
L thiS ; f ^ Ch the Gold Coast wa * ™ “4 which provided

This on T mry S f0rei S n exchange.

actor alone made the Gold Coast economy one of the

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY I5 1

most vulnerable in the world. Nevertheless the world ,

cocoa prices which reached its climax in 1965 nee n0
fatal if a sound system of planning and economic con
instituted early enough. What was lacking was ear y pr P ^

effective fiscal and prohibitory means of restricting ^

consumer goods and semi-durable products so as 0 a . , £ or

continued uninterrupted inflow of the capita goo s f or

development, even at a time when the foreign exc ange , s

purchases abroad fell through circumstances eyon • y e

control. Secondly the economy was unlikely to e u p or

unless, as early as possible, long-term pl ans a ® ^ tQ m j n i_
increasing internal production, particularly o 00 , hean

« talons. Almost one-third of f ***** ^

exports had to be spent on imported food, bu D , sQ -|

Ghanaian soil under tropical conditions, there-

surveys, irrigation schemes, a scientific use o e i office

fore an educational campaign among farmer . exoerts for

could produce no planners of experience nor ,, ^ Gold

anything but cash crops for export. They refused to
Coast to hire, out of its own resources, expert interested in

Mr Worswick who had international reputations, we already

just these problems and had, in Dr Balogh’s ease “rtaudy^^ y
farm up detailed plans as to how the techmcrans and

required could be obtained. _ , , T have been

What was the reason for this obstinate refusa . n ^ area .

that the Gold Coast was a great earner of dollars for the stern „

It was British policy to prevent any correspon o em pl 0 y
dollars by the Gold Coast. In 1953, the year we attempted^
economic and financial advisers from outsi e currency

allocation from its own dollar earnings for pure ase ^ percentage
markets was 21 cents for every dollar earned, n 193 „ n j s R 0 bert-

allocation was reduced to 16 cents per dollar, s 1

son put it in his book Britain and the World hconoi j -

‘It meant that each country as a country agreed to han ^ t0

dollar earnings to Mother in exchange for ster i little black

Mother when it -wanted extra dollars to spen • • >_ed on the

children who were often the best earners cou dollars, while the
head if they showed too great a propensity to spen

J 5 2

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

grown-up white daughters, who were often pretty extravagant, could
only be quietly reasoned with.’

With a Balogh or a Worswick to advise, the little black child might
have put up as cogent a claim as the pampered white daughter, and
that would never do. On the other hand it is more likely the Colonial
Office had no such Machiavellian reason in mind. The answer is
probably that on principle no outsider should be permitted to
intrude into their preserves. Certainly the agitation for a financial
adviser had had one positive result. A Colonial civil servant of the
old regime, the permanent head of the Ministry under the 1951
constitution, was given the job. He was still there when I was
appointed Constitutional Adviser and washing to consult him I
inquired for his office. It turned out that he had none and he
conducted his labours from his bungalow. Nevertheless, irrespective
of his positive contribution, by his presence he blocked the appoint-
ment of every other expert.

In any case, w hatever the reason, in this supposedly first prepara-
tory period for independence from 1951 to 1954 the CPP w r ere
prevented from building up that financial or economic civil service
machine which was essential if the Party’ was to tackle effectively
the problems w hich w ere bound to arise over balance of payments
and the management of the monetary’ system. When in 1954 the ex
officio Minister of Finance w'as replaced by a CPP nominee his
successor was left with the same staff whose shortcomings and
allures had been so severely criticized by the Watson Commission
six years before. Dr Nkrumah’s choice for Minister of Finance, in
™ ar / j ^ 1C P ost * n the pre-independence Cabinet, was
. A. Gbcdcmah an Ewe who had been born in Nigeria. He had run
t ic arty when Dr Iskrumah was in prison and had proved himself
a irst c ass organizer. He spoke most Ghanian languages perfectly
and was a polished and suave negotiator in English. He had been a
sane an stone merchant, a science master in a secondary’ school and
\ a ... rn ^ na k c , [ . lc Part y newspapers. There was no question of his
unity utin is approach to financial and budgetary’ matters he was
on 10 o\ in t ic extreme and in practice he followed almost the same
po icy as t at o us ex-officio British predecessor. This was to prove
a continual source of dispute between Dr Nkrumah and him and to
lead to his remoxal from the Ministry six years later.

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 153

It would be wrong to blame Gbedemah personally for all the
subsequent economic ills which befell Ghana but certainly the
failure of his Ministry to introduce effective exchange control legis-
lation or to do away with the sterling exchange system earlier and
its monetary and taxation policy generally were, on the Ghanaian
side, the main reasons for the financial difficulties which later arose.
After 1961 Gbedemah was to leave Ghana, settle in Federal Ger-
many and from Hamburg to conduct, in association with Dr Busia,
a sustained propaganda campaign against the policies pursued after
1961 by the Ghanaian Government. In the arguments he then
advanced he was to show himself highly conservative financially.

At this time the CPP were divided as to whether to press for
immediate independence to which they were pledged by their
slogan ‘self government now’ or to wait until there were more
African civil servants trained and the Government reorganized in a
form suitable for an independent country. When asked my opinion I
had originally believed it better to wait but the sabotage by the
Colonial Office of all attempts to get the type of financial and
economic advice necessary to reorganize for independence, brought
me round to the view that perhaps the ‘Independence Now’
section of the Party was right. In consequence I came to know the
leader of this group within the Party, a Fanti lawyer from Cape
Coast, Dr Kurankyi Taylor, but who practised in Kumasi. Through
him I met his lawyer friend from Ashanti, Victor Owusu, who was
ultimately to become the first Attorney General of the National
Liberation Council. Kurankyi Taylor had been expelled from the
Party in 1952 but his reinstatement then seemed only a question of
time particularly as Victor Owusu who remained in the Party had
agreed not to go forward in a constituency where a left-winger ,J. E.
Jantuah, who had supported Kurankyi Taylor, was now being
pushed by the Party. Ultimately however after standing with the
CPP throughout the 1954 elections, Kurankyi Taylor, Victor
Owusu and two other prominent Ashanti CPP members, Joe
Appiah, whose father was secretary to the chiefs’ main organization,
the Kumasi State Council, and R. R. Amponsah who had been on
the Executive of the CPP United Farmers Council, all went into
open opposition.

Later, at Kurankyi Taylor’s request, I appeared in two political
cases which it seemed to me it was the duty of any lawyer practising

154 HEAP THE WHIRLWIND

in the Gold Coast to undertake. The first was an appeal against death
sentences passed on a number of supporters of the Chief of Wenchi,
Dr Busia’s brother and election backer. Their village had been
invaded by pro-CPP supporters of another chief and they had
defended themselves, killing in the process a number of the intruders.
In such circumstances their prosecution for murder, by the Colonial
authorities, seemed to me to be unjustified and I was proved right in
that, in the end, all but one was acquitted and in his case his
conviction of murder was reduced to one of manslaughter by the
West African Court of Appeal. The other case was a much more
difficult matter. Krobo Edusei’s sister had been brutally murdered
in the course of what was clearly a campaign of terrorism against Dr
Nkrumah’s party organized by anti-CPP chiefs. In almost all other
cases the police had been unable to collect sufficient evidence to
prosecute but in this case they believed they could bring the crime
home to two leading opposition politicians, the one, a wealthy farmer,
the other, a Kumasi chief, who was the propaganda secretary of the
Opposition party. At the trial the chief was acquitted but the farmer
was convicted. I could not persuade the West African Court of
Appeal to quash or vary the sentence and he was executed. I was,
and still am, uncertain whether the evidence was anything like
sufficient to prove the crime and I did what I could to secure his
reprieve. It is interesting to note that these, I should have thought
perfectly proper legal activities, have been converted by an American
Professor into a proof of my political double-dealing. In his book The
Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah Professor Henry L. Bretton remarks :

‘In a category all by himself was Geoffrey Bing, former British MP,
QC, who, it should be noted for the record, had come to Nkrumah
after having enjoyed the confidence of Nkrumah’s opposition.’

In view of the trial, a matter which he does not mention, it is
ironic that he a little later goes on to link my name with that of
Krobo Edusei, the murdered girl’s brother:

Attached to the pugnacious Minister for general guidance and to
piovide the legal rationale for personal rule in a form most palatable to
public opinion, especially in Britain, was a barrister, Geoffrey Bing,
onetime legal adviser to the opposition groups; groups he now was
called upon to “legislate” out of existence.’

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY

155

I do not know what judgement on me Professor Bretton would
have passed if I had refused to defend those accused of Krobo
Edusei’s sister’s murder on the grounds that I was at the same time
advising Dr Nkrumah upon what technical and specialist aid it
might be possible to obtain from Britain.

In 1954 there was another General Election, this time on the basis
of universal adult suffrage. Since 1951 there had been considerable
changes in political alignment. Of the five of the ‘Big Six’ who had
remained with the United Gold Coast Convention only Ako
Adjei came over to the CPP. The remaining four joined with
representatives of the intellectual aristocracy, among them a
number of leading lawyers, such as N. A. Ollennu and K. A. Boss-
man, afterwards to be appointed to the High Court Bench. With
them was Dr K. A. Busia, who up till now had been an Independent,
the chiefs having nominated him as a Member of the Legislative
Assembly after the electorate had rejected him in 1951. They
formed a new Party, the Ghana Congress Party, to include some
former CPP supporters and as a national political party of a Western
type. Had the Parliamentary system developed in the Western way
this Party should have emerged as the Opposition. However, at the
General Election its only Member returned was Dr Busia. J. B.
Danquah and William Ofori Atta lost their seats.

It was thus by chance that Kofi Busia almost overnight became the
Parliamentary leader of the Opposition in the immediate pre- and
post-independence periods. He had been chosen to lead the Ghana
Congress Party because he had stood aloof from the struggle within
the United Gold Coast Convention but his education, birth and
previous career had already cast him in the opposition mould. He
was of the Royal House of Wenchi of which his brother was chief
and as such had supported the Ashanti Confederacy though his
people, who were Brongs, were traditionally opposed to Ashanti
domination. It was for this reason that in 1951 Busia had been de-
feated by a CPP candidate in the Wenchi electoral college and yet
had been then chosen for the Assembly as a representative of the
Asanteman Council. Despite the fact he was always thereafter to be
supported by chiefly influences he was in no sense an enthusiast for
traditional rule. His doctrinal thesis at Oxford, later published in
195 1 as The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of the
Ashanti was a shrewdly critical study of the system. In 1942 he had

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

156

been chosen as one of the wo Africans to be given ‘European’ posts
in the Civil Service and had become an Assistant District Commis-
sioner. He had resigned to continue his academic career and in 1951
he had been the first African to be appointed to a Chair at the newly
established University College of the Gold Coast where he was
Professor of Sociology. His real involvement in politics in Ghana
only lasted for five years from 1954 to 1959. In that year he was to go
abroad and not to return until after the coup d’etat.

Nevertheless in the Western world he was later to be regarded as
the personification of the opposition to Dr Nkrumah. The reason, it
has always seemed to me, was that, having rejected traditional
religions he was subconsciously converted to a more dangerous
form of sympathetic magic and came to believe that it was only
necessary to copy every British political institution in order to enjoy
automatically all the material achievements of Britain. Anyone with
faith of this nature was not unnaturally popular in the West. Indeed
it seemed to me that his political philosophy was to advance a stage
further and to become based upon the theory that so long as a
country remained friendly with Britain it became as it were, a
democracy by association. After the coup d’etat, a young major from
Ashanti, one of the minor participants in it, was rewarded for his
assistance by being made a Brigadier and Commissioner of Finance.
He wrote a book to justify the revolt to which I shall refer later,
since it often reflects the reasons why the chiefs and tire professional
classes opposed Dr Nkrumah and because it seems to me to sum-
marize what appears to have been Dr Busia’s policy. In the same
way as Kofi Busia had earlier written a preface to Nii Bonne’s
autobiography so later he was to write an introduction to Brigadier
Afrifa’s The Ghana Coup. To him this rebel seemed to be:

‘a citizen with an impassioned faith in the value of democracy, and in
the Commonwealth. He has the courage, rare in these days of flaming
African nationalism, to express his gratitude for the training he re-
ceived at Sandhurst, and his admiration for the democratic institutions
of Britain . . . Afrifa’s book is a challenging defence of democracy.’

As will be seen from the extracts later quoted this is in no way
an accurate description of Afrifa's political philosophy but that
Busia should have so written is a revealing explanation of what he
understood b) democracy’. All this, however, was only to become

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 157

plain in the future. At the time of the 1954 election the situation was
apparently very different.

While the intellectuals had no popular support the Chiefs of the
North were able to organize a Party of a sort to safeguard their
interests and their nominees won twelve of the twenty-one seats in
the Northern Territories. They, therefore, and not the intellectuals,
became the official Opposition and according to the British model
their leader was officially installed as the salaried ‘Leader of the
Opposition’. What he and his colleagues were, in fact, was a pressure
group formed in the belief that the North had not had a fair deal in
the past and would not get one in the future unless it had its
distinct representation. This Northern People’s Party had no
objection to the CPP policy as such, except in so far as it affected the
privileges of Northern Chiefs. On the contrary, what they wanted
was its application in their area as a priority. The same regional and
tribal opposition appeared elsewhere. The Togoland Congress was
another such regional party based on Ewe reunification, even if this
involved partition of the Gold Coast. Other members of the
opposition represented sectional and regional interests of this
sort.

Though I think none of us saw. it then, the British political
system, when applied in the Gold Coast, muffled instead of stimu-
lated criticism of policy. After 1954 there was a strong opposition
case to be put but Parliament was a barrier to its discussion. With
the defeat of the attempt to build up a modern civil service machine,
the CPP with little or no expertise within its own ranks was unable
to judge the effects of various proposals put up by the Colonial
administration. The professional intellectual class, however, had, to
some degree, this ability but they were unrepresented in the Legis-
lative Assembly. John Tsiboe, the editor of the Ashanti Pioneer , the
opposition newspaper, told Richard Wright ‘the British are using
the CPP in the same manner as they once used the chiefs’. There
was considerable truth in the criticism.

The opposition to CPP policy was however divided. Above all,
the professional classes in Accra and Kumasi were interested in
making money and the key to money-making, either by providing
professional services or through money-lending lay in a higher cocoa
price. Fundamentally these professional men distrusted the bulk of
the people and did not wish to be dependent for election upon them.

158 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Cobina Kessie, who belonged to the younger generation of Ashanti
intellectuals and had served on the Coussey Committee and was to
be elected as the Kumasi candidate of the Moslem Association Party
in the 1956 Assembly, had no more regard for democracy than the
old lawyer from Cape Coast, Francis Awooner-Williams.

‘When the masses act on their own,’ he said in January 1955, ‘they
do so only in one way, for they have no other: they lynch. It is not alto-
gether by chance that Mr Nkrumah himself preached “direct action”
or “positive action” against a previous government. For lynch law
comes from America, the paradise of the masses, and Nkrumah was
educated in America.’

What this educated elite feared was not communism, a far-off and
distant danger, but the rough and ready democracy of the United
States which they saw about to be thrust down their throats by the
British administration. The only alternative open to them was to
resurrect chiefly power as a support for their party but for this they
had to purchase the support of the chiefs.

They began by founding ‘The Committee for Higher Cocoa
Prices’. The cocoa price in the world market had soared but the
Government still paid the farmer a predetermined fixed price which
did not vary with the world market. The use to which the surplus,
thus accumulated, was put was a matter on which the Government
could legitimately be attacked. It was invested in Britain, that is, in
practice, lent to the British Government, but this aspect of the
matter, so as not to offend the Colonial authorities, the opposition
did not raise. What they demanded was a higher price to the farmer,
politically attractive but certain in the condition of the Ghanaian
economy to produce disastrous internal inflation. In addition, they
attacked the Government and the Marketing Board’s policy
generally. The CPP had used the resources of the Board to give low
interest loans to farmers. The larger farmers and many of the
chiefs had for long run a profitable business by lending to the
poorer farmers and the CPP’s policy thus split the previously united
farmers front. The poorer farmers and those looking for Govern-
ment development to open up more land for farms sided with the
CPP. The wealthy farmers lined up with the chiefs and to give the
‘Committee for Higher Cocoa Prices’ a more ethical look, it was
transformed into the ‘National Liberation Movement’. The chiefs

INTERREGNUM OF LOST OPPORTUNITY 159

would not allow this new organization to be called a ‘Party’. Party
politics were contrary to the tenets of traditional rule and as a price
for their support they insisted it should embrace feudalism also and
thus propose the re-division of the country into its old provinces
which had existed as almost separate entities in the heyday of
Indirect Rule.

On the 14th September 1954 amid the firing of muskets and the
singing of Ashante war songs in Kumasi, the traditional centre of
chiefly power, Bafuor Osie Akoto, Senior Linguist to the Ashante-
hene, made a ritual slaughter of a sheep in order to inaugurate ‘The
Movement’. Perhaps as a gesture towards the Colonial authorities,
the ceremony took place in the Prince of Wales Park. Yet this can
have been small consolation to the fastidious Westernized intel-
lectuals who had, like Dr K. A. Busia, exposed and ridiculed tribal
superstition. Attempting to escape from popular pressures these
intellectuals had surrendered to their old opponents, the illiterate
chiefs, and Bafour Akoto became the Movement’s Chairman. The
Asantehene’s Confederacy Council was employed to destool all
chiefs who had supported the CPP. The wheel had gone the full
circle. Writing in 1951 Dr K. A. Busia had said of the Confederacy’s
Council’s activities :

‘It is not only the literate commoners who feel the Council is not
sufficiently representative. An illiterate cocoa-farmer, sixty miles from
Kumasi, put what is a general criticism most clearly when he said, “All
I know of the Confederacy Council is that whenever the chief comes
back from Kumasi he brings a new law. We must not hold funeral
celebrations. We must not plant cocoa. We must pay a levy. When you
ask why, they say, “The Council says so , or the Asantehene ruled
it”.’

Now five years later he was to find himself opposing in the Legis-
lative Assembly a Government measure, the State Council Bill,
aimed at curbing the powers of this same Confederacy Council.

Such was the situation as I saw it, when in February 1955 I paid
my last visit to the Gold Coast as a British Member of Parliament.

CHAPTER FIVE

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

In may 1955 I was defeated in Hornchurch at tiie General Election.
It was no surprise. At the two previous elections' I had only been
narrowly returned on a minority vote and it had been long clear that
with any further national swing against Labour I should be out.
Nevertheless, I was still a member of the Labour Party’s Conference
Arrangements Committee. No doubt 1 should have the chance to
come back to the House within the next year or so. It was all for the
best. Hornchurch had been a difficult Constituency to represent
with its huge electorate and narrow majority. Perhaps, thanks to
this temporary misfortune, I might now find myself some safe scat
where I could concentrate on Parliamentary work without always
looking over my shoulder at my floating voter. In my case, I was
tired. I need not now spend night alter night in the House of
Commons. Those of us who had been supporters of the policies of
Aneurin Bevan were always in trouble of some sort, always having
to make decisions which in retrospect seem trivial, but on which
at the time one felt everything depended. It was pleasant only to
have one job to do and to take all the legal work which came along
without worrying whether it would conflict with a debate in which
one should speak or with a division which one had to attend if only
ostentatiously to abstain. I sat back and waited for a by-election.

At the October Labour Party Conference that year I was voted
off the Conference Arrangements Committee. I had been short-
listed for two by-elections for safe seats but not ultimately chosen
for either and then there came up, what had become an annual
event for me, a complicated currency case in Nigeria. It was a
matter in which I w r as convinced the law was on my client’s side
but, for reasons which I could never adequately explain to him, he
never seemed to win when it came to Court. Fortunately' his faith in
me remained undiminished though he had already' lost in three
previous hearings. Now the matter was coming up again, this time
before the Federal Appeal Court in Lagos. I thought I would take

160

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

the opportunity of this case to visit the Gold Coast where there
were some small legal matters in which I was also engaged. I could
thus have a holiday at little expense since I had a small house
waiting and ready for me.

About eighteen months before, tired of the social life of the
‘Seaview’ and needing some headquarters where I could store my
papers and keep my belongings, I thought I would rent, if such a
thing were obtainable, a small cottage which I could use as an
office and living quarters. Talking over this idea with some friends,
one of them, at that time a Major in the army, J. A. Ankrah,
suggested I might like to rent a small property belonging to his
family. It had been built originally as the servants’ quarters to a
larger house and was not too expensive to lease, being in a somewhat
unfashionable district and some distance away from what was still
called the ‘European residential area’. Working the whole thing out,
it seemed to me cheaper to take this little house and employ a
steward the whole year round to caretake it than it was to pay hotel
bills during the time I was likely to be in Accra. It was a simple
place, consisting of four rooms, absolutely square, twelve feet by
twelve feet by twelve feet, in front of which ran a six-foot wide
veranda. The windows had no glass in them but this was no incon-
venience in Gold Coast weather and, once I had installed a bath and
a lavatory in one of the rooms, the place was ideal. Subsequently
when my wife came out we rebuilt the interior with the agreement
and to the delight of the Ankrah family. Small as it was, we could
have comfortably lived there indefinitely but when I became
Attorney General I had to move to an official bungalow traditionally
occupied by that official, but I kept on my lease for the little house
renting it out occasionally to friends and intending to go [ 3ac { c t }j er( !
when my job came to an end. Then, when it seemed I might stav
in Government service longer than I had first thought, I surrendered
my lease. As is traditional with legal instruments to which a lawyer
is a party, it appeared that the terms of this document were impre-
cisely drawn. I was in continual correspondence with my landlord
now General Ankrah, as to who should pay for restoring it tn its
original condition. Oddly enough, a week before the com I had a
letter from him on the subject. I suspect he would not have troVd Med
to write if he had known that m seven days-ti me hg
proclaimed as head of a revolutionary Governn,^

in: a i* tih. win iti.w i xi)

162

ill-informed I may have been as to what was comini:, I do not think
the future Chairman of the National Liberation Council had any
better knowledge.

Anyway, in February 1956, 1 set off again for Africa. Whatever
happened, 1 was free to spend a month’s holiday in my little house
in Accra. 1 knew the Gold Coast well by this lime but l had never
had a chance to stay in it, free front legal or political commitment.
So long as 1 was a Member of Parliament, and indeed holding
myself out as an expert on West Africa, I could not have refused to
talk politics. 1 would have had to call on the Goxcrnor and meet with
Ministers and officials. Now 1 had no responsibilities and little
desire to be mixed again in local allairs. The complete failure of the
scheme, on which Dr Nkrumah and I had worked for two years, to
secure a cadre of Civil Service specialists from abroad was a justifi-
cation for not attempting to meddle where practice had shown 1 was
of little help. In any event, 1 had other plans. Like the traditional
rejected suitor of Edwardian times, I could spend my period of
African exile and then return decently to woo some other British
constituency. Further, I was marrying again, though the girl, who
in her spare time was a Rally driver, had first to compete in some
international events if she was to maintain her status for the next
Monte Carlo competition. A holiday on the Gold Coast would fill
the gap. From October to April the weather in Accra is superb with
scarcely any rain. It was the season for surfing, swimming, picnics
and sightseeing.

Ghana has been for so long in the public eye as a political country
that its non-political fascination is often forgotten. But the Gold
Coast then was, as 1 suppose Ghana still is today, one of the most
exciting and yet sobering places in the world. Over it broods a sense
of five hundred years of international history. Elsewhere on the
Guinea Coast the broad estuaries of the great rivers had provided
anchorage for the traders and slavers but the shore of the Gold
Coast was one long line of surf, huge lazy waves which broke
continually on the sandy beaches and washed the roots of the
coconut groves that fringed them. The early European invaders had
to establish their bases on shore and their castles and forts still
stood every- twenty miles or so along the coast. Here still intact, as at
Cape Coast, were the great underground slave dungeons with no
light except that which came through little ports facing inwards so

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

163

that the guards from outside could fire under cover to quell any
slave revolt. Here from these underground cellars one could still
walk along the dank, oozing, stone-faced passage through the great
mud walls of the castle’s foundations that led to the sea gate down
which, direct from the prison chamber, the slaves were forced into
the waiting canoes below.

At Elmina, ten miles further to the west, the Portuguese had
constructed the first European building south of the Sahara. In
1482, ten years before Columbus reached the West Indies, its stones
had been transported from Europe, each marked and numbered, so
that a prefabricated castle could be hastily erected before the
expected counter-attack of the inhabitants. When, in the seventeenth
century, Maurice of Nassau conquered Brazil, the Dutch, in order
to safeguard their slave supply, attacked and captured Elmina and
over its drawbridge still stood an elegant stone in which was carved
the Latin inscription recording the exploits of this ‘high, mighty and
illustrious prince’. Elmina had remained in Dutch hands until 1872.
In its little museum was the flag of the ‘Free Burghers’, the ruling
community of mixed Afro-Dutch descent whose ruined houses still
bore their crests and coats of arms. The Dutch had enlarged and
strengthened the castle but one could still see in position some of the
numbered Portuguese stones. The ancient shrines of the district
still preserved among their sacred objects chips of stone which had
come from the Portuguese statue of their patron Saint Anthony.
Here many strands of history had met. There was a room in the
castle still structurally the same, where de Ruyter, who sailed up the
Thames in 1667 and destroyed the British fleet at its moorings at
Chatham, had had his commemorative portrait painted. Here Major
Robert Baden-Powell had come two hundred years later, wearing
almost for the first time his broad brimmed scouting hat which he
had designed for campaigning in the Gold Coast, to meet Nana
Kweku Andoh, Chief of Elmina. Together they had worked out the
organization of African scouts for the Ashanti war. The signs used
by these scouts — Krobos’ from former Danish territories — for their
tribal purposes have become the symbols of the Boy Scout Move-
ment of today. At Elmina one could still see the room on the battle-
ments where Prempeh I, then known as King Kwaku Dua III
of Ashanti, and his Chiefs had been imprisoned to await their
transportation to the Seychelles; the last of the long line of African

164 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

political prisoners who had been lodged as captives in the castle’s
slave cells and dungeons. On its walls were iron plaques com-
memorating the expeditions which the Dutch had dispatched from
this African base. Every year they had sent a contingent of their
Gold Coast troops to the East Indies. The ‘cloth’ which became the
normal dress, and when made up for women is known as ‘Mamma’,
bore Indonesian designs exactly copied from those brought back by
these returning soldiers.

Yet to me even more interesting than the castles was the progress
of collection of the traditions and origins of the African people of
the Colony. A. W. Lawrence, the brother of Lawrence of Arabia
and formerly Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge, had
been appointed the year after Dr Nkrumah came to power as
Secretary and Conservator of the Gold Coast Monuments and
Relics Commission and was engaged in organizing a National
Museum. Here one could see traced out the tenuous connection
between the African peoples and the- civilization of Upper Egypt.
The lotus flower is unknown in Ghana but the staves of office of
the Chiefs’ linguists had almost invariably beneath the emblem
they bore, a stylized lotus leaf. Here was an opening from which one
might begin the exploration of a fascinating but practically unknown
section of history, the long connection of the civilization of the Nile
valley with Africa south of the Sahara, including the almost
forgotten link between the Christianity’ of Nubia which resisted the
Islamic drive south and the early Christian Kingdom of Ghana.

Approaching Independence stimulated everywhere an interest in
the past. Treasures long hidden away for fear they would be carried
off by Colonial Governments were coming to light again. The Gold
Coast had been supposed to have had no indigenous written history.
Now even in the North documents written in Arabic script, but in
African languages, were being brought out again, recording local
history of as early as the sixteenth century.

Everything at the time made the country fascinating. Its ways of
life were sufficiently mixed with European culture to be under-
standable to a stranger like myself and yet they were entirely
different. It was odd, for example, to find oneself living under
modern conditions in one of the last surviving Gold cultures of the
world. Then, as now, everyone aimed to have at least one gold
ornament and craftsmen abounded who would individually design

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165

them. Even in a small village there would be at least one sign saying
‘Licensed Goldsmith’. I ultimately settled on one from Dodowa, a
village twenty miles from Accra which has given its name to the
battle which decided the fate of the Gold Coast. Here on the 7th
August 1828 an army of the coastal people, supported by an English
contingent, defeated the Ashanti forces which two years before had
routed the British and killed the Governor, who was leading them
in person. At Dodowa this defeat was avenged and the British hold
on the Colony was retained. Now over the historic battlefield my
goldsmith would go in search of scarab beetles. With a technique
perhaps handed down from Egyptian practice of four thousand
years before, he would cure them in camphor and mount them in
gold as jewels for earrings and brooches.

I had been introduced to him, first, on a previous visit, coming
back from a picnic at Tema, then a little thatched fishing v illa ge
round a lagoon. We were all of us sitting eating on an upturned boat
when a green mamba, a particularly poisonous snake, came out
from beneath it. An African girl in the party chased it barefoot and
killed it with a stone. I was horrified at the risk she had run but she
explained it would never attack her as it was the totem of her clan
How then, I asked, could she possibly kill it. ‘Oh, didn’t you know ’
she said, ‘I am a Christian.’ At this time the CPP Government were
trying to use the Colonial Film Unit, which they had inherited for a
propaganda drive against superstition, and this girl was one of their
stars. We went together to see a film designed to expose the ‘n
shrines’. It included an extraordinary sequence revealing th''
ceremonies of a fetish priest which had been shot by a Euro °
cameraman. I asked in view of the difficulties even Dr Mar^^
Field had in discovering what took place in a shrine, how thic 0 ^ 6
possible. ‘Oh, I arranged it,’ said the girl, ‘with the fetish n ’
son. He doesn’t believe in that sort of thing any more. H • S
Catholic and anyway he needed the money. His wife is s ; c t, C !V a
wants to make enough to take her to Lourdes.’ ‘* ncl " c

As it turned out, once I was settled in my little house T f A
myself fully employed in legal work both in the Gold Cm oun ,
Nigeria, where at last I won my currency case. The time we h A G^A
to marry had come round, so instead of going back to Enof A
future wife came out and on the 7th July 1956 we w ere b ai ?
Elmina Castle. The short civil ceremony took pla ce ; n th ™™ ve

x 66 reap the whirlwind

market which had been the original Portuguese chapel which the
Dutch had desecrated on account of its heretical past. It was said to
have been the last place on African soil where St Francis Xavier
had celebrated Mass, before sailing for India.

At our little house we had one regular visitor, a small boy from a
neighbouring African household. When we moved to the official
Attorney General’s residence his mother came to see us saying that
he was fretting and missing us and we arranged with her that he
would live with us and we would bring him up. We sent him to the
International school, a remarkable Ghanaian institution at which at
one time children of over thirty nationalities attended, and here he
had to learn English from the start. When later on as Attorney
General I organized a scheme of general law review, one of the new
laws introduced was for adoption. We took advantage of it ourselves
and adopted him under it. However, despite all theories of the
common citizenship of the Commonwealth, this did not make him
British. His name could be put on my passport but with the foot-
note inserted by the High Commission, ‘This child is not a citizen
of the United Kingdom and Colonies.’ At the time of my arrest in
1966 he was at Achimota, the co-educational boarding school which
Sir Gordon Guggisberg had founded and to which our son had won
a scholarship exactly live years after starting school. Then, when
my wife was expelled, he came with her and since he was not a
British subject we had to adopt him all over again. It was a peculiar
position because to determine his status the English Court had to
look at Ghanaian law and under that we were his parents. However,
we surmounted this last hurdle and the adoption went through. He
is now both a British subject and a Ghanaian citizen and it therefore
seems fitting that I should dedicate this book to him.

A week after we were married there was another General Election
in Ghana, called on the insistence of the British Government.

‘I have made my view clear to the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast,’
Alan Lennox-Boyd, then Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs, told
the House of Commons, ‘that because of the failure to resolve the
constitutional dispute w c can only achieve our common aim of the early
independence of that country' within the Commonwealth in one way
and one way alone; that is to demonstrate to the world that the peoples
of the Gold Coast have had a full and free opportunity to consider

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER 167

their constitution and to express their views on it in a General
Election.’

Why should an election, on the basis of ‘one man one vote’, to
determine the constitution to be adopted at Independence have been
a pre-requisite for Ghana and yet considered subsequently to be out
of the question for Southern Rhodesia? The question is of import-
ance. It raises the issue whether there ever has been, in the first place,
a consistent British policy of preparing colonies for Independence,
and secondly whether, if so, it was part of that plan to endow them
from the start with a democracy of the British model. The British
Cabinet which reached this democratic decision in regard to
Ghana was Sir Anthony Eden’s Suez Government which would be
generally accepted as to the right of Air Harold Wilson’s Adminis-
tration which ruled out a General Election on a universal franchise
in Southern Rhodesia’s case. Therefore, to find a logical answer
which fits a consistent policy is difficult. Cynically it might be said
that British post-war policy has been to accept that all Africans
must be treated as equal unless the number of Europeans living
amongst them exceeds five per cent of the total population. This
formula would explain why, prior to Independence, Africans living
immediately north of the Zambesi were allowed this privilege of
universal suffrage, while those living south of the river, in Southern
Rhodesia, were denied the right though they had the same edu-
cational and cultural background to their fellow countrymen north
of the river. The European content of the Zambian population was
3.1 per cent, while the European content of the Southern Rhodesian
population was 5.9 per cent.

However, this possible racial limitation apart, official British
belief has always been that every British Government, irrespective
of its political complexion, had been working, at least from the end
of the first world war, in accordance with a long-term plan towards
Colonial independence and Western European style democracy.
This was certainly the sincere belief of the senior Colonial officials
in Ghana prior to independence. Addressing the Ghanaian Parlia-
ment at Independence, after being sworn in before its Members as
the newly independent State’s first Governor-General, Sir Charles
Arden-Clarke said, with a simplicity and sincerity impressive
certainly to those British who like myself attended the ceremony:

x 68 reap the whirlwind

‘The Colonial policy of Her Majesty’s Government in the United
Kingdom, so far as the man serving in the Colonies is concerned, has
not only been constant through the years: it has been quite simple and
straightforward. These were the instructions I received when 1 arrived
in Northern Nigeria as a young Administrative Officer:

“Your job is to teach the people committed to your care to stand

on their own feet and to run their own show within the rule of

law

He had always, I knew from talking with him, felt this deeply and
no doubt these were the instructions he received when, a young
army Captain twenty-two years old, he left the British Military
Mission with General Denikin in the Crimea to join the African
Colonial Service in which he was to spend almost the w hole of his
official life. But when he arrived in Northern Nigeria the year after
Lugard had retired from his Governor-Generalship, what did these
instructions mean? Could they have had any connection with what
they must have seemed to mean to the Western representatives at
the Ghana Independence celebrations thirty-seven years later?

‘The Rule of Law'’ in Northern Nigeria meant the union of
executive and judicial power under die control of the chief. As
Miss Perham has said in her life of Lord Lugard, ‘throughout
tropical Africa the judicial side of tribal life is generally the most
advanced aspect and has been that most successfully retained and
developed under British guidance. This w'as especially true of the
law and courts of the Nigerian emirates.’ It was as a ‘Political Resi-
dent’ among these Northern emirates that Sir Charles Arden-Clarke
spent the first thirteen years of his Colonial service. Lord Lugard
himself has thus described the ‘Rule of Law’ as applied through the
machinery of indirect rule by these Residents. ‘The Residents,’ he
wrote, ‘men without legal training as a rule, administer Justice in
the Provincial Courts.’ Their findings Lugard used to examine in
the light of the recommendations of his Attorney General, the only
lawyer concerned in the process. ‘Then,’ continued Lugard, ‘I
review every single case ... I am not hampered by legal techni-
calities, but I bring to bear a long African experience and a know'-
ledge of native custom ... I above all endeavour to bring to bear
a strong ‘common sense’ point of view. Frequently I set aside the
Attorney General’s recommendations ... I think that for sub-

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER 169

stantial justice it would be hard to beat this system.’ Maybe, but it
was a system which had no relation to the ‘Rule of Law’ as under-
stood in Western terms. When in 1920 Sir Charles Arden-Clarke
had received these instructions, what was intended — a development
of the Lugard system or its replacement ?

The evidence from Ghana is that until the elections of 1951,
development towards Independence was conceived in terms of
creating the kind of chiefly state that was thought still to exist in
Nigeria and which certainly existed around the Arabian Gulf. It
may be, of course, that around this time the British Government
changed its views and accepted a general belief in Colonial demo-
cracy. Perhaps in that case, this declaration was the first example of
it but the subsequent history of other British African territories
suggests otherwise and that ‘one man one vote’ was still regarded as
the last ditch position, only to be accepted if fancy franchises of
various types failed to produce an African Government of sufficient
stability. The sudden enthusiasm for an election in Ghana may not
have been, as was thought by the Gold Coast Ministers at the time,
a trick by the British Government to delay Independence. On the
contrary, it may have been an effort to set the CPP firmly in the
saddle, in the belief, mistaken as it turned out, that the CPP would
more readily follow a British lead in economic and international affairs
than would a Government compounded of the chiefs and intellectuals.

At any rate, whatever the British Government motives, a new
election was desirable. The National Liberation Movement had
won a by-election in Ashanti by a decisive majority and, for all that
anyone on the outside could tell, they might have had massive
popular support behind them. In fact this was not so. The policy
which the intellectuals had been forced to accept was primarily one
of preserving for the chiefs the absolute power they had obtained as
agents of indirect rule and, at the same time, absolving them from
the limitations of governmental control which were an essential
ingredient of that system. The intellectuals had been compelled to
boycott the innumerable conferences and committees designed to
devise an agreed independent constitution. Their chiefly allies would
not sit down with the Government so long as the Government
insisted on amending the law so as to restore to the Governor the
powers he had previously had of reviewing the decisions of the
chiefly councils.

I 7° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

The new elections cut through this sterile dispute. The CPP were
returned with a two-thirds majority, seventy-two seats out of one
hundred and four, five fewer than they had had in the previous
Parliament. On the other hand, their share of the popular vote went
up by two per cent from fifty-five to fifty-seven per cent. Considering
derisive** 6 * nUmbcr ° f uno PPosed returns, the CPP victory was

However, I was unconcerned in these events. At the time of the

E rVtl" 1 Y Cre ‘ n Ni S eria "'here a series of cases had
™ r f G , han “ throu g b out that July and early August. We

for m Tn i r f f\ dayS °S y When > onc gening, I found waiting

Cabinet C Chapman, the Secretary to the

with the r p Um f ie ?, aid > "’anted my advice in connection
*ith the Cocoa Purchasing Company's affairs.

R \ 1S 0rgam f tI0n was a subsidiary of the Cocoa Marketing
genml Go . vcrnmen t and CPP control. It was on!

largfst Sidnfl UyinB L a8CnC1C r 0f thC Board and had beConlc tbc

of its integrity had 1 ^ c ° coa from the farmers. Suspicion

dbccn S rowin S for some time. In io« the Chair-

Zed ifregularide« g B ° ard hadmade a ^port to his Directors on
matter had been r CSm subaicbar y Company. In consequence the
t0 ? NklUmah aS Prime Miniver. He in
the Board’s nolicv A° t, 1C C large ® to tbe Minister responsible for
independent ^ ntitv m L° wev ® r tb e Board had been set up as an
the Minister claimed L ? m ° d f , of St ? te Corporations in Britain,
putting things ri<ffir an L- nab e t0 glvc an f precise directions for
then h°ad the mes sent T f ° r 3 >’ ear ’ Dr Nkrumah

General’s office which - 6 P °! lce ’ k le y consulted the Attorney
the control of the Gold r S Y' 1 autonom ous body outside
General’sdepartrnem^en^T^ A PP a ™tly the Attorney

evidence upon which 'iml? t , 1 , at , tbere dld not exist sufficient
prosecutions ™

at least a Commission nf p ’• , b ' kruma h then insisted that

Company’s affairs and determine ho^F ^ UP t0 g ° int ° the

gations against it were justified. h ° W far ^ widespread alle-

partiality a Judge^omNigeria^Ir^u^ T? “ y SUggestion of

" CWnra ”- He hjd » of assssffjs

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER I7I

sort, nor had either of the other two members of his Commission.
The Attorney General’s office, which, according to precedent,
should have provided the investigating staff, informed the Govern-
ment that they were too busy drafting the new constitution for
Independence to be able to spare counsel to assist the Commission.
The Chairman regarded the Commission’s hearings as a civil action
in which the Opposition were suing the Government for fraud and
at which the Defendant had refused to appear. Anyone claiming the
slightest connection with cocoa was heard without much regard to
the relevance of his evidence and, in short, what was alleged by the
many lawyers who addressed the Commission was that since the
CPP controlled the Cocoa Marketing Board and thus the Company,
the Government Party were therefore personally responsible for
any irregularities which had taken place. The Commission’s Report,
which the Commissioners were on the point of handing in, was
hardly likely in such circumstances to be favourable to the Govern-
ment but, Daniel Chapman told me, Dr Nkrumah was determined
to publish it. He wanted, however, to accompany it with a Govern-
ment White Paper, analysing its findings and incidentally setting
out the action which the Government would propose to take
in the light of its conclusions. Daniel Chapman had come to
ask me whether I would help with this. It was a limited assignment
but if I accepted I would have a Government office, an official
secretary and access to records. I was to be asked to serve for three
months as a maximum and would be entitled ‘Constitutional
Adviser to the Prime Minister’, not because I was to advise on
constitutional matters generally but because Dr Nkrumah had, in
order to facilitate the appointment of an ex-Indian Governor as a
constitutional conciliator, been given power to appoint on his own
initiative a constitutional adviser without going through the Public
Service Commission. The previous occupant of the post, Sir
Frederick Bourne, had left Ghana, the Opposition having refused
to meet him, and the job was vacant. I accepted, never for a moment
thinking that as a result I should spend the next ten years in Ghana
Government Service.

Without even turning to the Report of the Commission it was
clear once I settled into the work that in many ways the Cocoa
Purchasing Company were guilty of a number of the allegations
which had been made. There was clearly sufficient evidence against

172

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

man) of it:s employees for prosecutions to have been successfully
ln Britain : h was onl i' afterwards I was to
would h * S f 1 . n “ ncccssariI y mea n that such prosecutions
found - m G lana - Again therc "as not much fault to be

menr in ( ! f le C ° mm,ssi0ns recommendations and the Govern-

monos.l f r?^ S L ab r C ° a!lbutone - This "as a purely political
t [ f C C ° coa Purchasing Company should be'reconsti-

nomlated m Sf n “ ° f Dircctors Purposed of three members
Seuti -S Opposition, tliree nominated by the Government

pronocals' ^l r 1 ? appQlntcd b >’ the Governor. All their other
to the CPP indTl I*" ' vcre a,mcd at checking abuses discreditable
Yet the Hbo^r y “ Und< T nC the pur P ose *e Company.

" s - disl ; poimin s ”> ■■

SoSt r;r m ° f the c^/l «

their monied sunn > coc °a-farming upon which they and
if it was true as P 1? “ me more and morc to depend. Even
refused to lend to L?™" 1 ?’ 011 Suggcsted > that the Company
dominated Smted Farmed S° members ** CPP

loans had long been an acknoutT’/^ S ! V ‘j S ° r "' uhhoId ' n S of
porters of tlie chiefs In ti, , C , dged me thod bv which the sup-
most the Compam^was^doin^n ^ br0Ught .P“^e to bear. At the
the old bad practices Und° ne "’> lt "' as merely continuing

charged private co' r ? gentS of ^ Company had
this was, the amount of inre^ ^ ? btain ‘ n S loans. Criminal though
and through these illeo-a] e - Paid b J tbe Parmer both legitimately
if the latter 9fT^ s agents, even

charged by the chiefly lenders Whatw^f f ^ “““i 681 normall >'
overall question of enrm r hat "as left unexannned was the

some mir^tal to tr 6 ^ mdebtedn ^. To deal with it by
studied scientifically on f t l C °"° my : ^ 0nl >' had « never been
past with a deg^e of “ had been deaIt in the

So far as curing indebtednes^ * ^ tbat Was a * most unbelievable,
as barren of ideas 7s the CnT T n° nCerned the Commission were
Pledging of cocoa farS ?' 1 admmistrad °n of the past,
creditor either took over the farnTfo^ fi but “ general the
recouped himself from its nr n™ ^ f feed penod of J' ears and
the profit (usually four-ninths’! a 2 - S 0r e se be took a proportion of
} ninths) against repayment of the principle and

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER 173

a proportion (usually two-ninths) in way of interest on the sum.
Normally under African law, ownership did not pass to the creditor
even though there was default in the repayment in that the farm
failed to produce sufficient cocoa to pay off the debt. Cases were
recorded in the Gold Coast Law Reports where, after eighty and
ninety years, the descendants of the original debtors had recovered
pledged farms. Generally speaking, too, creditors were not a pro-
fessional class of moneylender but other cocoa farmers. Nevertheless,
there were some professional moneylenders and there were forms of
pledging which did lead to the sale of cocoa farms and altogether
farmers’ indebtedness in general resulted in much injustice and
hardship. In addition, it was economically disastrous. In the post-
war years the Gold Coast cocoa farms were attacked by ‘swollen
shoot’, a disease which is spread from tree to tree by the mealy bug.
Unless infected trees are at once cut out they infect others and the
whole farm is doomed. But, though an infected tree ultimately dies,
it goes on bearing for a considerable time.

While a farmer might have a long-term interest in his farm and be
willing to destroy diseased trees though they were still bearing, this
did not apply to the creditor who would, within four or five years,
have to surrender the farm to its owner. Unless, however, ‘swollen
shoot’ was cured or at least controlled and confined, it was only a
matter of time before the cocoa industry would be destroyed. Any
infected farm was a danger to its neighbours and any farm pledged
was likely to be infected. The relief of indebtedness was therefore
vital to checking the disease.

The problems caused by indebtedness had long been known to
the Colonial authorities. The West African Lands Committee had
considered it. They had sat intermittently from 19x2 to 1914 and
submitted a draft Report as early as 1917. This was unfortunately
for official use only and was not generally released until after the
second world war when it was out of date. It was clear, however,
from subsequent investigations that indebtedness naturally varied
with the overall price obtained by farmers for their crop; but once
debts were incurred in a period of low prices they were not after-
wards discharged owing to interest accumulation when the price
again rose. In the 1926-27 cocoa season, for example, world prices
had reached their inter-war peak and farmers received £10.9 million
for the 238,000 tons of cocoa which they produced in that season. In

' >4

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

' 933 ~o 4 'hough they produced nearly the same amount, 220,000
tons, they only received £2.4 million. Naturally their indebtedness
rose in J 933-34 and the price had never risen sufficiently for them
subsequently to have any chance of discharging these debts con-
tracted in bad years such as this.

I he Colonial authorities of the time were concerned by the
dangers inherent in indebtedness and they conducted a thorough
investigation. It was the only general survey ever made in colonial
tunes into the prevalence of, and the motives behind, the pledging

, a>cru I 31 ’ 111 '’ - 1} - v tllc ‘* mc 1 cunc to investigate this question" all
tile materia! collected for this survey had been lost. Like those who
v.uukl reconstruct the early writings against Christianity, I and
those helping me had to search through the books and papers of
those who had commented upon or refuted the Colonial authorities’
f° n . c Lbll J n: > lor quotations or even oblique indications of what they
Ut VU V 1 1 u-|r Report. In the end it proved impossible to construct
an> c V r ! Sto,c,u 3CC0 “ m of 'heir findings. Nevertheless, from such
Ty ' SUmVcd ‘' U3S clcar 'hat almost yearly the Colonial

S r, " Cf r '- arna thc lhrcat t0 C0C03 through the growing

' ue > tedness ul tarmers. In 1936 Professor C. Y. Shepherd in an
i.v.al Kc;,rt on the Economics of Pcjsant Agriculture in the CoU
ca h-d attention to it. In the following year Sir Prank Stock-

n ?! di • f 14 <,n ° f ,I,C 0)101,131 found that ‘the

ncre l. • cro P s f( >r advances received has been

mueir" r ,h r - Ce r!-- VC3rS a " d nu - v be accc P‘«l ^ a basic cause for
r - ‘ t u 3,tCnUon " hid > * given to the farms

tu P rc P J ration of the crop’. Yet in face of all this
i>'>univz >Us u<inc.

V ' 1 ;! ; i • ■ u 1 ! ' !"• - 1 * 1 , C as 3 fmal protest against

a:.,v:! tr hvtiin ’ "if r ?3m . ll,c < ~ />1<,nial Office instituted

attentmu i, ,i.Vf , ‘T’? v.ltich once again called

a«.!i .n i.a\i-i ’ b ?{ '. ud bwrn bo °f ,cn no 'vd without any
Kean.e \ un ”? ‘he second world war the issue

L.; the C..! \ ,**. 1 V ' l c c 1!cb * v,trc forced to protest and at

.. ’ ' 1 >vC.unc sufficiently alarmed to at least

hC0rt ' ncJ ,hc , Gumcil in 1945

.. , / JnU -nnoun^cd with a flourish that it was

l"*'

to -.as up a (a«mmL.;o,

, ' n to consider method-, of supplying
t:cu:!s !u c ' Ku - f-tnncis, and to studv at

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER
least the possibility of relieving them of even their past indebted-

ness.

In consequence a Cocoa Farmers’ Credit Committee was csrib
lished and met in January 1946 under the Chairmanshin „r ,
Financial Secretary of the Colonial Government. More than h If ' r
its members were Africans connected with the cocoa tm i ] f °
the first time it looked as if there might be a thorough ini* • • r

followed by action. Various sub-committees were set un
three months a plan of work was established. Then r °i
April 1946 the Committee was adjourned by its Chairm” 1 « -
and it never sat again. The reason given was that the nrnM ^
be taken care of by the British Government’s Whit p™ "° U ^^
Cocoa Marketing which was due shortly to be published T a P cr on
when this document appeared it merely p ut f bnv * , vcvcr »
proposals contained in an earlier war-time White Pap Cr ^ = cncra l
It proposed stabilization of prices which, it said \\ 0 j > ^ °^J 944 -
achieving the fundamental object of any reorganization" r j* ssist > n
industry, namely, ‘the progressive abolition of indebtc ” IC C0CO3
producers’. By itself, of course, stabilization of n r : ness among
nothing to abolish indebtedness. This only could be ( j 0 ^ C ? f cou ^
accumulated through stabilization were used to pay 0 jr- Cl , funds
which could then be funded through some Cocoa Balk tC . dncss
organization. 0r similar

This was what the Watson Commission prop 0se .
ging of an industrial crop,’ they said, has ahvay s lc

gaging

mort-

business for farmers in all countries, in a society Cen a s °rry
constituted in the Gold Coast it presents the \ Vo s at present
usury.’ They proposed the establishment of a (y, ea tUres of
Bank or Discount House. The Colonial Office wou|(j farmers’
Plans, the Secretary of State explained in his official ^ 110712 of it.
their Report, were already taking definite shape ip te mcnt on
and included provisions for the setting up of an Agrj„ > °ld Coast
There was a draft scheme already in existence and ,f ral Bank’,
sufficient to deal with the situation. s "'as quite

After an interval of time this draft scheme emerge ■
a draft Bill to be submitted to Gold Coast Legi S i ativ a the f 0rm 0 f
plan it proposed was, however, obvious y quite , ^ricil. The
Bill was never even introduced into the Legislative q e an d the
an Ordinance was passed setting up, ms ea of a[) • Instea‘j

%icultur-

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Bank, an Agricultural Loans Board. This Board invited farmers to
submit requests for loans and in all it received some 73,000 of these.
In order to evaluate the requests, it then produced an eight-page
form which had to be filled in with meticulous detail. Nevertheless,

mill?n^ 0 f 00 fa ^, CrS c ° m P leted h and applied for a total of £50
r> , . ln T 0ans ‘ ' le . n t lc ^coming CPP Ministers suspended the
been a ** I* 1 ? 5 11 " aS d ' scovc rcd that, in all, two loans had

fin eJ, H t0 - a11 ^ ^ I ’ 32 ° and of one was to a farmer
CoS nm an,maI . husbandry’. After forty years of continuous

bdebtedrSf ‘ Z eXammatl0 f of the Problem of the cocoa farmers’
cocoa ? arm r WR net f SUkwaS ° ne loan of £(>00 to one
nanv are ev ^ acUvi . ties of the Cocoa Purchasing Com-

indeed remarEble. agmnSt ^ background > what ic achieved is

namelv^o ^ evl? \ d ’ d wbat skoidd have been done from the start,
S&SST- d,e -? U8e8 ° f famers ’ indebtedness. Only upon
relieving mdelm-d^™' c e ^ an n n ation be made of the social value of
devised The ren nCSS S • u . rtber act i° n to prevent it recurring be
rW V lh S f ° r lnde btedness as unearthed bv the Pur-

another buToS £*? ^ ***■ 008 ^ ^cS^to
under the heading causes listed appeared in every area

farm was SS mdebted Undc ’ In other words, the

expenses or for the d ° r , 1 e P ur P oses of advances against living
suLr„^o™ rt'ST ° f but because of

From this it was at mv r °T tbe exten ded family system,

cocoa farmers involved™™ C r r tbat tb f cunn g of indebtedness of

existing debts. It was only a part San ^ fUnding ° f their

social system of the country P f essary reorganization of the
, Fven from the start the CPP i

issues which were evaded in r 1 • \ l eaSt ’ ex P osed for discussion
Purchasing t l Not 0nly did the Cocoa

For the first time ever in Gold r 1SC0V £ r tbe cause of indebtedness,
to relieve it. Loans to farm blstor y they took practical steps

Purchasing Company in their firstSe^ f^ 011 - Were made by the
at an increasing tempo - ear °P operation and continued

all the problemsTvhich ° ^ 0mpan y affair > in miniature reproduced
had to fie p, Nkrumah’s Goientment
overriding issue at the time „as the decline in cocoa

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER 177

production. If cocoa failed the whole economy would collapse and
independence would become meaningless. Before the second world
war a crop of over 300,000 tons had been obtained. In 1951, when
the CPP entered the Government, production was only 230,000
tons and in the next year it fell to 212,000 tons. For forty years the
Colonial administration, backed by experts employed by the Colonial
Office, had attributed the ills of the industry to farmers’ indebted-
ness. Yet no action had been taken. All that the CPP did was to
implement the policy advocated in theory by the Colonial adminis-
tration but which in practice they had not applied. Krobo Edusei
said proudly in the Legislative Assembly in 1954:

‘The Cocoa Purchasing Company is the product of a master brain,
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and it is the atomic bomb of the Convention
People’s Party. As honourable members are aware, the Prime Minister
in his statements to the CPP told his party members that organiza-
tion decided everything and the Cocoa Purchasing Company is part
of the organization of the Convention People’s Party.’

The Jibowu Commission quoted this statement of his as proof that
the Company was a CPP political conspiracy. Even such a balanced
and sympathetic left-wing Journal of opinion as the United States
Monthly Review in its special issue on Ghana of July 1966, repeated
the quotation as showing that the CPP Government was only a kind
of ‘pork barrel’ administration of the familiar United States type and
of course some of the shortcomings of the Cocoa Purchasing
Company can be cited to support this view. Yet unless Party and
Government worked together to combat ‘swollen shoot the industry
was doomed. The loans scheme of the Cocoa Purchasing Company
was the first positive action taken for forty years to deal with a
problem which every previous Administration had acknowledged
but which it had not had the courage to tackle.

Since nothing had been attempted before, it had meant setting up
an organization for which the skilled personnel did not exist and
which was therefore almost certain to become, to some extent,
corrupt and to be manipulated, at least on a local level, for political
purposes. If there were no Chartered Accountants in England how
many public companies would be conducted with absolute honesty?
If there were no large class of trained book-keepers in Britain what
British Board of Directors could answer for the integrity of their

i?8

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

business? No doubt it was the fear that if they did anything in
Colonial ^ T' £ ° ™ rrUption a,ul scandal that persuaded the

aboZ sSrstr t0 r r, ihing - The pian « th*

S ' V 1 > ptoudcd that the chiefs’ judicial system, the
wol h^ I Sh , 0uld d f al ,' vith Redness. This, if applied,
much nior CCr , ai . n 'I resuUx * n far greater corruption and
£e med of $ ‘ P ? SSU ? ^ ^ chkk anyone eyer
dou bt !hi, l , ,? ng agams : lhc Cocoa Purchasing Company. No

proceeded St™ " &«* ~

ac£wd mi? f h indcbtcd " css " hidl Cocoa Purchasing Company

StS "lr nt l d a T S . thC i,np ° rtant factors i" ** revival
Int the cj In 19651 ,hc last >’««■ of Nkrumah Govern-

more t an doirrl ° f G1 “ na had reachcd -19-1,°°° tons, or
EsS" S t “ SW before, CPP
began their ’"'Colonial Government and had

Compa I, °Z 5 0n,b 1” ")■ "'i* the Cocoa Purchasing

1-acoS and ““ -.-7

resigned itself to the n ’ ” 1 - 9 ’ 1 ^ tbc Colonial regime had almost
prodnctiorotinemLr?'" ° r Ghanaian coco,

ness. The Watson CommissionTad'Sid" i,y_1,r0d " e ‘ ofindebted-

estimated *a ““,1“ " ni°" “r“ in Coast and i, is

perem auttriS ilTf Z ° b e™ “ “ <>m-

■5 million a „ , vj" „ | ,b r Tf* of s I’ raJ is ab »“‘
have practically disappeared i„ Tr "“'“'p

not a sectional, nor merely a farmer’, I’m ‘ C ° C ° a pr ° blcm 15
lem since the economic life 0 f the C ? 6 6m: lC ls a natlonal prob-
Shoot issue is reallv the n • °l°ny is at stake. The Swollen

shoulder political responsibility ^ ° f ^ ab,l,ty of African leaders to

‘prime test’. * S at ° m ‘ C b ° mb> was thc decisive response to tliis

power to enable thenwTrive 011 S R -e P ° rt ’ the Government took
'tarketing Board and through Cm So? ^rch^sing

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

179

Company. Mr A. Y. K. Djin, the General Manager of the Company
whose conduct the Commission had censured, was informe t at
unless he resigned a specific instruction would be issued to t e
Board to dismiss him. Such drastic action was justifie . e
Commission had found he continued to manage his persona
business while full-time Manager of the Company, w ic was
contrary to his terms of employment. Yet in reality, who 1 t emore
harm to Ghana economy-the officials of the Agricultural Loans
Board who scrupulously refrained from outside business activities
and yet never examined the problem which confronted them and m
consequence could never make up their minds to grant any oans,
or Mr Djin who was responsible for setting up an organization

which tackled the problem? . ,

I was appointed ‘Constitutional Adviser to the rime 1 inl ^ e r
solely for the purpose of helping in the preparation 0 p ans w ic
would cure the ills disclosed by the Jibowu Commission and, with
the publication of the Government’s White Paper on its epor , my
duties should have come to an end. By then however ano er cri
had arisen and, as my three months period a not expire ,
asked to deal with it. The Cabinet had become increasingly alarmed
by the method in which the British Government was going about in

preparing the constitution for independence. .

Britain had a long tradition of such constitution-making Up to

the end of the second world war a P 3 ^ 11 ’ e = un 'Y 1 , adhered

America Acts of a century before had been scrupulously adher
to. All Commonwealth countries on becoming independent had
started off with a Constitution contained m a Bnnsh Act of Pari
ment. The practice had much to commend it.

British Parhament might be alleged to be in other matters no one
could contend that it w°as not to be trusted inrepdtot he workings
of its own svstem. When introduced as a Parliamentary Bill, the
own sysre Commonwealth country attaining

fndepe’ntnce wild at least receive the scrutiny of Members of the
maepenaence w British system should work.

M»sh Parliament came to be

prevented from camming the constitutions of Impend terntor.es

^ So forSfp'Ssm'n »d Burma were concerned this could be
properly justified on the ground that the alternauve plan of semng

lb ’° f'j ai* i lit unm.v. ini>

up a Constitutional Convention within the umntrv contented was
prckrable to the drafting bv the British 1'arliamcnt of their new
Constitutions. Unit Ccjh.n, itowever, a new pJjii was introduced
and tins was later to he applied to ever;, other liritish Territory
subsequently obtaining independence. Tiic liritish Parliament’s
hmction was restricted to the passim; of a Genera! Act of Indepen-
dence from which prac.icillv ail mention of the proposed GiU-
utton to he adopted after Independence was omitted. The Act
instead I authorized the liritish Government to enact it bv Ordcr-in-
Uunct! which in practice meant that it was drafted bv the Colonial
UI bee her sv stem appeared to be to tale the evhiim; Gdnnial

" ! Ti-f lhc lusls ,ur ,!ut independence. AH that their

file example of Cev Ion should have been a warning. Its Gmsti-

wi h n domeMi V Umbk '° f principles juxtaposed

JrjT C ' c » u , U . l,Un . S i0r ' hc »f idmdal public

was not ev •« • “■ aarctl,J “ 1,1 > c -rs. The Cevlon Gmstitution

Colonial G u, ! uaUK ' d 1,1 3 separate document. It consisted of the
mS L “ '’P ,hcr " it!l »"«»•<* Order-in-Gmnei!
provisions’ remit “' g oro, l K ™‘ sc chanctmu it so that, theoretically,
obvious absunlir” 1111 ! mdc I";’ ndtnt status were removed, The

J,Ut il of this

draft a Sn” . ituti m f Pt? jl °‘ ^ l “ a ‘ l “”P‘ in the first place to
documcm ^ " ould bc «««aincd in a simtlc

bc^scofwhafrt dy .. lUS , ljU ^ blc inj^n brolc dovw,
the sanctity of tlu* C t"' C • l ° bc 1 ,c nccd * l)r safeguarding, with
which it had been aurJed'”! '" 'l '■'? tcr,ns ol Compensation
British Colonial Gvif Sere * 1° U *1 b ° P '” J Ul ,!lc 5*9 pensionable

^ Uit “ ,hC

General itTaTekarUm* 1 a( . tcr ". ardsi ’ JW " hen I became Attorney
Civil Servants had Jot t o Zr?’ \ ant sure, of the British
Constitution to which even tr as lIll; ,,rimc l )ur P°« oh the

file on cons, itutionalprwiossCwere’r s ! ou ^ l l| ,c subordinate, in the

circulated, as I sunnose L copies of letters whicli had been

General’s office, bj^members of"th < - I p° r ° Uti , nC ’ tu **
with the duty of examining A ^ G . (ncrnor s Committee charged
3 LXaniImn S the Colonial Office drafts of the Const!-

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

181

tution. These letters, it was stated in them, should on no account
be shown to Daniel Chapman who was Ghanaian and who, as
Secretary to the Cabinet, was the official Secretary of the Committee
in question. The reason given by the writers was that he would
‘leak them’ to the Cabinet.

The documents they had sent for the information of the Attorney
General’s office contained re-drafts of the compensation clauses of
the Constitution which the writers had privately put to the Colonial
Office in London as suitable for inclusion in it. As these letters
pointed out, if the Colonial Office in London accepted their pro-
posals, they, the writers, would be in an invidious situation. The
offices which they held made it necessary for them to advise the
Ministers concerned as to whether or not the compensation terms,
as finally set out in the proposed Constitution, should be accepted.
If, as was pointed out in the letters, it was known that the drafts
upon which they were asked to advise had in fact originated from
them they might be placed in an embarrassing position. Hence the
instruction that under no circumstances should they be shown to
Daniel Chapman. Yet it would be wrong to accuse the officials who
wrote these letters of greed. Their alternative proposals would have
benefited their colleagues, not themselves. Nor could they be
accused of conspiracy. On the contrary, the letters all bore fi e
numbers showing that they formed part of the normal records o

their departments.

It is true that when Robert Gardiner, now of the United Nations
but then Establishment Secretary, and I subsequently searched for
the files in question we found that, prior to Independence, they had
apparently been abstracted from the records which were to be left
in Ghana. While this prevented us obtaining the full story there was
nothing necessarily wrong in it. After all, the other files had been
destroyed or taken to Britain without any sinister motives. Those
who removed them would not have been the officers concerned and
it may have been thought that they were of no particular historical
value or significance for Ghana since the Colonial Office did not m
fact re-draft the compensation terms m the form m which the
officials in question had suggested. It was this preoccupation with
compensation, not the impropriety of anything done m regard toit,
which was fatal to the drafting of adequate Constitutional Instru-
ments In fact if the officers concerned had only shown their

182 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

proposals to Daniel Chapman there was every likelihood that the
Government would have proved more sympathetic to them than the
Colonial Office.

The compensation issue, in itself, is an excellent example of how
preparation for Independence took place in practice. A Colonial
1 erntory becoming independent and wishing to be rid of former
Colonial officials whose policy did not suit the new Government
might in reason be required to agree in advance to compensate
those whom it dismisses, but the compensation terms, so laboriously
F rr? [ he . ( f 1 ^ na i Cons t'tution, went much further than this,
i. C 0 onia Civil Servant whom the Government wanted to
keep w as not only entitled to resign in the normal way and retain

sum P o?V° n ng 2““ had ’ in “Edition, to pav him a lump

00 stron P L n r n0 , n o Th,S pr0vision for Gibing-, he word is not
the rr theCml Scn : ant t0 leavc his employ was enshrined in
be bes 5 t 4 H C °fr H tUtl ° n T d the argumcnt ranged over how it could
penSence 6 ^ tllC pr °' CCtcd ncw Constitution for Inde-

service^n Sv any , Brkis J Colonial official who had ten years’
between ai anH ° ^ uc " as m 1954 in Ghana and was
would rec ive /W arS ** noUcc of retirement and

pension If he rS ^ C r° mpenSa r 0n in addition t0 his normal
proportionally less^The nl^ ^ ^ 3gC ° f 4 '/4 2 he received

official who min-hf ha P ’ T Sh ° rt> enc °uragcd the technician or
officer to leave at the^ St ^ e ° n aBcr independence as a senior
theory preparations f ery moment "hen, according to the official
Whil^arampemate/ f S ° V f J nmCnt ' vcre in thcir cr ucial stage,
another Colonial Government h^ ^ 3 P ensionable P ost with
and thus Ghana fnnnrl \ if 6 C0U d acce pt contract employment
of office who often without COmpe " sa , tln S Colonial officials for loss

Servants owing to a similar J WaS e T lal Lv short of Civil
even occurred where official ■ bemg In operation there. Cases
agreed with each other tn * 'h ' 6 enl Pi°- v in Ghana and Nigeria
sation and pension from the^n ?° StS ’ drawin S their compen-
the other ol cont« a £mpl ° yed by
cent above their pensionable pay h H fiXed 3t twen ty-five per

was surprised how philosophically the Gold Coast Ministers

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

i8 3

accepted the situation. The sum involved, after all, ran into millions.
‘Even England,’ said Archie Casely-Hayford, ‘had once to secure
her independence by paying “danegeld”.’ ‘It was natural, said
Krobo Edusei, ‘that if the British are going, they should demand a
“customary gift”.’ Nevertheless, the Government decided that if
bribes had to be offered it was best to give a bigger bribe to persuade
key officers to stay. So in 1955 the CPP Cabinet decided to offer a
counter-bribe. Any British officer could stay if he wished until
July 1959 and would receive the same compensation as he would
have received if he had retired when his compensation figure was at
the maximum. Alas, the lure of £8,000 tax free together with a
pension and the chance of taking up a new career at the age 0 41 was
too strong for most of the officials, and the number of pensiona e
officers continued to decline. There were insufficient Ghanaians
trained to replace them. Apparently when the compensation sc erne
was thought up no consideration was given to the spee mg up o
African training. In fact, African substitutes could only have been
found by accepting temporarily some planned owering 0 qua 1
cation coupled with a new system of training ivi ervice recrui s.
This was what had been proposed in the final Report o e or in„
Party to review the Africanization Programme. The members of
this Committee were responsible officials, A. . u, now epu y
Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat Michael
Dei-Anang, the Ghanaian poet and at that time the senior Ass s ant
Secretary in the Ministry of Education, an avi g erv ’ ants

of the most experienced and progressive 0 « 1 Colonial

Nevertheless, their recommendations were rejected by

aU W 0 hen ie i became Constitutional Adviser in 1956 the position had
become so bad that one-quarter of all the senior

Service were vacant On the day of Independence, the 7th March
service were vacant. nens j ona ble officers remained and on the

t957, as predicted only 519 P enS10 , _ nf thece ->Hr ,

same date a vear later the total was down to 400. Ot these 285 were

“he piofess"n,l and technical grades agncnlturahsts, ardntects,

citdl engineers and so on who could not by

Ghanaians The only course open to the Ghana Government was to

offer an eien bigger

“letter ab™ what they had previously received. The,

184

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

were offered their compensation immediately, before even they had
ieit the Service and, in the case of those officers who had not
reached the maximum entitlement, they were promised, in addition,
ic en 0 their contract service the extra compensation thev
Office! VC rC lf thcy had continucd 10 serve as pensionable

Yet, despite all this the battle of the Constitution was over how to
for ! M n| r U i f ° r - n l °o f ' VOrds t0 safc Buard the 519 officials. Provision
tution Th C ° ° nia ' nS1Stcd > must bc incIudcd the Consti-

the oriJ! 1 T Cant tlm *T hmV thc *954 Constitution containing
Colonial Dffi ® Uarantee bad t0 . be kept alive. To secure this the

Constiturin r 1 ?, 311 . ed tiat ‘ n tbc forefront of the Independence
Constitution die following complicated form of words must appear:

bvThe r° u C r “ (C ° nslitution ) Order-in-Council 1954, as amended
Tlfe C , ST (C r titU ' i0n) Amendment) Order-in-Council
Council in« institution) (Amendment No. 2) Order-in-
in-Council 5 , ‘ t? . hc G ° ld G*® (Constitution) (Amendment) Ordcr-
of Part t of the f T ' Hc CXIcnt sct out in thc sccond column

anything lawfully clone" thereunder!’ 15 ° rdCr ’ ^ " ilh ° Ut PrCjUdiCC “

compensation Fovfsio^ofth! il™ T °" ly ‘° kCCP alivC thc
include, possiblv hv mict 1 1 Constitution but also to

only rcmoTLlrf k .V ^ of esttaneons manor

the provisions whkh .-n! T* “V?*”* 0 "- For example, one of
Constitution was this ,, 1 ?''" ’ T US 10 K ' “‘nludcoi in the Independence

independent goveSimSt ‘AT H" ,h ' » f

‘construed’: ana bad ’ amon g other things, to be

visions/ltt ! C 40 On a nD] Of , SeCt - 0n 1 ° f the lndla ( Con sequential Pro-
applies to laws in force on rh° H ^ ? 3me ' Vay 3S that subsection
(b) as if subsection (2) of ° ate mentioned in that subsection; and

(« i..e n , re J;“^“ 1 3 0 ? f,h ' B ' i “ Ac .94*,

and subsection (2) of c,w r ^ sectIon 3 of the Ireland Act 1949
- .hose s«bs^ r :^”o ,°.ws' n I f nd A “ 'ft* ”

mencement of those Acte respectively - ° “ ** ^ ° f the C ° m '

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

185

As the proposed Constitution was drafted, it needed an affirmative
vote of two-thirds of the total membership of the Ghanaian Parlia-
ment to alter a single word in any of this.

It was not only that such provisions were not immediately
comprehensible even to the Judges and lawyers of Ghana. Their
inclusion raised an issue of policy. The CPP Cabinet wanted a
Constitution which the people could understand, which, as r
Nkrumah said, ‘could be taught even in the schools’, around which
loyalty could grow and which could thus become an accepted
institution. For any of this, it had, at least, to be intelligible to the
educated lay reader. As it was, the over-concern with the question 0
compensation resulted in a great many of its pages being e v ote to
setting out the methods of calculating the exact sums due to ntis
officials while fundamental rights were only dealt wit in two su
clauses. Of these, the first had been designed to dea with the I amil
minority problem of Ceylon and was copied ver atim rom e
Ceylon Constitution. The second was an abbreviated version of a
provision of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, w ic a e
drafted to prevent laws being passed in Northern Ireland that migh
prejudice the position of Roman Catholics, i eit er seeme p

^ s T abcri V 6 i:a^ t

,0 attend at a Cabinet meeting. Somewhat naturally the Cabrnet
could not follow the ramifications oftheOJoni jOIficc draftth

r 4.1, t r,Mc oclrpH whether I could, within 3 . month,
was now before them. 1 “ ™ tion a form that the Cabinet

produce an entirely new dratt consuuui t

could discuss. They were Jte dear;h« Sen, Ini

Constitution should be based on L°mmon we f

should reproduce where possible the ac a ^ s j mp j e

Commomvealdi Cousmudons but ^ ^ ^ R must

SfaS' Sights audS addition all the points upon which 1,

had’been decided to meet t ^j^^^a < scheme b^ whlch'^lclurts
further asked whether I cou ^ ;1 for Parliament to do and what
could rule on what was consti^^ Jf ^ had been enacted they

was not, but m such challenge. Above all, the new draft

would no longer be subject hi tQ the average

had to be in simple languag

CPP supporter.

^ REAP the whirlwind

I managed to produce a draft in the time limit. Looking back on
m} wor now it bears every trace of haste but it was something at
eas or t le a met to consider. Their meeting for this purpose, at
which I was present, sat on and on-so far as I can remember from
mne o clock in the morning until almost six in the evening without

wi/rr' Mod ! ficat !° T ns of Poetically every Article I had drafted
iscusse an ^ was sent awa ) r t0 make the changes and to
amphfy my notes on them, explaining where each Article had been

ouesdfn A 1 ^ WHy ^ G 1 ° Vernment rec °mmended the wording in
alte Zn, another long Cabinet meeting, at which again

s nt to T o T" 6 m l de> “ final draft was agreed. It was printed and

basis for , r Wlth aformaI rec l uest ^at it should be taken as the
basis for the Constitution at Independence.

accented^Tr t0 if Us at . t ^ e l ' me that it would not be

view than rb ' r* Urt ^ meet ' n g the Opposition’s point of
Election Ld K p C °f St,t f U ° T naI Proposals upon which the General
the Opposition ^ SCt ° U . t dle fundamental Rights which

Government want 1 v” d ?™ andin & and it was what the Ghana

tW0 « ^ree days of us arrival in

reply ‘that the* evfi* - ran ^ ^ ecretar y of State’s Dispatch in
replaced bv 7 tnstruments should all be revoked and

features not in the 1 ^^™! ^inst' 7 C ° nstltuti ° n em hodying many
fundamental rights and rn ™ ent , s such as codification of
always been mv C ° nstItutIonaI . conventions ... It has

achieved in the following m mg ^ lnde P e ndence would be
Gold Coast would be srnnt ^ lrstdy ’ t h e Parliament of the

Act of the United Kinp-H 6 p^V^ 6 Westminster powers by an
Ceylon Independence Act °s!>r ^l™*^ ° n the Precedent of the
necessitate issue of an amendin °n n’ passage of this Act would
cedent of Ceylon final “ rd ? r-ln ~Council again on the pre-
in-Council made f ° r . the te ™s of an Order-

of necessity rest with U 't Gnited Kingdom Ministers must

impendence Uold Coast

mU>ghTpSe r t u !d™»i°Tr " ,mpon,,T hitch ' vhidi

legislation which had to be ena^L' There , was a hu S e mass of

so as to implement the Ghana

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER *^7

draft. We were hoping for the loan of a British Parliamentary
Counsel who would now have time to finalize this. The new oust 1
tution could be introduced shortly after Independence. The Co onia
Office draft provided that their Constitution could be amende y a
two-thirds vote of Parliament which the CPP controlled. Our p an
was shortly after Independence to repeal in toto the Coloma ce
Order-in-Council and to substitute the Ghana draft for it. t was
annoying that at the Independence Celebrations the specia y oun
and gilded Instrument of Government which would be ceremom
ously handed over by the Queen’s representative shou contain so
many schedules about the exact sums which shou e pai m
compensation to the remaining 519 British Civil Servants an s °
paragraphs about the Fundamental Rights of t e six mi
Ghanaian inhabitants. However, as Dr Nkrumah pointed out to me
all that anyone who attended the ceremony wou see wou ... .
fine binding of the book. It was immaterial w at was 1
Within a month of Independence we would introduce our o

My wife, "who had taken part in the last two Monte CadoRaffies,
had gone back to England to compete in that year s e » ^

the end never took place — one of the now or S°

Suez. Thus, three days before Christmas I found: in
up in bed at home with one of those fevers to 7 • t0 saY that

the tropics are traditionally subject. My stewr t0 see me.

the Prime Minister was at the door and wanted g y B ,
It appeared another Dispatch h ^ c °™ e £ r ° Nkruma h wanted my

Before he circulated * g b * eir authority on the British

reaction. I was after all, he said , decided t0 take an

Parliament which apparently ^ Secretary’s message was

interest in Ghanaian affairs. Th< n . British Government were
a blunt announcement that, me upon the basis upon

no longer prepared to enact u el d themselves out as willing to do.
which they had, up till now, _ lained) been disturbed by the
The Colonial Secretary had, ^ of P Commons on the Ghana Inde-
tone of the debate m the Ho tQ var ; ous speeches made by

pendence Bill and he referre p arty . It was necessary that he

back bench Members of his o Govemment further constitutional
discussed with the Goia ^ {d Coast Government was

guarantees. He proposed, 1

^ REAP THE WHIRLWIND

holiday ^ ^ sIl0uld v ’ sit Accra immediately after his Christmas

Dr Nkrumah, sitting in the bedroom of my little house, took the
matter ar more philosophically than I did. He had never expected,
e sai , t at t e ntish Government would agree to Ghana having a
democratic constitution. All he was concerned with was that the

[r ft, 0 ! 1 HJf !t P| a j n tbat ** was Britain who refused to enact
n a at a times his Government had been willing to accept

" r t C ° nStlt TT t0 ? at of the 0] der Dominions. He had, he
would r 'f S !i° r u T P re mise that the British Government
araniimr u 1 ^ S ^^ L ° W °f independence in order to avoid
this oliieri SU "fr- ^ 1S ’ n0 d°nbt, was a last effort to achieve
M h£ Wanted from me was an appreciation of the
£ ™° nS Wh ‘ Gh COuld be made and which would still
the countrv in^i Con !X and,n S a substantial majority of the votes in
constitution wlii fr° S ’ t0n ln wblcb they could, if necessary', alter the
a condition of intpemdence° P0Sed ’ ° bvi ° Usly ’ t0 force on Ghana as

civilized in^cmiouV' ^ v * W3S abvays t0 find him, much more
and Colonial Civil 0 5 sop ^ lstl . c ? te ‘l w ay than the British politicians
me t viST imnl ' T T* ' ,hom hc “"tending. He left

= “zr ^ iib ' ss

aceom^Xa °M, C g G d EZ d T

of State at the Colonial (W then an Assistant Secretary

agricultural matters at th^’r^ E .X n ™ od bad been in charge of
Commission’s proposals for r° ““p Gfbce when tlle Watson
but it was not on this account rwT Bank ^ ad bcen turned down,
couple of years befnrp n- • at ^ remembered him. I had, only a

of Commons on his behatf *At Uk? Dlvi ® io , n lobbies of dle Housc
Commons debate he had left th °, f tbls particular House of

nent Commissioner of Cro l n t ^ mal ° ffice 5° bec «nte Perma-
been involved in a mm™, ands ar *d m this capacity he had
Dorset. His Minister Si ° Ver ^ and at Crichel Down in
independent investigator Ifn ° m ^ Dugdale, had appointed an
into .he manerSKid ° f mine, to go

and of other Civil Servant T 1 ! a ®fP ort criti cal of Mr Eastwood
leagues, thought his Rennrr K’ j ’ . e man y of my Labour col-
S Report biased against Civil Servants in general

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER ^9

and Mr Eastwood in particular, and I had voted against what I

considered his unjust condemnation. . , ,

The point of view taken by the Labour Party in the e ate a
been that Ministers were solely responsible for the conduct o t eir
departments and that it was unnecessary to call in outsi e inves 1
gators. If a senior civil servant was to be removed from s pos ’
which is what had been proposed in Mr Eastwood s case, t is s ou
be done by the Minister responsible on his own initiative. In
replying for the Government, in which Alan Lennox- oy w ^ s
that time a member, Lord Kilmuir, then the Home ecr f a ’
conceded the point. ‘The position of the Civil Servant, e sa 1 »
that he is wholly and directly responsible to his Minister. * s . ,

stating again he holds his office “at pleasure an can e
at any time by the Minister and that power is none e
because it is seldom used.’ It now became apparent a „

purpose of Mr Eastwood’s visit to argue that t s t eory was

mistaken and should not be accepted, at any rate, so ar

C °Onc" e Alan Lctmox-Boyd and Mr Eastwood got downto^
cussion it was clear that their main objection o tatement 0 f
which we had drafted was not that *

Fundamental Rights or went be y ond ^ ^tional conventions that
case of Ceylon, but that, among the co Servants

it set ou. was dte principle

as agreed by both ®"“ h t Sn e ° plan. as explained

Crichel Down Debate. The Gold . Gvil Service should be

to the British Government, was * * be a p ublic or

organized as it is m Britain than y would be res tricted to those

Civil Service Commission but its d Commonwealth

which it performs in Britain and in the

countries. . . -..-gd a Public Service Act

The Ghana draft Constitution^enw until it was passed our
which should spell out th“ e pr ™ s execut ; ve powers relating to
draft Constitution P rov ^ ice generally shall be vested in the

public officers and the public adv i C e of the Cabinet’. This

Governor-General acting °" s ; m ilar provisions in the consti-
provision had been c °? ied ™ ltb countries but it was totally
tutions of the older Comm ran counter to their new

unacceptable to the Colonial Office sm

r 9° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

principle of Civil Service control first introduced in the Ceylon
(institution. Under that Constitution Ministers were deprived of
all control over their Civil Servants who were only responsible to an
independent Public Sen-ice Commission which was not responsible
ar lament. Similar provisions had been inserted into the 1954

Tn , C( ? St Coastltutlon but now the Colonial Office draft of the
Independence Constitution went even further in limiting Ministers’

anno^nrm T the ‘ r ^ The °P erative words were now ‘The
dismiss-d Cn i P ro . m ° tIon > transfer, termination of appointment,
in rhn C 311 1S r^ mai 7 Contrcd °f public officers is hereby vested
C(.'nnmW n0r ener aCt ' ng ° n the advice ° f the Public Service

limited 6 .G oas t. Constitution a transfer was, at least,

limitation on rl raRS Cr 1 r V l ° lv . ing an * ncrease d salary’. Even this
removed T lc P°" cr °P tbe irresponsible Commissioners was now

SLr neTZ ,l WaS r ? dcfined aS mea ™S ‘The conferment,
that to which thp 0 ffl ° r 0t ie ^ v ise, of some public office other than

intention was m r, these proposals, and presumably their

the Civil'Servicc lnister ‘ a ^ or Parliamentary control over

condemned b Sir T S innovation had been strongly

AdS a ,L Ur J ”"!"S S "ho been ConsttatioLl

d "™ B th * 1-dependence
democratic system but on f uun d atlon °f -be British Parliamentary
be flexible" on li " haKV ' r »>“ Secretary of State might

In hc ""old not concede an inch,

the Governor’s official • / e summ oned to Christiansborg Castle,
Secretary of State a draft r^’ and lwd put before them by thc
either to accent or reinct* mu onstl i tutlon which they w-ere invited
was proposed, cither indent* °l lmpicat ' on was if they rejected what
some other even worse rn ”■ Cn ? C w° u ld be delayed or alternatively
The new British pronosak'^^H^ 011 -^ bc ^ orced 011 them,
being alterable bv a von- r " CrC > - lat ’ i nstea d of the Constitution
Parliament, some* thirteen tv,0 ~ t nrds _ the total membership of
sections setting up the Publics ? S .-° f 'Z inclutiin B of course those
thc Judicial Service Cnm„ • • ervice Commission and its parallel
Ghana ttas t0 C: di vS dT’T’ “ bc s P^ a % entrenched,
have a Regional Assemble m°l UC P fS‘ ons - Each of these was to
mbl } and any alteration of these entrenched

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

191

clauses had to be approved by two-thirds of these Regional Assem-
blies. The drafting concealed the reality. The Assemblies were
limited to five and two-thirds of five is four.

At the last General Election the CPP had only an overall majority
in three out of the five Regions so this provision would make it now
impossible to introduce the Ghana draft. In any event, no alterations
to the entrenched clauses could take place until the Regional
Assemblies had been set up by a complicated machinery, which, too,
was laid down in the Constitution and which meant, even if every-
thing was done at maximum speed, it would be still impossible to
enact a Constitutional change at least for eighteen months. These
alterations, it was implied, had been made by the Colonial Secretary
in the interests of the Opposition. In fact they made their position
impossible if they were to obtain their objectives bydemocraticmeans.

On the basis of how voting had gone in the past it was 1 e y t at
the Government would gain a majority in the Northern Region
one of the two Regions where the CPP were m a minority, an
might thus be able to alter the Constitution. What was .mposstble
was that. on any e '-i st ' n S caleulat'on, the OpposuKJn^co u ^^^^ arn^a
majority m four out of the five Regions tn . , , ,

election in the two Regions in which the ol ? f ,

divided, they had not won a single seat. The pposi 1

JeGe^Heedon^the^si^-^^

Federal Constitution Ostensibly in 1 their pp^ ^ ^ &

had now been altered in such a way t organization they

whole voted decisively ^ ^e fcd U-p^ k sQ kng *

advocated, it would have been ™P 0 members in the two coastal

Regions in which they rhen held every ar i singa co j_
The British Government .had CiviI

tution which was intended to P had, how

Servants behind which, in every othe^

done so at the cost of produci complicated to the point

way, was quite unworkable J S designed as to make inevit-

of incomprehension. Further ^ one smaU example, any m

able conflicts widi the Courts^ ^ ^ of a chlef) ^ ^ ^

affecting the tradmonal fun ^ Constltutl0n had ^

any obligation to consider the chiefs’

192

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

views but it was not entitled to proceed with any such Bill until
three months had elapsed from the time of referring it to the chiefs.
But what was a Bill affecting the traditional functions or privileges of
a chief? Was it, for example, a Bill which provided for the safe
custody of the regalia of a chief in a traditional area where, owing to
a disputed election, there was in fact no chief.

The Speaker ruled that a Bill to provide for the safe custody of
regalia pending the election of a chief was not one which affected the
tra ltional function or privileges of any chief since it only arose in a
situation where there was no chief and the Bill was enacted without
re erring it to the Houses of Chiefs. The Courts, however, decided
ot enuse. They held that the Act should have been so referred and
t at, since it had not been, it was unconstitutional and they gave
amages against those who had enforced its provisions.

1 n en ll . tmiatcl y elections for the Regional Assemblies were held,

, C PPnsition refused to nominate candidates on the grounds that
i? S b ? d *! ot b een S rant ed the powers to which the
so T T* 1 1 ° 1 U “ C t lc T were entitled. In consequence, though
Wo n'’™. 11 ,' 5 - V ° n SCatS > the CPP had a majority in every
seems nrS n n he u baS1 u ° f previous local Government elections it
Oonnshi™ w that the S fT result . would have occurred even if the
their lad- nf & cont< r sted election and it may have been in fact
from the P SUCC ? SS m t lese e ^ ect '°ns which led them to withdraw
iqS ffi 1 T T te f H ° wever this was > by the end of October

19 {*tZZ T S dCar f ° r alteHn S Constitution.

Council in Svi t0 try t0 amend the Colonial Office Order-in-
constitutional fn ' ’ T a£c .°t dance with the various complicated
f't ' Vari£d from Section to Section. An
tution cvcrv restr! ^ tC ’ ''h'ch merely removed from the Consti-
ordinarv Act of P-iV 0 " ° n 1 ^,.b e ‘ n S ame nded othenvise than as an
each House of Chiefs? ent. \\ ith due solemnity this was referred to
Re-donal Sscm W , the ‘ r V,ews > and afterwards to each of the
retired ^o-thffds^^t "' aS “1“^ P assed by them and by the
was die one^and^onl bSO UtC . ma ^ or ty °f Members of Parliament. It
tutional provisions to whic^tTV? 0 " ? Vhlch the elab °rate consti-
labour and time were ever applS? 0 ™ ° ffiCC Had deV ° ted S ° mUCh

y. ^ wvu applied.

months. The ^Cons tl tutiem ni^ 011 laS , ted in P ract ice just twenty-one
institution (Removal of Restrictions) Act of x 8th

CONSTITUTIONAL ADVISER

193

December 1958 set aside those sections of it which hampered
constitutional amendment and thereafter it was changed by the
same process as any other Act of the Ghana Parliament. I he
paragraph in a schedule to the Ghana Independence Act, passed by
the British Parliament, which had given the British Crown the power
to impose these clogs on constitutional change and which forbade
their removal was also repealed. In this connection it is interesting to
note than when the British House of Commons passed the para-
graph in question, its Members were under the impression that the
restriction on amending the Constitution would amount on y to t ae
necessity for obtaining a majority of two-thirds of the i lem ers ip
in the Ghana Parliament. Alan lennox-Boyd’s subsequent further
restrictions had therefore no Parliamentary sanction an were on y

imposed by the use of the Royal Prerogative.

During the debate the Secretary' of State never disclosed that he
had been officially asked bv the Ghana Government, through the
Governor, Sir Charles Arden-Clarkc, to consider a Constitution
based on drat of the older Dominions. In order not to emb™ the
United Kingdom Government, Dr Nkrumah's Government never
disclosed that thev had prepared an alternative ra a • ■
ment has never be'en published. Hastily drawn .hough it ^vas , is of
i- - ■ . r , „ Mpirlv what were the Lrr views on

historic interest as it shows very cieariy • j

reason I have

had about the whole oft is r su w ho had studied in great

of the proposed Parliament . — Com ’ monS) had been spending
detail the procedure 0 working out with Parliamentary

some three months in on cerem ony for the independent
officials an impressive fa die ease of Ceylon and

Ghana Parliament based U P°“ . g the sovereignty of Parliament
deliberately designed to emp

and the new constitutional re atl ^ th be f ore these ceremonies were
Suddenly, less than, I thm > ^ quite casual l y t0 Dr Nkrumah
due to take place, the o ; t would be more appropriate

that the Colonial Office ha dent set at the independence of

to base the ceremony on ^ stud ied what had taken place
Australia. None of us had, of cours , y

194

» Australia „ vcr ^

f*. ' m much “Wine

ODenin £l ?n tely We discovered that the , Australian precedent
E g °? n arliai «ent or Speech £ f £ ad been *> ^mal

the , Throne - Instead, the

sune-'Ri i C 1 p n . ce ^nseum and accomn n ? u tlJOUS Iy t0 die recently
£ rvule Britannia 5 >, acc °mpanied bv rm« r-n^Vr.

=2 Science """^usfyto

to choint, had

^2[ 0ac ‘ A “L Mi “

?,H? 0 ' d nfStacL'M^'V 1 Kensi "P”“

at BuckinvL f ^anaian Parliament who was t0 attend
that St 1 Palace > since we™ m t half of the Qpeen-
Colonial Offi ^ Wh ° dealt with these ° d t Kensin gton Palace
Finally w^v t0 Which we were Pf ot °«>I~and at the

wiiosetecret 15 - t0 See Lord Kilmufr rt t Buckin S ha m Palace.

received us w ith Were toId the oririnaJ 6 ° rd C ! lanccUor > from
staff had ever S C ° wtes Y but some surn^™^ 1 had come - He
last moment th £n con sulted on the ino f f nS ^r Neither he nor his
11 wafpelt *? Ceylon precedent * Was on,y at the

level of a th™ £ S ’ tbe most striking e% as finally accepted.

^„ ght . oot Brit . sh *mg «™pl. , „f .he a J eI , cc „

PPmach to Ghanaian Independence

CHAPTER SIX

ATTORNEY GENERAL

It was, in the end, the impreciseness of the Lennox-Boyd Consti-
tution which led, six months after Independence, to a vacancy
occurring in the office of Attorney General. The Order-in-Council
had provided for interim Regional Assemblies composed solely of
Members of Parliament for each Region and it was a dispute on the
election to the Chairmanship of the Interim Regional Assembly for
Ashanti that caused the crisis.

The 1957 Constitution had continued a provision, contained in
the earlier 1951 and 1954 Constitutions, under which the Speaker of
the National Assembly did not have to be a Member of Parliament.
This was an unusual provision with a British type Parliamentary
system but there was much to be said for it.

When the CPP first came to office in 1951 they took advantage of
it to elect to the post Sir Emmanuel Quist who had been President of
the old Legislative Council, was a leading figure among the Ga
aristocracy of Accra, and was typical of that intellectual class of
African whom the early twentieth-century Colonial policy had
excluded from public life. He had been, in his youth, an able lawyer,
had joined in 1914 the Attorney- General’s office but it was made
clear to him that he would be denied promotion on account of his
race and within a year he resigned. He had been, before the Second
World War, active on the conservative side in Accra municipal
affairs. Politically he was well to the right even of the old United
Gold Coast Convention. His career had nevertheless exemplified
the fight in the inter-war years against the exclusion of Africans from
all positions of authority in the Colonial administration and it was
therefore appropriate and symbolic that, in his old age, he should be
chosen for the office of Speaker. Nevertheless this did not prevent
the Opposition, feeling perhaps by this time he had become too
identified with the Government, running a candidate against him for
the Speakership in 1956. They had proposed as an alternative,

ig6

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

another elderly lawyer from Togoland with a very similar back-
ground to that of Sir Emmanuel, a Mr B. K. Tamakloe.

At the first meeting of the Members of the Interim Ashanti
ssem y over which Sir Emmanuel had, in accordance with the
Lennox-Eoyd Constitutional provisions to preside, the Opposition
majority decided to elect as the permanent Chairman his old rival,
Mr lamakloe, who was neither a Member of Parliament nor
an 1 y irth. This move was in line with the general Opposition
policy to elevate the two Regional Assemblies which they controlled

Parliaments S 31111 and tbe Northern Territories — into subordinate

th p In w COn , Sti I Ution ? 1 i. discUSsions the Opposition had argued that
c„: ov „^| IOn: J D ss . eni , ies should have similar powers to those
thatRe f W Y tl J e A Parh r nt of N o«hern Ireland. The CPP’s view was
Londnn S r!! a ^ mbll ?, s should have powers similar to those of the
Govern mp 01 r ,nt ^ .°. uncd and s h°uld be similarly constituted. In the
should be Hr- 0 P’ mo *i tbe P fesidin S officer of a Regional Assembly
member o'f w ‘ he Chi "™" the London CouMy Council, a

administration o7IR2 TI,7 l “ T'Tf 1 ”" A
tVDicallv rlirl not j egl0n ‘ , he Lennox-Boyd Constitution,

for a ‘Regional C C °™ e d . 0wn dec ' s ‘ v ely on either side. It provided

wkhimtln'^mrmth 511 ^ 10 ^ 1 ' 1 C ° mmission ’ which was to be set up

later than nine m r e P endence and which had to report not

organization it r ° n • f & lenvards on what Regional powers and

power S or th LrT ^ ? e * irable - Nothing was said on the

Assemblies which^ve^'t^be f [ ai " e ' V01 J of the Interim Regional

considered and acted on the Repmt of theC ^ Parliament had
All that rhe .• report ot the Commission.

do was to ‘offer advkeTo^^Xr 1 ^ 6 Interim Asse mblies power to
Region’ — which the In A’ -a a Minister on any matter affecting a

could do in any event inth ^ S COmposin S the Interim Assemblies

and to set up ff thev of Members of Parliament-

the object of encouLT ^ a , Commi «ee in the Region ‘with

and the public’. Looking K°°i. re adons between the Police force

chair these bodies was a cn ^ ,k° n !t ’ tbe fi uest '° n of who should

n appeared symbolic of the^r" ^ ai ? adernic matter but at the time

‘Federalists’. Asked by the Cah^ b f WC “ the <Unifiers ’ and the

wording of the Constitution tf [° r my Vlew 1 said that 1116
onstitution, though obscure and capable of various

ATTORNEY GENERAL 197

meanings did not, I thought on balance, permit the Ashanti Interim
Assembly to bring in an outside Chairman. On the basis of my
opinion the Government requested Mr Paterson, the Attorney
General, to take proceedings in the Courts to obtain a ruling on the
legality of the Ashanti Interim Assembly’s action. He would not do
so. He considered my view of the law to be wrong, that the Assembly
was entitled to appoint Mr Tamakloe and that in any event it was
not a matter for his department.

By this time the issue had developed into a legal trial of strength
between Government and Opposition. Mr Tamakloe, now described
as the ‘Speaker’ of the Ashanti Assembly, was planning to preside at
what was, for all intents and purposes, a State opening, copied from
that of Parliament but with the Asantehene in place of the Governor-
General. The Chief Regional Officer’s staff in Ashanti, who were
Civil Servants responsible to the Central Government, accepted Mr
Tamakloe’s directions and, on his authority, summoned a meeting
of the Regional Assembly for this purpose. The CPP minority
group among the Members then took Court proceedings, challenging
the legality of the whole affair. They were upheld and Mr Tamak-
loe’s election declared invalid. The decision was in no way a
criticism of the advice tendered to the Government by the Attorney
General. So obscure was the wording of the Constitution that the
case might have gone either way. However, it produced a crisis of
confidence. Mr Paterson decided to retire from Ghana and to
accept appointment as Chief Justice of Northern Rhodesia.

Under the Lennox-Boyd Constitution neither Dr Nkrumah nor
his Government had any say in the appointment of his successor.
The Order-in-Council provided that the appointment to the post of
Permanent Secretary (but not dismissal or transfer from it) should
be made by the Governor General ‘acting on the advice of the Prime
Minister, after the Prime Minister had consulted the Public Service
Commission’. However, from this provision the office of Attorney
General was specifically excluded though the post was senior to that
of Permanent Secretary. Dr Nkrumah wanted me to obtain the
appointment and asked me to apply for it but I was awarded it not
on any political ground. My ultimate selection was a consequence of
the operation of the Colonial rules of procedure that the Public
Service Commission continued to apply in conditions of Inde-
pendence. The fact that I had been a Labour MP for ten years and

reap the whirlwind

Constitutional Adviser to Dr Nkrumah for a year was immaterial —
neit er were posts within the former Colonial Service. In the end it
tvas apparent y a question of seniority. I had the requisite honours
egree, ough not in law but in history. However, it was seniority
t? C ? j° [ e English Bar and appointment as Queen’s Counsel in
• ng an t at enabled me to defeat the other candidate, a Judge in
the British Colonial Service.

Nn !inli n ° d ; lus j° n , about the difficult i r of the job I had taken on.
„ n . , f f ln ! V1 ua . could rescue Ghana from the legal confusion

WhptTip C t'* 11 u SS U bad uiherited from the Colonial regime.
I rnnlri C °- U S , U , CCCed or wou W fail depended upon what staff
anything™, ^ u-° W * Cou ^ d or S an >ze tlieir work and not upon
mv dem t C ° U 30 11CVe una * ded m yself. Yet the appointments to
Sv&SZ Were r t0 J 6 made n0t by ™ but by the Public
in mv own A ISS10n " n t b e °ty I could not even transfer an officer
approval and T epa ’ t ?^ nt pr ° m one job to another without their
antiquated mi,r am 7 n0t recru ' t on m y own initiative. The
pre-indeDendenrp 1 ^ " " C1 * inherited, almost unchanged in its
and immediate 1 ° ! la ,r e ’ W3S ^ ube unsuitable to initiate any reform
development Tneffi ^ WaS essent >al for any planned economic

enterprise which haTto bT 316 ** T^a 0Verhead char S e on any
factor which mntrlt be °P erated under them and the single

Judged by this criterion "cf t0 . me ® cienc y of ! aw is uncertainty,
systems where olwm hanaian Law was high on the list of
component African rei 5 ned supreme. Its most important
factor. ’ aW ’ was lts most neglected and uncertain

began its description of Hwt? , the Courts Ordinance still
„ m force in the country by providing:

the do C arint e ofequi 0 J thI H 0r t. any 0rdinance > the common law,
were in force in Eno-T T 1 6 Statutes op general application which

- * -

The basis of the law tn a ■ •

to be what it had been in P mim ^ tere d> thus appeared at first sight
been born. Unfortunately it 3 and tW ° - ears before my father had
British Acts of Parliament wl/^ n0t CVen 3S sim P le as that. Not all

to be applied but only those ofwTf ^ July I§74 were
y ose ot general application’. Which were of

ATTORNEY GENERAL 199

general application and which were not, was extremely doubtful.
New hotels, for example, were at last being constructed in Accra.
Did the English Statute Law, as it applied to innkeepers in England
in 1874 apply to them in Ghana in 1957? The tests applied in the
past by the Gold Coast Courts had differed.

One school of thought argued that the right course was to ask
whether, for example, the law relating to innkeepers in England in
1874 would have been applicable in the conditions of the Gold
Coast in that year. This, I think, was the correct test but another
school considered that while the Act might not have been held to be
of general application in 1874, ^ might later become of general
application when, for example, as in this case, the need for inn-
keepers, and thus of a law regulating their liabilities, had arisen. In
other Colonies where British law had been applied from a specific
date these words — ‘if of general application’ — had caused much
litigation. In the earliest series of Law Reports of New South
Wales one-third of the reported cases were on this issue alone.
Fortunately in the past in the Gold Coast it had not troubled the
Courts to this extent but it remained a danger that might at any
moment arise. However, the more immediate problem was, now
that so many years had gone by, to find the books which would tell
one what English law had been in that far off summer of 1874. For
example, in 1874 there was little statute law on Partnership in
England and the relation of partners was largely governed by
common law. Did the English Partnership Act of 1890 merely
consolidate the common law previously existing or did it import
new principles? If the latter was true, these new principles could
not be part of the Law of Ghana and the Courts would have to
identify and reject them. If the former was so, then the English Act
of 1890 set out the Partnership law of Ghana.

By fixing the date of the reception of English Law at as early a
date as 1874, Ghana was denied the value of the rationalization of
English Law undertaken from the last quarter of the nineteenth
century onwards and inherited the legal debris of seven hundred
years of legislative history. Conditions in Ghana were too different
merely to adopt current English Law which in any case was often
behind that of Commonwealth countries and of the United States.

The difficulties which we continually faced can be illustrated by
examining the problems involved in dealing with one minor piece

200

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

“ f h '? slatIOn ’ the ^-drafting, in part, of the Law of Inheritance
wlipn cc undertook among other low priority tasks in 1961

thp rpfn* 2 K1 r' C °P ed » re-cast the more important laws. Before
Af p 1 1, ' C 0UI . 1 th at > apart from the Law of Succession under
US ? m ’ ^ lc administration of estates of deceased persons

Ihese Zn “ T b J no less than thirty-six enactments. Of
modifvin ° nC " Cre ^?“hsh Statutes and five Colonial Ordinances
the En 2 l! n ^T e part / cu ’ ar or another this British legislation. Of
2sf Fn rl r S r h ! ch Sti!1 a PP Iicd ^ 1961 the earliest was of

S Z s eZ 1‘ h I C £ VS C °" CC ™ d daKd ™S".

Edward TTT° h • * ^ ree more Statutes were from the time of

jor? p:, * avmg een enacted at various dates between 1330 and

Sfa mu*"’/" 1 : Tud0r nvo from ,he time

Elizabeth I Tl "° '■hat °f Edward VI and one in the time of
in the rei<m ofTh 0t . ler ^ nactments st *ll applying had become law
more came fro* 11 ™ d one during that of James II. One
Statute of George III Z.f °f p ,lliam and Mary. There was one
eight from the p-SJ 11 ’ Geor ° e Iv . two of William IV and
in all a legislative histrT^ °r 9 peen Victoria’s reign. They embraced
been enacted q 2 veirs !7 ° . s84 years - The most recent of them had
before. J previously and the earliest of them 676 years

applying. The^e wiTthrfeTth! 1 ^ Was J? ot the onl > r ^‘slation
ance decreed that- t ler sources. First, the Courts Ordin-

of the Courts shalfbe hf f ° f t0 3]Pply t0 the j urisdiction

jurisdiction and "“*» ° f ^ ^

After Independence it ic t .

jurisdiction’, which refer ™ a „ ue ’ t n e reference to a limit of ‘local
Courts, had become meini i° '^subordinate position of Colonial
local circumstances permit’^ CSS ’ Z ^ wor d s ‘so far only as . . .
‘Imperial’ law— presumably t0 a ! low the Courts to adapt an
had been declared to apply rn e r Sa , me . thln S as a British law— which
local conditions. Once ° ? mes generally in order to meet

Court the British law was tn Z ada P tat i° n had been made by the
laws as that of Merchant Qt,' - S e ^ tent amended. Such important
to these rules. ’PPmg had to be interpreted according

ATTORNEY GENERAL

201

The second additional source of statute law were the various
items of legislation passed in the Gold Coast by the local Legislative
Council and afterwards by the Legislative Assembly. These were
known as Ordinances before Independence, and, when passed by
the National Assembly after Independence, as Acts of Parliament.
What had been the local law of the past was often difficult to
discover. Even the National Archives, though reorganized after
Independence, were unable to collect a complete set of the various
editions of Gold Coast Law which had been published. However,
this was not of great importance since it had become the practice,
from time to time, to collect all the Ordinances together in a
consolidated edition and to declare these to be all the local Statute
Law in force at the time of the consolidation. The last of these
periodic consolidations had been undertaken in 1951 and contained
some 272 Ordinances. Unfortunately the five volumes containing
them were not published until 1954 by which time much of the law
contained in them had already been amended or repealed. No
adequate cross index existed. The whole system was one of confusion
and was made the worse because up until 1936 different laws could
be, and often were, made for the old Colony, the Northern Terri-
tories, Ashanti and the Togoland Trust Territories.

The final and in many ways the most important source of law was
indigenous customary practise. This African Law was in force, in
the words of the Courts Ordinance, to the extent that it was not:

. . repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience, nor
incompatible either directly or by necessary implication with any
Ordinance for the time being in force.’

African law had been regarded by the Colonial Courts as something
extraneous and, not like the common law, as something which
always resided in the bosom of the Judge. It had usually therefore
to be proved by the calling of witnesses but even this was not a
fixed rule. The Colonial Courts sometimes relied on their own
knowledge, sometimes they consulted Assessors or referred the
question to a Local Court and occasionally text books and other
works of authority were accepted as setting out the position. All in
all, it was a formidable subject on which to embark upon 3 policy
of modernization and reform.

One reason for the decayed state of the law in Ghana at the time

202 R£ AP THE WHIRLWIND

need " aS ^ lat tkc Colonial Office never believed in the

hierarchy of thr a! cxpcrt m tile Colony to draft its laws. In the
a ‘leaal dnftc * 1 , orney Oencral’s office, it is true, there had been
distinguish theTY vi 1 !' S ', Vas mcndy tb e convenient title given to
below°the 9nlirV "r U3 Y* 0 Was ddrd ' n succession, immediately
c Zlt lfT G , C T\ As so » as a vacancy occurred in that
mentary driftln^T 6 ■ ^ -' C would bc promoted to it. Parlia-
Lawyers are no mn °'' CVCr ’ Is one oP tbe most specialized trades,
have to have the ^ lr j terc!lan gcablc than engineers. They may all
particular line de aS1C t ™“ 1 ‘ n S but tbc ir ability to follow one
in it When I s,,^ 0 a j P ° n ^ C ’ r kav ‘ n S bad a i° n g apprenticeship
staff consisted of a e. '° ^ A «orney Generalship my drafting
who had been Crown r ™ug and able retired New Zealand official

African, without UniverT Z" WcStCrn Samoa and a
London as a barrister Q 7 dc f. rec but "’ho had qualified in
which to launch law ref UC ' 3 Was an insufficient base from
reform has a far greater m \ ne ”’ ly indc P cnd cnt state law

last resort law is the mn ° CanCC t . lan In a developed one. In the
state and if the social Cxprcs f on op tbe social purpose of the
change with it. * P r P°se of the state is changing, law must

exampIe^todecreTtha! 1 ? ° n -' V £* S ° far as k can be enforced. For
make' Britain 15 , a sociali « state’ does nothing to
expose the bankruptcy of the 5^ fT’ lf . enacted > would merely
principle is obvious and d ' ar g e issues, such as this, the
matters the co-reladon henl “ " 0t , rc( l uire . stating but in small
ment, though equally vital 6-611 3 " and ks method of enforce-

rs useless to provide in nrd!f 7° n0t s ? generally appreciated.
ls properly run that this Y 3t ’ Say> a bm ited liability company
Such a provision me ns noth' ^ f tUrn must be made annually-
within the Civil Service S^ U ' 6SStherei - alS0 an organization

companies should be making wLJnK 110 " 5 ’ roughly s P e aking, which

the machinery to check wb C return and when, and which has

S “ ch a «um has in fact been
with the law is valueless unless dYse^ C ,° mpany is not complying
ave access to some Court wKp .l 10 cbar g e of law enforcement
s P e ed and without too erpit- ^ ey can prosecute defaulters with
expenditure of time and enemv '-r CnS 1 C or t0 ° disproportionate an

g} ' To chan S e bad law only brings the

ATTORNEY GENERAL

203

legal machine into disrepute unless, at the same time, there is already
prepared and waiting the machinery to enforce the better law which
has been prepared to take its place.

With these problems before me I was at least to this degree
fortunate. I was better equipped than the Attorney General in
England to attempt the reform on the scale required. Indeed the
Office which I had inherited bore little resemblance to that of the
Attorney Generalship of England. Its affinities were to the post as it
exists in the older Commonwealth countries and in the United
States.

The titles of office-holders in the Commonwealth, the United
States and in the then British Colonial Territories derived from the
British political offices of the eighteenth century. In the earliest days
of Colonialism, a system of official posts corresponding to that then
existing in England had been established in the American and the
West Indian Colonies and this was the pattern that was followed in
the Colonies later to be established. The Foreign Minister of the
United States — The Secretary of State — derived his title from the
English Secretary of State of the seventeenth century. His office in
Britain has been divided into so many Secretaryships of State for
separate departments that the original significance of the office,
which was that of the Head of the Royal Secretariat, has been lost.
The name, in the form of Colonial Secretary or Chief Secretary,
survived in the Colonies, as did its original purpose.

The latter day Colonial Governments did not become depart-
mentalized into Ministries in the way in which the British system
developed. They still continued to be run through a centralized
secretariat and the title, Chief Secretary, meant what it implied. In
the same way the title of colonial financial officers became formalized
before the conception of a Lord High Treasurer had altogether
disappeared from English Constitutional theory. In Britain his
functions have now become divided between the Prime Minister —
The First Lord of the Treasury — that is to say the Chairman of the
Commission which took over the Lord Treasurer’s functions, and
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, originally the Lord Treasurer’s
Accountant but later the Second Member of the Commission of
Lords’ Commissioner for the Treasury. In the Colonies, on the
other hand the Lord Treasurer’s functions remained undivided and
were carried out by a Colonial Treasurer, a Financial Secretary or,

204

Kt A I* 1 in. WHIRLH ISD

One^offir C °f ^' C V ,i,cd ^ t3,cs ' n Secretary of the Treasury.
KtoscSZ ; “ lon . c '^ al | Uf ^ Chancellor, the Keeper of the
the Lev ofiir • • nC i’ n'- ,rJns plamation. Yet in many wavs it was
theory" and in' 11 * lC - rm , s ^ s - ^ tcII1 > 111 that >t represented, both in
Under the « P rac ' ICc . the unity of judicial and executive power.
Cabinet and th^”! - m . ntain . dlc head of the Judiciary sits in the
magisterial inn 1S ! ' US ma * n,3, " ncd 3 quasi-political "control over

of the law ^aJnuTpT nf * hC rna " a ' 4cmcnt - rcfon ” 3nd “"duct
duties belied in * * • iS ,' 1 - U " as ^ ccausc the Lord Chancellor’s
division of exernp 3 ^*"" ! < j UrrclU ‘-■‘ghteenth centuty belief in the
ofiice was not est-il'r ?*! i - Ud ! a:d P°wer that in name, at least, the
American Colon" ^ >C ■” l ! lc Colonies. L is true in some former
p :S2 r'.T n n ? after United States inde-
lor’ but he was Z' l'. C “ U a Io judicinI figure known as a ‘Chancel-

Howevcr, while his" title" wT''''! i , ' lldsC n ° grcat im portancc.

which his ofiice stood namelv tb ^'l"' eMW ! td ’ lhc P nncl P !c for
with the judiciarv u/c • - c h>se association of the executive

Africai lS; P T •' t0G),Unial Government.

Lugard depended unon ' "r •' , ,C f ° rm *! n ?% perfected by Lord
performed by the , ,U ‘^ la j an d administrative functions being
Native Ruler and somfi' C m l ' ldu . a *> though sometimes he was a
Lugard admitted that at"^ 3 BntlS, ‘ f 0,itlcaI ofI <cer. Yet even Lord
justices had to be mC S ' agC 1 lc lL ’ sal dcc >sions of these lav

and that a lavvxer of ^ omc sort of judicial re-examination

advise on the form of n™ i'" " ai 1 nca ' SS3 n' for this as well as to
generallv. Thus the f,, a " s 3nd 0,1 die management of justice

U,d CtacdW K I I" 11 ""f PCrr ‘‘ r '"" 1 E "S' a " d b >'

in Colonics with Indirect R„i . ~.. carru:d on . t0 some extent even
other transplanted officials n di 'idcd between the two

General. ° ltlC,als > lhc Chief justice and the Attorney

centurj’^the important^Iffi” UntiI thc firs t quarter of this

Chief Justice, not the Attn ^ 10 thc adm inistration was the

Justice held his Commiss S' Gc r ncral - Theoretically die Chief
the individual appointed h->H Ircc ? ^ rom the Crown but in practice

™ rk in dle Colonial system rL rmTr 11 ? " ho was trained to
sat in the Legislative 3 Ci ?, Ier Justice of the Gold Coast

‘spatches of the period are full of comphini ^

> of his failure to accept

ATTORNEY GENERAL

205

the Governor’s instructions as to how he should vote. Probably the
Chief Justice’s office was subconsciously supposed to be akin to that
of the Lord Chancellor. Prior to the reorganization of the English
Courts in 1875, a Chief Justice in England was scarcely more than a
departmental head within the judiciary. A colonial Chief Justice, on
the contrary, had always been a political figure.

In this regard it was typical that the first Chief Justice to be
appointed in Northern Nigeria, the late Sir Henry Gollan, had
political rather than legal experience. He was a young barrister who
had been, for the previous two years, Lord Lugard’s private
secretary. Even he, according to Miss Perham, ‘resented the small
sphere in which he was allowed to act’. Colonial judges had, as now,
no security of tenure. He was dispatched to the Bermudas and there
was substituted for him a Chief Justice whom, as Miss Perham dryly
remarks, ‘gave no further trouble upon the points at issue’.

In early Colonial administration it was the Chief Justice who sat
on the Governor’s Executive Council and who advised on legal
policy. Though many of his duties w'ere later, through Colonial re-
organization, to devolve on the Attorney General the Chief Justice
in all British Colonics still retained to the end many of the quasi
political functions of the English Lord Chancellor and w T as openly
treated as the official link between the executive and the judiciary.
It was typical of the misrepresentation to which Ghanaian affairs
were generally subject, that when, under the Republican Consti-
tution, it was provided that the President could decide, at will, which
Judge of the Supreme Court should exercise, from time to time, the
functions of Chief Justice, this was described as a deliberate
departure from the standards of judicial impartiality established in
Colonial times. In fact, for good or ill, this constitutional provision
reproduced exactly the principle upon which Colonial justice was
organized.

The Chief Justice of a British Colony still today holds office only
during ‘pleasure’ and if he does not see eye to eye with the Governor
of the day he can be sent off, like Sir Henry Gollan, to be a judge in
some other Colony or retired from the Service. The Ghanaian
constitutional provision in fact only put into precise language the
British constitutional practice. The Lord Chancellor can be dis-
missed at will by the Prime Minister but he still remains a Judge of
the highest Courts and his pension is really a salary to recompense

206

reap the whirlwind

th^TnHirM S r UbSeqUent dut ' cs as a Law Lord and as a member of
S n 1 Commi “ ce ° f ^ Privy Council. Tire i960 Ghanaian
TusS wTi rCpr ° d u? Cd th . is arra ngcmcnt exactly. The Chief
and he wn C m b ‘ s capacity as a Supreme Court Judge

ceased toT P n t0 COntinue t0 «rvc on the Bench when he
ceased to be the executive head of the judiciary

in itseiltlf ° ffiCC ° f Att ° rncy Gcncral Scamc frozen almost
it never devpln "^ e . ntur ^ mou ^* Unlike other departments of state
never had °" n s< r cretar ' at an d the Attorney General has

England the officeofDi^ctr of Pubfi^P Whcn ’. f0r CXamplc ’ , in

AttorneTGene!r y /,- VaS attachcd t0 the Home Office. The
have developed into a kindofn '°f C ° Iiea S“ c > the Solicitor General,
The Law Officers’ mini . Professional Parliamentary spokesman.
House of Commons rh T T* cuty .bas become to explain to the
they do not control mtncacics ^legislation whose drafting

the Government’s beb in, ° U [ tS 1 le >' undertake important cases on

by a department ^ver'whirb n ° C prCpared or “gated

former British ColnmV t C V ^ P res ‘de. It was otherwise in all
in the United States the At MC ° ^ Gomm onwealth countries, as
Justice and as the Gold r t0 r rney GeneraI became the Minister of
naturally develoDed in rh; ^ a PP roac bcd independence the office
the Attorne/G^neralVwni ? England a considerable part of
appeared in matters which 'V^r Urt ^ m Gha na I occasionally
importance but none of m, > Obeyed to be of Constitutional
past. Their duties thev ece , ssors bad done so for many years

not of an advocate! 0SI ered> Were those of a Minister and

Attorney GraeSl^oSdbe^ 81 ' U ” dC A ^ Constitu ti°n the
as such, have an ex-officio seaHntb^T as . ^'nister of Justice and,
*957 Constitution part of n, tle Legislative Assembly. In the
uncontrolled by Parliament ; 6 F r °? css op building a bureaucracy
ment and creating an Atm! 1 '' 0 revers iug this natural develop-
nothing except his own conscience^Th Wh ° T* res P onsible t0
Lennox-Boyd Constitution ran thus ^ aCtU3 P rovisIon of the

(1) The Attorney General ctm v.

e a P ers °n who is a public officer and

ATTORNEY GENERAL

207

he shall be vested with responsibility for the initiation, conduct and
discontinuance of prosecutions from criminal offences triable in Courts
constituted under the provisions of the Courts Ordinance or any Act
repealing and re-enacting with or without modification, or amending,
the provisions of that Ordinance.

(2) The assignment to a Minister of responsibility for the depart-
ment of the Attorney General shall confer responsibility only for sub-
mitting to the Cabinet questions referring to that department and
conducting Government business relating to that department in the
Assembly, and shall have effect without prejudice to the provisions of
subsection (1) of this section.’

The Section, both in its tautology and its general intent, was
typical of the Constitution. Judges and the Auditor General might
he removed on grounds of stated misbehaviour or infirmity of body
or mind by an address of the National Assembly carried by no less
than two-thirds of the Members but there was no such provision to
enable Parliament to remove the Attorney General. However
eccentric his behaviour, however out of tune the policy he might be
following was with the Government’s overall plans, he was irre-
movable by the elected representatives of the people. The only
authority who could dismiss him was the Public Service Com-
mission. Whatever my deficiencies in office — and they were a
frequent subject of comment in the British press — my continuance
in office was not, under the Lennox-Boyd Constitution, the responsi-
bility of the Government of Ghana.

Even if the Attorney General had only been a glorified form of
Director of Public Prosecutions the constitutional definition of his
office was impossible of fulfilment. In Britain, as in Ghana at the
time, most prosecutions under the Courts Ordinance, which of
course included all those in the Magistrates’ Courts, were taken by
the police and, at the time the Lennox-Boyd Constitution was
devised, the Attorney General’s office certainly had not the personnel
to examine or advise even on a fraction of these cases. Whether, for
example, the police were sufficiently active when there was a crime
wave of, say, violence or fraud in some particular locality was a
matter for which the Minister for the Interior, who was responsible
for the police, had to answer to Parliament. The section, no doubt,
was intended to prevent the growth of corruption and thus allow the

ATTORNEY GENERAL

209

maintain sub-stations, as one might call them, of the department in
every town where there was stationed a Judge of the High Court.
Secondly, the Attorney General’s department had a function
inherited from Colonial days, the drafting of all current legislation,
a task performed in England by the Parliamentary Counsel to the
Treasury who are thus responsible politically to its First Lord, the
Prime Minister. The third function of my office, though apparently
part of this second function was, in reality, of a different nature. It
consisted of organizing the continued revision of the law, a subject
which in Britain would be the responsibility of the Lord Chancellor.
This task was much more urgent and onerous than in England. The
break-up of the old Colonial pattern of administration meant that
even Ordinances passed two or three years before were already out of
date. The Governor in the pre-independence period, Sir Charles
Arden-Clarke, had had a belief that when political progress seemed
slow the appearance of movement could be achieved by a change in
the designation of officials:

‘We learnt,’ he wrote afterwards of this tactical action of his Colonial
administration, ‘how r effective the device of changing names could be.
It is, I suppose, true that “a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet”, but we learnt that if we changed . . . without in any way
altering their functions or powers, . . . the name of Chief Com-
missioner to Regional Officer or District Commissioner to Govern-
ment Agent, they all seemed to smell much sweeter in the public nose.
That device certainly helped us to get over some difficult periods.’*

It may have done so but it rendered the Ghanaian Statute book
almost unintelligible. After Independence the Government revived
the offices of Regional Commissioners and District Commissioners
though without the powers they had possessed in Colonial times.
Every law where these officials were mentioned had therefore to be
re-examined and redrafted in the light of their present duties. In
fact ‘The Laws of the Gold Coast 1951’ were peopled with Colonial
ghosts — functionaries like the Chief Secretary, the Commissioner
of Labour and the Director of Medical Services and many others

• Dr. Nkrumah’s recollection of this incident was somewhat diflcrcnt. Sir
Charles Arden Clarke, he told me later, had fought to the last to retain these traditional
colonial designations for ‘political officers in the field’. It was only through the con-
tinuous pressure of the African members of the 1951-1954 Executive Council that he
was persuaded reluctantly to accept the change of title.

210

R * Al* 1 HI. \\ Hill!, WIND

ba d been abolished, had changed their titles

d iffi ; ?'f 1 " .his miph, help So sc, o\cr s on, C

wh it oflir THX 0 - r , 1 ', C lmilcd I n,r P usc of clarify ing w hat holder of

was ncassarw LnUt a t0 CUTcisc tI,e P°"ers the law prcscribed.it
was necessary to rewrite it. 1

Government ;\ Uornc -' ‘General had charge of the civil side of
would he 1 it' 1 . )UMncss ' l * lat is ( o say matters which in England
? "” h by Treason Solicitor or the solicitor’s
law v ers to nrm'V. ll |- Sl - r ^‘ ” ^ bana there were quite insufficient
the Attornev p'. C M j, lclt(, . rs t0 , ^ lc 'arious Ministries and therefore
Ministry with a"' T™ ^ ° 1CC . ud t0 hU PPh such legal service as am
might rec’mirc h/ | t .' CCptlnns such as the Land’s Department,
the most exacting! JS 1 " S aS,Ua ° f thc dc P Jrt, »cnt’s work which was

and still does^ u!' 1 ' 11 ' 0 "^ lt - )rne ' < ^ Lncr ' d there evisted in London—
known sT, rp 1 * nM ! tu ‘“*" »i«h admirable qualities, originally
Clarke prindnle Z ^ U on the Arden-

Govcrnmcnts and A ! rc, . IJnK ' d ^ be Crown Agents for Overseas

the Secretary of State fa'Tr i*' >I ' C * W ° AgCnts ' appointcd b - v
financial representatives .! L „ C " lon ‘ cs "ere the business and
public authorities and hr t ' ??.°, ma Go 'ernments and of all
issued and m« t fc iS ttUbl ? hed !» Colonial territory. They
They negotiated the nn r . oans . and the investment of their funds.

ofcapital goods and plant and S otl! n:>PCCtlOI r ill ‘ , . )pins and i nsurJnce

Colonies. They were t ' cr TPcs of equipment needed in the
passages to the Colonies” oftl boo K lng a 6 c,lts for thc air and sea
Crown Agents w e re in I SC ,n .P ubIic <™ploy. These two
preparation for self-Pn,.,. * '° rt ’ an ' ,ivj l ua ble institution. Any

been drought, have invarlv-eTthcgenerU natUrally > it . n . ,i b rbt havc
of their organization with that offhoP LX . P . anM0 . n and mtegration
independence. tbc Colonial territory approaching

However, though this Aeene„v

was unrivalled, it lacked utf r ex Pertise and food of experience

taking place in thc Cnlnnl , lcicnt appreciation of the changes then
have been decentraliS ", f heC ™n Agency could

Commonwealth organization P ° 1 ! lcady VIt ahzed, a real centralized
the Crown Agents fave d" S ’ U - havc bcc ” built up. As it was,
in any wider aspect of the lmprcssion °f being quite uninterested

ovement towards Self-Government in

ATTORNEY GENERAL

21 1

Africa. They were the British, and thus, for all practical purposes,
the world agents for the sale of all Ghana’s official publications. They
would stock them at their Millbank office in London and, it a
purchaser travelled there, he would no doubt be able to get a copy.
They never thought of expanding the service.

When Ghana was most under attack in the early days they never,
so far as we could discover, advertised, sent for review or otherwise
tried to promote the sales of the carefully compiled refutations which
the Government put out, despite the fact that the allegations whic
the Government were answering affected adversely foreign business
and investment. There naturally were criticisms of how they had
invested Gold Coast funds in the past, a particularly sore point
since these were largely derived from dollar earnings.

Before Independence, a quarter of all the hard currency from
Colonial Commonwealth used to support the sterling area syste
came from Ghana. These earnings had been investe 111
Government securities and had diminished not only ,
devaluation but also from a general fall ' n v ^ ue 0 } s ?. C ' , r
they were invested. Gradually a feeling °f dishke m dealing thr mg
the Crown Agents built up. More and more t e an .
ment wished to act independently. In all the circumstances there

was much to be said for so doing if an effective m epen e

tive could be constructed. The difficulty was in cons uc •
Attorney General’s office had never been equipped with staff who
could advise on commercial contracts and there ore
priority was to get some rudimentary organization o 1 fonser
Now that Ghana was independent, foreign businessmen no bn er
solicited for business in London. They came to Accra and waited on

“oSTrfte defects of the Cro»n Agent system “f

financial agents of the Government they di no c ° n credentials
their duty — perhaps it was not to tender a vice o , . wag

of financiers from Britain who came to Ghana. Yet sue
essential as a Biblical analogy may show. The
separating the sheep from the goats is not
of British animal husbandry. The two creatures are so
appearance that the expertise assumed in the Bible tobe necessaty
to put them in their right class appears something ^y° ne c °
leam in half an hour. It was not until I went to Africa that I realized

210

REAP the whirlwind

when e vp 0 ^ ' °f^ C ? s bad ^ een Polished, had changed their titles
jfc" fe " tha ' this rai S ht M P ‘to 8« over some
what office 0 . r . tbe lmited P ur pose of clarifying what holder of

Government^ 6 Attor . ne y-General had charge of the civil side of
would be dealt* 3 ' ^ S !f eSS 1 ’ tbat ls t0 sa . v matters which in England
SS^U! .T£X* ^e-tt Solidror or the sdilr's
Iawvers to j D' Chana there were quite insufficient
the Attornev d ^ S p 1CIt £ rS ^ tbe valaous Ministries and therefore
Ministry with a S ° Ce ^ ad t0 su PPty such legal service as any
mightSuhe ' TtI eW f L XCepUOnS SUch as the Land’s Department,
the most exacting ^ ^ aSpect 0ptbe department’s work which was

and still docs— - mT 3 '™ 6 A ttorne y General there existed in London-
known as ‘The Crown t J tutl0n with admirable qualities, originally
Clarke princfc ^ “ the ^

Governments and Admi • d , Crown Agents for Overseas
■he S«c,e B * “ The ,w„ Agents, appointed by

financial renresem-in\ e ,, Colonies were the business and
public authorities and R S °a a Colonial. Governments and of all
issued and managed thp”] S established in Colonial territory. They
They negotiated the nurch° 3nS - and 1116 lnvestmcnt of their funds,
of capital goods and 1 f\ lnSpeCtl0n ’ dipping a " d insurance
Colonies. They were everTth 01 u* w PCS 0pe( 3 u 'P Inent needed in the
passages to the ColnniVc r e booking agents for the air and sea
Crown Agents w e ! re n ^ “ . public em P%- These
preparation for self-n™, S ° rt ’ 30 i nva luable institution. Any
been thought, have involvedTh^™ 1 ' 1 ? naturall y> ic might have
of their organization with that of fhp rl eXp , ansi0 . n and integration
independence. tile Colonial territory approaching

was unrivalled, it kicked asfiffi^ S ex P erds . e an d fund of experience
taking place in the Cnlnr,; 1 Clent a Ppreciation of the changes then
have been decentralized and poSl If Cr ° Wn AgenCy C ° uld
Commonwealth orvaniznirm P • ,., y VIt ahzed, a real centralized
the Crown Agents gave the C -^ aVe bee . n built up. As it was,
m any wider aspect of the m P ression °f being quite uninterested

ovement towards self-Government in

ATTORNEY GENERAL

21 1

Africa. They were the British, and thus, for all practical purposes,
the world agents for the sale of all Ghana’s official publications. They
would stock them at their Millbank office in London and, if a
purchaser travelled there, he would no doubt be able to get a copy.
They never thought of expanding the service.

When Ghana was most under attack in the early days they never,
so far as we could discover, advertised, sent for review or otherwise
tried to promote the sales of the carefully compiled refutations which
the Government put out, despite the fact that the a egations w ic
the Government were answering affected adversely foreign business
and investment. There naturally were criticisms of how they had
invested Gold Coast funds in the past, a particularly sore point
since these were largely derived from dollar earnings.

Before Independence, a quarter of all the hard currency from
Colonial Commonwealth used to support the sterling area system
came from Ghana. These earnings had been invested 111
Government securities and had diminished not oniy throug
devaluation but also from a general fall in value o t e s oc
they were invested. Gradually a feeling of dishke mdeahng through
the Crown Agents built up. More and more the Ghana Gove
ment wished to act independently. In all the circumstance there

was much to be said for so doing if an effective in epen e. n

tive could be constructed. The difficulty was m construe mg .
Attorney General’s office had never been equippe wi
could advise on commercial contracts and there ore V? 0 ® ■

priority was to get some rudimentary organization o 1S ,

Now that Ghana was independent, foreign businessmen no bnger
solicited for business in London. They came to Accra and waited on

OU One 0 of te the defects of the Crown Agent s Y stem ** “ f

financial agents of the Government they di not con ® rre( ientials
their duty-perhaps it was not-to tender advice on the credentials

of financiers from Britain who came to Ghana, e sue ^

essential as a Biblical analogy may show. The scrip u terms

separating the sheep from the goats is not un ers an .

of British animal husbandry. The two creatures are so ^similar m
appearance that the expertise assumed m t e 1 e could

to put them in their right class appears some ng reatized.

learn in half an hour. It was not until I went to Africa

212

REAP THE WHIRLWIND'

lun', esscutialh similar the two beasts could be in different climatic
onditions. One could tell with practice, yes, but only by noting the

cnnS P ° f the r ta j 1 - 0r S ° me ° ther SUch sma11 «gn. The same
shnnl tT 10n le< ^, ln distinguishing which financiers from abroad

Cirv nf y 6 C ' 1 , C0Ura S cd , an d which discouraged. No doubt within the
rmrlp -ir ° n ° n * C characteristics which enable this decision to be
needed i S ° a PP arent tlat no E reat ability or special organization is
C tv of A A t0 m ? C th£ Ch0ice ‘ Ic was otherwise in the
very camS tf" ^ and S oa *> °"e had to look

financier ^ fC ° ne C0U d attempt to classify the visiting

founder^ ^f VU p dra ’ wko later became well known in Britain as the

“m&S? M “ n ; Ins " a '“ c °”^> ™ a

sortium m Ilf n Ghana m Au gust 1958 to set up a Con-
by Canto k ° ver *1 mineral n S hts in Ghana and he was backed
SpKttd had a Vr e . ’ * "T" 8 fina "“ S'oup, which, as might be
Gold Mininir Co ^ ^ ^ b ^ best credentials. Some of the local
Sec rSaw,T”' eS c , ' re ™ fi "”cial Acuities “"J. «
me»?H= wtTctid S “ m ' d f™»mbU to the Govern-

v.iio believed that nrnfit C ^''eminent, an investor and financier
Christianity if Africa was only compatible with

anti-ColZid CWi ! a „ ami_ Colonial basis. He himself was
he maintained in Ceylon ^ there was his Conv ent which

businessmen to track S S n d , been - he sa!d > ™» »f the first
anti-Colonialists heevnln' a p e °. pes ®- e P“hlic of China. Like all
Indeed, he had' actual! r ’ be lad ka< ^ his brushes with the law.
Belgium, the oppressor of the" ™ pnsoned b Y 3 Colonial power,
his confinement bv the ; ^ on ° 0 ’ hut Bad been released from

Brussels. We had by this ® rcession of the Apostolic Delegate in

checked up. It all nmwrt if an organization of a sort. I had this
tt j tL “ u proved to be true
Under Ghanaian law as it tt,„

could register a Commmt m. 60 Stood> anyone with £7 in cash
The tax paid was Z 2 ^ 5 . «Pi*l of any amount,

million. L 3,™^!,"““ tb ' spiral was £ 50, 1 or £r
Limited, invested onlv in i t lat his principals, Camp Bird
their subsidiary The Ghin^iwr sunas - Gc had therefore registered
^5° million which should he Z™ e Corporation, with a capital of
Pany’s immediate needs nZ ^° Ught > be suffi oient for this Com-
tteeds. Other Ca mp Bird enterprises would be on

■ ATTORNEY GENERAL 213

a larger scale. They were. He followed up his original flotation with
three companies each with the capital of £ 100 million.

It might seem strange that one of these, the Camp Bird Bank,
should require an authorized capital much larger than that required
by any of the ‘Big Five’ in Britain, and that the only amounts
subscribed in cash towards this £ 100,000,000 capital was £7 but
there was nothing illegal about it. It was true that even under the
then antiquated laws of Ghana, a bank could not operate without a
Government licence, but Dr Savundra, when the point was put to
him, said, quite correctly, that the Camp Bird Bank was not
operating — it was only existing — and so long as he could prove he
was not doing any banking business there was no offence in his
having a bank with an authorized capital of £ 100 , 000 , 000 . This
indeed was the law but it seemed to me also the indication we had
been looking for. Despite all Dr Savundra’s references and the
report of the high standing of Camp Bird which my office had
received from the financial enquiry agents in London, it now
seemed certain that we had a goat on our hands. How then should
we proceed ? There was no evidence on which to prosecute him and
to deport him on the ground that he was planning the investment of
£350,000,000 in Ghana and was therefore a suspicious character
might well be misrepresented abroad and might indeed discourage
other investors who were coming with more than £7 in cash. As a
start, we had the books of the Ghana Minerals Corporation
examined. Dr Savundra had announced that, as an earnest of good
faith, even before the agreement with the Government was finalized,
Camp Bird had already invested £ 2 | million in cash in the Corpora-
tion.

Our examination, on the other hand, showed that only £50,000
of the £ 1 shares in the Company had been issued to Camp Bird for
cash. The balance of the 2,450,000 £1 shares allegedly issued to
Camp Bird were credited in the books of its Ghanaian subsidiary to
‘suspense’. Nevertheless, not only the shares issued for cash but one
half million of these ‘suspense’ shares had apparently been converted
into bearer warrants. Fortunately for us the Ghana Companies Law
was then so old-fashioned that it had never got around to providing
for bearer warrants. The issue of such shares^ was also contrary to
the Ghana Exchange Control Law but this, as it was then operatine,
had also been drafted in Colonial days and was such a direct copy of

214 RC *P THE whirlwind

nmmH ^ ^ CSt 4 ^‘ C;ln curr cncv, let alone die new Ghana

£ “"7 “ever mentioned in it and it was doubtful how far our

NcveriM*^ U ,'°r U t f , t0 transactions in local money.

registered 'wi’ "? p 1 , 31 . <:ast justified in sending inspectors to the

,Sr^^ C 7 ° f , b — ° f Dr tundra’s other three com-

for nublir • ^ CC S - IC 1 compan - v books as should have been available

&: t,on , on *»* Payment of a fee of one shilling. As

evidence for C n ° boobs at ab > at ^ ast vvc had sufficient

panics at least r '^ 1 " a ™ Rt and Por the prosecution of the com-
panies, at least, for technical offences.

Dr Savimdnd/rK^ ^ rcsidt ' n o search certainly substantiated
was to separate rh'™ t0 ^ CC P'>' religious. Indeed, our problem
Mother Sunerin C r a f fC ^ rom tbc P r °fanc. Did a letter from the
.hat the tZ t d ' he Conv r '« “PPOnd in Ceylon stating

refer to a religious’ or ‘ bl “ k bls ’ un0 P cnc<1

object with the mm V nan ? la transaction ? Burning a precious

itS re ' binh in a more satisfactory
received from a Priest S < pintual ativicc Dr Savundra might have
his stay in Ghana he h T shrinc ’ and “ was dear that during
through various intermeSerpTn^'f S ° UBht dlvinC assistancc
with items of his business we J ' 1 ™ C< i l ° corrcs P°ndencc dealing
Ceylon asking for sneri-d COpics of cables which he had sent to
this revealed 1 a 2 “ E“ ” * H »" -«r . none of

definitely secular nZll any niore than did letters of a

Parliament how easy it wasT t0 3 Member of the British
can say of the latter was that it n°° . tbc . Af [ icans - Even now, all one
be an error of judgement Tr , Pr °. Vcd ’ ! n dle of after events, to

Savundra was accorded the ' 1S m E f lta ' n ) not in Ghana, that Dr
big business. opportunity of entering the realms of

receipts for four packages ° n ^ r significant find in the search were
Dr Savundra had deposited whtf ^ aigbt . an d measurement which
these receipts were pencilled U Ghanaian bank. On the back of
packages contained the missing us to believe that the

certain formalities to go thrai^ 1 !? P Varrants - A S ain > there were
search warrant to obtain the 1° bePore we could get another
a day or two’s delay all wis arrant thebank - Anally, after
climax of the case I had the f ^ and as tE * s seemed to be the
had the four packages brought by senior bank

ATTORNEY GENERAL

215

officials to my office where I had assembled a collection of police
officers and independent witnesses of undoubted respectability.
When we had all gathered I asked the bank manager to open the
packages in our presence, and to pass the contents to the head of the
Fraud Squad who would describe the documents to us before
handing them round for identification. It appeared Dr Savundra
had anticipated us. It seemed after the search he had gone to t e
bank to inspect the packages and thus had an opportunity, unknown
to the bank, to make a substitution. At any rate, each now turned
out to have been filled with waste paper to make up the same weight
as its previous contents. Attached to each of these bundles o torn-
up magazines and toilet paper was an obscene rhyme about my wi e,
whom Dr Savundra had never met. They were written on the same
notepaper as an unposted communication to the Convent.

From a technical point of view, of course, we were bac to square
one. An individual commits no offence in England, nor m ana, 1
he writes indecent poetry. The crime consists m pu is ing 1 o
someone and Dr Savundra had done the exact opposite. e a
locked up his poems in a bank vault under con ltions w ic m
normal circumstances would have guarantee t at t ey were

returned to him unread by anyone. . , , ,

His subsequent deportation arose out 0 not mg w ic
himself disclosed but through the over-eagerness o ,

London. Within a few days of his arrival Dr Savundra hadpersuaded
a junior Minister, in no way connected wit ° ° , •

letter which stated that the Ghana Government had approved l m

principle, his proposals. safdTotoglbout this corres-
ing with the appropriate ministries, sui » _

° . . y , 1 1 w n c w to anyone m Ghana that,

pondence smce it would have been 3

. . r , . • n : nr Minister in question came to write tne

Lond ° n ’

agreement had been conciuueu

published the letter ^ - nsuffident evidence t0 prosec ute

I took the vie' Savundra had done anything illegal,

or even to establish that ur signature were subsequently

Most of the shan of Finance. Some were

delivered anonymously to ting that they had been

missing but we found a note su^b b

2l6

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

hand ^he^rem^V' 00 P r ° 0 ^ tbat t * 1 ' s was untrue. On the other
thev had in Pin!- 1 ° \, C rna,or ' t 3’ oP them was positive evidence that
Company nnk- n0t , ecn lssued > and as with his poems, he or his

an ^nce if they issued them to the
thp ^ £SS . bchevcd > erroneously as it turned out. that if

public . N ev ;L C rTu ' ? an ° ffence if ^ey issued fern to the
the Government- ^ ur f * leved . erroneously as it turned out, that il
world opinion * S 1Cd tbe [ acts "hwh we had discovered,

Ghana was not fn f Upport us ’ n declaring that his presence ii
deportation which T u P , Ub ! C S Qod an d this was a ground fo:

iaur„rrirTht,'"' , ' ! r e<i ™ h ,hc » w ^ ^

West German finn ' " as done. Dr Savundra and two othei

suspicion, were deputed "a fuff^ ^ Xnoa ^ had come undei

Dr Savundra and Canin' R,VH ! t . emen , t , on the facts in regard tc

spite of all this th r ^ d " as lssued by the Government. In

a nd Dr Savindm e T;f’ S aCti ° n » "S"* to Camp Bird

beginning of a general Ghnn^ by thC Bnt ‘ sh press g eneraII y as the
r- h nerai Ghanaian camnanm

beginning of a "general' GwT" bJ thC Bnt ‘ sh press generally as tl
-- " MmSeTh, against foreign inves,

« d °« 'he '5'hXSbef '' S j p ' cl » ICorr “P»"' J “' i

M 5 V- 1 I

ment. For example 1 ne Uatly Teleerabh's^v,

Acer, reported on the , 5 .h

Ghana forthwith mCn W f re today ordcred 10 lc3 '

he good”. The men > r presence is not conducive to the pul

deported from Gh-i'n' e ^ rsc batch of foreign investors to l

independence ’ ^ deportad °n wave following Ghana

This 11 (

figures. From Independence' to^he™ 8 supported by th

tations, including that of Dr 9 C j end of W58 the total depor
had amounted in all to Mn ri'f Undra and the other two financiers
of destitute aliens the return » ls ’figure included the repatriatioi
found to be of unsound mind ° t l6lr . countr y of origin of person:
and those aliens who had hr. or convict ed of habitual prostitution
they had served their term n r e P orted after conviction and aftei
total was made up of ner?™ Im Pnsonment. In fact the bulk of the
ordered to be deported in r i" .° , bad been tried, convicted and
imprisonment did not exnim ° ° ^ r tlmes but whose sentence of

The t 9 6o census showed SaTof Independ —

0 b) 7 2 6 , 82 o almost one in ever, • 3 tben tota ' Ghanaian population
a considerable proportion some'?" 35 of forei g n origin’. Of these
ihana of foreign parents and h 9 °’.°° 0 ’ Were children born in
P rents and who might or might not thus have

ATTORNEY GENERAL

Ghanaian nationality. Nevertheless, the alien problem was on a
entirely different scale to that in Britain where even a proportional!)
much smaller Commonwealth immigration has led to, at least,
minor disturbances and, later, to a restrictive polity. In the circum-
stances of Ghana after Independence it is, in fact, extraordinary
that the total deportations for all causes should have only umbered
63 for 1957, 162 for 1958, 75 for 1959 and 54 for i960. This alk
gation in Britain that action against Dr Savundra was part .
campaign asainst foreigners generally in G ana was re |^ r , c
furthcrCvidencc by the CPP leadership that for reasons which were
not clear to them, there was an organized attempt ‘ .

deliberately to misrepresent events in Ghana to t c n 1 P ' •

This belief was later to have political consequences and it

fore worthwhile examining how it arose. .» r _

Even leadint; organs of the British press, The Da, V T'kg»£ fa
example, had almost immediately after Independence launched
attacks on Ghana. Not only was Dr Nkntmah accused o f totm

ship but the British Civil Servants who ha rests

r.S.ooo compensation were marked out lor P J rn ■ ■ •

month before my appointment as Attorney General I he D; Ij

Tekgrjpk had written:

■if Dr Nkntmah chooses

oppresstve way, .hat ts hts affatr J ^ ;<nIKC Thclc ate will
naht to expect, howexe., and ih „ nB Ghana

many British functionar.es m , m , and to

G'ia crr.mcnt, compelled to w ' ■ -

enforce them. . . - the Ghana

The ludac who e, cashed British; the

Government from Accra w as PriiUh.

police effeer who mwty’.cd mem « m «« * -

Pr sh doufcllfss acted a rrcctl> m .. c c ■ • ^ mtced to

, > C\i*VC. »- **-*•* . - ■»

■s. p-us! t'-'.-i the Pep- rf n Act . ! ft;:*
d" "hi-* ... ,s.,?crcd to m---' J Jc’cn.cVw
r”cd vuh Pr NlmmahN

U the >'r't vet
rioter !v'* jet v

:*!1 r s •

, " , „ 1

.wi'hC-m. cr :VA - - mmMrm k mtyl’rd^

! V ff\ : i >' !'• ‘ | - Cj ' ” * "

* J lV -* . .ye, . ’ o ; Vl .1 d 1 r.W S h t U tfV

Pr NP-c-

2T 0

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

r Ve dSe *° P'."-’’ TAgntti

orders aminct Ghana Government had issued deportation

All. r 'rr; 11 '”:' Ni S™ lh ™ Hving in Kuimsi. One,
tZ ££1*' b \ h l C, y n,ed “ b= *be Zerikin Zongo of the
tants! The other Ain *" bl ^°M ts non-Ghanaian Moslem inhabi-
Chaplain to the Vr ^ ® tbman . Larden Lalemie, claimed to be the
right to the sniritu Tl^ “ m ™ un ' t y> or > in other words, asserted his
Northern Nieeria h ead f rshlp of the Hausas whose homeland is in
over West Mrica A *** "* “ be found a * Moslem traders all
the Hausa comniunhv^ 111 " ? Vents . ln Nort}lern Nigeria have shown,

Mosque maintained by Alhajfothma The

of continual disturb ' T * Ut "man Larden had been the centre

and was impossible toprovI^haT V^’ righdy ° r n0t ' S

Ployed in political crimes of vS ltmer . ant Hauses had been em ’
When I became Anf "° lence and intimidation.

Report of a Committee thefe W3S in the office the

violence in Ashanti T> r “/“W lnt0 “mes of extortion and

still then of course underBridsh offf^ 3115 SUpplied by the police “
prosecution had not been n “ fficers ~49t such incidents where
for anyone to trv to establi^^ C \* n tbis inflammable situation,
certainly liable to lead ™ ss : lf , as Ze rikin Zongo was almost

had been attempted there h.H^ °, n the Iast occasion it

and loss of life and the Coir. 3 • 1 eCn , ser i° us destruction of property
the previous claimant on T? aUthorities °fthe day had deported
therefore that the Ghana Pr. & account - It was not unreasonable
to follow this precedent m/a 171111611 ? 00 ^ tbe v * ew tb at they ought
his Chaplain. The ‘uniust n eport . tbe P res ent one, together with
The Daily Telegraph was no jP™* 3 * 1011 Act of I 957 > referred to by
ment but merely a consolirW enactment of the Ghana Govern-
subject, the Aliens Ordinary 100 j tW0 British colonial laws on the
eport my client Neif HalabvTnd^^ 11 had been Proposed to

, JiiicilS l Jrrlino*,^ i vwiumai 1a vi

deport my client Neif Halahv™ f r ' v k* c h & had been pro
(Deportation) Ordinance mJd ^ * be J mm igrant British Subjects
poor friend Charles Deller baA !L. W .,r 1Cb ’ aIso . ln colonial days, my

— viumanrp j . . , o *•***«- uuuicuj

poor friend Charles Deller had art W ll 1C u 3ls ° in coIonial da ys, my

of the relevant Section had r ™ f y been de P ort ed. The wording
U ™s. ained unchanged since early Colonial

ship law had to be so drafted*^ f ar ° Se ' T'he new Ghanaian citizen-

,h0M * ^ ** rTZS

ATTORNEY GENERAL

219

that the two men were Nigerian citizens. Indeed, their claim to
exercise jurisdiction over the Northern Nigerian popu ation m
Kumasi depended upon their having this nationality but both now
claimed that they had had Ghanaian mothers an t e tS our
Judge in Kumasi, Mr Justice Smith, an Englishman and a former
British Colonial appointee, granted an interim injunction restraining

the Government from deporting them, until they a anopporuniy

to establish that they had dual citizenship. I was asked by the
Attorney General’s department to argue the case. 1 eanw 1 e e
Opposition newspaper in Kumasi, The Liberator, came ou wi
what the police regarded as an open incitement or tn a inspire
attacks to be made on them. The newspaper s whole front P a gc was
devoted to a speech, supposedly delivered to a arge cr0 ^
Opposition Deputy Chief Whip— who, however, subsequently

^The paper^ alleged^he told this crowd, ‘that the police allowed
CPP Action Troopers to stone innocent people ^Sts.^
court . . . without making any attempt to arre att : tU{ j e a f ter

therefore warned that if the police showed the same attitude a^r

court today, no matter what the ruling 0 e c disastrous

SHOULD eSeCT A RETALIATION WHICH MIGHT BRING DISASTROUS

consequences. i j in fact been no attack on the

This was quite untrue. There had, ’ believed t u at .

two men’s supporters and the police ^efore b^eved Aat the

statement was intended as a provoca ion , SUPDOr t 0 f
justification for an already *

this there was a further passage in

nearer, rlpnf a large number of people are ex-
‘According to our cor ' ^ t ’ he Supreme Court today and in-
pected to throng t e P r and market sta u s are expected to

vestigations reveal that^ ^ ^ ^ m5ght be of

remain closed for th ' ;blc c ] as h between rival parties.’

merchandise resulting from a possmie

, .t. threat seriously’. Police were drafted to
The Government took the r t ^ for this reaS0[1) nQ riot

Kumasi from all over Gta ^ he force in Ashanti involved a
occurred but the concentra

considerable security nsk csew te ^ ^ ^

by N^riau Hausl" ibesmen, that Mr Justice Smith heard the case.

220

reap the whirlwind

themselvcsharfm-i ^ ^ n °' V 3 P OS ! t ’ on t0 s ^ ow f ^ at the men
Nigerian The m 6 pas , s P ort a PPbcations claiming that they were
evidence' in LTt • not P roduce “7 document or other
born in Ghana KW ° tbei ^, cka ' m tbat ^eir mothers had been
and the GovernmenTwere^ ^ J udge dischar ged the injunction
deportations. The Tnd u ^ US kl ' ee ln ^ aw t0 proceed with the

matter should not be held tT^ ^ S3y that his i ud S ement in this
men might take tn nht • P re J u dice any further action which the

»nd civfl pVoTelt t H ““'““I' “ “ national!.,
their behalf. On the f If- P ur P? s , e had also been instituted on
Precise instructions whwVd de f cls . I0n . was inevitable and I had
expected. Speakinp- fro ° ^ t le l ud gement was as we had
circumstances the Gove m 2 pre P ared . text > I said that in these
would not deport them r nm u nt - ?° U ' d S' ve no undertaking that they
»». was ** hand, the Gov J-

pending deportation so that thS de ?' r f d) t0 hold them m custody
nationality could be more £ . lr C1V1 actl °n to determine their
to Accra under arrest andT j V& conducted. They were taken
Immediately lodged ln . P ri *on.

might or m i g h t not have Ca b ™ g V , a ™ us new s items appeared which
Smith s impartiality and 1U t • d as an atta ck on Mr Justice
Chief Justice, intervened^ o!i tj 1 - 5 ’ 11 * ^“tee-Hun, then Acting
Ghana the head of the Sim * S II jp truc ti°ns the Chief Registrar, in
who would correspond in p rei . ne j ° urt Secretariat and the officer
Hanaper, wrote to Mr t0 tbe d erk to the Crown and

enclosing one of the allegedlv^ff at j!" son ’ stdl Attorney General,
toneer newspaper which he said a fticles from the Ashanti

justice into disrepute’ ‘Tb r'i_ £n ^ S t0 bring the administration
continued, ‘would be grateful^ ;r Chlef J^ice,’ the Chief Registrar
question as to whether thp consideration could be given to the
eeedmgs for contempt P u ication gives grounds for pro-

i lenient, advised neither on P * aterson , now on the point of
ecision was left to me in mv p" ^ - n ° r tbc ot ber and the ultimate
enera , the Commissioner of P P aci T as Counsel for the Attorney
Interior, Mr Ako AdjeiTconside ? ^ the then Minister of the

the f° US T nion that Proccedinrt d \ m VIew of the Chief Justice’s
be fact that Mr Justice SmiKn, °l7 ' ? be taken a "d in view of
civi action, that we should nr P r °b a bility have to hear

Proceed against the Ashanti Pioneer

ATTORNEY GENERAL

221

and the London Daily Telegraph whose correspondent Mr Ian
Colvin, then in Ghana, had made comments somewhat similar to

those of the Ashanti Pioneer. .

Meanwhile the violence which did not materialize in Kumasi
began to take place in Accra. The police were attacked by persons
alleged to be supporters of the two men. A European member o t e
Attorney General’s staff who visited my office on an entirely 1 erent
matter was attacked on leaving and wounded. His assailant a
Hausa, was caught but neither at his trial nor to the police wou e
say anything as to why he had made the attack or at w ose msti
gation. His only admission was that he had mistaken t e town
Counsel for myself. The police considered that any urt er our
proceedings would almost certainly precipitate the riots w ic a
only narrowly been averted at the time of the last hearing m ^umasi.
In the light of this it was decided at a meeting of i misters, a w
I was in attendance, to do what the Colonial Government a
on the previous occasion when there had been trou e ro
attempt to install a Zerikin Zongo. The Colonial author, es had
taken special powers to deport him and the 1 inis ers
follow this precedent and to pass a specia c o
legalizing the return of the two men to t eir 'T ,
irrespective of the possible nationality of their mo er ' • • asa inst

time it was decided, in order to show ^^ V ^ e n ° d Ppj rtation S orde r

« — g.Sn^ which tad been enacted by «he

Colonial regime and which was still in orce. .. . ■

rp ° . vVpstprn Parliamentary tradition it was, no

To countries with a Western ran nerhans

doubt, a brutal use > of .^J^Sn^idor times ki England
which was legal in that it hadb " e " d the modern conV entions estab-
but which was entirely contrary h did not s£e it in

lished in the Western world. The f G ment 0 f the type of
this light. To them it was a normal actoivaov

which they had personal ah and Mr Ako Adjei, now

When, nine years before, D been imprisoned by Sir

the Minister directly resp « ' ^ CoIon}al Gover nment had, by
Gerald Creasey s admmistra tQ the Courts by way of

decree, denied them the n h had n0 ied the

detention bn, they tad po.nted ont that

222

reap the whirlwind

doSen ag " inst , ac " ess . t0 the Courts was going further than was
Creech L P L ' Var ' time Defence Regulations. Arthur

identical to tH ^ ’snussed their implied criticisms in words
Government inrh have been used by Dr Nkrumah’s

to the Govern n h Cn ^ U f ^ on g°’ s case. In his pubh'shed Dispatch
^nt^Z7L l eXpl r ed at length why ** Labour GoJern-
necessary ou ght such action proper, constitutional and

used as an n f bat ^ eas corpus proceedings might have been

SiTtSSS or Tt a „ serious breach of the P eace - How

a case relating tn ‘ ‘ an be ! ^ u strated by the events . . . when

heard. On that dav^m ^ seizure of goods during the boycott was
area had to he is 1 ' j 1B j f ° P°P^ ar excitement, the Supreme Court
cordon of infantry 3 and^ bui,dmg t0 be surrounded by a double

prevailing In the State e "ent then

have led foth Zesr^ ?° d ° ub t that court proceedings . . . would
such potter ' Borden The Commission’s comment that no

United Kingdom eve! 3SSU ' ne b >' His Majesty’s Government in the
late ttar appears to overiookTet' Hfe ' and - death stru gS le in tJ,c
or was likely to be aroused in this countn mternal
See t u ' *

been necessary to maheri^-f Cta ^ ec ^ otber occasions on which it had
Gold Coast denying indiri!! ^^Ltions and laws in the Colonial
To the Africa^ £ c fsef t0 thC ““*•

use, in the national interest ;r Government miphed the right to
government which the C \ ■ Same P owers and methods of
denial of access to the mu rn- 0 ° ni - juniorities had employed. If
in J 957? The Labour Govern ™ 1 t m 1948 " hy was k wrong
stood not only f or enlightened Cnl su PP orted k in J 94 S

self government. It was nnt vif* 13 ru e but even f° r Colonial
to justify their action on thf^ * r Nhrumah’s Cabinet was trying
previously been done bv vinw^° Un tba t what they proposed had
the past. Thev were onlv r . c j ctlonar }’ a nd oppressive regime of
Lari Attlee’s Government haTS^ f ypc of power which even
to emploj. Why then should d nilt [ cd “ " as essential sometimes
popularly elected Government 1Crc bc f° much criticism when a
even by the Left wing of the I if ' n ^b 3113 an d no protest,

S thL Ubour Pa «y, when it had been used

ATTORNEY GENERAL 22 3

against Dr Nkrumah and Ako Adjei by a Colonial regime admittedly
unrepresentative of the people?

With the deportation of the two men the Contempt proceedings
against Air Ian Colvin and the Ashanti Pioneer, which had already
been started, had to be reconsidered. When I had been in their
favour it was because the main case was part heard. To criticize
a Judge in the middle of the proceedings was one thing, to criticize
him now they had been terminated was another. I had just become
Attorney General and, by an irony of fate, the decision on this lg y
political matter had, under the Lennox-Boyd Constitution, to e

made by me on my own responsibility.

In the end, mistakenly I think now, I decided that the procee mgs
should continue. I think, on reflection, I probably gave too muc
weight to the feelings of the British members of the Ju lciary an
among the civil servants and police who looked to die overnmen
to defend them against attacks which might preju ice t eir u re
employment once they had left Ghanaian service. s °u
realized then that nothing I could do could shie em rom

venom of their kith and kin. . . c T

A further complication arose. The Actmg ie Ju ’
Justice Quashie-Idun, decided he would be a mem er
nominated to hear tfe case. This put me m considerable d

tWs was^e wy thi^gs^ad b^n don^in Colonial

Justice had asked for die case Jo ^ If hoW ever, I went

believe that contempt had been ^ aded him not t0

pnvately to see the Act ^^^ terpret ed, particularly if I could
sit my action might well benu tQ P alter the compos i t ion

not explam m public why I hd ^ to amnge for some one from
of the Court. In die en was to ld that the Actmg Chief

outside to raise the issue a “ . le matter likely to be discussed
Justice was only sitting be ^ a “ • t as t0 whether the case should

was the technical, but importan t t he then archaic judicial

be heard in Accra 01 argument that the action could only be
system there was a good legal g

22 4 REAP the whirlwind

brought in Kumasi, which incidentally meant that the Judge
attacked had himself to hear the case.

The Daily Telegraph and the Ashanti Pioneer had briefed a former

rrnc^n 2 ° » mi ^ e * n tke ^ ouse °f Commons, Christopher Shaw-
„ ui„ S ’i ^ Iecn s °unsel, Recorder of Nottingham and an acute and
rprEm'* 1 "? er ' W T ° j 0t unnaturaII Y seized immediately upon the

savin 1Ca ^° U ,r' n dev<do P* n g h he widened the front of his attack,
saying, according to The Daily Telegraph report:

” ^ enC J a /. ter ™ s c harges that I make, with the fullest sense of
responabihty, because this aspect of the case may be of the highest
nstitutional importance, are that Mr Bing, with the assistance of
scrnnl d ° m 6 re P resents > has, in flagrant defiance of the court, not
tender" a ? r ? Cur ^ dle perpetration of a monstrous outrage upon the

svstem f T a ' U reedom oP Ghana and upon the newly established
system of administration in Ghana of British justice.’

promise toteen^l See * 1IS P °' m v ‘ ew - We had indeed given a half
action was heard A t 'a° me J 1 ’ n cust °dy in Ghana until their civil
particukr ca e tho”^ ° f Parliam ^ to deal specifically with a
accord with what U fi common m Colonial practice, was not in

Shawcross, like myselThad^ 8 ?’ 115161 ' !t is true that Christ 0 P her
Commons or elsewL ’ ^ m , ade n ° P rotest ln th e House of
defended the same de^w™ Pa ' 30ur Colonial Secretary had
But if the practice ° a ? cess t0 the courts in Nkrumah’s case.

by the fact that we hadTothV" ** fir f. place k was not made ri & ht
about the whole rhino- t i c fluiesced m it before. I was unhappy

genuinely intending to beh ^ ^ ^ Ghana Minist ers had set out
of the previous So , VC “ a dlfferent and better way to that
the force of circuit reglme - ^ either the y nor I had realized that
methods. ances might soon compel us to copy those

Acting Chief^ IustTce al rn tlllS, V‘ d n0t tllink i): was proper for the
substantive charge. For r , ? IeSlde °. ver f he Court which heard the
to abandon the High Court '''; aSOn J? W3S my “Mention, in any event,
on the technical noinr r r . oce ® dln S s once a decision was reached
do, to a Magistrate. fwaT^f Dg ^ C3Se ’ 3S we discovered we could
Judges found that'thev hod 3nyt ! lm F therefore, relieved when the
Ashanti Pioneer were award d” 0 - ,uns d lct ion. Mr Colvin and the
were awarded costs against the Government. Mr

ATTORNEY GENERAL 22 5

Colvin gave a promise to return to face any proceedings contem
plated in the Magistrates Court and he and Christopher , ay, cross
then left for Lagos. I myself went off to spend a few days holiday
with Dr Nkrumah at Half Assini, the western frontier village where
he had grown up. We were bathing in the surf when the Police
Superintendent in charge of the Prime Minister s ra 10 in v y'
Accra waved to us from the beach. There was an important messa B .
It was from Krobo Edusei who had been appomte , a ay or ®
before, Minister of the Interior, announcing that he had informed the
Immigration authorities that he could not approve t e issue
re-entry permit for Christopher Shawcross. r, r -

Krobo Edusei had a logical case for his particular point ^
His experience of the law had led him to be leve
merely places where politics were pursued by ot e ^ | ne ' ^

night of Independence he had stood beside Dr Nkrumah « he

addressed for the first time the independent people o^Ghana,

wearing a prison cap, embroidered ^^ler Colonialism

Graduate’. To him any criminal convi , be j et

was the best testimonial obtainable of po itica re . - d by

no one forget rha, he. like Dr NJ—

the previous regime. He re S ard ^ c [ ", P or ot henvise, imposed
tution through which a government, be sa i d

its policy behind a cloak of the Gold Coast which

there were incidents in past legal r )

could be cited to justify his argument^ ^ ^ duty t0 the ; r clients
Nevertheless, he accepted Uhl ^ rformed it . Rough though he
and never complained when P outside it who crossed him, he
was with those in his hen in pr i va te practice, defended

never complamed to me “at , of political terrorism, shot

the two men accused ofhavu g, tQ wh ich I have previously

down his sister m cold bloo . h ^ Smith . It had resulted

referred was tried before thi Th; J s hc accep ted. I was then a

in the acquittal of one ot • Coast but w hen it came to
lawyer in general P ractlce f “V he outs ide, for the sole purpose of
the intrusion of someone ded as a purely political affair,

involving himself m wnai 11 0 different . Ghanaian lawyers were
then this was to hint altoge bodgs j an Federation and East Africa
prevented from entering e if they wanted to take part in

generally by the British Government

226

R£ AP THE WHIRLWIND

Gfi d a? C aIl0W 2 British lawyer t0 intermeddle

the outside^vn bowever > ^ut I, who was condemned by

ctiTa five!^ f ° r the ban ‘ The D “"y *9™, fir example,
CASE of BING V Lng> Tyf ^ art,cle e ntI tled, ‘THE ASTONISHING

Sefton Delmer and ,V } '° U Ae evidence >’ said its author, Mr
It certainly wic at r» S Ver - v > ve O’ hard to escape the verdict.’
reached the end^ ? dm . e T pronounced k himself before he had
cSuT^d Ofl?,' “T* ° f his five columns. Despite this
be written to defp A • ^ pr ° cess which the article purported to
extreme form r! ' ’- U ! s worth quoting since it exemplifies, in an
aroS ,kt th0 Nl ™"“ h ^vemnten.

press attacks as thk h a ^' ^ would be understandable if such
preventive detention % be .^ un ’ sa J r ’ apter the introduction of
newspaper the Ashavt' p - ter 1 16 Suppress ' on of the local opposition
party 3 state. Howet \i‘°T " f Cr the cs tablishment of the one
took place. I n Sentemh ^ be f an ong bePore an y of these events
denunciation and The Drill 9 ti Whe ? Mr DeImer Published his
similar attacks the law in nu ee&ra & 1 and otber newspapers made

Colonial times.’ Its Vew nnl,V K a WaS CXaCtl >’ what * had been in

of Britain and there ‘twal institutions were modelled on those
run the country in am, n*n° lndlcatlon that anyone then wished to
Nkrumah or anyone eke nl^ n °, r ’ indeed > at the time, had Dr
appears clearly when \Tr d ° ? 0 ' 9 ne explanation, which

obviously, and possihlv h, £ r mer S ardcde * s analysed, is that he
Colonial Government had ? refore odl ? rs also, had no idea of how
fhe Commonwealth. Perh and ’ ^ ndeed > still was being run in
independent that he and th*^ lt: , was ord y when Ghana became
similar line, took an int ° SC • . er commentators who followed a
knowledge of pas t histonTm' 9 affairs - Anyone without any
tyrannical something whiet, 9 ° e excu sed for condemning as
independent government of JL r^i W - S , ° nly the follow ing by an
Is this, however the wB f 1 9 0nial precedent.

Nkrumah considered f m „ l**?' lanation? Was the Ghana of Dr
^ estern opinion to cnncoV 6 rS , t ’ an influential section of
equilibrium? Was it mavhp U 6 Z cbaPe nge to an existing world
world as a whole had un 6n ° n - V subc °nsciously, felt that the
lvided for ever into rich anH n ° W ’ estab hshed that it should be
and poor nations on, as it had worked out,

attorney general 22 7

a basis of colour, and that the very existence of Dr Nkrumah in
Ghana, irrespective of the economic or political policies he followed
was in itself a threat to this, up till now, stabilized order of things.
Unsupported charges of Communism can be explained as a warning
of the propaganda assault which would be launched if Ghana was
later to attempt in any way to persuade the Soviet Union or Eastern
European countries to take an interest in Africa. ^ ...

From a purely personal point of view, also, it is worth while
setting the record straight. In a footnote to his attac ' on my e
haviour in Ghana Mr Delmer added in bold type at e ott °m °
one of his columns, ‘ Indeed , the writer, Arthur Koest er, ws pu ic )
called him a Communist— and not been refuted.’ Why anything m the
writings of Mr Koesder or, for that matter, m those of Mr Delmer
should be taken as true because I have not corrected them 1 do not
altogether understand but for some people it appears to e S0 ‘ n
this particular point, if Mr Delmer had been a serious searcher alter
truth, he could very simply have obtained the answer himself by
telephoning the Labour Party at Transport House who could have
told him I had been a paid up Labour party member since 192b
Nevertheless, despite this obvious failure to check his facts, even th
most bizarre of his other allegations, in the absence of a contradic-
tion from me, appear not only to have been accepte as true y

colleagues, but to have been expanded by them e }° n ,

For example, as will be seen, in the article in question, 1
erroneously awarded me a half Chinese great-gran mo er -
time I came to visit Bermuda nine years later I had been equipped
presumably on the basis of Mr Delmer s ongina mis ’

with a full set of Chinese forebears, one newspaper positively assert-
ing I had been bom there.

‘Fantastic and eztmordinary characters,' began Mr DetoeA
•have always been drawn to the magnetre shores of Afoca r Gold
Coast. Freebooters, pirates, sUve-t»den, smugglers and “Star
have all found it a splendid hunting-ground for the tot 5 ™ _jeare. B
never has there been a more amazing and entgmahe than tall.

REAP THE whirlwind

dcscribed'nT sIav< i s t0 be t^d in the new world. To be

Drake’s first- 1 a ™ azin S ar >d enigmatic figure’ than Francis
historian ^savc c ? mim ”d ,n g officer, whom Callender, the naval
whose vova<ms'r ”1?^ n , C ? ed tbe founder of the slave trade’ and
England’ would ° a° ? 1 ° C l 1 ^ oas . t made him the wealthiest man in
Mr Delmer C< i datter ing if there was any indication that
a rticle isTn v nr r" Ut 16 " aS talkin S * b out. Unfortunately his
Express hcked^ ,°- f that tbcbbra D on Imperial Affairs at the Daily
consul the rh Y f B , ritain ’ s ° ldesi African colony. Anyone

and extraordinary' character read . that amon S the <fantastic
magnetic shores Africa’s Go dr ^ a "’ ayS bCCn dra "’ n t0 ^
Bartholomew Diaz ChWcr i d S? a . St Wcre > amon g many others,
Admiral de R U y er Columbus, Maurice of Nassau,

J. H. Thomas and fo ,? arnet Wolscl . e > r > Lord Baden-Powell, Mr
the most charming of rhn 131 matte B Brincess Marie Louise, one of
the Royal familv from ^ ecc ? ntric an d adventurous figures which
th Got, S y „„E T “ "T P rodu “ s ' Her book learn flm
have been amon°- the ann" I9 7 6> migbt ’ one would have thought,
Afcn Empire permin ' ■! D^re^ml^' °" ^

tinned, 'but they were^neT ^w ^ nine daj-s ’’ klr Delmer con-
it. They began with a h ^ ?\ b ! cb s h°°k the world — and puzzled
successfully challenged p r mcism of Bing by Shawcross as he
cases of alleged contemnt ? ]uns Icdoa of the Supreme Court in the
had reprinted a Daily Exit *• agai ' nst dle -ds/ianti Pioneer (which
the London Daily TeleerJ+V t P ™ on cr ‘ticism of Bing) and against

Attorney-General fifn b' ^ C ° lvln '
courts, charged Shawcross bad abused the process of the

dictation speed. ’ Cl ° ln ° his words and delivering them at

The nine days came in ,•

and Western legal tradition— If “ T when ~ in the fac e of all British
Interior, refused to let Shaw™ ° ° ^dusei, the new Minister of the
m a new action.’ ° SS return to Ghana to defend his client

In fact Krobo Edusei’s nff>.

universal ‘British and Western 0 ? "T tbat he applied the almost

u “" d S “«. Common, 5S ^ Lid down by

Western European practice.

ATTORNEY GENERAL

229

This tradition, by this time long established in the United States and
Western Europe, was, in the majority of cases, to exclude from any
particular country’s courts all but nationals of that country or else,
as in the British case, all but those who had satisfied the Bar as to
their knowledge of local law and of the fact that they had not been
recently practising as a solicitor; rules which effectively excluded
most Commonwealth practitioners coming to Britain to engage in a
particular case. Ghana, unlike Nigeria after Independence, did not
exclude non-Ghanaians from practice. On the contrary, it broadened
the basis of admission, allowing any barrister or solicitor of standing
from the Commonwealth to appear and did not merely limit
audience, as in Colonial days, to practitioners from England or
Ireland. What Krobo Edusei did, in Christopher Shawcross’s case
was, by the use of immigration procedure, to apply the rule at that
time imposed in almost all British African Colonies and many
Commonwealth countries that a barrister coming from abroad, 1
admitted at all, must get prior permission from the Government
before he undertook any particular case. In so far as Western lega
tradition’ had any relevance, it was on Krobo Edusei s side.

‘The reason given for this step,’ explained Mr Delmer, that Shaw
cross had unpardonably criticised Premier Nkrumah and his Govern
ment-is one of the inexplicable puzzles that make up the mysterious

Mr Bing. .... ,

For Bing, who as a Socialist M.P. was forever criticising the
Government and defending the right of others to criticise must know
that advocates in British courts have a duty to criticise an attac t e

Government if the interests of their client requires it. .

They are only limited by the powers of the court itself and their
own professional ethics. But never by the police or the Home Secretary.

To watch him now and contrast his present with his past it almost
seems as though there were two men fighting each other behind those
inscrutable, slant-eyed, almost Mandarin features.

Mr BING OF LONDON, Socialist lawyer, politician, indefatigable cham-
pion of civil liberties . . .

versus

Mr BING OF GHANA (shall we call him Mr Bong ?), authoritarian expo-
nent of Fascist Communist Police State methods.

230 REAP THE whirlwind

Patririn'n '^ CS U P dle casc °f onc of his constituents, a Aire

British fi? ?? " *° laS becn rc ^" usc ^ a re-entry permit by the then
outsooL-pn - oast . authorities. Her husband, a journalist, had been
Zt ffi “ 1 11S A Cnt,CiSm 0f . thc British Administration,
motion in ft, . °e CCra ’ SCCS j° urnalist Dellcr and successfully files a
Dellcr and her baby" 10 C ° Urt ™ PCrmit t0 be sivCn t0 MrS

with arrete ? tbrcatcns British newspaper reporter Ian Colvin
member of the Th ^ tT Conn ‘ vcs that Bis counsel, Shawcross— a
Mr Dim t ? u 3r ~ iS rcfuscd Permission to defend him.
Berlin and'rm CptCm cr ’ *935> goes to an international congress in

thc . Hitler . for ^

democratic traditions ^ m pnson ' vlt, iout trial in defiance of

deported without'tria 1 ] 3 ’ 5 Gh3n3 °PP osit, ’on leaders arrested and

looking closdy’ tnto^mv^^ mC L ,Wll0 ’» aS hc cxplains later, ‘Bad been
so many of his facts wrn past llst ory’, should nevertheless have got
*95° to take up the cnJ ' ri Cxam P le > 1 did not fly to Accra in
letters on behalf of ^ laides Dellcr’s wife. I wrote many

though I cannot now recall rh^Tu’ n “ r doubt > } took up her case,
be sure, I did not ‘file „ m „• , etads - Of one thing, however, I can
her an entry permit for th *°^ ln . tbe Supreme Court’ to obtain for
authorities never allowed tb S ^ lp e reas °n that the then Colonial
powers to exclude arhitmr-;? ? Urts t0 have any control over their
I did not ‘threaten Brin'd? " ° m tbe ^ wished from tlie Colony.

arrest’. So far as I can remp ? e " s P a P er reporter Ian Colvin with
not ‘arrange or connive th-iMv^ 1 baVe never s P oke n to him. I did
the Ghana Bar— was re f.._ ? ls c °unsel Shawcross— a member of
contrary, I had oririnallv f PCrm ‘ sslon to defend him’. On the
s ould be admitted immediate? 30 ^ - tbat Christopher Shawcross

d'ffi S °i that be could appear fo^M^ r' T^° Ut forrna lity to the Ghana
difficulty arose, personaUv^ 7 Mr C ° lvm ’ even undertaking, if any
exduded after the contemnt r Sp ° nsor h is application. He was
Colvm had left Ghana It i s P „f ^ ° Ver ’ and after he and Mr
Shawcross applied to return / C0Urse ’ true, that when Christopher

r 0 vtn in contemplation but the^VIr ^ P roceedin gs against

se I discontinued, naturally, as

ATTORNEY GENERAL

231

soon as I learnt that his counsel had been excluded. In practice, the
effect of Krobo Edusei’s ban was to secure in advance, through my
intervention, what was, according to Mr Delmer, the purpose of
Mr Shawcross’s visit. I was never consulted about his exclusion,
Krobo Edusei saying to me afterwards, ‘If I had told you you
would have tried to get the Prime Minister to stop it . This, at least,

I should have attempted though I doubt if I would have been
successful.

Sir Arku Korsah, the substantive Chief Justice, was at the time
acting as Governor-General but he called me to the State House to
tell me that he personally approved of what Krobo Edusei ha
done. Both he and I were anxious that the lawyers from as wide a
circle as possible should be admitted to the Ghana Courts, e
thought, possibly rightly, that it would be impossible to maintain
this principle if lawyers from other countries were brought in to
conduct purely political actions. Shawcross s clients had, be ore e
left Ghana, started civil proceedings against Dr Nkrumah, the
Commissioner of Police and myself. There was no question ot
prohibiting this action. The issue was solely whether a non-Ghanaian
lawyer, who had been admitted for another purpose, shou e
permitted to return to deal with this case. Had the decision been
left to me I should have said yes but the comment of the Uuet
Justice showed that Krobo Edusei’s contrary view, ha , at east,
some judicial support and, as I learned afterwards, the 1 mister s

action was backed by Dr Nkrumah. ,

As for having ‘three Ghana opposition leaders arrested and

deported without trial’, if Mr Delmer was referring to * ®
leaders, there were two of them and not three an never ear
them until after they had been arrested. In Britain, as elsewhere it

is usual practice to deport non-nationals without rst 0 '

In fact, the sum total of my offence was that, after the disturbances

in Accra, I was in no way opposed to this prece en eing

and their being deported to Kano in Northern Nigeria, their home

fanatics. The Ghana Government believed, rightly or wrongly that
the two men concerned were engaged m racial and religious agi-

R, AI ’ Tin. WIIIK1. WIN'D

in^slnnt| V *fj''.*r' |* lc l >rc 'i ,u ^ c i ,< -Ticlencf history of political violence
of the mm’ 'r- e 1Ct lc - l )r<,c hiimcd themselves as supporters
0f l »rr lhe ^ thing, Morse,

treatment of K ’ a "n of " having done so, against the

to the Intern i , ) ’ 3cI,,unn "hen I came to Berlin as a delegate
that Mr Delm ■. 1 ° nJ | C,U 3 . !ld ^'"‘tvniury Congress. I only wish
Germany In M " *° 'm** 1 ,cn t *' c Impress correspondent in
poMerf ’vo , Tn . a f le 1° Ws newspaper to add its

reported the C ° P < f a ‘ 0WCVcr ' he must have l.now n, since he
P«ofutti^S KSS ' 1 ut ." llnt 1 “U Jbout •nudnunn «as only
1 il cl T ,hc regimes,.., .hole .hick

referenced. ? ' ■ '« deploy. The in, ere., of Ms

introduced S Coin.' 1 Ui ! hc * cct, '* , y- hor Mr Delmer, having thus
verdict he had ,” Uni f l . CJl l cr 1 Preceded to deliver himself the

«X^£Th u S S" 1 ,x “ ,y ratahi '’ “

"t. it with some supplementary evidence.

pta^.s= zszr ■" in t f ■■ ^ ^

‘I ha\ c been In, t • ’ i , . ’ ,mn »cdiately supplying the answer,

■here" 1 ” km5 d ~'>' i»>« Mr Dios’. pa>, his.ori end I ,Mol

Imf G ' 0l, '" J ‘ adl l!i "S o > folio, er of ,l,e Comn.uni., Perry

tradition for him lo daind'hc" 1 '''" -"' h ,l,,: l,Cit M° sco "' ayilator.'
opposing the British r Protection of democratic liberties while
his friends are in , |m. GOU ' nment ’ a,ul "■» as soon as he and

half-Chinese Dui^omanl'l" aild Brcat-grandson of a
Only a year later we find him ^ '° thc Bar in I 934-
munist training centre in I i CGtunnK at AIar -v House, the Corn-
generation of British Pn on . 011 ^ ronl which nearly all the younger

munist-sponsored orcanwm' Cacrman Rc lief Committee”, a Com-
were his fellow orators at fi"/ PoU,tt and olhcr Communists
prisoned Thaelmann. ° J ' W * <T rallies on bchaIf of the im '

prisoned Communist "bos? 3ld t0 thc iamil 3' of tlic im '

hated Red dictator. Rakos >— who later became thc country’s

ATTORNEY GENERAL 2 33

(Said Bing, on returning from a post-war visit to Communist
Hungary: “It was grand to find Rakosi once more playing his part m
restoring democratic government to his country. )

During the Spanish Civil War, Bing went to Spain to work there for
the Communist-dominated Republican Government.

After the war he joined quite a number of Communist-sponsored
organizations, such as British-Rumanian Friendship Association— of
which he is vice-chairman, the Britain-China Friendship Association,
and the International Brigade Association.

The method of presentation is, it is of interest to note, exactly
that of the Watson Commission when they made similar charges
against Dr Nkrumah. It is guilt by association with, where necessary,
the facts altered so as to fit the argument. For example, my great-
grandfather, to whom Mr Delmer refers by implication was a Dutch
Sea Captain of some distinction who remarried from time to time.
One of his wives was an Indonesian girl from the Island of Maccas-
sar but my branch of the family is not descended from her. Neverthe-
less, a hundred years after her death, she is dragge m^to jus 1 y
‘those inscrutable, slant-eyed, almost Mandarin eatures o s a .
we call him, Mr Bong’. I am sorry, in many ways, I cannot establis
a claim to mixed blood. I should certainly he p ease o e P
Chinese. Yet, even supposing I was more than half Chinese, as
example, Dr Wellington Koo, until lately a Judge th ® 1 ,

national Court, how can this be thought to govern my political or legal
judgement unless indeed Mr Delmer was arguing in favour ot the
racial theories prevalent in Germany in his pre-war a ^ s '

Certainly I gave a lecture at Marx House m a room, I : remember
decorated with frescoes painted by a well-known member of the
Labour Party who was later to become a success* ^Labour
Earl Attlee’s administration. I was a supporter of those in the Lab

organized to support the Spams P ^ j d _ aknost

in Houses, -feting

the House of Common^ orga ^ on

dot i hope I did so. 1

ATTORNEY GENERAL

235

‘It was as an extreme left politician,’ he wrote of me, ‘that he took
up the cause of Africans whom he considered victims of British
Colonial oppression.

This association led to the appointment in 1957 _ of ex-M.P. Bing—
he had been defeated in the meantime— as constitutional adviser to
Ghana— an appointment as fantastic and extraordinary as his promo-
tion to Attorney-General, which followed shortly after. .

For barrister Bing had no special qualification to entitle him to sue
appointments, neither as a constitutional lawyer, nor as a practising

barrister. ,

Indeed so scanty was his practice as a member of the Bar that when
Bing, as an M.P., was made a K.C., it was said that his was the most

drfifinal Qillr pvpr

By accepting a contract from the Ghana Government, Bing, in the
view of his fellow members of the British Bar, has broken the rules of

his profession. , ,

For by tying himself under contract to the Government he has com-
promised his independence as a legal officer of Ghana whose one con-
sideration must be the interest of the public and not that of the

Government or the party. ^ 1 j „

Mr Bing no doubt would have waxed furiously eloquent had some

Tory committed such an act.

For him all these things have become antiquated trimming to be
shed in the interest of “stability and order .

An interesting case.’

To this argument I cannot even now reply Whatever else a
1 • & 1 .1 yprfnjn road to disbarment is to disclose tne

barrister may do, the _ certain road Chancellor, when

past secrets of his fee book to anyone ouiu T ,

seeking- an armointment, and the Income Tax Inspector, when
seeking an appom ’ hi d that Mr Delmer was right and,
contesting an assessment. It 1 ninie . , . c _ . 1 • t

crime ot touting . a large practice, then I would be

mistaken and a - ous 0 ff enC e of ‘advertising’. Still, things

committing the eq J Mr Delmer’s observations were

being as they were ' h t i me it was otherwise when it

unlikely to affect my credit out at ui<=

ATTORNEY GENERAL

237

with the Government. Such exclusions, whether right or wrong,
were so commonplace in the Colonial Commonwealth as to e
hardly worth a paragraph on an obscure page of even the most e t
wing British newspaper. Secondly, I was accused of deporting t ee
opponents of the Government. British Colonial history is a Hong
record of such deportations. Occasionally they received pu ^ty,
as for example when Archbishop Markarios was sent to t e ey
chelles Islands, but never, so far as I can recall, condemnation from
the Daily Express. The truth is that, in the eyes not only ol the
Daily Express but of other British newspapers as well, Ghana had

committed the unpardonable crime of behaving, when m epen ent,

as independent and had acted in her own territory in exact yt e
same way as the British Colonial authorities would have done it they
had remained in charge.

Here was the real sin. Independence for Ghana was on y accep
able to an important section of British public opinion provi e 1 ^
Ghana Government realized it must not treat the representatives of
the British Establishment as if they were Colonial Africans or
British anti-Colonialist agitators. A few years previous y Jo >n
Stonehouse — afterwards to become Parliamentary ecretary a
Colonial Office-was made a prohibited immigrant m East Africa.
That was one thing. He had come to help the Africans. 0 ex
Christopher Shawcross was quite different. He had com e to help
Englishman. To use Mr Sefton Delmer’s final words, An interest g

CclSC* A *

Dr Nkrumah saw it in another light and was m “ ch J £

It was proof of a thesis he had often advanced. ' White peop
generally,’ he said to me, ‘have a deep sense o gui .^ g are

which they excuse to themselves by arguing . br themselves

incanable on account of their race of doing anything for themselv .
incapable on accounr 01 cannot do anything good

From this it follows Really tha > hcmselvcs either . So they
for themselves, they can not do b some wh ite man. This puts

must have been led m dom b y dffi Accor ding to their

those pushing this theo^ m s0 10 be a bad leader of Africans

argument white men cannot b h European intermingling in

you must be non-white but nun sum u

your family.’ through his books. ‘Something exactly

He went busily searchin,, a about Jamcs Brew, an

of the same sort,’ he told me,

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

236

came to the recruitment of British technicians and civil sen-ants for
Ghana. If lawyers of whom we were desperately in need, were really,
in the view of the British Bar, ‘breaking the rules of their profession’
by accepting appointments offered by the Ghana Public Sendee
Commission, as set up under the Lcnnox-Boyd Constitution, then
legal development in Ghana along British lines would prove
impossible. In these circumstances 1 hoped for a refutation of Mr
Dclmer’s definition of a barrister’s duties from that watchdog of my
profession, the Bar Council. None came.

The harm that this and other similar articles in other British
newspapers did, syndicated as they were, like Mr Delmer’s article,
throughout the Commonwealth, was not to me. I may have had to
wait ten years before I was at liberty to reply to Mr Dclmer but I was
comforted by the thought that the Civil Sendee would not always be
my profession and ultimately I could speak for myself. The damage
was to the conception of a Commonwealth Civil Sendee, recruited
from its more developed countries and sening, as a matter of duty,
with its newly independent members, without obligation to sub-
scribe to the political policy of these new states. If now civil sen-ants
recruited on this basis were not only to be saddled with the whole
responsibility for the policy of the state they scn-cd, but also, if that
state’s policy did not suite some British newspaper, have the secrets
of their families, down to the marital vagaries of their great-grand-
fathers, published for all to read, then of course such recruitment
would be largely inhibited if not entirely prevented.

In the final analysis, of course, what Mr Dclmer and his news-
paper had against me was nothing that I had done politically in the
past. On balance, probably, my left wing activities had not been as
consistent or effective as some of those whom Lord Beaverbrook had
employed from time to time to edit his newspapers. As with the
Watson Commission and Dr Nkrumah, so with me and the Daily
Express. Our crime was organizational, not ideological. His offence
had been that in Colonial days he insisted on applying to a Colony
the forms of political organization used by the Labour and Conserva-
tive parties in Britain. My offence was different but parallel. I had
taken part in applying the techniques of British Colonial rule in an
independent state. The matters alleged against me happened to be
untrue but they were, first, that I excluded a British lawyer who
wanted to appear in court on behalf of someone who was in dispute

ATTORNEY GENERAL

237

with the Government. Such exclusions, whether right or wrong,
were so commonplace in the Colonial Commonwealth as to be
hardly worth a paragraph on an obscure page of even the most left
wing British newspaper. Secondly, I was accused of deporting three
opponents of the Government. British Colonial history is a long
record of such deportations. Occasionally they received publicity,
as for example when Archbishop Markarios was sent to the Sey-
chelles Islands, but never, so far as I can recall, condemnation from
the Daily Express. The truth is that, in the eyes not only of the
Daily Express but of other British newspapers as well, Ghana had
committed the unpardonable crime of behaving, when independent,
as independent and had acted in her own territory in exactly the
same way as the British Colonial authorities would have done if they
had remained in charge.

Here was the real sin. Independence for Ghana was only accept-
able to an important section of British public opinion provided the
Ghana Government realized it must not treat the representatives of
the British Establishment as if they were Colonial Africans or
British anti-Colonialist agitators. A few years previously John
Stonehouse — afterwards to become Parliamentary Secretary at the
Colonial Office — was made a prohibited immigrant in East Africa.
That was one thing. Ele had come to help the Africans. To exclude
Christopher Shawcross was quite different. He had come to help an
Englishman. To use Mr Sefton Delmer’s final words, ‘An interesting
case’.

Dr Nkrumah saw it in another light and was much amused by it.
It was proof of a thesis he had often advanced. ‘White people
generally,’ he said to me, ‘have a deep sense of guilt about slavery
which they excuse to themselves by arguing that Africans are
incapable on account of their race of doing anything for themselves.
From this it follows logically that, if they cannot do anything good
for themselves, they cannot do bad for themselves either. So they
must have been led in doing bad by some white man. This puts
those pushing this theory in another difficulty. According to their
argument white men cannot be evil, so to be a bad leader of Africans
you must be non-white but with some European intermingling in
your family.’

He went busily searching through his books. ‘Something exactly
of the same sort,’ he told me, ‘was said about James Brew, an

238 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

attorney of Cape Coast, who was the draftsman of the Fanti Con-
federation Constitution. 5 — He would find it in a moment. This
reaction and erudition that went with it was very typical. His library.',
in which he was searching, was well chosen and he had a sincere
regard for scholarship, however much he might politically disagree
with the scholar in question. For example, I have heard him
complain that Miss Perham, the biographer of Lord Lugard, had
not acknowledged sufficiently the basic scholarship of Lord Lugard’s
wife, Flora Shaw. Lady Lugard had written a book on Northern
Nigeria, A Tropical Dependency, which Dr Nkrumah often praised
though the political content of it must have been offensive to him.
In this case, however, he could not immediately find the reference
for which he was looking. Two days later, in die evening, a police
car arrived at my house with an urgent message from the Prime
Minister. The envelope, when I opened it, contained only one slip
of blue paper on which Dr Nkrumah had written in the green ink he
always used :

‘Administrator Salmon to the Colonial Office on James Brew — “A

penniless lawyer with an awful private character (a half caste)”. 5

The slip was presumably destroyed when the looters wrecked my
office, but, remembering the text, I have checked on it. It occurs in
Despatch No. 153, written, strangely enough, by the Administrator
on Christmas Day 1871, and ‘awful 5 was underlined in the original.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE STRANGE CASE OF
MAJOR AWHAITEY

On the 21st January 1959 there was assembled on the orders of Sir
Victor Paley, the British General then commanding the Ghana
Armed Forces, a Court Martial to try Major Benjamin Awhaitey, at
that time one of the most senior African Officers in the Ghana
Army. The events which this trial disclosed were, in a sense, a dress
rehearsal for the military coup which was to take place seven years
later but every role was reversed. History was to repeat itself, but
first as farce and only later as tragedy. Major Awhaitey was charged
with ‘neglect to the prejudice of good order and military discipline
... in that he, at Accra, on the 18th and 19th December 1958 failed
to report, until after he had learned that the matter had been
reported by others, that he had been informed of a proposed coup
d’etat being organized by one Reginald Reynolds Amponsah and
others, which coup d'etat involved, inter alia, the seizure of the
Prime Minister, Dr Nkrumah, and other Cabinet Ministers by army
personnel on the 20th December 1958’.

Of the Officers who assembled to try him, two were British and
three Ghanaian. All of these three Ghanaians were destined for
higher Command. At the time they were Majors. One, A. K. Ocran,
was, seven years later, to become one of the leaders of the revolt and,
for his part in it, to be promoted Major-General, to be appointed to
succeed as Commander of the Armed Forces its first leader Kotoka,
afterwards killed in an attempted counter coup and to become a
Commissioner in the National Liberation Council Government. The
second, Major Charles Barwah, was, of the three, the one I knew
best.

The son of an army sergeant he had been born and brought up in
the so-called ‘Northern Territories’ of the Colonial Gold Coast. It
was from these ‘NT’s’ as they were generally known that the bulk
of the infantry of the colonial army was drawn. At that time any
African living there was under considerable handicap. Primary

2 39

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

240

education was poor and there was only one secondary school. Charles
Barwah triumphed over all these difficulties and then, like his
father, joined the army. In 1947 much to the surprise of the colonial
authorities he did what no soldier from the North had previously
done — passed the officers’ training course examination.

So began a career which ended with his promotion to the rank of
Major-General. When General Ankrah was in 1964 compulsorily
retired, he took his place as Deputy' Commander of the Armed
Forces and at the time of the revolt he was their Acting Commander.
When the mutineers came to his house he left them in no doubt as
to his loyalty and they shot him down there and then. In his book
The Ghana Coup , A. A. Afrifa, one of the officers who planned the
coup , thus records the death of the most distinguished soldier Ghana
has yet produced.

‘As for Barwah, he resisted arrest most unwisely and tlierby compelled
an officer to adopt other methods which he himself knew would be
adopted if he became stubborn.’

So died one of my best friends in Ghana, a man who in the modesty
and gentleness of his life and by his triumph over all the restricting
circumstances of his birth and upbringing in the then illiterate and
neglected North, was the embodiment of all that was fine and honest
in the Ghana Armed Forces.

The third Major serving on the Court Martial -was General
Ankrah himself, the man under whose command those who killed
Charles Barwah were to come and who, after the coup d’etat, was
promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General and to the Chairmancy
of the National Liberation Council. Reginald Reynolds Amponsah,
the individual around whom the charge against Awhaitey was
centred, was, shortly after the coup, appointed by Ocran and Ankrah
and their colleagues on the National Liberation Council to the
Commission which has drawn up Ghana’s new constitution.

The bank account used by the conspirators in England was one
nominally opened for the use of a Ghanaian student at Leeds
University. The student in question, Osei-Bonsu, w r as later to be
placed by the rebel regime in charge of State Information and
Propaganda.

Major Awhaitey was prosecuted by John Abbensetts, a Ghanaian
lawyer, then in private practice, but who I was afterwards to

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY

241

persuade to join my department. He was later to become Solicitor-
General in Dr Nkrumah’ s last administration and then to go over to
the regime of General Ankrah. The defending counsel was Kwaw
Swanzy. I had come to know him when he was a member of the
opposition and the partner of Dr Kurankyi Taylor, my friend in the
pre-independence days in the National Liberation Movement and
who died in 1959. Kwaw Swanzy was a good academic lawyer who
had written an excellent history of the Colonial Gold Coast courts
which we often consulted in my department when issues of past
practice came up. He was to become the last Attorney General of
the Nkrumah regime and a CPP Member of Parliament. Thus it
was that, in the end, we found ourselves both imprisoned together
in Ussher Fort. At the time of writing he is still there.

Among the principal witnesses against Awhaitey was one of his
fellow Majors, Nathan Aferi, who by the time of the coup had also
risen to the rank of Major-General and to the command of the
Armed Forces. He was absent from Ghana when the revolt took
place but his cabled approval of what had been done was to assist in
consolidating the regime. The Judge Advocate was Squadron
Leader P. L. U. Cross, dso, dfc, a Trinidadian whose appoint-
ment to my department I had secured a few months before. He and
I first heard of the Awhaitey affair when we were together, on
Christmas Eve, in Timbuktu.

My wife and I had long planned a holiday in the African interior.
My wife’s sister was coming to stay with us for Christmas so this
seemed a good time to visit neighbouring territories and we asked
Ulric Cross to join us. We planned to travel by car through what is
now the Republic of the Upper Volta, meeting the Niger at Mopti,
a busy river port, as full of canals as a Dutch town, and an important
centre of trade in present-day Mali. From there we had booked
a passage on the river steamer which went to Timbuktu. After
fifteen months as Attorney-General I felt I deserved a holiday. The
good Dr Savundra who had been my main worry over the last three
months had been deported on the 15th December. The re-organi-
zation of my department was going well. The Shawcross episode
was behind me. Dr Nkrumah was due to leave for India on the 20th.
The Cabinet was in recess and the Law Courts had risen. There
was nothing, I thought, which could possibly keep me in Accra and
so it was, early on the morning of the 19th, my wife and Ulric Cross

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 243

contrary to the information given by the French Embassy in Accra,
that the direct road to Mopti was impassable, particularly as
everyone assured us that by making a detour through Bobo-
Dioulasso, the only other sizeable town in Upper Volta, we could
still reach Mopti in time to catch our steamer. The road, according
to the unanimous opinion of all those we consulted, was good, if
untarmac’d, and it was safe to travel fast.

So it was, on this third day of our journey, in that tricky light
just before dawn, Ulric Cross who was driving, hit, as we turned a
corner, a belt of sand which had been driven across the dirt road.
The car somersaulted twice. None of us was seriously hurt but the
MG Magnet, my wife’s most prized possession, which she had
bought for the 1957 cancelled Monte Carlo Rally, was left a mass of
twisted metal on the roadside. In French territory, as in the former
British Colonies, there existed that same class of Syrian and Greek
business man. Fortunately, one of these, a Greek contractor, came
by some hours later, picked us up and took us on to Bobo-Dioulasso,
still some two hundred miles down the road. He knew a taxi driver
who was going that day to Mopti and since this driver would be
there anyway long enough to pick us up on the way back, he
suggested we should bargain with him to take us. We were bruised
and shaken but, after all the preparations we had made, it seemed
cowardly to abandon our holiday now. So we set off in the driver’s
somewhat dilapidated car. Our chauffeur had acquired, if not the
language, at least the technique of the Paris taxi driver, and we
found ourselves being driven faster than we had ever dared drive
ourselves. We tried to console each other for these new risks we had
so casually incurred by saying that if we got through we could dine
out on the story of being the first Europeans to visit Timbuktu by
taxi for Christmas.

The paddle steamer which we just managed to catch turned out
to be a kind of floating bistro, which drifted rather than sailed down
the Niger. But, at least, unlike her sister ship, which had to be
towed by a tug, the engine of our vessel still functioned. Convinced
that all our troubles were over, we enjoyed on board French cooking
and wine and we would sit drinking from the large variety of the
Parisian aperitives on board, as the low and distant mud banks of the
river slid slowly by and thus it was, to our surprise, that we arrived
on time at the port for Timbuktu. Timbuktu itself, which had, in the

244

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Middle Ages, rivalled the university cities of the world, was now a
htt e mud-house town, its dusty streets filled with camels and
veiled Touareg men wearing crusader-like swords. When Leo
Atricanus s guide to African trading was published in Venice in
the sixteenth century there was a big demand for literature in
Timbuktu. More profit,’ he wrote, ‘is made from the book trade
than from any other line of business,’ but it was no longer so. There
was not even a shop which sold picture postcards. It was an anti-
™ ax a “ er a11 our misfortunes and exertions. We were bored,
ihe Lampement’ or Resthouse which the French Government
maintained had only twelve beds and was the only hotel accommo-
da don, but we were alone in it and the only outsider we found to

rhxi rT j louare S schoolmaster who taught the nomad
children of the desert and studied world politics. He was remarkably

of thP R r v e ^T H t W ° U o dlSCUSS endlessI >' such thi ngs as the policy
P s , a our Party or political developments in Western

, a r? d he 7 aS) I , lmagine > typical Of the intellectual elite
nd t0 “S kad " esta hlishing an independent

and pohdcally left wing Mali. There was a pleasant coloured girl

dTlirV’ l T d™P™=»> ” d sh «. “ trie/to

i fp"';,; h ” ! * fr “?. » Vietnam lady, married to a soldier

mas Eve we th iTn 11 ’ lad 3 P ° wcrful radio - As it was Christ-

*• TT Sed US '

arrested andTmn Eve that the Ghana Government had

Amponsah MemST f the p mventive Detention Act, R. R.
United Partv and h” aEia ment and General Secretary of the
Leader of So ? C ° lle3gUe Modesto Apaloo, die Deputy

deader oi the Opposition in Parliament. 1 *

with^vhom to Sahara > isolated fr om pracdcally anyone

Accra it seemed rn S *e gS) C , Ut off from a11 communication with

“ been working

think now pardv mLj 1 ¥ d been buter ty opposed, on I
Preventive Detention Art- f grouncE ’ to the introduction of the
Member of Parliament T i! j" mont hs before. When I was a Bridsh
tyrannical and bigoted K v? attacbed "’hat seemed to me to be the
mcnt Wh d i e 7 r of the Northern Ireland Govern-
“ a separate Parliament was established in Northern

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 245

Ireland after the First World War, almost its first act was to
introduce a Special Powers Bill under which it could, among other
things, imprison political offenders without trial. As a child, I
remembered seeing a ship anchored in Belfast Lough, opposite our
home, in which many of these prisoners including Cahir Healy, a
Northern Ireland Member of Parliament whom I was later to
know when we were in the Commons together, were imprisoned.

In 1947, one of those rare occasions in the British Parliament
occurred on which Northern Ireland’s internal affairs could be
discussed. I took advantage of it to declare myself against preventive
detention in general. The Northern Ireland Government had
suspected that it had exceeded its Parliamentary powers in regard
to certain technical matters and sought to have promoted a Bill at
Westminster to validate what had been done, possibly in excess of
its constitutional authority. Since at least a case could be made out
for saying that preventive detention in Northern Ireland was also
beyond the powers of the Northern Ireland Parliament to enact I set
down an Amendment to this Bill.

My proposal was that the British Parliament should validate
what had previously been done under the Special Powers Act but
would, in future, prohibit preventive detention and other similar
powers being exercised by a subordinate Government in the six
counties of Ulster. In view of the volume of the criticism which
followed the introduction of preventive detention in Ghana it was,

I think, remarkable, looking back on it, that I could find so little
enthusiasm for my proposal to make it illegal in the United Kingdom.
Indeed, I had so little support from my fellow Members that I did
not even take my Amendment to a division for fear of showing the
smallness of the anti-preventive detention vote.

However, the next year another fortuitous circumstance arose
which enabled those of us opposed to preventive detention to make
some progress in our campaign. As a result of the Irish Republic
leaving the Commonwealth it was necessary to introduce into the
British Parliament an Ireland Bill. This once again enabled us to
discuss Northern Ireland affairs. Better organized this time, we
actually divided the House, getting on one occasion the support of
some forty Members, among them a number of Parliamentary
Private Secretaries to Ministers. Despite the Constitutional theory
that, except in matters affecting the affairs of the Ministry of which

246 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

his Minister is the head, a Parliamentary Private Secretary is free to
vote as he will, this opposition to Special Powers in Northern
Ireland was considered a grave Parliamentary offence. Lord Blyton,
then a Durham miner MP, escaped the wrath to come by a hasty
resignation. The other Parliamentary Private Secretaries including
J. P. W. Mallalieu, now a Minister in the Labour Government,
were peremptorily dismissed. However much some politicians
were later to condemn preventive detention in Ghana, it was clear
that to vote against it being further continued in the United King-
dom, was something that disqualified a Labour Member from hold-
ing even the most junior position in Earl Attlee’s Government.

Nevertheless, as a stubborn opponent of preventive detention
anywhere in the United Kingdom I would, for this reason alone,
have found it hard to accept it in Ghana. This apart, and even
supposing 1 had voted with the majority of my Labour colleagues in
supporting its application for the last quarter century in Northern
Ireland, there were other arguments which then seemed to weigh
particularly strongly against introducing it at this time into Ghana.
It was true that neither tire police nor the Courts in Ghana were
capable of dealing with political crime. It appeared extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to punish treasonable or seditious
offences under the existing system because of the deficiencies in the
machinery' for collecting the necessary' evidence and because of the
need for establishing, under the English laws of evidence, that
certainty of guilt required under the British system. Nevertheless, it
seemed to me that if preventive detention were introduced an easy
way out would be provided. Neither police methods nor the
organization of cases in court would then be improved and thus it
would be always argued that preventive detention was necessary.
My argument against the Act for which I had some support in the
Cabinet had no effect on the majority of its members or on Dr
Nkrumah who supported the idea from the start. Nevertheless a
compromise was arranged to meet the views of those, like Kofi
Baako, then Minister of Information, who were opposed to the Bill.
If the Act was used at all, it would not be used against politicians in
general and certainly not against Members of Parliament.

Shortly after the Bill was passed an event occurred which appeared
to justify those who had argued in favour of the Act. A dangerous
tribal conspiracy was discovered. It w'as clear that it could only' be

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 247

dealt with effectively by the use of special powers. The Special
Branch of the Police was still under its old Colonial commander, a
level-headed Southern Irish Catholic who therefore, I thought, was
unlikely to accept what was done in Northern Ireland as necessarily
a precedent to be followed. This officer, James McCabe, was in
favour of preventive detention being employed in these particular
circumstances which had arisen shortly before we had gone on our
holiday.

Accra had originally been a Ga town. The Gas are a people who
had moved down the West Coast in the seventeenth century and are
entirely different in origin and social custom to the Ahans. With the
growth of Accra as the capital and with the neighbouring new port
of Tema becoming the principal industrial area of the country there
was an influx of people of other tribal groups into their traditional
territory. The Gas found themselves losing their dominant position
in their own community. The Ga Shifimo Kpee — ‘The Ga Stand-
fast Organization’ — was the reply of those who believed in direct
action. The political danger of politics becoming tribalist had been
obvious from the start and the Nkrumah Government attempted to
meet it, at first, by imposing by legislation the British political
system. In effect, the two-party system was introduced by law. The
Avoidance of Discrimination Act made illegal all tribal, religious
and regional parties and thus forced the opposition, which had
hitherto consisted of four or five separate elements, to come together
in one so-called ‘United Party’. The Ga Shifimo Kpee refused to
accept this and continued as a conspiratorial organization. It chose
as its organizers and office holders men who were said by the police
to have had long experience of violence and non-political thuggery.
One of them, I remember, it was alleged, had no less than seventeen
previous convictions of which a number were said to be for wounding
or other acts of personal violence. The Special Branch were highly
apprehensive of a possible breakdown in law and order if this
organization was not broken up. Certainly spies’ reports of what they
were said to be planning were frightening enough. Their Direct
Action Group was said to have been organized into cells for the
purpose of violence in two wings, the one known as the ‘Zenith Ten’
and the other the ‘Tokio Joes’. All the classical conspiratorial
machinery was reproduced. Secret oaths were taken. The leadership,
when it attended, would appear only at secret meetings held in a

248

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

darkened room where the speakers were masked and otherwise
disguised. I discussed with James McCabe attempting to bring
some at least of the persons concerned to trial— Modesto Apaloo,
or example, who was said to have addressed one of these meetings—
but he took the view that any prosecution would disclose inevitably
the very tenuous system which the police had built up in order to

ir r,lf r T° n ° fwha , t Was going on and > for this reason alone,
it should not be attempted.

Nevertheless, I had had doubts about the use of the Preventive
10n , A ^ again ^ fo «y-thrce members of the ‘Tokio Joe’s’ and
would Tni ^ f S ‘ r }! 0SC arrcstcd included persons whom I
Ashie Nil- C C aS i SC 1 ° j po ltlcians - Among them for example was
Setln k f ° ’ had bc f n . a rc in the West African National
ofTe cpp nnH - b T ^ ? riS : nalnic mber of the Central Committee
the electoril l'" 1 ' ■ 6 L> Action, standing as a CPP candidate in

domat s ' , COmP ,° Se r d ° f Nana Sir 0fori Atta’s old
eoiwj h! A P defeated by onc vote in the electoral
Skle Let, 1 S I 0 "’ WiHiam 0fori Ana - Yet he and
mittee had been’r? r° 3 °J the 0riginal CPP Central Com-

S Section of T ‘ ° UtIlnCd by the P0lice *he evidence of
ection of and involvement with the Ga Shifimo Knee

hatutXid™ and rlT j J * Parli ™™”>' Select Committee
in r ? ad S " 8S ' SKd th '>’ llad b “" engaged

« seemed l me
principle was being eroded.

everything ^the baW* 1 ' ” ay fr0m my offic ' “ d ° f ™ch with
OpposS MeX«Tp n ," m ' n ‘ ° ftl “ tletention of two leading
worsffbars and ? ™ f'T™' a ?P' a " d ? “nlirmation of m?

upon. Apart from anythTng°elsTTw',s 8 l ,hlCh . h * d b een agreed
tention had entered into f ’ V cIear that preventive de-
purpose which nonp nf l j 6 " P base and was being used for a
was passed. Something at tbe time tbat tbe Act

our holiday was over and weTnrl’ 8 °u C ^ adly wrong ' Obviously

took a jeep some fifteen miles across the s? ^ ACCra - at ° nce \ We
we were able to nirL nr, n 1 P SS the Sahara to an airstrip where

driver ^ **** ^ found our taxi

where I could obtain official’ transport * Ghanaian fr ° ntier
1 1 e first frontier town we stopped for a farewell drink and, at

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 249

its little store, I remember congratulating the storekeeper on the
coolness and the excellence of his beer. He was to remind me of this
when I met him again four years later. He was then asking for ten
thousand pounds from the Government in return for revealing the
persons behind the bomb attacks on President Nkrumah and I had
been asked to find out whether he had any information which would
be worth buying. In the course of our talks we had a cup of tea. In
the end, it seemed to me that he knew nothing of value and was only
trying to make money out of scraps of information he had picked up
in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. Antony Deku, at that time John
Hartley’s second in command in the Special Branch and today
Commissioner of Police and a Member of the National Liberation
Council Government, thought otherwise. He considered that this
storekeeper, Yaw Manu, was himself actively involved in the
attempts on the President’s life and that he should be put on trial.

In court Yaw Manu attributed the admission he had subsequently
made to the police on this score to the after-effects of a drug which
he said I had put in his tea when we had had our conversation. Since
his statements to the police were not made until some weeks after
he had drunk the tea in question, the court was not impressed with
this part of his evidence. When however, after my arrest, I was
badly beaten up in the courtyard of the Central Police Station by a
gang of soldiers, one of the grounds given was that I was well known
for putting poison in tea in order to make prisoners confess. When,
after my arrest, my wife took my supply of anti-malarial drugs to the
Central Police Station, an army officer held a dagger to her throat
while he abused her obscenely and attacked her for consorting with
a man known to everyone to poison prisoners. When finally I was
deported from Ghana, the columnist of the Government-owned
Ghanaian Times, a veteran African journalist, who had been known
for his contributions to the Nationalist press in pre-war years, wrote :

'Sorry Geoffrey Bing, former legal adviser to the deposed president,
has been expelled from Ghana.

I am not happy that he was not allowed to meet the press to tell the
part he played in the last treason trial— administering dangerous drugs
to some of the accused persons.

If he made any statement to that effect, let this be published. For I
learn the man to whom he gave the tea with a drug is paralysed.’

250

UKAP TMK WHIRLWIND

same 1 S? ' fUU - rC bUl ” ,S rclcV3m at *1& «BC in that the

! n, >? ,tn r 0,,s ra ”g trough the whole of the AMuitev

seemed Z; 1 " fw 1 * ‘ /VV ‘" these disclosed

seemed absurd but no more absurd tlian the possibility that bv the

storv threew k T ,Stcr , < ; d j n ! c3 > n ".ay be led to Jell an untrue
Awhaitev a fiZ T T‘ ^ ‘ thc aboruvc CUI,s Pm>cy revealed bv the

InS'Etit H V '“ i,C> ,S “ d Court Martial

oo, , of r °",, r “ n b! ' r"' S " " ,UI <* oorlv after-

barn V ' „ U “ »«*■""" A.baitov had

Soldier bv name Of , bccomc friendly with another

missioned bur "at ' A ? c,,J ‘ ah ' w,w " as subsequent also com-

Zm Zun ih V U - S Tl a Li ‘ u ‘™ a nt. According to

Awh aitev a ‘t r ^ r^' him »° c ‘>™ his oflice-
he ZZlT lum tST. ^r, an r daW ° f 1 lhi; Accra Garrison-and
R. R. Amnonsah and \l c . 1US,U l>c ** orc tu o Members of Parliament,
brought with them cL° ^ Ap;l l 0 . 0 ’ lud visitct! Win and tliev had
£50 ^ WdZo T* whh b %« of rank and

that thc two Members^of Parr 1 ”' 3 ' St ? rj ’’ Awllaitc >' i,ati u,lci him
S n,y NCOS '» "■>

Dr Nkrumah when he 1 ' , ^ :,0, h ct tla 'm to assassinate

next morning US ab ° Ut t0 bo3rd his for India the

account of wha\ mok place °was g t 0 -m CUt ' Amcn - Vah ’ s subsequent

his friend Amenyah to meet A dl ,‘ ng l ° do thi s and he wanted
place which had alreadv he r 111 D ons ‘^ 1 ail d Apaloo at the meeting
possible Pei Awh 'itet o nr" &cd I and ,cH thcm that “ "’ould not be
of doing this, reported nt n?"f C .! ht: T P d '* lal - Amcn >' ah > instead
him to a senior British ofl! 1CC ." , la ^ he alleged Awhaitev had told
the Army aut Wes mZT ^P 0 ” tested by

and Amenyah was told lw hf Z. S , pmaI B . ranch ' vas consulted
by Awhaitey. When Amenv'd ° K ccptllc a PPointment as suggested
Place he found R R AmT fT* “ thc Ponged meeting
him the message which heT'd Z? a ' 0nC in his “ r a " d he gave
According to Lieut'. Amenyah" R ^ vb ? ltcy had told him to give,
that the plan should be abandoned d^Pj 1 ^ ' vouid not accept

when he could meet Awhaitev A ^ a i Skcd hlm t0 g0 and find out
la 'te\. Amenyah returned to the camp and

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 2 5 x

reported this to the Army and Police officers in charge of the
investigation. James McCabe with Major Otu— later to become
Commander of the Ghana Forces and whose dismissal was given as
one of the reasons for the coup — and Major Afen— who was later to
become Commander in his place-went together to the beach to
arrest Amponsah. They found him still waiting there and asked him
what he was doing. He said he had an appointment with Modesto
Apaloo. Thereupon he was arrested. He was searched, found to be
unarmed, and nothing incriminating was found m his car or on his

P Meanwhile Major Awhaitey had been questioned and had given
a statement which differed in many particulars from the story which
Amenyah said he had told to him. The essence of it was that on the
previous evening, the 18th December, Awhaitey had been called
out by a driver, whose name he gave but who it was impossible
find, on the pretext that his uncle, the Chief of Dodowa, wished to
see him. In fact, the driver took him to visit : R. R. Amponsah.

Awhaitey’s written statement continued, Amponsah ... to
me that he had heard that I was the Camp Commandant and
we should try to be grateful to the Opposition and the oniywaywe
could do that was to support them to come to power I Risked ^h
how we could do that as we were non-political and he
should support them by organizing a coup f a .

Awhaitey admitted that, except for his con- vers nation ”

Amenyah he did not tell any other officer o t 1S a PP r ° alleged
any official report about it. In regard tote e ai ^ g

approach by Amponsah he was g rt ^wffich had taken him

did not make any note of the number of • < i t0 regard

to the meeting and brought him back. He ^ ^

this assassination plot as a private matter ' h fi questioned
Members of Parliament concerned and when he was nrs q

about it by McCabe he said W «£

d,in E .howfari,,UIbequoKdMn*eh r ht feh ^

an interesting indication ot tn y

officers interpreted tbeir 'non-polmca^ ro^. been agreed t0

By the time I g ot back “ ;\asis that what he had said of his
court martial Awhaitey on b ^ ^ ^ therefore his on i y

relationship with Amponsah about it. It was

offence was failing to reveal a plot wnen ne

252

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

thevThen^i°'' ^ er, t ° rec ° nc ^ e this version with the facts, even as
°n the face of it, neither version of A^vhaitey’s

different ver.i^ “ ntaine , d m h,s written statement or the rather
be true Crimed ° ri? S re ated , b >' Lleut - Amenyah— was likely to
small sums nf m > ana are bnown t0 have been committed for
or Analogs in 0067 ' “ Yf m ° St un]ikel y anyone of Amponsah
befecruited n P T C WOdd P resume that » for £50, NCO’s could
Yet A™ T‘ g lt t0 assassmate or arrest Dr Nkrumah.

by Awtoevand y'a St t beCn f ° Und at the rendezvous named
for him Wh^ H u nyah W3S t0 be believed > was waiting there
r ha ? h l mad a th c matter much more s ™s was that the

£=“’ 5 iJ “

examining the evffiencT ItT * r , etU ™ ed l() Accra and be S an
involved in some HinHp f seem ed clear that Amponsah was
£130 on Officers’ had S ^ ac , tIVlty or e ^ se be would not have spent
»me connection “E ^

Awhaitey, who had hppn ’ 7 Y JUSt P 0ssi b le , of course, tliat
Amponsah had made aZ ? the , Senior ° fficers warned that
the whole story in order to inv^T’ ^ ° n thlS account invented
see what could be his motiv -° ^ Am P onsab but it was difficult to
time which implicated 10 S ° d ? mg ; Tbe 011 evidence at the
Awhaitey had mention A- ° " 3S tbat ^ eut - Amenyah said that
ment niSbSS?.? 8 T* in his - ritten «**-

of him. This mtffi If f A ?P 0nsah ’ s arrest, made no mention
Amponsah alone had been^ 56 h aVS beei ? because he had known
had misunderstood him or fn S 1 ° r ^ migbt be because Amenyah
involve Apaloo. ’ f ° r S ° me P erson al reason, had tried to

that Amponsahffiadsaid wIi^Th a Y the time against Apaloo was

foat he was JS?£ ffl F ukB {t« he was doing at the beach,
written to the Setalv^ffi my return > office had

further evidence of ASw^nS^ Sayln -, that in our view, if
his detention under the Art lnv ° jement could not be produced,
hand, Awhaite™s lexo£w V ° d , n0t be juStified - 0n the oth e ;

some major plot involving thlarm™ that P ° SsibIy

° rn A was afoot. It was most undesir-

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 253

able to detain two leading Members of Parliament without bringing
them to trial, yet it was impossible to attempt to convict Amponsah,
let alone Apaloo, on Awhaitey’s contradictory evidence and the
isolated and unexplained incident of the purchase of badges of rank.

At the time I had a, possibly naive, belief in the efficiency of
English judicial methods when applied in Ghanaian conditions.
Awhaitey’s Court Martial had sentenced him to be dismissed the
Service and following this it was agreed, at my suggestion, to hold a
full-scale quasi-judicial investigation ‘into the matters disclosed at
the Court Martial of Benjamin Awhaitey . . . and the surrounding
circumstances’. The Governor-General’s Warrant of Appointment
of the proposed Tribunal provided that ‘the Enquiry shall be
conducted as far as may be practical in the manner in which pro-
ceedings were conducted by the Tribunal appointed in the United
Kingdom on the 28th October 1948 to enquire into allegations
reflecting on the official conduct of Ministers of the Crown and other
public servants (commonly called the Lynskey Tribunal)’.

After Independence, in order to strengthen the Court of Appeal,
the Government had appointed to it an English Queen’s Counsel,
who had been Recorder of King’s Lynn, Mr Gilbert Granville
Sharp, now one of the Commissioners of the Crown Court in
Manchester. For such a Tribunal he seemed the obvious choice as
Chairman. He had not been involved in Ghanaian politics. On the
other hand, he had played a distinguished part in British public life,
having been a Member of the Royal Commission on the Press and
of the General Council of the Bar. The two other members of the
Tribunal were chosen with similar considerations of impartiality in
mind. Only one Ghanaian was appointed, Sir Tsibu Darku. He had
abandoned his policy of fierce opposition to the CPP which he bad
followed in Colonial days and indeed now might have almost been
classed as a CPP supporter. Against this he was among the most
senior surviving members of the old African establishment which
had supported the Colonial Governments of the past. I-Ie was an
ex-Chief, a former Opposition candidate for Parliament and he had
been a Member of the Governor’s Executive Council in the time of
Sir Alan Bums. Taking it all in all, he was unlikely to be prejudiced,
either for or against the Government.

The third member was a West Indian, Air Maurice Charles, then
a Senior Magistrate and later to become one of the small number of

2 54 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

K eS ?“ in °, ffice by the National Liberation Council after
oJS c ^ Un J e T ’ he ' Vas sti!1 a mem ber of the Colonial Legal
• , p, erv !“- could therefore look to a Colonial career

and!?? 6 f d f‘ red and thus was not bkely to be biased by
toind 11° °.r loca l advancement ; rather, he would be unlikely
which miaLif t0 anytb ! n £ 'ykich might be criticized outside and
the Common weal th. reJUdlCC ^ ° btainin ^ employment elsewhere in

Commi^nn^ ^ enera / ^ a PP eared at t b e enquiry as counsel for the
were ruo rl 111 aCC0 , rdance with ^e Lynskey precedent. With me
Mills Odoi ban , aian Layers, then in private practice. One of them,
widl me a ’ ll aS * ocla * of Tawia Adamafio, was later to serve
and then to h , Q ° r • en . era ’ t0 succe ed me as Attorney General
dftarhl was ™ 1° the Supreme Court - After the coup
and as such was t / U - gC Advocate General of the Armed Forces
public execution Slt ° n tbe court martial which sentenced to
second couo d’etnt , arm ^ °® c ers who failed to carry out a

outside the law wic" I ° ^ bert Reward-Mills, his only interest

Accra Turf Club provSeYlf'yi’ T d P^ hapS ’ like ma ny others, the
Certainly his orhf d dhls Geological connection with the rebels.
London toeethcr^ limi ted. When once we were in

only two valuable n^ 0 ?^ ^ bus ‘ ness my wife showed him the

early niLIctl ce ^ gSWe P ° SSeSS .’ nvo sma]1 P a -ls by the

indeed” he said ‘bur w? A n S e b ca Kaufmann. ‘Very nice

Kwaku Boat " va a 'man of ^ ^ ^ painted >“£■’
impressed bv SPP 1 n ' man of more diverse interests. I had been

from him declining a amon p .Lmil Savundra’s papers, a letter
dra’s Ghanaian Mi n ;n° St r- UCratlV ^ ° ffer t0 be secret ary to Savun-
Parliamcnt but he nevp^K ] orn P a ™ es - Boateng was not then in
been a member of a C ° ^ . rePuscd on ^e grounds that lie had
work was finished and °, mi T? ISSIOn on Concessions and though its
undertake anv emnlo * e fmrt submitted, he felt he could not
this document had he^^Lr'i! 10 ! 1 Evolved the mines until after
show a degree of d onI^ Shed - This had secmcd to me then to

West. He was iLrried to d ° CS n0t find evcn in thc

deputy head of the Tm ^"Shsh schoolteacher who was the

time and which was 1? a mmal School to w hich our son went at die

Ghana of cooperative ° ^ m ° St im eresting experiments in
cooperame private enterprise on a non-aligned multi-

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 255

national basis. At the time of some crisis in East-West relations I can
remember seeing the compound of the Ministry of Foreign Aifairs
suddenly filling up with flag-flying cars of the Missions of the
countries in dispute and their Ambassadors hurrying into the
Ministry carrying files of papers. It was a meeting of the Inter-
national School’s Board of Governors of which Michael Dei-Anang,
the African poet and at that time Permanent Secretary of the
Ministry, was the Chairman. He too ended up as a fellow prisoner 0

mine in Ussher Fort. , ,

Later we were to become family friends with the Boateng s and
Boateng himself was to be my Assistant Attorney General in the last
few months of my Attorney Generalship, then to become Minister
of the Interior and afterwards Minister of Education. He too was
arrested after the revolt and is still in prison. ^ _

Everything possible, I consider, was done to make the Enquiry as
effective and as impartial as possible. A team of shorthand writers
from the English Courts was flown out. Investigating officers were
sent to London, to Paris, Stuttgart and Lome, the capital of logo,
where it also appeared that evidence might be obtaine . 3 y

verbatim report of the proceedings was provided free to a 0 ose
who might be involved. Ultimately the complete account, word tor
word, of what took place before the Commission was 1 printed . and
published at a subsidized price. It ran to just short of one million
words. Evidence was taken in six languages from ninety seven
witnesses who answered in all 12,619 questions. One un re an
eight documents were tendered in evidence and the ommission
for twenty-nine days. In the interest of fairness to t ose w o e
be adversely affected, the procedure, as followed at the Lyns y
Tribunal, was altered for their benefit. What was requesmd [by
Counsel appearing for persons involved before the ^ Ljmsk y
Tribunal and refused, was agreed to by the Granvffie Sharp
Commission. As soon as a statement was taken from any mtii^s
which might reflect on a person involved, he was served with a copy

of i t - • cnpprii which followed the form of Hartley

Shawcross’Topening to the Lynskey Tribunal I said that the
k* k VnH hv now been accumulated might lead to one of

ev.dencewh.ch had ^ four e c(m .

^"Se whole story of, plot * deliberately

2c6

REAP the whirlwind
fabricated in order rn i .

point of view taken by Mr T Inn ° C f nt A P ersons - This ... is the
certain other witnesses^ The mp ° nsah ’ , Mr Apaloo, Dr Busia and
fact existed but SE^“* 0nd : * ■ is no plot in

make martyrs of themselves and ', 0 ^ tbose implicated wished to
tbe Preventive Detention Act ® j^rately courted arrest under
possibility is that such a tlimn- i ’ ’ ul reasons f° r thinking this a
appear at this stage ^ to ZV ^ ^ ° ne of explaining what
possibility is that the allegations fa f° rS ‘ • * Thc third

misunderstanding and a°serie<; nf ^ r WCre t ie r . esu l r of a genuine
justly aroused suspicion but which 1 ” ° rt V, nate C01nc idences which
separately . . . Tim fourth possibShv^ l eXp]aina ble if regarded
• . . If, of course, the Commit cin 1S a * n feet, existed
evidence, concludes that the a11 of the

third possibility . . . t ] len g 10ns bave arisen as a result of the
found. If, on the other hand the C ”” fur . ther re levant facts to be
piot "’ as (to use a phrase from ^ 0mmissi0n finds that the alleged
nesses) a “frame-up” it ^11 be TT™ by 0ne of the wit-
to establish the facts about how rh V Comnl)SSI °n’s duty to tty'
mdividuals participated ^ was organized and

s that the allegations arise our miar A if the Commission
Pot was deliberately concocted bv rh^ SCC ° nd possibiIit y, that the

"ho have been suspected of comnF^ 6 persons > or some of them,
suffer mnrf-..- _ \ U 01 complicity, in .L— .1 , .

‘ , , '“-“uvrateiy concocted ,i. *-»»aiuiiuy, rnat un

"lm have been suspected of corner ^ persons > or some of them
*f Cr tttttftj’rdom, then m ° rder that ** shoulc

mme who manufactured this evident C °™™ sslon ’ s duty to deter-
dtc framers” the same as the “fr d e and how they did it. Were

m s that a plot actually existed thT^ ’ Flnall >'> ' P the Commission
to determ n,. > . stcd , then . . . lt w 1 . .

— ... wa uie same as Hi* “r- ,, , uia ic. wer

m s that a plot actually existed ' FlnaP P> *f tbe Commissioi

* dCtCrminc "’ hat VI* WiH be thci r duty to tty

Pwons concerned in it.’ ° f the P lot and who were thi

die m ' 1 ‘ S trUC ’ "' c ™etIbU*cd b AAfr A rT* aWe t0 da Certair
J Manager of ‘Badges and Fn’ A ^ Ir A ' D ' Glcnnie then, as now

r". “ London ' i .“ISaTJ” ’ a ' ra "- t " 0 "'" S| '»I> i» >!»

mnw A r n ‘[ , °, nSah had spent f no .^e evidence which established
name of ‘John Walker’ .SoW London ln buying, under the

zr\ ! ° ’"ter"? v™)’

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 2 57

for them to be sent to Lome, to what proved to be an accommodation
address for Modesto Apaloo, who, it was established, subsequently
collected them through an intermediary. The hackles provided by
‘Badges and Equipment’ did not match up exactly with the Ghana
Army type. Amponsah therefore returned them, together with a

sample of a Ghana Army officer s hackle.

‘Badges and Equipment’ arranged to have duplicates of this
sample specially manufactured at a cost of some £23. These were
sent to another accommodation address in 1 ogo where, mysterious y,
they were allowed to remain uncollected until they were later foun
by the Ghanaian investigators. No trace of the other accoutrement
was ever found. Neither Amponsah nor Apaloo gave any convincing
explanation of the reason why they had obtained articles

Amponsah’s story was that he had bought t em on e a
fellow West African, whose nationality he did not know, but
name was ‘John Walker’. Apaloo’s explanation was that he hue
nothing of the hackles and that the Togolese Member of Parliamen
who said he had received them on his behalf, and his own
brother who told the Togolese police that he had collected th
from the MP for Apaloo, were both forced to make untrue
ments by the Togolese authorities.

At the Commission Major Awhaitey insisted that all the °* ce £>
including Lieut. Amenyah, to whom he had onpnally told h s
story, had misreported him and that his evi ence a i* S mrt : cu i ar i v

Martial had been misrecorded. This seemed impro a ,P

as the record of the Court Martial had been made by shorthan
writers from the English Courts, but it did not
to establishing what had really happened. e 0 , France

equally inconclusive. Amponsah had jnsite er ‘ ^

at the time he made his purchases at Badges ^qmpment b
except for the fact that he had ascended the “^^aith
healer, the purposes of these journeys remaine PP ^ e(Jed

The fact that the conspiracy, 1 there: ’ was^ ^ of the

along traditional lines and, on ^ out vivid i y f rom Mr

police which they were unable t p > • r 0 f t } le Special

Justice Granville Sharp’s j ames McCabe. McCabe

Branch, Assistant Comnussic 1 ^gd when arrested and the

had mentioned that Amponsah was unarme

following dialogue ensued.

258

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

The Chairman (to the witness): One of the unusual features of this
plan, if it is to be regarded as a piece of terrorism, a plot to assassinate,
was that the man who it is said to be principally responsible w'as not
armed ? — That is correct, my Lord.

You said it was usual for people to be armed ? — I said in my ex-
perience, my Lord.

Which you say has been considerable? — It is considerable.

Twenty' years’ experience, ten years in Palestine, you lived through
two revolutions and you have seen a lot of terrorists? — -That is true,
my Lord.

The whole picture is rather unusual in many respects? — The pic-
ture is very' unusual, very unusual indeed.

For instance, you would expect, would you not, in a plan for a coup
d'etat for some attempt to be made on communications ? — I would
indeed, my Lord.

The broadcasting system would be an attractive target? — A primary
target, my Lord.

Postal Telegraphs? — Indeed, my Lord.

The Police? — Yes, indeed, my Lord.

And this was not characterized by any of those features? — It was
not, my Lord.

Were there any other features of such an exploit which were miss-
ing? — I do not know that I can — I think your Lordship has prob-
ably covered the salient points. I think it might be helpful, my Lord,
in considering what might have been going to happen, to consider
what in fact happened in Burma in 1946.

In Burma? — Yes.

I do not think the terms of our Commission cover Burma. — I do not
want to bring matters in, but it may be as well to keep it in mind.

Your answer generally is that the characteristics of a coup d’etat are
that persons engaged in it are armed; secondly the principal targets for
attack w ill be the post office and the broadcasting system and, indeed,
any means of communication, the army signals and so on ? — Yes, in-
deed, the police barracks and the army barracks, part of the security
forces.

1 just wanted to get that picture in at this stage so it forms part of
your evidence. — Indeed, my Lord.

\\ e may want to ha\c you back again at a later stage. — I am at your
Lordship’s disposal.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 259

The Attorney General: May I put one question to the witness ?

The Chairman: Yes.

The Attorney General: What did you mean by what happened in
Burma, in 1946 ? Can you say in a word what you had in mind ? — In
1946 in Burma a group of the opposition party dressed themselves up
in military uniforms, stole an army truck and went into the cabinet
room and massacred fourteen of the entire cabinet.

( The witness withdrew .)

The analogy is of interest. Burma was the country outside Ghana
best known to the Army and Awhaitey himself had served there
from 1943 to 1946.

A number of other possibly suspicious incidents were brought
out in evidence but the Commission rejected most of them on
various grounds. For example, they were not convinced that Major
Aferi, who gave evidence of a highly incriminatory conversation
which he said he had overheard between Awhaitey and Amponsah,
was telling the truth. They considered that Aferi might have been
prejudiced against Awhaitey who had been promoted Major over
his head, and were doubtful, in any case, if Aferi was near enough to
have heard what he alleged was said.

Much time was taken up over Awhaitey’s various cars, which it
was difficult to see how he could run on his pay. In particular,
evidence was led to show that in November and December he was
using a green Wolseley car which belonged to a then prominent
Opposition Member of Parliament, Victor Owusu, whom, after the
coup , the National Liberation Council appointed as Attorney
General. Awhaitey certainly had the car and was involved in an
accident with it, after which it was repaired at Amponsah’s request
and this seemed to show a connection between Awhaitey and the
Opposition of longer standing and on a broader basis than anything
to which Awhaitey had ever admitted. General Paley told the
Tribunal that this car was in front of Awhaitey’s house at the time
he was arrested. If this was so, how it came back into the possession
of Victor Owusu was never satisfactorily explained. The Tribunal
found that 'while the circumstances surrounding the matter
certainly gave rise to suspicion’ they could not hold, 'in the state of
the evidence as it is which creates a situation highly equivocal’,
that the strange goings on with regard to this particular car estab-

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

260

lished anything positive. So it was also with other innumerable small
strands of evidence. One example will perhaps explain the difficulties
one faced in this regard in Ghana and the difference between legal
investigation in Britain and those in a country still in a state of
development.

It had been established that the money used to pay for the pur-
chase of the military accoutrement bought by Amponsah came from
an English banking account which had nominally been established
for the purpose of providing education at Leeds University for a
Ghanaian undergraduate, one Osei-Bonsu. There was no dispute
that the money genuinely required for his education had been
provided by his mother, but it was also clear that the account had
been fed by other persons and that R. R. Amponsah had drawn on it
on a number of occasions when in England for United Party
purposes. In order to discover how much money from other persons
had been paid to the Osei-Bonsu’s study account it was necessary
first to establish how much Osei-Bonsu’s mother had paid to it.
This verbatim extract of my cross-examination of her shows how
impossible it was, even, to establish a simple matter like this:

Q_. Can you remember, did you provide money for your son in the first
six months of last year ?

A. I used to remit him every day.

Q_. Every day ?

A. Every time, my Lord.

Q. How often was every time ?

A. Every time I got the money I gave it to Mr Amponsah to send
to him.

Q_- But how often ? Once a month, once every two months, once every
three months ?

A. At times I remit him monthly and at times if I have got it before
that time I give it; I cannot tell exactly how often I used to remit
him.

Q_- But in January of last year — this time last year, did you give any
money to Mr Amponsah for Mr Osei-Bonsu ?

A. Yes.

Q_. How much money did you give ?

A. I cannot tell you the right sum because at times I gave £50 and
other times £100 so I cannot tell. At times I gave him £200; at

26 i

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY

times I gave £ 170 , any amount I had in hand, that is what I gave.

Q_. In the first six months of last year did you give £50 at one time and
£60 at another and so on ?

A. That is what I have already explained to you. I did not take notice
I gave sometimes £50 and sometimes £70 and sometimes /200. It
is no use to me and I do not keep a record of it.

In the same way it appeared that Major Awhaitey was spending
more money than he could have earned through his Army pay but
he claimed that it came from his family and a relative was in court
to give evidence that he had in fact provided the money. To prove it,
this relative produced the receipt cards for compensation which he
said he had received from the cutting out of his cocoa trees and these
showed that he was in sufficient funds to have been able to pay the
specific sum about which we were inquiring at that moment. From
an examination of the receipt cards, however, it turned out that this
compensation had been paid to him after, and not before he had said
he made his payment to Major Awhaitey and which Awhaitey in his
turn alleged he used for the completion of the purchase of a Jaguar
car. At this the witness was not at all put out. ‘I only gave you,’ he
explained, ‘those five cards because they bear my name, 5 and he
produced a great number of other cards whose payment was for
an earlier date. The only difficulty was that they were made out to
other people. This exchange then ensued :

Q_. You now say the money in hand came from compensation paid to
other people ?

A. What I am saying is that these are my brothers and I am head of
the family and look after their children and everything, and every-
thing is paid to me.

Under the complicated Ghanaian family system this might well
have been right. The fact that none of the names of the persons to
whom the money had been paid in any way corresponded to that of
the witness was no proof, one way or another, since family surnames
of the English type do not exist in Ghana. Short of an investigation
on the spot of unbelievable complication it was impossible to tell
whether this witness was or was not speaking the truth.

One further incident underlines another difficulty encountered in
judicial investigation in a country where not only many languages

z6o

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

lishcd anything positive. So it was also with other innumerable small
strands of evidence. One example will perhaps explain the difficulties
one faced in this regard in Ghana and the difference between legal
investigation in Britain and those in a country still in a state of
development.

It had been established that the money used to pay for the pur-
chase of the military accoutrement bought by Amponsah came from
an Lnglish banking account which had nominally been established
for the purpose of providing education at Leeds University for a
Ghanaian undergraduate, one Osei-Bonsu. There was no dispute
that the money genuinely required for his education had been
provided by his mother, but it was also clear that the account had
been fed by other persons and that R. R, Amponsah had drawn on it
on a number of occasions when in England for United Party
purposes. In order to discover how much money from other persons
had been paid to the Osei-Bonsu’s study account it was necessary
first to establish how much Osei-Bonsu’s mother had paid to it.

1 his verbatim extract of my cross-examination of her shows how
impossible it was, even, to establish a simple matter like this:

Q. Can you remember, did you provide money for your son in the first
six months of last year ?

A. I used to remit him every dav.

Q_. Ex cry day?

A. Ex cry time, my Lord.

Q_. How often was exery time?

A. Exery time 1 got the money I gaxc it to Mr Amponsah to send
to him.

Q*' ^ ut * um oll cn f Once a month, once exery two months, once every
tiirec tnontlu, ?

A. At times I remit him monthly and at times ifl have got it before

that time 1 gixe it; I cannot tell exactly how often I used to remit
him.

U; Eut i.i January of last year — this time last year, did vou give any
m ccy to Mr Amponsah for Mr Osei-llonsu?

A. Yes.

Hu»» mutt; money did you give?

A. I cam. tel! you the right sum because at times I gaxe /50 and
‘o u.. t«r..ws ^rcc so 1 cannot tell. At times J gaxc him £aoo; at

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY

261

times I gave £170, any amount I had in hand, that is what I gave.

Q_. In the first six months of last year did you give £50 at one time and
£ 60 at another and so on ?

A. That is what I have already explained to you. I did not take notice
I gave sometimes £50 and sometimes £70 and sometimes /200. It
is no use to me and I do not keep a record of it.

In the same way it appeared that Major Awhaitey was spending
more money than he could have earned through his Army pay but
he claimed that it came from his family and a relative was in court
to give evidence that he had in fact provided the money. To prove it,
this relative produced the receipt cards for compensation which he
said he had received from the cutting out of his cocoa trees and these
showed that he was in sufficient funds to have been able to pay the
specific sum about which we were inquiring at that moment. From
an examination of the receipt cards, however, it turned out that this
compensation had been paid to him after, and not before he had said
he made his payment to Major Awhaitey and which Awhaitey in his
turn alleged he used for the completion of the purchase of a Jaguar
car. At this the witness was not at ail put out. T only gave you,’ he
explained, ‘those five cards because they bear my name,’ and he
produced a great number of other cards whose payment was for
an earlier date. The only difficulty was that they were made out to
other people. This exchange then ensued:

Q_. You now say the money in hand came from compensation paid to
other people ?

A. What I am saying is that these are my brothers and I am head of
the family and look after their children and everything, and every-
thing is paid to me.

262

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

are spoken but where there are dialect variations which may not be
appreciated by Court interpreters. Awhaitey had said that he had
been lured to the meeting with the conspirators by a false message
supposedly from his uncle who, he said, was the Chief of Dodowa.
One of his other uncles from Dodowa was called, at Awhaitey’s
request, to confirm his having received gifts of money from his
family. In cross examination I asked this witness, quite casually,
about the other uncle from Dodowa, the Chief. This uncle’s evidence
was translated from Adangbe, a Ga language, but as recorded, in
English in the proceedings, it is clear and beyond doubt:

Q_. Now, just one other matter. You say they all came to your family
house in Dodowa. Now the Chief of Dodowa, he is also an uncle
of Mr Awhaitey, is he not ?

A. No, he is not an uncle to him.

Q_. The Chief of Dodowa is not an uncle?

A. No, he is not an uncle.

Q. Would he be called ‘Uncle’ ? Would Major Awhaitey call him
‘Uncle’ for any reason?

A. —No.

Not only that; the witness further persisted in this denial of any
relationship between the Chief and Awhaitey when he was pressed
on it by counsel representing Awhaitey. It seemed that here, at
least, one very small point had been established. Awhaitey, for some
obscure reason, was pretending that the Chief of Dodowa was his
uncle when he was not. However, Awhaitey was able to explain it
all away as a misunderstanding owing to the interpreter speaking
pure Adangbe while the uncle whom I cross-examined used a Shai
variation of it.

‘He did not understand the question,’ explained the Major, ‘owing to
the interpretation. The interpreter asked him whether he was my
‘tsc-ko”, which is the Adangbe for “uncle”, but he should have used
the uord “tse-vayo”, which is “little father” in Shai language and
means uncle”. So he did not understand; instead of saying “tse-
wayo” he said “tse-ko”.’

The particular issue was trivial but it illustrates the general
problem with judicial proceedings in a developing country. Under
the English system of law, legal proof involves in almost all cases the

264 REAP the whirlwind

plotters had approached Awhaitey, not in December, just before the
proposed assassination, as he said, but earlier in the year, in all
probability before the purchase of equipment was made in London
in June. Meetings might easily have taken place but there was no
evidence whatsoever that they had, except for what Lieut. Amenyah
said Awhaitey had told him and which Awhaitey later denied saying.
Awhaitey was, at this time, the only Ghanaian officer who com-
manded an independent Unit and was thus in a better position than
any other African officer to organize a coup despite the fact that
the troops under his control were largely administrative personnel
and comparatively few in number. There was every factor which
aroused suspicion and yet no single positive fact to substantiate it.

In the period immediately preceding Awhaitey’s arrest there had
been rumours of an army coup d'etat and there was even a Special
Branch report in regard to it. Its source was a conversation in a
foreign Embassy in Accra which had been allegedly overheard by a
non-Ghanaian guest who reported it to the police. According to this
report, Dr J. B. Danquah had been heard assuring a diplomat,
known to be not particularly friendly to the CPP Government, that
everything was planned and that Dr Nkrumah would be overthrown
by Christmas by die Army. In view of the status of the informant
the report was taken seriously enough by the Special Branch and
by General Paley for there to be a thorough investigation made as
to whether there was any possibility of the Army planning a coup
d'etat. Nothing whatever had been discovered. Had Awhaitey set up
any very' widespread organization, almost certainly something would
have come to light in this investigation.

The details of this Special Branch check on possible dissatis-
faction in the Army were reported to the Tribunal, though die
reason for which the inquiry' had been made was withheld since
Dr Danquah uas appearing before the Commission as counsel for
Amponsah, Apaloo, Dr Busia and other members of the opposition
together nidi Koi Larbi whose London office had once housed the
West African National Secretariat. The report itself proved little.
1 he most that could be said with certainty' was that it was unlikely'
that Amponsah and Apaloo would have purchased the accoutrement
they did unless they believed thay had some Army link which would
enable them to utilize it effectively but that any plot in the Army
only involved at the most a few persons.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 265

The Commission after long deliberation issued three Reports, a
unanimous Report, a majority Report and a minority Report. In
their unanimous Report they found that Amponsah and Apaloo,
‘since June 1958, were engaged in a conspiracy to carry out at some
future date in Ghana an act for unlawful purpose, revolutionary in
character’. What they were unable to agree upon was what was the
nature of this ‘act for an unlawful purpose, revolutionary in charac-
ter’. The majority of the Commission, Sir Tsibu Darku and Mr
Maurice Charles, found that Awhaitey, Amponsah and Apaloo
‘were engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister, Dr
Kwame Nkrumah, and carry out a coup d’etat’.

Mr Justice Granville Sharp, in his minority Report, reached an
exactly contrary conclusion. He found that Amponsah and Apaloo
had withdrawn from the conspiracy when they suspected that the
police were privy to it and that Awhaitey was not a co-conspirator.
Thus he found that ‘there did not exist between Amponsah,
Apaloo and Awhaitey a plot to interfere in any way with the life of
the Prime Minister on the airport before his departure for India’.

I had been convinced that the findings of the Tribunal would
either show that Amponsah and Apaloo were prima facie guilty, in
which case they could be prosecuted, or else it would establish that
they were innocent and they would be released from preventive
detention. At the time of the Enquiry I still hoped that the Act
could be shown to be based on mistaken policy. The Tribunal’s
findings convinced me otherwise. It seemed indeed that the only
positive achievement of the Commission was to vindicate preventive
detention. No Government could be expected to release individuals
whom a majority of a quasi-judicial Tribunal had found were
engaged in a plot to murder the head of the Government. On the
other hand, it was almost certain that no successful prosecution
could be launched against those concerned when a Judge of the
Court of Appeal had come to the conclusion that, though they had
been involved in conspiracy, it was impossible to determine what
this conspiracy was and that they had abandoned their plans,
whatever they were, prior to the date on which they were to be
carried out. In view of these two contradictory' findings the only
logical answer was that Amponsah, Apaloo and Awhaitey should be
detained under the Preventive Detention Act and that such legis-
lation was necessary.

266 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

On two important matters tire Commission were unanimous.
First they found ‘that Mr Madjitey (the Commissioner of Police),
Mr McCabe, Major Davies (a British Intelligence Officer attached
to the Ghana Forces), and the Police and Army Officers who
assisted them were connected with tire events into which we have
had to inquire only in the performance of their duties, and were not
connected with any design to implicate innocent persons’. They
added, ‘There is no justification whatever for any suggestion that
the Cabinet of Dr Nkrumah, or any Member of it, was interfering
with the course of justice.’ Secondly, they equally exonerated the
other leading Members of the Opposition. They found that there
was ‘no evidence whatsoever that Dr Busia, Mr Appiah, Mr Owusu
and Mr Dombo were involved in these transactions’.

Looking back on the Tribunal’s findings in the light of after-
events there is nothing to suggest that this last finding was mistaken.
When preparing the material to put before the Commission it
naturally seemed to us probable that the General Secretary of the
Opposition Party, R. R. Amponsah, would have at least consulted
Mr Joe Appiah, known in Britain as the son-in-law of Sir Stafford
Cripps but in Ghana thought of, like Amponsah, as a former
member of the CPP. They had been friendly, had had the same
backgrounds, and, in general, it seemed unlikely that if a major plot
was afoot, at least Joe Appiah and possibly Dr Busia, would have
also been informed.

The overheard conversation in the Embassy, in regard to a coup
d’etat, suggested at least there was some rumour of what was being
planned was circulating in Opposition circles. Nevertheless, the
evidence against any of them when it came to the Tribunal was
slight. Victor Owusu was connected only by the incident of the
green Wolseley car and some other evidence, which the Commission
also rejected, by a local Scout Master and his lady friend who said
they had picked him up and taken him home from a point near the
military camp on the night Amponsah was arrested. Otherwise the
only suspicious circumstance was that early on die morning following
Amponsah’s arrest the whole leadership were found by the police
at i a.m. gathered at the house where Amponsah lived. Again,
however, there was little suspicious in this on examination. All but
Apaloo and Dr Busia were tenants of the building and they might
naturally, as they said, have been awaiting Amponsah’s return,

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 267

alarmed that something might have happened to him. The fact that
subsequently everyone in that room that night was to be appointed
by the National Liberation Council to draw up the new Constitution
for Ghana, is one of those curious coincidences which surround the
Awhaitey affair but are without any established significance.

Though the Commission unanimously rejected the Opposition’s
involvement, it equally unanimously rejected the case which the
Opposition, as a Party, had argued before the Tribunal, namely that
the whole idea of the plot was a ‘frame-up’ by the Government to
justify preventive detention. In such circumstances, if the United
Party was to continue to claim that it was a Parliamentary and a
democratic organization the only course before it was to dissociate
itself from the two plotters, remove them from their posts and make
it clear that the United Party disapproved of those illegal activities,
at least, on which the Commission had made a unanimous finding.

Dr Nkrumah’s Government in the White Paper it issued on the
Tribunal’s Report, specifically accepted the finding that the other
Members of the Opposition were not personally involved. The
breach between the United Party and the Government which arose
over the Granville Sharp Commission came about, not because the
Opposition were suspected of sharing Amponsah and Apaloo’s guilt
but because they would not dissociate themselves from it. At this
stage there was no question of detaining anyone other than Awhaitey,
Amponsah and Apaloo, yet Dr K. A. Busia went abroad, being
clandestinely conveyed over the frontier by my storekeeper
acquaintance, Yaw Manu, and thus avoiding ever having to explain
to Parliament his attitude to the conspiracy. The remaining United
Party leaders attacked in the National Assembly the good faith of
the majority of the Commission. It might be said that this was
legitimate to the extent that, of course, it could be argued that Mr
Justice Granville Sharp’s great experience in legal matters had led
him to a fairer conclusion than that reached by his colleagues. No
such argument could dispose of the unanimous findings against
Amponsah and Apaloo. Faced with this straight choice, the United
Party refused to accept the Commission’s unanimous conclusions
or in any way to disown Amponsah and Apaloo’s action.

The Awhaitey matter created in the minds of the Government
the impression, never to be eradicated, that the United Party, as a
party, would condone, and perhaps actively support, any illegal

z68

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

means of overthrowing the Government. Thus preventive deten-
tion, which when established was only to be used in an emergency,
now began, more and more, to be regarded as the sheet anchor of
stability and the old reluctance to use it largely disappeared.

The Granville Sharp Commission was, in another way, equally a
watershed in Ghanaian politics. Until now the Government had
been sensitive to overseas opinion and particularly of criticism on
the BBC and in the British press and policy had very often been
modified in the light of the effect it might have on Western
opinion.

The Awhaitey Enquiry was, in a sense, a world propaganda
move. It was an effort to explain why Ghana was forced to use
preventive detention. In the Government’s view the Tribunal’s
Report showed that they had attempted to examine objectively,
w 'thin the accepted legal conventions of the Western world, the
application of preventive detention in two key cases. It was true
that the full Proceedings of the Commission were of enormous bulk
but great trouble had been taken with the typography and layout.
The document was readable, and in circulating it, the Government
accompanied it with a summary and with a White Paper explaining
its point of view. The unanimous, majority and minority Reports
were each fully cross-indexed and any competent lawyer would
have had no difficulty in following the argument where the majority
differed from the minority and forming, on the basis of the evidence
cited, his own opinion.

Despite the fact that even the paper-backed edition of the Tribunal
Proceedings weighed over four pounds, they were sent individually
by airmail to every jurist throughout the world who was known to
have criticized the use of preventive detention in Ghana or to have
expressed concern about Ghana’s denial of civil liberties. So far as I
■now, the only reply received was from a Japanese member of the
International Commission of Jurists who wrote to congratulate
the Government printer on his choice of type and on his method of
printing, t made the Proceedings, he said, a pleasure to read but he
gave no indication of the conclusions to which reading them had led
him i he Proceedings were, so their title page claimed, ‘to be
purchased from the Crown Agents for Overseas Governments and
Administrations at 4 MiUbank, London, S.W.i’ but the Crown

gents, it \s ou d seem, considered it outside their duty to advertise

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 269

hem or send them for review even to learned journals and, so far as I
•an recall, they sold less than half a dozen copies.

The British and American press which had been so critical of
•vents in Ghana scarcely referred to the Commission s finding ,
though all the usual steps to call their attention to salient passages
of the Proceedings had been taken. A special analysis for the press
was made and the issue to the public in Ghana and elsewhere of the
Tribunal’s report were delayed two weeks or so to provide serious
journals wittf advance review copies so that they could make an
objective study of it prior to the official publication date. None did.

^ treatment of the Granville Sharp Tribunal, perhaps more
than X else, I think, convinced Dr Nkrumah and the
Government generally that the attack on the absence of Civil
Liberty in Ghana, was not motivated by genuine concern for the
SI individual but was the result of a deliberate policy of
denigration of everything that Ghana did whatever it was. Preven-
tive detention had been established in n 1a e ofthetvne

duced into Ghana without resulting m any denuncia ^ It was
which its establishment and use m Ghana had argued

accepted in Accra that it might be
that the reason for the

employ the Act un ustly and India j y- , u v w hich it

Proceedings were offered to the world as

might be judged whether thi s was so. ^ ^ cndrely ignored>

m making the adjudication ‘ reafter in Gbana) international

This was the turmng p • itt ’ n 0 ffas biased and world

protests came more and more to oe wnucn

F Se C! taf Z mple wm'perhap* illustrate this Ming that we all
One hnal examp V ^ Quld be mlsun derstood and mis-

had, that whatever ional > an organization for whose work

reported. Amnesty everyone j n Ghana had the highest

‘respect is»e“two or three years later, a Christmas card on which
respect, issued, or isoners in various countries for whom

they listed ^ had been ‘imprisoned for their

prayers were asked since ^Y ^ Modesto A paloo. If such an

political opinio • S ti onal’ misunderstood the Gran-
TSS? ’X^l's ’Lings, what hope was there of obtaining

sympathy or understanding elsewhere.

270

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

It could have been argued, of course, by ‘Amnesty International’
that Modesto Apaloo should not have been imprisoned at all, in
that he had never been convicted by a Court or stood trial in the
ordinary way. The organization might have contended, though it is
ifficult to see on what grounds, that the Tribunal was biased against
hm. It might have argued that the Tribunal’s unanimous findings,
in Apaloo s case, that he was engaged in a conspiracy to carry out an
act or an unlawful purpose, revolutionary in character, and its
majority Report, which held that the act in question had been a
conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister and carry out a coup
, eIa *’ we ^ e both insufficiently supported by evidence and could not
therefore be accepted. What could not possibly be argued was that
his political opinions had anything to do with the matter one way or
another. Nowhere did they arise at the Commission. The reason for
his detention had been advertised by the Ghana Government in
every way t at it could. He had been placed under detention because
a quasi ju lcia ody had decided unanimously that he was engaging
in revolutionary activities and, by a majority, that these included
murdering the head of the Government
With the ‘Amnesty International’ Christmas card I, for my part,
abandoned any hope, even with the most liberal organization, of

evhwT? ° r , )Usnfyin S what was bein B done in Ghana. Whatever
, . 0 c c °ntrary might be put forward whenever someone

oninhw med ’ 11 W0U f t0 the outside world be ‘for his political
so Prevent" 0 m f tter ' vbat effort was made to show that this was not
precaution ek ^ entl ° n migdt be acce pted as a legitimate security
beat the NkrumahGovemmInt Uld ** “ Stick ^ which to

Prcvenrivf-n l t} ' A PC ° f controversy the actual facts of Ghana’s

! ,n M 10n A( ; t ‘ lave tended t0 be overlooked. It was first

anv Cablet 1th "“I Assembly by Krobo Edusei, acting without

hk be nisi? f ° r e d0ing S °’ in Member *957 a * a result of

that counte r Indian le g islat *on then being enacted in

iLre ba?;/?! in fact > threatened to introduce a

February but h U C ndlan ^ ct when Parliament resumed in

eemedle Gov?''" 5 in the Cabinet and a t that time it

S rnffi af? er I 1 "? 1 had definitdy decided a g a ™t it. It was

Sitalaccout ' / ^ Am P onsah purchasing
litarv accoutrement and that the Ga Shifimo Kpee had set up a

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 271

secret organization, that the proposal was revived and a somewhat
restricted version of the Indian Act was enacted in July 1958. As I
have mentioned previously, it was then intended as a precaution
only. Certainly at the time there was no intention that it would be
used against leading figures in the opposition. For example, although
the facts of Amponsah’s purchase of accoutrement were known
when the Bill was passed, there was no suggestion at the time of
using it against him on this account.

The Act which was drafted and redrafted several times, in the
end provided for detention up to five years. The detainee had to be
served with written details of the grounds of his detention within
five days of it taking place, and was given an opportunity to appeal
against them but the appeal was to the Cabinet and the machinery
did not work well in practice. A detainee could also always bring his
case before the courts by way of habeas corpus proceedings, and a
number of such actions were taken but the courts held that they
could not examine the merits of a detention and this remedy was
thus of little practical value.

The Attorney General’s office was only concerned with the
administration of the Act, in that we advised whether, on the face of
it, it appeared to us that the evidence put up by the Minister of the
Interior was strong enough to warrant detention, and that what was
alleged came within the provisions of the Act. Our views were
annexed to the Cabinet paper proposing the particular detention or
detentions and only very rarely would I, or anyone from my office,
attend at the Cabinet when a particular case was being discussed.
Sometimes the Government proceeded with the proposal in the
Cabinet paper despite our doubts, in other cases our views were
accepted and the order was not made. In all cases, the Cabinet was
the final arbiter.

By the end of i960 three hundred and eighteen detention orders
had been made. In the majority of these cases the detained persons
were at that time still in custody, though it was not unusual for
detainees to be released after only a short period of detention.
However, of these three hundred and eighteen detention orders,
two hundred and fifty-five were made in i960, after the Act had
been extended, at the urgent request of the police, to cover gangsters
whose activities were of course quite non-political. It can be
argued, as I in fact did, that it is much worse to use preventive

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 2 73

)een used wholesale. The one thousand three hundred political
prisoners alleged by the opposition, before the coup, to be held under

he Act was clearly an exaggeration. c

The original proposal that the Act should lapse after five years
was discarded in the face of the attempts on the President s life and
the terrorist bomb attacks. From time to time large batches of
detainees were released and certainly before the 1961 strikes Dr
Nkrumah was in favour, if not of the repeal of the Act itself, at leas
of the release of all those then held under it. In fact, however, it
continued in use. From my own prison experience I do not think
that any detainee would have been intentionally ill-treated by the
prison staff but at Ussher Fort prison the medical facilities were bad
it was, I think, possible that a prisoner seriously ill, might easily
not have had proper attention. So far as Dr J. B Danquah, w o
died in prison, was concerned, no prison official with whom I spoke
at Ussher Fort, suggested that he had been treated other than well
and after the coup if it had been otherwise there was no reason why
these officers ^should not have said so. Nevertheless without citing
anv evidence in support, Dr Fritz Schatten, apparently an accepted
Federal German expert on Africa, has alleged that many detainees
•were tortured to death', 'in concentrate camp. . “ “

the “Grand Old Man” of Ghanaian Nationalism J. B. Danquah .

In fa t if one contrasts the attitude towards political prisoners in
Ghana with that exhibited by European government m the pre- and
oost-war years what stands out is the humanity of Ghanaian

behariour as compared to that of supposedly more cmliaed nattons.
behaviour P , war-time Germany there were no

In Ghana, unlike in any gas chamb ers. No detainees

were beaten ^0° death* as they were in Kenya at a contemporary
were oearen « torture d to death’ as happened m the last

period nor wer y . What is in fact remarkable is that

b «" mable t0 diE up f any ■»*“*-
cattd “ sc oTill-Satmcnt or indeed any execunon for treason or

SbveSonm justify the type of allegation peddled by those of Dr

S W a he„ n ’i S „ t May .967 I made this comment in connection with the
When in iviay y / reg i m e of tw0 y0 ung army officers

pubhc execution y^th ^ t During the whole period of Nkrumah

rulTno single political execution took place the Information

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

274

Officer of the Ghana High Commission wrote to the Manchester

Guardian replying :

‘This statement is simply not true. Mr. Bing, who was one of the
deposed President’s advisers, must have forgotten that in 1965
Ametewee, a police constable, was executed for allegedly making an
attempt on Nkrumah’s life. Again, among the thousands of the un-
fortunate Ghanaians whom Nkrumah locked up without trial not a few
lost their lives in detention. I mention only two, Dr. J. B. Danquah,

. . . and Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey . . . Nkrumah had them arrested
and locked up in prison where they died without benefit of medical
care. . . .’

It is true of course that this police constable, Ametewee, did make
an attempt on the President’s life but he was never tried, let alone
convicted for this offence. He had admitted to the shooting of his
superior officer in the police, Superintendent Salifu Dagarti, and it
was with this that he was charged. Since this killing was connected
with an attempt on the President’s life perhaps it might be argued
that it was a political crime and he should have been reprieved when
convicted of the murder but, if, as alleged by detractors of Dr
Nkrumah’s Ghana, like Dr Schatten, many political prisoners were
done to death, it is extraordinary that, fifteen months after the
rebel regime had been in power, the Ghana High Commission were
still unable to produce more evidence than this. It scarcely lies in the
mouth of the diplomatic representative of the present regime to
complain of Ghanaians ‘locked up without trial’ when at the time of
the Information Officer’s letter to the Manchester Guardian the total
of persons imprisoned without trial by the military regime far ex-
ceeded the number at any time under Dr Nkrumah’s rule. This total
never amounted to anything like one thousand, let alone ‘thousands’.

While I cannot speak from personal knowledge about the treat-
ment of Dr Danquah I can vouch for the expert medical attention
which Obetsebi-Lamptey received. I myself visited him twice in
hospital, where incidentally he was being visited by his relatives,
and I talked with his doctors. At the time of his arrest he was
suffering from an advanced stage of cancer of the liver. His death
was inevitable and in no way connected with his imprisonment.
Though at the time he had been charged with organizing terrorist
bomb outrages in which thirty persons lost their lives and some three

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 275

hundred others had been seriously injured, he was placed in a
private ward in the best equipped civilian hospital ^ ^eja and had
all the drugs and attention possible provided for him by the Gov

""The maintenance of law and order in developing countries is a
highly complicated question. The method by w ic a e P
made to solve it in Ghana was unsatisfactory certainly n the
ultimate resort, in that preventive detention d. d no . ^
organization of a successful revolt. In vie ? v of ‘ ^ be

afoot, the number of political detainees mig t ° . j e p

excessive but what proof was there that they were consniraev
The Ghana Courts had failed to check
because of the rigidity of the English laws 0 evi enc
and their, perhaps, too dogmatic enfo— n — “ £

1“ K; - x Sirs

preparation of cases. Police “ e *° ds h “ „ " Ias concerned, the
necessity are defective and, so tar , tn line arth

Awhaitey Enquiry showed that ^might ^

sufficient to prove a conspiracy of ^ existing mac hine, to

effort made, it was impossible tial to reach definite

establish all those small points which are esse

and final conclusions. , - nn as applied in Ghana, was

The trouble with preventive . ^ ’ tbe efficiency of the

.ha, its fairness or <-‘ h f™l' t K^emSy »as likely to be only
police investigation and thus th y fer as publi

slightly more effect™ to M righAof the

security was concerned and m ^ c5icumstances , what eke

individual were involved .J of the expe dients to which

was possible? The only basis ^ tulate an alternative which
developing countries ; urcesa vailable to them, and this is

is workable m terms ^ been unab le to do. Far from

exactly what Western cou on princip i e and alterna _

preventive det f nt '° n Rrb 9b S Co i on ial Office view was that it was not
tives suggested, the Bntis j highly moral and reformatory
only a highly neeess^ b»^» y ^ Afria ^ g
instrument °f g°^mme | or excused as due tQ j

advocated rather than explains -1 v

circumstances in some particu

276 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Almost contemporaneously with the publication of the Granville
Sharp Commission Report the British House of Commons debated
in June, 1959, the circumstances in which eleven Africans in
prevendve detention in Kenya had been beaten to death by
prison warders. The Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd,
naturally expressed the British Government’s sympathy with the
relatives of the deceased and its profound regret that this lamentable
incident should have occurred but he strongly defended the
‘rehabilitation’ system in the over-zealous conduct of which the men
had lost their lives. Far from preventive detention being wrong, he
told the British Parliament, it was in fact the only method by which
tribal conspiracies could be stamped out and those who had mis-
guidedly joined them could be trained in a way which would enable
them to return to civilian life. Progress, he felt, had been enormous.
At one time there had been 38,000 Africans in preventive detention
in Kenya. Now, thanks to the ‘rehabilitation’ policy it would be
possible to reform the 13,000 detainees previously pronounced
incorrigible and therefore likely to be imprisoned for life. The
British House of Commons agreed with him and the Motion
condemning the Government’s preventive detention policy in
Kenya and calling for stern disciplinary action against those
responsible for the deaths was decisively rejected.

An equally interesting explanation of the need for preventive
detention had already appeared in the London Times some two
weeks before the debate on the killings in the Hola concentration
camps in Kenya. Explaining certain happenings in Southern
Rhodesia, the Bulawayo correspondent of The Times, in a two-
column centre-page article, described how ‘500 members of the
Southern Rhodesian African National Congress were roped in for
detention in a smoothly executed night roundup’. The correspondent
admitted that at first sight it might seem a little arbitrary to arrest
and imprison without trial the whole of the then leadership of an
African Party which it appeared represented the aspirations,
however mistaken, of ninety per cent of the population of the
Colony particularly as it ‘was the proud boast’, according to him, of
the European minority ‘that no blood has been spilt in racial anger
in their sunny land since 1896’. ‘In fairness to the Government,’
however, he pointed out, ‘it must be conceded that political sub-
\ersion, preached to and practised among illiterate and semi-

THE STRANGE CASE OF MAJOR AWHAITEY 277

literate African masses can spread like a forest fire unless subjected
to the most strict police and governmental surveillance . . . The
normal trappings of a democratic judicial system are ill-equipped
to deal effectively with such threats to public safety.’

These views were not hastily thought-up justifications to deal
with immediate situations. In 1961 the British Conservative
Government presented to Parliament a four-hundred-page White
Paper dealing in detail, from start to finish, with the Mau Mau
rebellion in Kenya. The argument throughout is that the Mau Mau
movement only became established because the British Government
failed to abandon soon enough normal judicial procedure and did
not detain without trial, at an early enough stage, a sufficient
number of African suspects. The Times article on preventive
detention in Southern Rhodesia was quoted with approval.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

If the British Government had been prepared to enact the Consti-
tution as prepared by Dr Nkrumah’s Government in 1956 and which
is set out in the Appendix to this book, it is possible that the pressures
for a Republican Constitution would not have developed so early
nor have been so insistent. As it was the Lennox-Boyd Constitution
was unworkable from the start and had in any event to be replaced.
By 1959 the climate of opinion was such that it would have been
difficult to secure acceptance of another monarchical constitution to
replace it. In fact an executive presidential type of Government
was almost dictated by the nature of the civil service machine left
behind by the departing British imperial authorities. Even to the
last the Gold Coast civil service administration had been centred
around the Governor. From 1951 onwards, it is true, civil servants
were distributed in theory to Ministries but the chance was nominal
rather than real. A centralized system of government was the
Colonial legacy. That Ghana should choose to adopt the same system
as the individual British Colonies of North America had chosen in
view of the similar institutions which they had been bequeathed was
therefore in no way extraordinary'.

States, like individuals, are circumscribed by r the circumstances
of their birth. What Ghana was in practice capable of doing when it
became independent was affected and limited not only' by what had
happened in the Gold Coast before Independence, but by the
conditions under which that independence came about. Subsequent
developments were predetermined by foundations already laid. The
establishment of the Republic in July i960 was not, as it is often
represented to have been, a first step to build on new autocratic
foundations. On the contrary, it was the last planned effort to
establish a \\ estern-type democracy'. Yet almost as soon as it was
set up, it failed to be employed for this purpose. Again there is a
paradox Much requires examination.

The accepted British view of Colonial freedom was that after a

27S

designing a republic 2 79

long period of ‘tutelage’ Colonies ‘ripened’ towards independence
whfch was automatically granted by Britain once it was esmbhshed
that the fruit had reached maturity. At first glance it seemed that
this was what had happened with Ghana. wa ’ , , ’ nQ

obvious reason for the grant of independence. rps : stance 0 n

armed revolt or even strikes, demonstrations or passive resistanc^ on
a scale which Britain had been unable to contain. Independence it
seemed, had been ‘granted’ on altruistic grounds s

settled policy of liberation. The metaphor of ^o t primarily

the reality. Ripeness as a horticultural phenomenon, is not prim y

the result of man’s activity. It depends upon th ^^™o t
and the vagaries of the weather, but whether a Colony s ° r 15 n
‘ripe’ for independence must depend upon -hether^been

equipped m embryo with the orga " S una ided will not create
survival of a self-governing state. N independence depends

these. Their existence or otherwise before mdependenc P

almost entirely upon the eonsciouspo cy o eve n in

In fact, there was never developed in the ^ a sdf _

embryo, many of those organs nece Y , acce p t ing these

governing unit. Nevertheless , loo^ ng ^ ^ Gh ‘ ana ^ because

congenital omissions, the < |“ e * the’new state was unable on

of the conditions of its birth or b * 0 f se if government

the one hand, effective* ^capable of

as it had been equipped with, > rty 0 f the organism

creating new ones to compensate for the pove y

with which it had been endowe . before independence,

In a limited sense m the last tew , , • of the fruit. A

Britain had attempted to force , ° up by apprenticing Ghanaian
nucleus for a foreign service w. sphere was a scheme by

civil servants to the (Ammons to provide detailed

the secretariat of the no tec h n ique of running a British-

technical training and advice ran |. officer from the British

type Parliamentary democracy^ F ^ t0 reor ganize Town and
Local Government Service

District Councils. r a nc wly independent state is not

However, the success or at * Iomats> the efficiency' of pro-

determined by the suav - ... or t hc smooth working of its

ccdurc in its Legislative • „ or failure depends upon thc

local government machine, bucce.s

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

280

technical ability of the new state to manage its internal economy and
to control its external balance of payments. In this regard all the
preparation, such as it was, was based upon the assumption that,
though independent, Ghana would remain integrated, financially,
economically and commercially to the British system in the same
way as it had been before Independence. In other words, the
technical preparation assumed the local demand for independence
would be satisfied so long as there was a facade which gave the
appearance of change. Behind this it was assumed that the old
Colonial relationships could continue to operate unimpeded.

That this should be thought to be the likely result was by no
means entirely the fault of the British Government. The policy of
the majority of the leadership of die United Gold Coast Convention
who, up till 1951, it was assumed would come to power, was simply
that Colonialism should be continued in an Africanized form. The
policy of the CPP had, after their electoral victor)' of 1951, been one
of securing independence by agreement, and this meant, in practice,
never forcing an issue such as the appointment of the outside
experts which Dr Nkrumah and I had tried to secure in 1953. On
political independence alone, was the CPP prepared to make a
stand. Speaking in the National Assembly in November 1956 when
he announced that the British Government had agreed on 6th March
1 957 as 3 firm date for self-rule, Dr Nkrumah had said:

\\ hen I first became Prime Minister I determined that I would
compromise, if necessary, on every issue except one — the Indepen-
dence of this Country. In consequence I have had from time to time,
to give way on this or that point and even to persuade my Part)' to
accept half-measures which v.e all knew in our hearts were basically
unsatisfactory. I his policy of which I, at limes, had grave doubts, has
proved successful.’

In the circumstances, the British Government cannot altogether be
blamed if the technical equipment provided was not such as to
enable Ghana to enter immediately upon a plan to reconstruct the
-olonul machine, let alone to destroy it root and branch and
su 'stitute fur it some other system. Nevertheless, the result was that
nuna was endowed will) a Parliament declared fully competent to
make any law which it cho,c but was denied the technical personnel
r. rev wry to frame anything more than the mo>t limited alterations

designing a republic

281

to the existing Colonial legal system. Laws which are to be enacted
by the British Parliamentary method or enforced by a British typ
judiciary, need the most expert preparation, yet no provision .
been made for the supply of draftsmen for the purpose fromBritai ,
or for the training of those from Ghana. It is a good exa ™P le ,
subconscious supposition that nothing wou e c an|
independence. Yet a country can hardly be sard to be .pc fo
independence if it is forced, after independence to continue in the
Colonial pattern, not because this was the pohtical ■ — of the
incoming Government but because the outgoing Colonial power
denied it the technical means to change. . , tc

The horticultural metaphor can be pursued one stage Mum If
in ,957 Ghana was ‘ripe' for independence, ■ b “" e

apparent that other African Colonial fruit s0 °" b '

same condition. What happened, therefore, was not just a quest
of a failure to prepare adequately in the case of Ghar a. It » » “
overall failure of the British Government to thmk in terms of ma
rather than nominal independence for its An can
already mentioned, the most obvious techmca step-the enlarge

ment If the ZZ

able to second officers to Col™ 1 t Lugh a vital link in the
even considered. The drafcma h fidd he is of

chain of legal changes oriy “ eclm|ckns> sudl M taxation

no value unless backed by ^ ^ ljke . and in general, a

experts, exchange control spe for research and compara _

change m law is only posab ff^ ^ directionj eIsew here in

tive study of other attemp system, have been studied.

developing countnes widi a | ^ organizational approac h

In practice it is ™P, OSS 1 ^ nment f rom their political implications,
to die problems °f ^vep & problem w hich my department
To take one smah - P ^ Indepen d e nce there was no bank-
attempted to tackle m £ Bi u modelled on the English law, had
ruptcy m Ghana and v h Letrislative Assembly had rejected it as
been introduced in 1 95 , diti o ns . But where was the organ which

unsuitable to Gold C ^ j cou j d asse mble as to what would be

could instruct such expe Was Parliament so composed

suitable for Ghanaian c ^ and if s0> w h at procedural devices

that it was qualine enable it to lay down the basis of a

were necessary in oraer

282

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

bankruptcy law which would, in its view, be suitable for Ghana?
In fact, in neither its composition nor its procedure was the National
Assembly suitable for such a task. Thus ultimately in the end we
were driven back on an extra-Parliamentary method of sounding
public opinion.

A mixed Commission chaired by the Ghanaian Secretary to the
Bank of Ghana and having as its other two members a Ghanaian
timber merchant and a British Civil Servant, was set up. This
Commission not only toured the country but consulted with some
sixty diverse interests. Among these were, for example, the West
African Committee, representing the largest expatriate firms, the
Accra Merchant Women’s Association representing African petty
traders, the Commercial Attache of the Soviet Embassy, the
Lebanese Community, the judges, the Bar Association, the Associ-
ation of Chartered Accountants, the T.U.C. and so on. Nevertheless,
this was improvisation.

The main question, what should a Parliament in a developing
country do, was never faced. It was a small example of a general
proposition. Those who prepared African Colonies for Indepen-
ence had no finality of purpose because they never received any
c ear indication of what was intended by independence. Was, for
example, the whole theory of centralized Colonial administration to
be abandoned in favour of the British Ministerial system? Was
arliament to be a replica of Westminster or to be a democratic
version of the one-party Colonial Legislative Council?

Io what, for example, was the 1946 Gold Coast Constitution
suppose to lead? That it was supposed to lead somewhere is clear
rom t e o omal Office s pained reply to the Watson Commission’s
descripnon of it as being outmoded at birth. ‘The 1946 Constitution,’
tne bntish Government retorted in their White Paper, ‘was not a
e ate recognition of long standing demands, but a necessary and
cceptc step in constitutional advancement.’ But a necessary step
in what direction? Towards a One-Party State? It would at least
1 - m ron ? Governor Burns’ opening address to the first Legis-
“ Ve C ° Un ? asscmbled undcr it- The unofficial African majority
all vtlf 116 , not t0 lndu Ige in ‘mock Parliamentary procedure’ or to
j r t e ™ se ' e s to become an official Opposition for this would
, I" G ° VCr "° r ’ the ob i ect of the Constitution,
ar \, e 1951 Constitution appeared to have been designed

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

283

for a one-party, rather than for a mo-party state The Coussey
Committee which inspired it, contained many traditionalists w
wished to get back to the old system of the democratic ch y
society which had been destroyed by the attempt to use the chief 3
an instrument of Indirect Rule. This idea of a return to a supposedly
pre-Colonial Golden Age of indigenous democracy had muc
said for it and in fact had, from the late nmeteent cen ’

influenced political thinking. The system it was t oug
followed was that of the Akans who comprise ° ne
population and whose various branches, the Fantis, e
Nzimas, the Brongs and others had evolved m°r e * ag has
pattern of rule in pre-Colonial times. This Akan sy \ on

been previously explained, in essence democratic but based upo

the principle of a one-party state. genuine

The chief had to come from a royal family but there ' * < dc _

contest among rival candidates. The chief cou e ^

stooled’ as itls described, by those who

significant that the most general reaso actio n, which had

have been that of expressing an opinion C ^ uncil . There were

not been previously approved by th ^ in his v m a ge

gradations of chiefs. Every head of headman would sit in

council which ekcted its he^m e Th t hat in the higher

the council next m rank, and the cn supposed

council, and so on. No chief, however high his ^ his

to express his own personal views. consult those whom he

council and, similarly, each counci extent of this consul-

represented before expressing a vieun ^ impossib le, but for the
ration would have made even p some how be found,

view that unity was essential an Western countries

This conception is not altos*' ‘ issue is decided by a
despite a Parliamentary syste tbe alternative idea of unanimity

majority. Almost to the present \ States jury system. This

has survived in the British before action, had developed

basic conception, of a genera Africa, in the same way as it

in the rural conditions of t0 pro vidc the theoretical, basis

had developed in medieval I q . difference was that it was
of a jury’s unanimous ver ic • trad ition rejected the very

more consistently apphet . matter and not onlv in legal ones

idea of a majority decision in am matte

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

as did medieval Europe. The one-party system which this implied
worked because when it was clear that a question had the support of
the majority, the minority, as with a jury, were then inclined to
reconsider their views and to come over one or two at a time, to the
side of the majority. Once the minority was reduced to a hard core
of dissidents then the chief would announce the sense of the meeting,
and the remaining few were expected to swing wholeheartedly into
support of the general view.

It is probable that if an analysis was possible of United States and
English jury decisions, one would find that unanimity was often
reached by a similar process. In the Ghanaian case, opposition, in
the sense of stubbornly remaining hostile in view of a general
consensus of opinion, was regarded as something akin to treason. It
was therefore, for example, in no way contrary to traditional
e aviour that, of the thirty-two Opposition Members elected to
the Ghana Parliament in 1956, seventeen should have joined the
ovemment by the end of i960. It was nevertheless inexplicable in
terms of British Parliamentary practice and thus added to Western
misunderstanding.

In this matter, from a constitutional position, there was no
difference in outlook between the Convention People’s Party and
t leir opponents. Neither in theory opposed the one-party state in
prmcip e, t ey differed only as to who should control it. In theory,
Bie Convention People’s Party believed that the Party should be
irectly responsible to the mass of the people without regard to
ra itiona organization. The Opposition, on the other hand,
e ie\ e at it should be responsible to public opinion expressed
nn ^? U ° r . 1X3 ltl0na f° rn js. This was why the principal opposition
tt CI " * 954 > the National Liberation Movement, never admitted
ji 11 " as a P ar ty at all. It was a ‘movement’, a grouping that
system t0 CCrtam tren< ^ s thought within an assumed one-party

n'mm-!!i^ en ^ nC n C0Il fidential discussions of policy were
me rn V ? ve j Timen .t ^ es - It is impossible therefore for

Color,:-! aUt onta * Ive opinion of what was the attitude of the
Assemhli ° 1,erni t' ent In the early days of elected Legislative

Governments. I. seem,, bovver, in

thev thoiwhr th FS cons ‘^ cre( i the question at all, that

o a the Gold Coast Parliament would be a body which

designing a republic 2 ^5

would operate along traditional lines. Only in 1954 when a two
party system emerged in practice did it become to eir min
desirable constitutional necessity. Even so, starting tom , j
date, a system akin to the British one might have een
had those in charge appreciated the essential pre-requisi
English model. In fact, however, preparation ^nghsh^-
mentary democracy never took place because its
conceptions were rejected not only by African inte ec a
but for a different reason by the British Government ltse - ^

In order to understand this it is necessary PP , ^
traditional Colonial Office approach to po ltics. , , ne ver

Office the word ‘political’ had a number of meanings, th g ^
the meaning commonly given it in Britain. _ rI S 1I | £ , 'pyg

wealth Territories were administered by P olltlca ' hi

term meant, of course, not officers who were
that political party in Britain but that t es ^ e content of Colonial
charged with the enforcement of the p Colonial

pol4. Later 'politics’ and ‘policy’ became d.vot»d.n the Colony

Office vocabulary and the term politics tva « owe( i t0 affect
cription of improper pressure whic office c i rcu lated a

the carrying out of pohcy. fn 1962 p M s ke Commissions
Note for the Guidance of Members of chairman 0 f the

in Overseas Territories, written y Mu lhall. It contains

Public Service Commission m Ghana, ivir j.
this remarkable sentence:

,. . n ,.w; c service from ministerial respon-

se effect of excluding the pufcbc * Ue t0 individ ual Ministers,

sibility may not at first be en Y 8^ has accepted the principle

even though the Governm political influence.’

that the public service should be tree irom v

• ■ i» rvf democracy was that the former

In short, the first pnncipl , the control of the latter-day

‘political officers’ must not come und

‘politicians’. . , Qffice docu ment underlines the

The preface to this C under _ developed sta tes will have to
point. It is accepted th ^ made dear that t h e supervision of
pursue a socialist policy ’ be taken out of t h e hands of the

those carrying out this policy
politicians:

286

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

‘The creation and maintenance of an effective and impartial Public
Service is important in all communities but of especial importance in
under-developed communities where Government must play a large
part in all major activities and must be the primary instrument for
further development.’

One might have expected that this would be followed by the logical
comment. If the community in question was ‘under-developed’ at
the moment of Independence, the former ‘political officers’ must
have borne some responsibility, at least, for this state of affairs and
the existing Civil Service, whatever its integrity and impartiality,
might require reorganization if the Government was to be ‘the
primary instrument for further development’. Somewhere in the
Notes one would have expected to find a reference to the fact that
the structure of the Civil Service may necessarily have to be altered
after Independence so as to provide for development. The docu-
ment shows that the contrary was the intention. The object of
creating the Public Service Commission was to preserve intact the
ancient, and admittedly defective, administration which up till now
lad rested upon ‘the ultimate protection of the Secretary of State
or the Colonies’. A machine had to be created to perpetuate, if not
is aut ority, at least the system by which he had worked:

As power is steadily transferred from British to local hands,’ the
preface explains, ‘the role of the Secretary of State in Public Service
mattei-s diminisht; 5 and finally comes to an end. At the same time the

< ~c '' * CC ^' omm ' ss * on is built up to assume increasing respon-
1 lties or the Public Service and ultimately to be an independent
. ecutive body fully responsible for the appointments and careers of
individual members of the Public Service.’

/- i ■ } n r fL CSt °/. t , he P assa B e is the insight which it gives into
i R • • , .thinking. The Secretary of State for the Colonies
RriricE 1S 1 v° , ltlca a Ppointment, yet the ‘ultimate protection’ of this
alitv’ niT 1 * lcian , ls ) sa ‘d * n t^ e P ast to have preserved the ‘imparti-
constitn tirin' 1 ! e J!^ the system. But how? According to British

resDonsil . 3 p 0r }! ^ ecause the Secretary of State was personally

member nf ,? r lament f° r .the conduct of every individual
miscondiirrer/t- e P a ^ t ^ le ^ t - His duty to resign if one of them
lmself derived directly from the fact that he pos-

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC 2 ^7

sessed the power of their dismissal or transfer. The Colonia
Office plan, which Mr Mulhall’s Notes set out m etai, ' va f *
deliberate reversal of this supposedly fundamental ntis ar
mentary principle.

‘A convention,’ wrote Mr Mulhall, ‘should if possible be established
that there is no direct approach between individua misters an
Commission.’

Of course there are strong, if contradictory arguments, i ,
of this now universally enforced Colonial Office ^po C Y *
territories coming to independence. ‘In Britain, says lesis-

‘the position of the Civil Service, while regulated in
lation, largely rests, like the constitution as a w o e > suc j 1

and convention. In the Colonial territories ov ® r , h t t he
convention exists . . It might h.ve been ‘ n 3° 0 f to

absence of any such convention was rnvernment until

territories could not be ‘ripe’ for Parliamentary ^ ar<Tue( j t h a t a
it had been established. If, on the other a ’ ... ^ ^ Civil

Minister in Britain has, in practice, no

Servants and that all that was being one perhaps

duce the British system as it in truth existed, Aen P ^

good sense in the Colonial °®: e * rg ^ ouse 0 f Commons in the
Morrison, as he was then, told H Constitutional

Cnchel Down debate— one of th ^ t he relation of the

discussions held in recent years m

Civil Service to the Government . ... f

‘There can be no doubt that a oS°«qui«d.

all the acts of his civil servants-and a^ ^ ^ envdope , . . There
He is responsible for every s a P Min i sters are responsible for every-
can be no question whatever ,

thing that their officers do . • - r

i „ c deceiving the House of Commons.
It can be argued that he w was then, endorsed this

When Sir David Maxwell y > ser i 0U sness’ of this doctrine of
statement and spoke of the im ^ en ^ assure( j the House of
ministerial responsibility an ^ ^^oily an d directly responsible to
Commons that a Civil Serv an ^ ^ een talking arrant nonsense,
his Minister’, he, too, may a Colonial Office was right in

A case could be argued that tn

288

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

taking such a view of these particular utterances despite the status
of those making them and the important occasion on which they
were made. In that case it was Britain, not Ghana, which had been
deceived as to the real nature of Parliamentary democracy. However
this may be, it is beyond the scope of this book. So far as Ghana was
concerned whoever was right about the control over the Civil
. ervl '“ e i n Britain in practice — it is clear that what was intended to
introduce into Ghana was not that type of parliamentary democracy
p . . was > at a ny rate as stated authoritatively, believed to exist in
ritam. The truth of the matter would seem to be that British
po my, m determining whether a Colony was ‘ripe’ for independence,
i not depend on whether it had a parliamentary system which was
seen in practice to be like that of Britain. The sole test was whether a
sufficiently strong Civil Service, outside political control, had been
create . Under these circumstances, it is only natural that the
question o training the Legislative Assembly, in the pre-indepen-
ence peno of the Gold Coast, to act and to consider itself as a
p ica o e House of Commons was overlooked in the process,
omina y, o ^course, uniformity of behaviour was enjoined. A ‘do
t yourself kit in the form of a Speaker’s Chair, a Mace and a
speaaUy bound copy of Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice was
lacking ^ Inde P endence - was real preparation only that was

Constitution was designed to prepare Ghana for
SfamlT^n 11 faCt ’ h de ^ bera tely turned the principle of

loc/t Cn P ■ ov f rnment: upside down. Under Section 44 of the
1954 Constitution it was provided:

n'f'nnW; the ^ overn ° r shall consider that it is expedient in the interests
introdnr T ^ PU ** C or S 00 ^ government . . . that any Bill
efferr tli ’ v ? n ^. mot * on proposed, in the Assembly should have
such reaJ 1 ’ w J ^ ssem ^ 1 y fail to pass such a Bill or motion within
thin l rr 6 Qme J • ; • the Governor at any time which he shall

as if ir R n a k' eclare that such Bill or motion shall have effect

as U it had been passed by the Assembly . .

GwemoV TOuld^end 1617 PfeCedins section of this Constitution the

have the draft of anv Bi ^lf- h ' m "

Governor shnnlrl k ^ • 1 , or hlouon which it appeared to the
e introduced or proposed in the Assembly

designing a republic

289

‘introduced or proposed not later than a date specified in such

m Th£' provisions ensured that the immediately

Legislative Assembly of the Gold Coast was made responmb e not

to Ae electorate but to the Governor. Lip service was paid to th_

theory of British Parliamentary practice by 1 the “ se , r ^? h all

section in the 1954 Constitution which

be collectively responsible to the Assembly , u

sion for its element. Far from the Legislature being ^a^k to pass

a ‘motion of: no-confidence’ in ^^“^/if the Assembly did
order it to pass a motion of Connaen

not agree to do so, pass it himself. ise h is powers under

The Governor, however, could y - of if ^ Cabinet

Section 44 if he had the approval 0 Secretary of State for

did not approve, with the conc ^ n created that if the Cabinet and
the Colonies. A situation was th ^ Legislative Assembly

the Governor agreed they cou ^ ^ ^ had been in the old

which remained just as much ? cb; and t h e Governor
days of the Burns’ ConstituUoml^abme^ ^ ^

disagreed, the Governor coul * h Cabinet being responsible to

of State. In consequence, far iromuie in pract i c e

the Assembly, asthe ^Governor, and the Legislative Assembly

they were responsible to the both These may 0 r may not

was, in its turn, responsible t0 insert in a transitional

have been wise and practica p cedent for autocracy and not a
Constitution but they were a P ^ proved in practice.

preparation for democracy. .. no t had in the last resort

ThefactthattheCabmethad unuHpa?, ma de Party

to rely on obtaining the s PP b WO uld have been difficult

discipline less important, in ^ k had been considered

to establish the tradition and ] n the Legislative Council

proper in the Legislative 0 s S foly elected on a party basis, to

before it, for Members, » j when considering legislation,
act on their individual re P b ; ne t could override the Assembly
Since the Governor and tn ^ thg Governm ent always having
this removed the practical n d frQnt _ A trad ition thus grew up
to present before the ra°^. se Cabinet Members might criticize in
that Junior Ministers an c , As a logical development of

the Assembly Government propos

2 9° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

this, argument in the Cabinet room tended to spill over into
arhament. After Independence ministerial differences were often
openly debated and reported in the official Report. In October
19 2, to give one example, Krobo Edusei, then Minister of Agri-
C .^ tore spoke. thus in Parliament of his colleague, Kwaku Boateng,
t en e Minister of the Interior, urging him at the same time to
suppress the Party press which had been openly critical of Krobo

usei s conduct, and that of other Ministers suspected of cor-
ruption. r

There are, he told the National Assembly, ‘a lot of innocent people in
the country who have been locked up by the Minister of the Interior,
nnocent people w ho may not know anything have just been locked up
} t e linister of the Interior for questioning. Why is it that up till
no\\ t e Minister has not been bold enough to go to the Guinea Press
n c ose it down? The country has entirely been disappointed by

what is going on at the Guinea Press.’

it f!!,r ra i 1} u' hen Cr i! icisms this sort "'ere considered permissible,
° „ C t tHat r n / t G0VCrnmen t Bill might be defeated by the votes,
on s others of Ministers, and divisions in the House were by no
n „ • 1 t'l 3 P 3 ,^ hnes. Indeed, in the pre-Independence

Briricti p PP°sition did not oppose individual measures, as in the
different * 3I ? lcnt i they absented themselves generally. Again
Societv haH * , 10nS 'r Cre at " ork - The -Aborigines Rights Protection
b cr tr US -, d t0 P art i c ipate in elections to the Guggis-

in auestion Th ou . na . '''hen they could easily have won the seats
was that an n C P. nnci P* c > derived from chiefly council practice,
ostentatious , PP os '. tlon had the right, publicly to demonstrate by
particular lu ' ? C . ntl0 /'> ^ hat they did not acknowledge the title of a
The Gb ^ T u 0dy t0 P ass 3n f l3WS at all.
freedom of I?" • ™ ent cn i°I' cd almost to the last considerable

Si l£C S, ° n h u “ nCVCr P° s ? csscd - 35 does ^e United
England somer, ‘ ^lenI:, P 3rt }' disci phne which is today in

democratic svstTm Thm^b “1 ^ ™ 3 ' n in ^ edient of thc British
model the Ka’tln 1 a hough theoretically a copy of the British

in practice that I? 1 * • Cm ^ -. h ad hy i960 come so to differ from it
in tiic British r° COnsidcr tr f in S t0 make jt " ork

f irst there was A • ' P t0 nvo tendencies were apparent.

’ CrC dcsirc s °mchow to get back to die Westminster

291

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

model, and secondly to have, what was inconsistent with it, the
chiefly council type of Parliament in accordance with Akan practice
and following the line of all Gold Coast Colonial legislatures until
1954. Until i960 the first tendency was dominant and Parliamentary
reform consisted almost entirely of attempts by legislation to compel
the Opposition to behave like an Opposition in Britain.

Abstention as a policy was prevented by depriving of his seat a
Member who either publicly announced his intention of not
attending, or who was absent for twenty consecutive sitting days
without the Speaker’s permission. In fact this permission was
widely given. R. B. Otchere, an Opposition MP, who was the only
defendant to plead guilty at the treason trial in 1963, had for some
two years previously lived almost continuously in the Ivory oast,
enjoying his Parliamentary salary having obtained leave of absence,
which was almost automatically renewed on medical groun s, rom

the Speaker

The Avoidance of Discrimination Act prohibited parties based on
regional, racial or religious affiliations and. thus resu te m t
Opposition becoming united in a single United Party, n practice
this may have made Ghanaian democracy less effective, in tat -
may have rendered the United Party,, as a whole, mcapa . e o
expressing the views of the particular diverse elements 0 w *T . !
was compelled to compose itself. However, in appearance the Bntisn

two-party system, regarded as essential to the working 0 t e n 1

democratic method, was established. The second tendency could
not however be eliminated in practice. There was a ways an in
ation to presume that Parliament should somehow approximate as
the Coussey Committee had thought, to a chie y counci an ’
if in the end, a general consensus, at least on major issues,
obtained there was something wrong with t e sys em.
Opposition Member who wished to join the Government party was
welcomed, though in practice he might stand for principles very

different from those of the CPP. , « u„,i

Finally, Parliament remained after Independence,
been by law immediately before it, a legislative body -In re _ ard to
the making of laws it had a far greater degree of
British House of Commons. In Britain, if the back bench Member
of the Party in power were to insist on major changes in legislation
Sc Government would either be forced to resign or become

292

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

gravely discredited in the country, if it gave way. Its fate would be
certainly sealed if the legislation in question was amended against
its wishes by a combination of opposition and dissident government
members. This used, however, to occur in the Ghana Parliament
without the Government being in any way imperilled. Minor
changes made at the time of the Republic were designed to emphasize
acceptance of this state of affairs. The Members of Parliament were
to be regarded as a council charged with criticizing the legislation
put before them and not as a body obliged to vote on any Bill strictly
on arty lines. Hence for example arose the introduction of semi-
circu ar seating instead of opposing rows of benches and the
discarding of the official title of ‘Leader of die Opposition’.

un amentally, however, the Republican Constitution was an
attempt to return to a British type of two-party system and, by new
constitutional provisions, to enforce that Parliamentary discipline
'Wiose absence had hitherto made it impossible to work it. Though
nrr.v' COri , Ca 2 ^ orma l Opposidon was abandoned, every
... .. _ 1Sl ,° n °, 1 1C ne '^ Constitution prc-supposcd two parties. For
’ °j } le nc "’ Standing Orders of the Assembly expressly
\ V . C °. r . art -’ Secretaries who would correspond in practice to
nffiJVp 30 m "wnv other ways, including the statement in the
1.. 1 ‘ 1 c P on .° l be Party to which a Member belonged, acknow-

Assemhlv C T^ ISt i CnCC bL T anUc P art y organizations within die
., n 1 p’ .\ e c - «°H e l bis proposed reorganized Party system
sidiarv - CnUa . ^' ect * on Act, one of the many pieces of sub-

Constitutfon 3tl ° n 1 " as cnactc d together with the Republican

could hr n!* S '^ Ct a j^ Chanaian citizen over the age of thirty-five
more citizens n'fri aS a “ n ^‘^ atc for Bic Presidency by two or
narrowed h\ tl . r * ai | la ’ ie choice "as in practice greatly

penalties if rh'c T*, m ‘ lc nomi nators had to declare, under heavy
supporters of th-' CC 3rall . on turnc d out to be false, that sufficient
•National W m i 7 a " 1 Jlc "°nld be standing for clccuon to the
fo r nM V CnSUre ,h3t ’ if 1 "ere alfelected, they would

die Xan.irjl C ' cr - candidate standing for election to

Officer fo- the I> Cm -f V cnt ' t kd t0 deliver to the Returning

dcaSnl h;^ l ck ‘ Clion > thc Chief Justice, a notice

* i C fcrcncc for one or other of the Presidential candi-

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

293

dates. Before he could do so, however, he had to obtain the consent
of the Presidential candidate in question. The Presidential candidate,
as party leader, therefore, could ensure which Parliamentary
candidates had his party ‘ticket’. The effect of these provisions was
to make sure that the contest for the Presidency should be a contest
between leaders of potential parties in the Assembly and not between
individuals as such. It was designed to provide that, normally
speaking, supporters of the unsuccessful Presidential candidate
would be returned as Members of Parliament. The President was
chosen at the same time as the new Parliament. The election
formally took place by the Chief Justice counting the votes, recorded
by the new Members of Parliament in the form of the preferences
which they had given before the election. Normally there would be
as many votes as there were Members of Parliament, although, to
permit Independent Members standing, the lodging of preferences
was not obligatory.

A number of other minor provisions in this Act underlined the
two-party conception upon which it was based. For example, if no
candidate obtained an absolute majority, his nominators were
allowed to withdraw his name, without necessarily obtaining his
consent, and choose another candidate who might obtain support of
Independents or those belonging to some small party. If there was
not an absolute majority at the first count, Members were released
from their pledged votes and the President was chosen by ballot
from among the Members of Parliament. If after five such ballots the
President was not elected, the National Assembly was deemed to be
dissolved. The provision was intended to compel Members of
Parliament to find a President in one of the ballots, since otherwise
they would have to face a further general election.

Constitutionally, the novel feature of the Constitution was its
arrangements to avoid the situation which arises, as for example in
the United States, when the President is of one political party and
the majority of the legislature of another. Whenever Parliament was
dissolved, either through an efflux of time or by the President,
because he wished for an earlier general election, there was auto-
matically also another Presidential election and the President, as
chosen on the method already outlined, was bound to be the person
favoured by the majority of Members returned to the new Parlia-
ment. Thus, despite its executive Presidential form, the Republican

2 94

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Constitution followed, in essence, the British and not the United
States model. The National Assembly could still force the resig-
nation of the President by refusing Supply. Thus was preserved,
what is considered by classical writers of the Professor Dicey
school, the cornerstone of British Constitutional practice. On the
other hand, and this was one of the difficulties in drafting the
Constitution, the Government hesitated to state this principle
boldly.

The logical form for the draft Constitution would have been to
provide that the President should resign on an express vote of No
onfidence passed by, say, an absolute majority of the total member-
s ip of the Assembly, but a draft provision to this effect was struck
out by the Government on the ground that it would encourage
irresponsible attempts to blackmail the Government by setting
own No Confidence Motions for the purpose of forcing policy
c anges. In the same way the power, existing in theory in British-
P. e . Ons titutions, for the Head of State to refuse to assent to
egis ation passed by the Assembly was retained; yet to deal with
anj irresponsible amendment the President could not only withhold
tus assent generally but also to any particular section of a Bill. On
e same principle, the Cabinet had to be drawn from Members of
< ar iamcn t exclusively and under the Constitution it was charged,
su ject to t e powers of the President’, ‘with the general direction
an contro o ie Government’. The provision in the 1957 Consti-

A 100 m at 1 C ,^ a ^* net s ^ould be collectively responsible to the
ssem ), tv as hovyever omitted since in practice it had never been
° r app , li , < r d ' Nevertheless, the new Constitution was
-ice t0 CSta i ls h an effective Parliament, to which it was
ssumed, representatives of both parties would be returned.

n Cr pro ° t h at at this time it was intended to retain the two-
m eth J S r’ C ur u? ^ 0und * n the Government proposals for the
the PleL; > Sta IS ! m 1 g t ^ ie ne " Constitution. Simultaneously, at
accemS iL at .'?‘ Ch . the . pe °P Ic ™ to be asked whether they
for the fi r„ e p ne "-a onstltut i° n J it was proposed to hold an election
closelv -ic rCS i*, ent undcr arran gements made to approximate as
Election A P °p S1 e , t0 t^ e seheme contained in the Presidential
votintr M-icn ° r SU Sec i ucnt Presidential elections. For this reason,
the mainrirv H r cons ptuenc)- basis and the candidate which carried
UK majoritv of consutuencies was to be declared elected.

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC 295

The two Presidential candidates, Dr Danquah and Dr Nkrumah,
were the leaders of the two contesting parties and so the result in any
particular constituency would show how that constituency would
have been likely to have voted if a General Election had been held.
In fact, Dr Nkrumah won in all but two constituencies. In its
White Paper, however, on the arrangements for setting up the
Republic, the Government had stated that if the Presidential
Election showed that there would be little change in the balance of
parties in the Assembly, they would treat this as a mandate to
extend the life of the existing Parliament. The result was treated as
such a mandate by the Government, though, on the showing of the
Presidential Election, the Opposition Members in the House would
have been reduced to two if fresh elections had been held.

This decision not to hold fresh elections cannot be squared with
any policy at the time to eliminate the Opposition. The intention
was to retain in the Assembly a sizeable group of Opposition
Members who, if an election had been held, would have been
unlikely to have been returned.

The mood of the political leadership of the CPP at the time of the
ig6o elections was undoubtedly to seek a democratic verdict. One
interesting indication of this was the personal imitations sent by
Dr Nkrumah to all African and Commonwealth countries to send
observer teams to watch the conduct of the election. So far as the
Commonwealth was concerned, there was a sound argument why
the invitation should have been accepted. Ghana had to seek
Commonwealth agreement to continue as a member when it
changed its status from a Monarchy to that of a Republic. Whether
or not this request should be granted, it might well be argued, should
depend upon whether the change had been freely approved by a
majority of the people of Ghana. South Africa’s application for
continued membership was likely to be considered at the succeeding
Commonwealth Conference and opposition to this, it might be
anticipated, would be based upon the argument that the whole of
the South African people were not consulted but only those who
were white.

Nevertheless, Ghana’s request was almost entirely ignored by
the Commonwealth. The only positive response was from Nehru
who denounced the idea as derogatory to the sovereignty of the new
state and reproached Dr Nkrumah for ever issuing the invitation.

296

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Thinking back on it, perhaps the form in which the letter was
worded might have, if the proposal had been generally taken up,
been used as a precedent for outside interference in the Kashmir
question. In any event, Nehru’s letter was strongly phrased and
understandably upset Dr Nkrumah. However that may be, the
general Commonwealth refusal to send observers could not have
een anticipated, and no Government proposing to rig the election
results would be likely to have run the risk of their frauds being
iscovered and denounced by Commonwealth countries, including
oouth Africa, then still a member.

A further example of this desire by the Government at the time
to ensure fair elections is illustrated by a strange incident a few
mont is previously over a contest in Modesto Apaloo’s former
constituency. After his detention, his seat was declared vacant and a
new e ection ordered, but it was not until the time for nomination
had almost closed that the United Party had decided on their
W" ' a *k an l 6 man c h° se was at that moment under arrest,
t,‘ f CCn c lar £ cc * with some smuggling offence. The police,
rnmnw’ for bis nom ‘ nees to see him, and for him to

.. . £ C e a . pessary papers in good time for them to take them to
. . rS* ^ Cer ' ^ len > however, the nominators were on their

T a . n . mt . e P a pers they were arrested, quite illegally, by
survivo f h0r F° Uce ■ These local Police forces were the
handed nv° E i° c . c ^ le ^f Pphce but their control had now been
the same ° °i C f aut h° r ities, whose interests they served with

when the 1SI " e ^ ar ° r tbe ^ aw as the y had exhibited in the old days
when they were under chiefly control.

declared thTcpp ^ n0t knowin 5 of what had happened,
made Dr Ml- u andldate returned unopposed. The incident
him The r rUm . a . as an or}' as I can ever remember having seen
ateW the r mm ‘ SS1 ° nCr ° f P ° Hce and 1 were summoned immedi-
Sk^ hSe^?R SS1 m e r ° f P ° lice t0 be reprimanded under the
ators’ arrest a 1 V 1S / 0rce bad been responsible for the nomin-
Sod of O t - t0 b * 0rdered *o find some immediate legal
Sent Ls deCti0n - The *titude taken by the

dance when th n e S by the Cabinet at which 1 was in atten-
attemnted tn matte t was further considered. No Minister

As ahvavs and most denounced what had happened.

y hana these legal emergencies involved certain

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

297

difficulties. Had the Assembly been sitting we could have had the
matter put right by rushing through legislation but as it was in
recess we had in the end to fall back on the dubious device of
officially correcting the Gazette notice which fixed the final date tor
nominations, and to substitute for this a later date. The power which
we used was of course only intended to cover genuine misprints in
the Gazette but fortunately it was so worded that we could use it tor
this purpose. A Government inquiry into the conduct of both police
forces was instituted and resulted in, among other things,
decision to abolish all local police forces as separate units. e ma
in prison was released and was duly nominated and, when the
election was held, he defeated the CPP candidate. .

Again it is interesting to note the British press reacted m a way
which convinced Ministers that it was deliberately biased against
Ghana. Almost all English papers reported prominently the arrest
of the Opposition candidate and his nominators, and accused
Government of rigging the election. Of this Ghana could make no
complaint. From a distance this certainly was the impression „iv -
When, however, the Government dissociated itself from he
whole affair, took vigorous action to put the matter right, an
Opposition candidate was, in fact, elected in the end, one would
have expected that these facts would also have been reported. They
were not. Letters pointing this out were written t0 f Brit „
newspapers. The Manchester Guard, an alone, so far as 1 . ca >

made any apology for what was in the circumstances an extreme
example of misrepresentation of what took place in •

This Anlo South by-election took place “ 1 “^ J 959 , ‘ 1
figures were United Party 3,086, CP 2, ^ r . i n the

theUnitedPartyhadamajorityof555-Inthesamecons y

Presidential election of April i960, the' totel po 1 jashgh r bm
the Opposition again won though wiffi a

comparable ma joritv of 92. Personalities had at

Nkrumah 3.47°-* United Party J in this constituency

least something to do whh ^ f J n J C rMy larger. Taking

tws is the resuit

which one might have expecte ■ . fi available, it is

« falsification «

29S

Kt.AI 1 111!. \V HH: J. WIN!)

maile. On the other lumi, i( one takes the first Ashanti constituency
t ( ) be won by the National Liberation Movement at a by-election in
‘ 955 i Atwina Nvvabiagvia, it !uil nt the Cicttcra! Llcctiun in the
o owing v car returned an Opposition Member on a 70 per cent poll
with a vote ol {5,334 compared to a Cl’l’ total of 1,393. There was
cvuence to show that this large Opposition tnajoritv had been, in
some wavs, augmented by chiefly pressure.

0 low ini: the C. 1 T victory in the country, the pro N!,M chiefs

were e-stooled by their subjects, with, no doubt, some Government

assistance, on the general principle that the traditional rider must,

in accordance with the theories of indirect rule, be on the side of the

esta ) is unent. lt would therefore not be unreasonable to suppose

,' at 1 . lt: nc )\ ^ ^ chiefs of the area exercised an equal pressure on

ie 01 ter side and in the local elections nine months before, for a

somew rat arger area but of which this constituency formed the

core t ie vote had been (.IT 17,129 as against an Opposition vote

5 A . umin £> as UJ s likely, that the Opposition vote was

r ' con , l, . nuin S t0 hall away gradual!}, the vote that might have been

Sri CX1 ’ LCta 111 A, " ina Nvvabiagvia would have been, in

f, r ,\ C ‘l\ Crcaial . ^P^tration, in the order of CIT 13,600, to

’ n -° r . 1C , PP 0i| ttpn. 1 he official results recorded a 90 per cent

1 /" ltsc,f “ 1 •uspicious feature— and the Nkrumah vote was

mnlnl. aS 22 ’7 6 .. a \ a Satnst the vote for Dr Danquah of 137. This

wholesale /kp - U IS °h v ‘ ous > rnust have been secured by a

in simil-ir n s, ) Icatlon . oPt l ,c returns and an analysis of other results

the same 2,' 1 ? SCatS 111 ^hami suggests, at least, that something of

these consrin aUcm P tct '> ‘h not so blatantly, in a number of
tnese constituencies. "

elections vvero/ aCC f dds cur ‘ uu - s paradox. In some areas the
plctc fairness n T , 7 tcc ^> *° Par as can possibly be seen, with com-
and in the mV 1 US "° U , d a PP car 10 be so, in particular in Accra,
falsification ShTT* ?*“'• if ^ynvhure, oltc tvoulcl suppose,
seSvS ” P , b "- S'evcrtheless, in Atom Dr Danquah

whole, 30 per cent.' ° V ° lCS and for 1110 urunicipal seats as a

conductcTtvcre*laiddownT. C ^,^Kt P ! CbisCile and ckction " crc

debate. Thev nmvirlr-ri ° l ^ e ^ atI ? na l Assembly after a full
and Government could’ am °" g ot,ler thin S s > that both Opposition
o vernment C ° Uld appomt a gcnts to be present in any

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

299

polling station and other agents to be present not only at the count
of votes but at every stage from the printing of the ballot papers on.
Posters in English and in nine Ghanaian languages were put up
throughout the country, explaining the main provisions of the
Constitution and the method of voting. In so far as the Government
had an advantage in propaganda, it was an advantage which applied
throughout the country and did not affect any constituency in
particular. Further, the supervision of the voting was m the hands
of the civil servants and the police. Any falsification must therefore
have been done with, at least, their passive acquiescence Had it
taken place all over the country this would be explainable but it
does not explain how it happened in some few constituencies but

not in the majority. e

The factor which made it possible and was later to account tor
wholesale falsification was, I believe, the revival of the inter-war
British form of local administration. The traditional Co onial
administrative system in Africa was based upon the Political
Officer’ in the field. These District Commissioners, as they were
originally called, were in charge of everything in a particular area.
They ran its local government, they dispensed justice, sitting as
magistrates, and it was through them that the or ers 0 t e cen ra
government were imposed. They were the exponents o over
ment policy to the people and the medium of communication with
the chief. No matter in their district was too trivial to be excl
from their purview. Thus, for example, when my wi e
married in Elmina Castle in .956, the ceremony was performed ??
the Government Agent. Governor Arden Clarke's
District Commissioner, dressed for the occasion in nmform and

Wt Each of ’these District Commissioners was originally responsible
tacn ot tnese Commissioners who ruled

to one or other of the Ame d and the Northern Terri-

respectively, m the old Colony, ty • i vn _ anf j

tones Housed in huge ‘Residencies’ set amid extensive lawns and
tones, Housea m n g an( j police to present arms, lower

well-tended gardens, with soiaie _ r • d even ; ne -

j 1 • _ T TTnirtn Tnck ceremoniously morning ana evening,
and hoist the Unio J nrot , r j at e bugle calls, these officials

and blow from time to 1 Colonial Secretary in his modest

far outstripped in S randeur d t j . were the real rulers of the
S^in^rs^in ,h. capita, did not possess

300

KF\1> Tilt WHIRLWIND

the machinery to run the country and everything was in practice
done by the District Commissioners under the command of these
Chief Commissioners.

Sir Charles Arden Clarke’s change of their titles from Chief
Commissioner to Chief Regional Officer and from District Com-
missioner to Government Agent, was a mark of the general distrust
o tieir political power In both parties. In the 1951 General
Llection, when the United Gold Coast Convention opposed the
it nevertheless put as one of the first points in its election
address that ‘Civil Servants must cease to be the “Civil Masters” of
t le country . lhe part) promised, if elected and returned to power,
that thev would ‘remove Civil Servants from the top level of “field
administration”, and place the character and structure of the Civil
cnice under the control of the Assemblv They, too, at this time
rejected the theory of a Public Service Commission.

Despite political pressure by both parties against the system, by
rwV lU C lad ^ ecn ac h' c ' ed but a change of name. The most
r] U .t™ " as diat l * lc m ° bt important and dominating of

k three Uucf Comniissionerships, that of die old Colonv, was

v P , and u Rc . gl0nal 0niccrs ’ in charge of Western, Eastern and
T j ,° a . es !° n f snbstituted. Nevertheless, at the time of
adminicr . C ?i C r , W ^ P°P u Iation of Ghana was still in practice
acouaintTr^ r l "° ^ lccro - Sydney MacDonald-Smidi, my old
Tamale in,? r V Rd die Northern Territories from

The m- r* r ^ fthur ^°'‘ n Ru ssdl ruled Ashanti from Kumasi.
Chief FCW,,, °, nS nff Ul0n ’ far from diminishing the power of these
Go cniniem A ° RlCCrS and thcir subordinates,' the renamed
missS d.,n A f ntS ’ C ‘ Urcnchcd i^ The Public Service Com-
transfer of Gvil"^ t0 ^ aSC dlC ‘ r decisions as to promotion and
frnm thrir sun n - Jnt 1 on L co, t f idcntial reports on diese officers
future was P n "? l ° ** ^ Service ' A Government Agent’s
Regional Offire ^ 1Ce , put at d lc discretion of the particular Chief
BK 3 Office m C u rS f 0f thc re 5 ion where he worked and a
orfnatS s ? u ® C r e e m? ^ “ efl ' ect ’ ****? dictate his sub-
not control he rri „i,i rC " as a m3n it e did not like or could
could recommend R - S tnins ^ r - Those who divvarted him he

supported him he for P romot i° n » and those who

meat Under die n P , r0Vldc " ith hi s assistance to their advance.

Under the proposals of the Notes earlier quoted, die Minister

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

3 0I

of Local Government who was in theory responsible for what went
on in the Government Agent’s Districts, was to be prohibited even
from approaching the Public Service Commission to suggest
transfers where the Government Agents were not fitting m locally,
or failing to support Government policy. The tightening up of die
definition of ‘transfer’ which we had raised at the time of Inde-
pendence was no technicality. It expressed a policy that senior civi
servants should be able, subject to a minimal control agamst abuses
by the Public Service Commission, to dictate the structure of th
Service and in particular retain in the Districts the Governmen
Agents of their choice, irrespective of the wishes of the Gove

m< The system, as it existed at Independence, was completely out of
tune with any modem theory of democracy. The ntis compari
would be with the Justice of the Peace system of local rule under the
Tudors and early Stuart monarchs, but in indepen ent ana >
Government had less control over these local magnates than eve
had the Tudor and Stuart monarchy over the country gentlemen
who ruled the counties in their name. On this issue there was “
party agreement. Opposition and Government a e were
opposed to the continuance of the existing system. dispute was
as to who should inherit the Government Agent s an o

Commissioner’s powers. It was clear that the : reorgamza an
rule must become almost immediately a ter n ep ecame
important issue and so I began work on it a most as so made

Constitutional Adviser, and in the p^Indopendence

a tout of Ghana so as to sue for myscif the tvotbng of *e u«on„

system. Sydney MacDonald-Smith receive m orot , 0 sed for a
Russell i/ Kumasi found all tht = dates

meeting with him, m»n«m ^ ^ arr „ gc for me

Daniel Chapman, * en S " cre ^ he nex t came to Accra on duty,
to discuss things 'yithhmi ' h h ^ ^ he had approached
Daniel Chapman told me atterwa hinl) only ta]k

hlr Russell with I see from Who’s Who

with the Secretary of S has j n hi s retirement acquired for

that this redoubtable c^d sen ’ 1 convC rsationalist. He has been
himself an even Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

ordained into the i mi or3Ct ice illustrated the limitations of
What to do about it m practice

302

reap the whirlwind

constitutional change imposed by die realities of the situation. We
could agree in theory that the Government Agents should not be
magistrates and that there should be instead courts presided over
y ^ a ’ ified Ia ' v yers. But where were these qualified lawyers to come
rom. Similarly, many of the Government Agent’s powers obviously
should go to the new elected local authorities. Immediately one was
laced with problems of local authority stafT and finance. How was
t ie particular official to take over to be found in die first place, let
a one low was he to be trained in his new functions, and where was
ns pay to come from? Nevertheless, a good deal was done in die
eary ajs just before and after Independence, to divest Regional
Utticers and Government Agents of much of their authority,
rans erring it to newly established District Magistrates’ Courts,
oca counci s, and sometimes to the police and other officials of the
central Government like the Registrar of Births, Deaths and
arnages. everthclcss, though much of their statutory power had

m e rf Cn awa >' the P rest ige of the Regional Officers and Govern-
ment Agents remained.

f . F "°y c , r y cars a tradition had been built up that they were
Cia S y° W 1< ? m t ^ lc commoners could petition for redress of
their irp C an ,i t0 thc c ^' c ^ "ould go for advice. They lived in
viduajc ’■ 13 tramed st aff and they knew the chiefs, indi-

viduals of influence and the people generally of their district. In

a constitn^i? 1 onw ards, it was die Member of Parliament for
happened in C ri W *° * ts P°^t‘ c al welfare officer. This never

wasdrea^l mn hana ' ^ hablt ° f turnin E to the Government Agent
powers thev In S railaed ' shorn of their magisterial and other
ment control y™ 11 ? 6 . a P°^tical force which was outside Govern-
bodv resident ^ V^i ° b , CC Was essent ial. There had to be some-
trusted him flip 1 ' C , ° ca 'W who could explain to people who
trees or of sunt ^ ° r exam Pj e > °f cutting out diseased cocoa
yaws' or for ioin?™ *!t^i & j am P a 'S n mass innoculation against
I V rPP , g adult educat ion classes.

understood i/pTcdce^^Ih^^fr dep£nded Up ° n the ‘ r bein f

man of the villt 1, J * be c ^ le f farmer or fisherman, the head
«"h°; Se5'„?r„£' Sh priest ' ?' olergyman or tire school-

Government Ardent- duencc ln each small locality. For this the

necessity. Yet the Lennox-EG ^Penor, the Regional Officer, was a
x-Boyd Constitutional provision prevented

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

3°3

these former ‘political officers’ being controlled by the latter-day

‘politicians’. . , ,

Another incident, arising out of the Interim Regional Assembly
for Ashanti affair which had caused the resignation of my P red «- es
sor, also brought to a head the position of Regional and Chiel
Regional Officers. Mr Russell was believed by the Cabinet to have
actively participated in the plans for the proposed state opening o
the Ashanti Assembly. He was removed from his post transferred
and posted to Accra for duty with a ministry. Un er e ennox
Boyd Constitution it was doubtful whether the Government had
authority to do this. Nevertheless, the anomaly of quasi-independent
former Colonial political officers representing an in epen en
Ghana in every one of its Regions, living under con ltions wic
suggested they were all-powerful, and with persona con o
still largely British staff throughout their area became ?“ dde 7
apparent. The very rigidity of the Lennox-Boy ons r

offiy a radical solutffin possible. Two months later the posts of
‘Regional Officer’ and ‘Chief Regional Officer’ were a***edand
‘Regional Commissioners’ who were both Membex s o
and Ministers were appointed in their stead. It had bc “P la ^ d
make them Ministers without a place m the Cabinet but again the
Lennox-Boyd Constitution did not allow it, and so until Rgubh^n
times these political Regional Commissioners J ere ’ ^ “

predecessors under the Bums’ Constitution, once agam members of

the Central Government. tQ rev i v ; n g the District Com-

From this it was o y a appointed on a political basis. For

missioner who also soon was to ^ PP on er s existed side

a time these new pohtmal District £nd ^ ^

Slde " fJSo fifl circle. The ‘political officer*?

peared^The wheel had^O on ^ superseded by CP P ‘politicians’.

0 They°adap a ted themselves, almost subconsciously, to the paterna-
ine\ aaapteu , ^ ^ co l 0 mal predecessors and the

hst role examples of it. For instance,

Ghana press produced som under ^

^VonTcomiffisLner Warns Against Subversion in Kokofu’,
carried the following item .

‘Mr R. O. Amoako Atta, Regional Commissioner for Ashanti, warned

3°4

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

a large gathering of chiefs, elders and people at Kokufo on his tour of
the Amansie district recently against subversive acts. He said he knew
all that was going on in the State, ... he would deal with anyone
who would in any way worry the Kokofuhene (the chief of the district
in question). He also asked the people to co-operate with the District
Commissioner for the area . . . because that would enable them to
have regular communication with the government. He asked everyone
to give assistance to the Census officials, ... He visited places like
the Destitute Home.’

Another item of approximately the same date from the Government
press shows what went on at District Commissioner level. The
Ghanaian Times of the 20th January i960 described an annual
festival at a small town in Ashanti:

‘The highlight of the festival was a Durbar which was attended by a
large number of people, including the District Commissioner, Mr
J. K. Donkor. The local fetish priest Obosomfuor Yaw Kye, com-
mended the efforts of Mr Donkor in providing electric street lighting,
a motor road and other amenities in the town . . . Obosomfuor Kye
poured libation and said prayers against the proposed French atom
test in the Sahara. He also sat in state and received homage from his
people. He also rode in a palanquin amidst drumming, singing,
dancing and musketry throughout the town.’

The full effect of this reversion to the old Colonial pattern was not
at the time realized, I think, by any of us. Ultimately it produced a
machine, which, like its Colonial predecessor, acquired a momentum
of its own. As the old type District Commissioner had to show that
his district was loyal to the colonial government and supported the
policy of the Governor, so the new District Commissioners could not
afford it to be seen that opposition was gaining ground in their
districts. From this it was but another step to start tampering with
first local elections and then national ones. Once this had begun
anynhere the process snowballed. Originally it might have been
sufficient for a District Commissioner to see that the government
candidate won. Ultimately any opposition votes at all became a
reproach. The referendum on Constitutional change held in
January 1964 showed a 92.8 per cent poll and yet recorded that no
opposition votes at all were cast in five out of the nine regions.

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

305

It was an impressive demonstration of the complete control by
the CPP of the machinery of Government which resulted almost
automatically through taking over the old autocratic control of local
affairs devised in colonial times. The process of election remained
the same. Theoretically all the guarantees of a supervision by
impartial public servants still existed. The officials who supervised
the polling booths in 1964 were the same civil servants who,
thirteen months later, supported the coup. The police who super-
vised the 1964 elections and were supposed to deal with those
attempting election frauds, were actually to be a party to a revolt
said to be aimed against undemocratic processes. It was in the power
of these two organs of the state, if they had wished to do so, to
prevent the gross electoral malpractices of 1964 or, at the very
least, to expose them. Indeed, it is hard to see how they could have
been achieved except with their active participation.

The ‘political’ Regional and District Commissioners lacked all
the statutory powers of their predecessors. They had no legal
authority which enabled them to supervise elections, or which they
could invoke to manipulate the results. All they had inherited from
their Colonial namesakes was their moral authority. The Colonial
tradition by which everything was done in accordance with the
orders of the ‘political officer’, no doubt had some effect but it
cannot be the whole explanation. In 1951, 1954 and 1956 the
Colonial ‘political officers’ had set an example of scrupulously fairly
conducted and supervised voting. There was no colonial tradition
of electoral fraud to which to appeal for justification. The establish-
ment of political Regional officers and District Commissioners
certainly not only made possible but encouraged electoral fraud, but
it cannot be the whole explanation.

The answer may be that both sides had become disillusioned with
fair elections though for different reasons. Indeed, by 1964 it may
have been to the interests of both that the results should be as unfair
as possible. To the CPP the fact that a false result could only be
declared with the connivance, and in many cases, through the
active participation of the civil service and police, who were always
potential rivals for power, was in itself reassuring. Elections were
accepted as a ritual to which all nations must conform, but their
results appeared to be received quite uncritically. Indeed, often the
bigger the declared majority the greater the prestige.

306 reap the whirlwind

Convinced as the CPP was to the last that it had the mass of the
people behind it, it saw no reason why it should advertise to the
world that, because of local problems, not understood outside
Ghana, its percentage support among the people might temporarily
have fallen. To those who subsequently engineered and supported
the coup, fair elections were equally an anathema, however much
they might subscribe to them in theory. They had become convinced,
and they may well have been right even in 1964, that they never
could have won even substantial minority support. Their lack of
popular support could therefore be best camouflaged by demon-
strating that the elections had been positively rigged. If the Regional
and District Commissioners took the lead in organizing a flagrant
distortion of the election results, it was not for them to hamper them.
This difference of approach comes out clearly if one contrasts the
entirely opposing views of three critics of the Nkrumah regime, the
British historian, Dennis Austin, the American political scientist,
Henry L. Bretton and A. A. Afrifa, the member of the rebel junta
singled out by Dr K. A. Busia as in his view a leading exponent of
real democracy.

To Dennis Austin the last fair election was that of 1956 and he
writes thus of it in his important and scholarly book Politics in
Ghana 1946-60:

‘The main polling day . . . was unmarred by any serious clash be-
tween the two sides . . . the crowds w r ere everywhere orderly . . .
and the police escorts unmolested. ... In part it was because of the
confidence each side had in its ability to win by fair means, ... in
part the peaceful conduct of the election was due to the vigilance of the
colonial government— the officials and police— as a well-armed
neutral supervisor.’

What Dennis Austin fails to query is why this ‘well-armed neutral
supervisor’ so singularly failed to carry out a similar duty later.

To Professor Henry L. Bretton, also like Mr Austin in the Gold
Coast in 1956, it was quite otherwise. According to him, by 1951,
the British Government had decided that the CPP was going to
allow neo-colonialism to be established and that therefore the
Colonial administration openly assisted in organizing a fraudulent
election:

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC 307

‘By 1951,’ he wrote in his book The Rise and Fall of Krvame Nkrumah,
‘Nkrumah became the chosen instrument of the colonial regime to
guide his country through what was envisaged as a peaceful transition
period; though political power would be transferred, the country
would remain within a web of British financial, commercial, and
military interests. ... In the course of the 1956 general election,
which was represented to the public as a quasi referendum on the
proposed constitution under which the colony was to attain political
independence, it became apparent to the colonial authorities that viola-
tions of the election code had been so widespread as to raise doubts
about the validity of the over-all election results— i.e., the over-
whelming victory of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party. But the
Governor opted in favour of overlooking the substantial body of
evidence indicating a nearly total breakdown of the election machinery
in some constituencies. Not a single constituency election result was
set aside. . , . An editor of the daily told me that towards the end of
the campaign political murders had been so numerous that the British
Government would have been compelled to cancel the election if the
total had been published. They were not published.’

Since ‘the daily’ concerned was, it appears from Professor
Bretton’s book, the Daily Graphic of Accra which belonged to the
Daily Mirror Group of London which was opposed to the then
British Government, it is strange that no word of these surprising
irregularities by the Colonial authorities leaked out.

To Busia’s Afrifa on the other hand the 1956 election was the
unaided triumph ‘of the veranda boys’. He, on his part, described it
thus :

‘It will be remembered that the National Liberation Movement, later
merged into the United Party had come out and offered a challenge to
the mythical invincibility of the Convention People s Party. Through
political gangsters and hosts of brigands, the Convention People’s
Party intimidated this country and got itself elected into power as the
Government Party at independence.

Memories of the struggle of a number of men, from the north and
from the south, who challenged the authority of this monster at that
time are still fresh in our minds. Most of the opposition leaders had
been detained and some of them had been forced into exile. The Con-
vention People’s Party had no moral strength. The leadership was

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

308

made up of ex-convicts, illiterates, bullies, and a gang of political
malefactors,’

When this point of view is analysed it is clear that this attack is
not on the one-party state as such, nor on the erosion of democracy
which took place after i960. His main complaint is that Dr Nkrumah
failed to follow the non-dcmocratie path. ‘Men like “Pa” Grant and
Dr J. B. Danquah,’ he explained, ‘knew it was necessary to make
haste slowly, and so they sought to meet the need and the wishes of
the people rather warily.’ The argument of these rebel officers against
Dr Nkrumah was not that he had not popular support but that his
supporters were uneducated, and yet he tried to satisfy their aspir-
ations. He did not believe, like the wise politicians of the United
Gold Coast Convention, that he should meet their ‘wishes and
needs rather warily’. The anti democratic case is put without
equivocation by this writer whose supposedly democratic principles
were so admired by Dr Busia. What he wanted was a system which
would put the elite in power:

Kwame Nkrumah,’ he wrote, ‘played hard on the illiteracy of his
fellow men and women, marshalling the majority of the 80 per cent
illiterate citizens around himself, and working them up against the
rightful authors of Ghana’s Independence . . . these big brains —
J. B. Danquah, Akufo Addo, Obctsebi-Lamptcy, William Ofori-
Atta and many others. . . . His majority of illiterate followers . . .

disregarded brain and wisdom in favour of brawn. . . .’

These three entirely different accounts of the 1956 election illus-
! rat p, ow ‘ijfficuh it is to establish the objective truth about anything
m ° hana - If, for example, the inhabitants of Gibraltar in a ninety
per cent poll endorse their present regime by a ninety-eight per cent
vote in its favour this is accepted in Britain as a true reflection of
lew oyal feelings and there can be no question that in fact it was.
a similar proportion of Ghanaians were said to have voted in
lavour of Dr Nkrumah the result is condemned out of hand as faked.

ne cannot t ius judge any election solely on its result. It is neces-
sary e ore accepting or rejecting it to examine it on a comparative

Sta ^ e it i s sufficient to note that though the i960 election
u very properly have been criticized, so far as some Ashanti rural

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC

309

areas were concerned, by contrasting previous patterns of voting
with those of the Presidential election, even supposedly informed
writers on Ghana in the Western world did not trouble to do this.
Instead they claimed on general grounds, backed by an inadequate
knowledge of how pre-Independence elections had been conducted,
that the result as a whole should be disregarded. For example, Fritz
Schatten thus treats the issues of the i960 plebiscite and Presidential
election, in his book Communism in Africa :

‘This personality cult reached a first peak in the spring of i960. Up to
that time Ghana was still a member of the British Commonwealth of
Nations under the Queen of Great Britain. This was, of course, only a
matter of form, but Nkrumah and his followers attached great impor-
tance to formalities. They therefore staged a referendum to decide
whether Ghana should continue to remain under the British Crown or
adopt a new status in the British Commonwealth of Nations as are-
public. . . . There was not the slightest doubt about the outcome of
this referendum . . . Just before the referendum the Government
announced that “in order to ensure a tranquil poll” voting would not
take place simultaneously throughout the country, but with several
days’ pause between three separate voting areas. The idea behind this
arrangement was obviously to give the CPP an opportunity of clinch-
ing the final victory by concentrating all its forces on each voting area
in turn . .

Holding elections on different dates was no new invention by Dr
Nkrumah but followed the practice of previous elections held in
Colonial times, and was for the purpose of making sure that there
would be sufficient civil servants available to supervise the voting
and sufficient police present to prevent malpractices though in 1951
the Colonial authorities had in their day so arranged the staggering
that candidates like Dr K. A. Busia and Sir Tsibu Darku when
defeated for one seat were in time to be nominated for another.

The Government did not ‘just before the referendum’ announce
this policy. The polling days were fixed by a resolution passed by the
National Assembly on the 15th March, a full month before the
election, which specifically provided that voting should take place on
three different days and specified the parts of Ghana in which it
should so take place. All this had been agreed to by the Opposition.
Dr Schatten’s book was published in 1966. He had therefore plenty

3io

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

of opportunity to consult a standard authority. In 1962 Butter-
worths, a leading British law publisher, had issued Bennion’s
Constitutional Law of Ghana which described in detail these electoral
arrangements. The author was then a senior British civil servant but
apparently his book did not come to Dr Schatten’s notice.

It was typical of the Ghana Parliament that, although the draft
Constitution had been considered and approved in detail by the
Cabinet, after die most lengthy discussions and alterations so as to
secure agreement, even Cabinet Ministers criticized it immediately
when it first came back before the National Assembly. After the
plebiscite, when it came for detailed consideration, these criticisms
were renewed and two major changes were proposed. The original
draft had provided that all Judges of the Supreme Court should
hold office as in Britain, that is to say that they could not, in practice,
be removed until they reached the age limit for retirement. It was
now suggested that the Chief Justice should be appointed and
dismissed by the President at will.

Technically there could be little objection. The proposal would
equate the position to that of the Lord Chancellor in Britain but
politically, which was not my concern, there were grave disad-
vantages. The Chief Justice at the moment was Sir Arku Korsah.
de had in fact long passed retiring age and his appointment was,
under the old Constitution, extended from year to year under a
special power to do so. Occasionally the date would get overlooked
until the last moment and I can remember once feverishly tele-
phoning, I think, Vienna, where Dr Nkrumah was on an unofficial
visit, to get him to reappoint Sir Arku by cable, it having been
discovered that his term of office expired the next day. However, it
was valuable that he should stay in office since, in a much more
important way than Sir Emmanuel Quist, he represented the link
between the CPP and the old Colonial establishment.

r !!' , r } ai K ? rsah begun his political career as the Secretary
ot the Aborigines Rights Protection Society but had broken with
em w en they boycotted the elections under the Guggisberg
onstitution, and in 1928 he was returned as a ratepayer candidate
tor ,P e Coast, and he continued to serve in the Legislative
ouna or some twenty years. He had been a member of the
orthodox London deputation which my Aborigines Protection
Society friends of 1935 had been so scornful of and had become a

DESIGNING A REPUBLIC 311

member of Governor Burns’ Executive Council. His official resi-
dence was very near to my own and we saw a good deal of each
other. He was the Government’s link, in a way, with many of the old
ruling families and I would meet at his house Dr Danquah and
others who had been in the old Legislative Councils prior to even the
1946 reforms. So long as he was Chief Justice the Government could
carry with it many of the old intellectuals. Anything that appeared
to question his position seemed to me on purely political grounds to
be undesirable, but legally speaking this proposal raised no issue of
principle.

Nevertheless I was not to escape criticism for it. When after the
coup d'etat I was imprisoned, the London Sunday Observer, in a
note on the various shortcomings which had brought me there,
remarked :

‘He shocked many of his former colleagues at the British Bar when he

worked out a constitutional way for Nkrumah to remove his Chief

Justice.’

The surprising thing is that having been blamed by my ‘former
colleagues at the British Bar’ for this alteration made by Parliament
on its own initiative to the draft of the Constitution as originally
proposed by the Government, I should not have been equally
blamed for the other much more fundamental alteration insisted on
by the National Assembly.

A final article to the Constitution was proposed and accepted by
the Assembly which allowed the President, if the national interests so
required, to legislate by decree. At the time this seemed to me to
undermine the whole principle of the Constitution which had been
so carefully elaborated and explained. At one stroke it appeared that
the delicate balance between the powers of Parliament and of the
President, so laboriously examined in Cabinet after Cabinet and,
after much alteration in detail to meet every point of view, finally
agreed, was suddenly to be abandoned to meet the whim of a
notoriously irresponsible Parliament.

It was the one moment when I seriously considered resignation.

I had not of course drafted the Constitution myself, nor any of the
mass of legislation with which it necessarily had to be accompanied.
The draftsmen were experts, some Ghanaian, some from other
countries such as Britain, Ceylon and Ireland, but they all had

312 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

embarked on this arduous and difficult job as members of my
department and it appeared to me now that all their work had been
thrown away. Yet in the light of after events I was mistaken. The
Constitution was later indirectly rendered valueless by the failure to
hold free elections and by its adaption to fit a one-party state for
which it was never intended, but this particular provision was never
used. The military coup, however, demonstrated its obvious
necessity. It could still be used as a means to restore a legal regime
and preserve Constitutional continuity.

While the Constitution was the most important single matter on
which I was engaged when Attorney-General, it did not occupy the
majority of my time, which was devoted to attempting to reform the
legal profession to meet the needs of the country and to build up a
department capable of dealing with the problems of independence.
Some account of this may be of value, as it illustrates in detail the
type of problem that, in practice, all developing countries must face
and the reason why these problems so often remain unsolved.

CHAPTER NINE

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO
FLAGSTAFF HOUSE

My first task as Attorney General had been ^
my department. I had begun with an analysis of its pay sttucm i ^
Theoretically expatriate staff and Ghanaians reeled ^dr^same
salary. In practice the cost of employing an exp r j ate was

twice as much as that of employing a G anaian. months

entitled to travel back and forth to England ^ 0n “ d

or so, ratios his wife and up to 'S^^^Ghaoaian
longer leave and had to > have housi g P Aft _ Gener al’s depart-
la^ers could not be obtained for £ short supp l y and

ment, partly because they were, in y ’ nractice. It was
secondly because they could earn more in E 0 ff ere d Ghanaians

easy to prove that the State would saw ev^ ^ ^ fifty per cent sa i ary

who would join the department ur oueans and thus got local

bonus over the standard rat ^ F^ t E difficult t0 get the

staff to replace those from abroad, it w y

civil service machine to agree. j vas attempting

In colonial days cost accoun ^ have been an

would have revealed too many * dition ha( j established it as the

argument for A^^^Jlishment office could not take into
sort of matter which the Est -would mean that

account. It was argued, Qther specialists. An analysis

Ghanaian lawyers were P al ^ specialists showed that if applied
of other departments emp }° y , ° P de Nevertheless, the arguments

in them equal savings woul ■ only after considerable

against it were interminable and it J y

struggle that I secured ‘s u SLe Court and the Attorney General’s
For a trial p e nod the| P o ^ entrants a salary compet itive with
office were allowed to ott nractice. Soon in consequence we

the earnings to be made in p P ed ^ scheme had recruited a

and the judiciary w ° Ghanaian lawyers. Without it it would
promising group ol youn D

313

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

have been impossible to find even the Magistrates to take over the
judicial functions of Government Agents. However, in the long
term the remedy was not to pay the inflated salaries which the overall
shortage of lawyers involved but to train students locally and thus
have sufficient practitioners both for Government service and for
the expanding opportunities of private practice.

According to orthodox British thinking, one of the things wrong
with Colonies generally was that they had too many lawyers and that
young intellectuals, instead of becoming engineers, chartered
accountants or doctors chose the easier and more lucrative pro-
fession of law. In a way there was just sufficient sense in this theory
to conceal its fundamental absurdity. Looked at in terms of per-
centage of the existing professional class there were too many
lawyers in Ghana at Independence. At the time of the Watson
ommission, for example, there were only forty-seven African
octors in the Gold Coast as compared with fifty-seven legal
practitioners in private practice. But this was not the result of a
conscious lack of regard for the public interest by the intellectual
c ass. t \\ as the inevitable result of the policy of Colonial education
generally. There was in the Gold Coast, prior to Independence, no
training whatever for the professions and therefore anyone who
wished to acquire a technical qualification had to go to Britain or,
o \ enough, to die Irish Republic, whose professional degrees the
Colonial Authorities also accepted, though they refused those of
na a an Australia. This limited the possible output to those
children of wealthy families who could meet the cost of maintaining
a student in London, Edinburgh or Dublin where, for an African,
expenses ten e to be higher in any event and where the cost of
board and lodging had to be met the whole year round— not only in
term time as was the case with a British student.

ihe pressure was therefore to choose die profession where the
the n s^L^ S w C , S j 1 °H est and tile examination the easiest. Before
c,Lt„T ld r ? Ihc English and Irish Bar

needed theSC two rc q ui rcments. What in fact Ghana

serve d, S0 } l< : mT . s rather ^n barristers, but solicitors had to
evnen it K??' 5 " England and not only "as diis excessively
Punik T1 ,U 1Cr - C V ' a f r<ductance f o accept Africans as Articled

ncrsonal vn C ° ntmUcd aftcr Independence, as I learned from
personal experience.

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAFSTAFF HOUSE 315

We wanted to article picked graduates with firms of solicitors who
did the type of financial and commercial work for which Ghana
needed experienced technicians and I personally toured their
offices. Everyone whom I interviewed was very nice about it. It
was not he, or indeed anyone in his firm, who objected to Africans.
On the contrary, they would have liked to have had them. Un-
fortunately, so it apparently turned out in each case, each firm
was cursed by having among their clients, persons of strong racial
views and they had, they explained to me, to take this into con-
sideration. It was not that they did not want to take our candidates,
it was only that they were certain they would be happier elsewhere.

Before the Second World War the qualification for the English
Bar was gastronomic rather than academic. Provided one ate the
proscribed number of dinners the examinations presented no real
problem. In consequence, in English terms, the Bar had become
overcrowded and subsequent to the war the standard was raised.
However, the curriculum remained unreformed. In reality it was a
memory test and very little else. Without entering into the con-
troversy as to whether this type of examination is the best means
for preparing an English barrister for his profession, it had very
little relevance to Ghanaian conditions. The student might qualify
as a barrister but when he returned to Ghana he had to practice as a
solicitor and for this he had no training whatsoever. Ghanaian law
in family matters and in question of inheritance and of land differed
completely from English law so what the student had memorized
was not even necessarily of value and might well be confusing. In
so far as English law applied, it was the English law of 1874 and
this was no longer taught at the Inns of Court. Above all, the
profession as it existed in England and as it was carried on in
Ghana, were, from the very nature of the differences between the
two countries, so dissimilar as to make the training for the one
almost useless for the other.

A local law school might cure this difficulty but it would not help
with the major problem. To increase the number of legal students
meant drawing from the pool of those with university qualifications,
or even with university entrance qualifications and it was this
limited class which provided the only possible intake into other
professions which were more important than law from the point of
view of national development. If lawyers were to be increased it was

316 reap the whirlwind

essential therefore to find some different source of supply. I believed
the problem could be solved by reviving the ‘attorneys’ who had
practised in the Gold Coast in the second half of the last century.

When Courts were first established in the Gold Coast, a develop-
ment parallel exactly to what happened in the United States and in
the older Dominions followed. The Courts themselves, without
reference to any outside authority, licensed individuals to practise
before them though they had passed no legal examination. I
believed the principle might again be applied. Apart from Govern-
ment service what was most needed were individuals with sufficient
legal training to be able to advise the ordinary man and woman of
the small town and village about their day-to-day affairs. It was
clear that the absence of such advice led to many unnecessary
disputes and real injustice. When, for example, cocoa farms were
pledged, the lender would produce a document drawn up by some
‘licensed letter writer’. To this the illiterate debtor would put his
mark. Quite often it would turn out that the terms arranged verbally
and those in the document did not correspond and in such circum-
stances there was no one to whom the debtor, or for that matter the
lender, could go for even elementary legal advice.

The provision of a class of lawyer charging small fees would have
been a valuable element in controlling the discontent, confusion
and often obvious injustice which resulted from cocoa-pledging
transactions. Ghana is a great country for proverbs and it is signifi-
cant that in the inter-war years a new one became current: ‘Cocoa
has not shown us the good man.’ In any plan for the solution of the
difficulties caused by a new rural industry with which the traditional
methods of the old society were unable to cope, the provision of
cheap legal advice available on the spot was essential.

Indeed, disputes over cocoa were only symptomatic of the many
other unresolved problems which arose out of the gradual break-
down of traditional society and the growth of a money economy.

his was evidenced by the growth of the ‘new shrines’, already
re erred to, which can be corelated to the development and spread
o the cocoa industry. While these ‘new shrines’ became for want of
an) t nng better a kind of legal advice bureau, the law which their
priests expounded lacked precision. I took up the idea that what was
needed was to upgrade the best of the licensed letter writers. They
had already to obtain a licence before they could practise. They

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 3 X 7

were thus subject to discipline and were in fact doing what would
in Britain be regarded as solicitors’ work. They were largely
employed for business and legal communications rather than tor
personal letters. I worked out a plan for a three months course in
which those participating would be selected by examination rom
the top grade of letter writer and would be given a course in t e
rudiments of law they were likely to encounter in t e country areas.
In this way I thought we might create a class of Attorney on the
English eighteenth-century and the Gold Coast nmeteen cen ry

The reaction which this proposal produced, I was later to realize
was typical of the obstacles w’hich occur, in practice, w en one 1
in the twentieth-century to apply the methods of progress success-
fully pioneered a hundred years ago by the present mdustna

nations in their developing stages.

We had set up a General Legal Council about
receive a number of pained letters from eminent and liberal jur sts
of the Western world. The legislation appointing it provided that
in theory, a small minority of non-lawyers mig f app
In fact ik England there is a similar provismn m i rega rd to the
doctors’ disciplinary body, the General Medical Council, and one
k^membeMsto tWs da/klways appointed.
no weight with Lord Gardiner, the most

persistent and indeed the most courteous, of my many corres-
persistenr, anu mw n f them the theory of ‘legal liberty’

pondents on the su ) • decide on the structural framework

meant that only lawyers could deed ^ ^ with the

GenSl L^Tcouncil tas that insufficient laymen were i appointed

have been found among the le 0 , r

In principle the Government accepted the idea ot upgrading

ticensed'ktter writers but when it came down to a dear ose of the,
f iTip Cabinet were unwilling to challenge the lawyers
sort many of the Cabinet wer while other of those in

on what they thoughttobe yiew . At the GeneraI

Leo'^Qmndfwhen^dtimately I made my proposal no one would
listen to it It was a ‘Colonialist’ suggestion, implying that Ghanaians
could not aspire to the same standards as the profession m England.
S was my Irst encounter with this conception of absolute standards

318 reap the whirlwind

which is, I believe, the most substantial of all barriers to developing
technical skills at the level required.

This controversy illustrated, in miniature, the internal struggle
which was going on between the elite and the mass of the people.
A ruling elite is created if education is restricted to the few who can
command the key positions in the Civil Service, in the professions
and in commerce and industry. The legal elite, already established,
did not wish to see its ranks diluted by the importation of persons
of the class of a ‘licensed letter writer’.

The University propagated the theory that no one was properly
qualified unless he had the same qualifications as a lawyer would
have had in England. Yet the whole question of standards is relative.
A standard in education is high enough when it can adequately
serve the needs of the community for which it is designed. As these
needs increase so the standard will automatically grow to deal with
them. The rules for admission to the various State Bars in the United
States is a case in point. American Universities have automatically
produced a higher legal standard for their law qualifications as the
needs for commerce and industry have become more exacting. The
fact that neither Presidents Jackson nor Lincoln would have
qualified as lawyers under the conditions existing in the United
States today does not mean that either of them was not a first-class
attorney in the terms of his own society.

In one respect, however, I was able to achieve something. The
General Legal Council agreed that a Law School should be set up
which was to be part-time for two years and full-time for one year
only. It was intended to attract a number of those, particularly in
the lower and intermediate grades of the Civil Service, army, police
and commerce, who had the necessary educational background but
whose families lacked the money to send them to London to read
aw. Again, its successes and failures were an object lesson on the
issue of standards. It was not acceptable that the level of qualifi-
cation should be lower than that at least of the English Bar examin-
al f K * n . anc k as was ne cessary also to teach the students the elements
° u “ an .^ s °i‘ c * tors ’ work, in fact the standard was
inuc lgher. Considerable numbers enrolled and then fell away
ut a ew did qualify during the short period the school was in
existence. One of these was the wife of John Harlley, now the
\ ice-chairman of the National Liberation Council, but then head of

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 319

the Special Branch of the Police Force. I used from time to time to
drop in at his house in order to get from them both advice on the
working of the course and how we could persuade more of the police
to enrol.

The Law School, nevertheless, in its turn succumbed also to
academic opposition. In Colonial days the University had been
unwilling to establish a law faculty, though this had been recom-
mended by the University of London under whose guidance it
came. These future champions of academic freedom in this par-
ticular matter yielded at once to the Colonial Office prejudices
against lawyers. Once however Ghana became independent and we
had found a Professor, the excuse why nothing could be done
in this regard, disappeared. The University had its revenge. It
insisted that no one should be admitted to practice who had not
secured a degree at it.

In the meantime, as a short-term measure, it was necessary to
recruit from outside Ghana not only for the Attorney General’s
department but for die Law Courts, the University legal staff and,
if possible, for other Government departments.

Our first source was British technical aid. Under the scheme then
in force the British Government would lend technicians and pay
their salaries to fill gaps where no local recruitment was possible.
This plan, admirable in conception, was rendered largely inopera-
tive in practice because the British Treasury would never agree to
the creation of sufficient supernumerary posts to form a pool from
which technical aid could be drawn. The House of Commons
appointed a Fourth Clerk to the Table, when only three were
required for the British purposes and there was therefore always one
highly trained parliamentary technician available to go abroad to
advise countries attempting to develop a Parliamentary system.
This example showed that the scheme was possible but the methods
of the Idouse of Commons were not followed by other British
Government departments.

Technical aid was accepted in theory as a moral obligation that
must be met but when it came to applying it the technicians were
seldom available. For example, the reform of the law of insolvency
was a necessity not only for Ghana but for Britain which was at
that time Ghana’s principal trading partner. I had in the end to go
personally to Sir Frank Lee, then the Permanent Secretary at the

320

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Board of Trade to beg for the loan of a Chief Clerk to a Chief
Registrar in Bankruptcy to help us with some highly technical
problems in regard to insolvency. Finally and, as a great favour we
obtained the Chief Clerk’s services for three months, but only, so far
as I can remember, provided he gave up part of his leave and we
met various costs. When later we wished to establish a Science
Museum we were only able to borrow an expert from the Science
Museum in South Kensington, if we paid everything in sterling,
including the British share of his superannuation payments.

It must have been apparent to anyone who made any scientific
study of the matter that African countries coming to Independence
Mould have to re-shape their laws and that they had no technicians
with which to do it. Yet the Parliamentary Counsel Office in Britain,
where drafting of Parliamentary Acts is carried out, was never
expanded so as to meet this obvious need. We were particularly
lucky in Ghana in that, having applied first, we obtained under
technical aid two leading draftsmen, A. N. Stainton and, after he
left, brancis Bennion.

Other African States were not so lucky and Ghana had in the
en to provide, from its small stock of scarcely trained draftsmen,
tec mcians in this field for East African Commonwealth countries.
A ride of the British Parliamentary Counsel’s Office prevented it
taking Ghanaians for training and we had to go to the Irish Republic
in order to obtain help in this regard. Had we had to depend on
cc mca ai or our recruitment of the outside experts needed, the
Ghana legal services would have broken down. Fortunately it is
possi e, i one looks around the world, to find many people who
cannot ac leve vvhat they want to in their own countries, because
ere is something wrong with them which, from the Ghanaian
point of view, was immaterial.

Indeed, doser inspection reveals a world full of such people. For
' jjlf 5 L> , ln Ce y lo n there was S. Namasivayam, who was the
• 1° U 'i° standard works on its Constitution but could never

countrv'V^i r f k ° f second Parliamentary Counsel in his own
materSl • S ™“ bccausc he was a Tamil, a disability im-

cSuia OUE ' U “ Gha “ a " d raa<k him FirS '

E I" SaST U . n . iv ? rsi, r Patrick Atyiah, the son of

> a i, a distinguished Arab nationalist but long resident

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAFSTAFF HOUSE 3 21

in England, who had been the Secretary in London of the Ar
office out of which grew the Arab League. Has son Itektad .a
double First in Law from Oxford. What was wrong wi
that his Arabic was not as fluent as that of his fa er s - * Tr nCT i; s h
no disability in Accra. He was the author of a stan ar »
work on the Sale of Goods and was just the type o exper ,

needed. To strengthen the prosecution branch we °^ n ^ ’

Ulric Cross, who sat as Judge Advocate at the Awtoy Court
Martial. Originally a solicitor from Trinidad, e a Office 5

been called to the English bar and worked m the Cobnml Offi^
In the war he had a distinguished record and was a navi* t
RAF, had become a Squadron Leader, and had won ffi^FCand

the dso. What was wrong with him, from a pom disability 0 in

practice in Britain, was his colour. Again, this was no disability

The same issue, accentuated by Cayworked in

broadminded enough to accept a ^ judice aga inst women

to accept a woman, and those reservations on the question of
lawyers, often turned out to which was t0 anticipate

race. In a matrilineal society s Hi^h Court Bench, sex was no

Britain in appointing a woman to i » nor the other .

disability and colour counte n p Qrm brought us recruits from
The same principle, in a ,, Wing-Commander in the

Canada and Ireland. Sidney nf . n alizcd bv his being subject to
legal service of the RCAF, va rat j ona j officers, and therefore

the same early retirement age peace-keeping force, where

had to leave the United Nan ^taff 0 f General Bums. We thus

he was an administrator on tn de experience, capable of

secured someone with cons Commercial Section of my office,
building up the new' and ' or of Statute Law Revision m the Irish
Vincent Grogan, Directo h ; m in the sense that Pauli

Republic, had nothing merel y that, at the time, Statute

Murray, for example, h d.^ ^ provide sufficient stimulus or

Law Revision \ rela , thus he was willing to be seconded to
scope for his abihties • Irebnd j n Ghana, John Hearnc, had
Ghana. His successor Constitution and had seen his work

been the draftsman of the l -

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

322

copied in the Indian and many other, perhaps less well known,
Constitutions. He had been later the first Irish High Commissioner
to Canada and then Irish Ambassador to the United States, where
it was said his list of honorary degrees from American Universities
far surpassed the score previously obtained by any other member
of the diplomatic corps in Washington. We were able to obtain his
assistance simply because he had reached the normal retiring age
for Irish civil servants. Perhaps even Mr Justice Granville Sharp
could be put into this class. His difficult}', if it may be so described,
was that, though he had stood as a Liberal candidate for the Epping
Division of Essex in every single inter-war general election, he had
never quite been able to defeat Sir Winston Churchill, though in
the 1929 election he came within striking distance of it.

In those days Ghana presented opportunity for people of ability
who for some reason or another were thwarted in their own country,
to cany out abroad the work they had hoped to do at home. For
example, we were able to get a foremost expert on English Company
aw, ro essor L. C. B. Gower, then Cassel Professor of Commercial
Law at London University and who is now one of the Law Com-
missioners, to come to Ghana to work on that type of progressive
Corporation legislation which he had been unable to persuade
ose m authority to accept in England. The background to his

appointment illustrates the sort of difficulties with which we had
to contend.

At the time of the Boer War there had been a Director of
eo ogy in e old Coast who had, perhaps imprudently, asserted
V Tlr lhat PotentiaHy the Colony was as wealthy in gold as
u nca. he immediate result of his statement was, not an
2 u a r V production of gold on the Gold Coast, but a fantastic
tip hcation of the companies registered to exploit it. In the end,

remflr Ar m ° n thc Colonial authorities that the Colony at least
TR- ° mP T leS Act ’ and cast ro ™d for the first one in
and in T n S * ? Ut t0 ^ English Companies Act of 1862,

LawofX 7 r XV CrCe J d ’ a ! m ° St WOrd for word > as the Company
panics An tW r ° aS p des P lte t ' le fact that a new English Com-
ComnanJ ’ a w 9 !? 8 ’ W3S already on the stocks - The Gold Coast

Wht T 't b " n S fty y “' S behind ^

cenu.rtA ;?/ ;"’" GeneraI « ™ »lre»dy nearly a

ty ut of date. In its heyday the English Act of 1862 had been

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 323

regarded as the Companies Promoters’ Charter, and it may have
been because we still then possessed it that Dr Savundra had been
attracted to Ghana. It was typical of the type of law which we had
to reform before any controlled private enterprise development was
possible.

At the same time as Professor Gower was making his visits to
deal 'with Company Law, we were able, thanks to the working of
the system by which, on grounds quite immaterial to Ghana,
developed countries got rid of able technicians, to secure as Pro-
fessor of Law at the University and as Head of the Law School a
scholar and practical commercial lawyer, John Lang, whose
experience and knowledge would normally have been far beyond
our reach. Indeed, possibly he might have occupied Professor
Gower’s Chair if he had not been persuaded to accept, instead of an
academic post, the position of deputy Solicitor to Imperial Chemical
Industries. Then came a dreadful discovery. His wife had once been
a Communist! In such circumstances, said the British Government,
they would order no more armaments from ICI until they changed
their deputy solicitor. When his case had been raised in the House
of Commons, Mr Reginald Maudling, speaking for the then Con-
servative Government, was adamant on the point at issue. A
Committee of Privy Councillors, he explained, had pointed out:

*. . . that in deciding these difficult and often borderline cases, it is
right to continue the practice of tilting the balance in favour of offering
greater protection to the security of the State rather than in the direc-
tion of safeguarding the rights of the individual.’

Thus it was that two years later John Lang was established in
Ghana as Professor of Law in the University. His appointment
was however not made, even in Ghana, without difficulty. Hitherto
the University College’s explanation as to why it had not established
a law faculty was that it had been impossible to find any sufficiently
qualified individual who could be obtained as a Professor. John
Lang had the support of London University, with which the
University College of Ghana of that time was in ‘special relation-
ship’ and indeed his appointment had originally been suggested
by Sir David Hughes Parry, a former Vice-Chancellor of London
University and well known for his work in organizing Universities
in Nigeria. Nevertheless, these University of Ghana academics,

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

who were later so strongly to defend their academic freedom,
considered that in this case they could not make the appointment
without first obtaining British security' clearance and it was not
until this was granted that the appointment could be made.

Permission was not always so easily forthcoming. In the early
days of Independence the Public Service Commission followed a
similar rule. We were badly in need of Veterinary officers of which
at the time there was a surplus in Denmark, and some Danish
veterinaries were prepared to come to Ghana. The appointment
could not be made, not because the applicants were Communists,
but because those in Britain who were advising the Ghana Public
Service Commission, lacked the machinery to enable them to
discover the past political history of Danes and presumably, on the
John Lang analog}', of their wives, and therefore the Public Service
Commission was advised to reject the applications in bulk.

Ultimately, to save the scruples of the University on the question
o appointment of persons whose background did not square with
t eir views of political propriety', a class of Presidential Professors
was established for whose appointment, like that to Regius Pro-
fessorships in Britain, the Government accepted full responsibility,
io one of these Chairs, that of Physics, Alan Nunn May was
appointe and startled muttcrings of disapproval came from various
T ^ j tlC i c l uartcrs an( l landed on tire desk of a Ghanaian official
w o a always prided himself on being completely outside politics,
iriis reaction was revealing.

During his period at a British University he had been most
care u to avoid joining any organization which might have any
oca or international political tinge but, being of a religious turn
o mm , e ad thought it safe to join a church organization which
concerned itself with the after-care of released criminals. ‘When
was m ngland, he said bitterly, ‘I tried to rehabilitate their
prisoners. Now when we try to rehabilitate one of theirs, there is
• , !1, us l s ‘ see now what the old man means about neo-colonial-

‘nt ° > m ? n WaS Nkrumah. The phrase is an angliciza-
. , ana > t ^ le of respect awarded to chiefs and was the

the™ resident C ° nVerSation by civil servants and police officers for

p tbe bav ' School, John Lang’s second-in-command was Leslie
, a recent y arrived white South African lawyer and a former

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 325

Senator. He had waited until the last moment when his Senatorship
was about to be abolished, and then made his way abroad and he
was typical of that class of liberal South African, who gravitated to
Ghana to find employment there. Some were white, some coloured
and some black. All had to choose between accepting a system which
rejected the political and social ideas for which they stood, or
abandoning the country of their birth.

Their presence in Ghana was later to raise an issue which African
Nationalism has not yet resolved and in which both my wife
and myself were to become indirectly involved. What, in terms of
the liberation of Africa, ought South African opponents of the
apartheid regime to be encouraged to do? Should they stay in South
Africa and fight it out or should they emigrate? If the question was
only one of propaganda, then obviously it was better that those
who could possibly remain, outside jail, should stay. A refugee
political movement is, from its very divorcement from popular
contact, likely to lead to faction fights and dispersion of effort.
Because the political refugee must, in the long run, be dependent
for funds on other Governments and organizations, based in
countries foreign to his own, he is subjected to influences which
lead him, if only subconsciously, to support policies favoured by
those who give him succour and hospitality. Since the countries and
organizations helping the refugees are unlikely to approach his home
situation from the same angle, there is added another outside
pressure which further stimulates the natural tendency of refugees
to quarrel.

From the African point of view there was however another
argument strongly in favour of encouraging refugees. Those who
had been so politically committed in South Africa, as to be incap-
able of living normal lives any longer there, tend to be drawn from
the more able and more skilled of the professional class and this
was certainly so among potential white refugees. The skills which
they had acquired in South Africa, whether it was in the Foreign or
Civil Service, mining or administration of industry generally,
public health, teaching, journalism or law, were those abilities
most lacking in the developing African States.

The historical example of the Huguenots is an argument in
favour of encouraging their emigration. In all probability only
fifty thousand Protestant families escaped from France after the

3 zb REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Yet these were sufficient
to establish the watch-making industries of Switzerland, to contri-
bute, perhaps decisively, to the industrial revival of Holland and to
set on foot that of Brandenberg. Huguenot soldiers, like Ruvigny
and Schomberg, introduced into the training of the British and
Dutch forces the disciplines and techniques of the armies of France
an possi y thus payed the way for the subsequent victories of
ar oroug . By an irony of fate, it was these same Huguenots,
tieemg from intolerance and oppression at home, who saved the
Ut< T . ^ tbc Cape. It was the industrial knowledge and

specia s '1 s of two hundred Protestant French families which
res ore prosperity to a Colony, which up till then could neither pay
is way nor even provision adequately the forty-odd Dutch and
oreign s ips, which at the time was the meagre annual total of
shippmg which used the ports of the Cape.

AfnVa S r W ™ e Value of attractin 5 to Ghana this South

0 • H * 311 3 ter ‘'’harpeville in i960 my wife was to pioneer an

by Which refu S ees of & colours were
“ , C l ‘ an and 3nd airlifted over the Federation of
transit— lin'd' ^ ^ ou ^ d bave been arrested even if only in
total nil ml "'k-'u ^ Con S° and from there on to Ghana. The
but ° M ™ S Sm *“-o„ly twenty-four-

svnchrnn irl r j 1 r tL t i''Jt was, its detailed planning, with the
tine border crn ° 1 C " a '” ItS across South Africa and of clandes-
It gave hone tn S fh n ^ S, ‘ W ^ a demonstration of what could be done,
waflom^, ” ‘ " , J S °" ,h AfHca ." i“ ls “d “Sored them there

resources was ° Ut j 6 ? 0Ut ^ ^-hrica which, however meagre its
at the time of the d lep ' Some y ears later . bei ng in England

of the Snfereni uT ^ COnference > I went to it. In the lounge

1 began discuss' Af - Were a S rou P °f South African refugees and
bored “t SS* AfnCan affairs with them. They were obviously

T ” ld **"”■»« ”d they
are so sorrv > sJd Y ' r ! 6 later the ^ returned in a body. ‘We
Bing’s husband.’ ^ ° them ’ * We dldn,t realize Y 011 were Mrs

documenUve mven^H^^^ 68 WC wanted t0 com e to Accra a travel
theory °fC°nimonwealth^itizensh^p. S Ml 0 Comrnonwealth^countties

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 327

had agreed, at the time of the passing of the British Nationality Act
of 1948, to include a Section in their own Nationality Acts giving a
special status to citizens of the Commonwealth. When Ghana
became Independent this practice was followed and on this authority
passports could be issued to South African citizens. The Ghana
Document had this letter of introduction on the inside cover:

‘The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ghana presents his compliments
to all those to whom this letter shall come and has the honour to state
that the holder, is a Commonwealth citizen by virtue of section 9 of
the Ghana Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1957 and is entitled to all
privileges and immunities of a British subject. The holder has indi-
cated his desire to take up residence in Ghana and this letter is issued
to enable him to do so.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ghana therefore requests all
those whom it may concern to afford to the holder the status of a
Commonwealth citizen and to allow him to pass freely without hin-
drance and to afford him such assistance and protection as may be
necessary.’

On the second page it contained, again strictly in accordance with
the then universal Commonwealth Law, after the Document’s
number and the name of its bearer, the statement:

‘ Status

Commonwealth Citizen;
British Subject.

COMMONWEALTH COUNTRY OF WHICH A CITIZEN
The Union of South Africa.’

The document was generally honoured but not in the Rhodesian
Federation. Sir Roy Welensky, when Dr Nkrumah raised it with
him at a Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference, made it clear
that he considered he had the right to pick and choose which
Commonwealth obligation he would accept or reject. Naturally the
conditions under which the applicants could apply for the document
were a little out of the ordinary. We had provided the Minister of
Foreign Affairs might designate individuals who could issue the
passport outside Ghana and an old Colonial British Civil Servant,
for a short time Mr Russell’s successor as Chief Regional Officer in

328

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Ashanti, Mr David MacWilliam, had been sent to Salisbury to deal
with South African applications. In view of Sir Roy’s opposition,
his mission was fruitless.

My wife was therefore also commissioned to issue them in any
other territory where this was permitted. Ultimately, still in
possession of some two dozen passports my wife ignominiously
oun lerself, having been caught in the first mutiny of the Force
1 ublique in Leopoldville, reduced to the status of a refugee. Her
nope of escape lay m crossing the Congo River to Brazzaville, from
wiose airport United States military planes were flying to Europe
; 0S , C 0 cou d manage to escape from the Congo. Within ten
^ a , r , S 0 tle err y gangway she was surrounded by mutinous
vnli/T? "• 10 I sus P ect ^ her of being a Belgian and smuggling out
a es in t e bag in which she was carrying the passports. Her
refusal t0 understand French and the soldiers’ inability to
t, i _ lc P‘ lss P orts g°t her through but her only method of getting

aircraft 3na . Was ^° secure passage on a United States refugee
aircraft evacuating Belgians to Brussels.

c , !! S ^ mCld “ ts ' ver , e > however, the least of her troubles. For the
e n “in airlift she had intended to use a civil aircraft, a four-

and wat ? ak , 1 ’ Whlch had been lent b y the United Arab Republic
o Bib,! , n I CX P enenced Syrian pilots. The plan was to !ake it
wouldt fvTh f nd , P1Ck UP there the refugees, who meanwhile

for the ulf ff e r C an CStmeIy assem hled. United Nations clearance
Govern mpnf t, i° n ^° a ' r P orts had been obtained and the British
in Bechuaml ^ a ^ rcc tbat the aircraft could land at Francistown
meS * h ™ on the point of take-off when a cyphered
with those* con fro, i™™ tbe wdf eless link which we maintained
South Africa > -j® tle as f em hhng of the refugees. Conditions in

for fouf d vs’ The d ’ neC “ d that the ^t should be delayed
Cross stores whf V a . lr " a \ however ’ was already loaded with Red
in the Consro dfh ^ beCn agreed h should take to UN troops
scheduled but 1 ? r was decided that it should take off as

cTosf on boar^r n my ^ wkh ^ ambers the Red
dist ss sifnaT Th ^ ^ AcCra ak P ort received from it a
airporr or s f l if* C ° uld not ° btain a from Leopoldville
was worried (yjrn H Sa ,l ’ vT c ° ns ‘ stent navigational directions. He

of peS nd ^ ^ He waS sbort

• here was nothing we could do but wait,

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 329

listening to his continual calls for help. His last message was that he
was over the sea, that his fuel was exhausted and he would have to
make a crash landing in the water. In fact he was not over the sea
but over a broad reach of the Congo River. By chance when the
aircraft was on the point of sinking, a river vessel came along and
the crew and the Red Cross officials were taken aboard, though the
aircraft was lost.

My wife made the journey four days later in an Air Ghana two-
engined Dakota which lacked the range of the lost aircraft and
meant that it was necessary to refuel in both Leopoldville and
Elizabethville in Katanga. The outward journey was made safely
though it was the first time, apparently, that an African had piloted
an aircraft South of the Equator. On the return journey with a full
load of refugees, after leaving Elizabethville, my wife noticed petrol
pouring from the tanks. As soon as the aircraft Captain saw what
was happening he headed back to the airport but the runway was
blocked by oil drums and trucks and it was a question of whether
these could be cleared away in time for the aircraft to land before
all its fuel had leaked away. In the end it got down, but it was a close
thing.

The Belgian Sabena staff were nonchalant about the whole
affair. ‘Those Africans,’ they said, ‘why they forgot to fit the cap to
the fuel tanks.’ The two incidents on top of each other, followed
incidentally shortly afterwards by the loss of Dag Hammarskjold’s
aircraft, raise a question as to whether all was coincidence.

Be that as it may, in fact neither the recruitment of South African
refugees nor the enlistment of specialists from abroad was sufficient
to deal with Ghana's lack of technical manpower even on the legal
side. So far as modernizing the law was concerned the problem
could, in any event, only be undertaken if it was more broadly based.
Effective law requires text books and specialists. These will not be
found, for purely economic reasons, if a particular law is confined to
one small country. It does not pay for a publisher to publish a text-
book on, say, Ghanaian Bankruptcy Law or for a lawyer to specialize
in it. On the other hand, the principles of a bankruptcy lav/ worked
out for Ghana would make it suitable, with small modifications for
other African states and territories with, a British legal system. The
legal uniformity over large areas upon which textbooks and
specialists depend could have been secured in the past. There was

33 °

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

no reason technically why this uniformity had not been achieved in
Colonial days, and, after British African Colonies became inde-
pendent, there was nothing to prevent their each adopting similar
laws, except for the fact that there was no central Commonwealth
organization to prepare them and organized conferences to agree
to them and to secure uniformity of practice. During Air Alac-
millan s wind of change’ visit to Africa, Dr Nkrumah put up to him
this idea. There was some exchange of correspondence about it and
I once saw Mr Alacmillan on it in London, but nothing effective in
the end was ever done.

So it was indeed, it seemed, with every project on which Common-
wealth co-operation was possible. The failure to co-operate so far as
1 f "'" , i as concerned was of no great importance. The different forms
o Colonial legislation which the newly independent African States
o the Commonwealth had inherited, were, through their ineffi-
ciency, slowness and uncertainty, of course, a clog on industriali-
zation and an invisible surcharge on ever}' commercial transaction.

et 1 \\ e had been able, through a Commonwealth scheme, to
devise the best legal system in the world, we should only have been
scratc nng at the surface of those underlying problems to which
cooperation between developed and developing countries should
first have been directed. The more one devoted oneself to legal
retorm the more irrelevant it seemed.

For example, I think it might be shown that the Ghanaian
Interpretauon Act was by far in advance of anything in Britain, the

."nr’ the Cornmomv ealth or in countries which have a
so-called common law system. My claim to any credit for its
composition is small. I knew precisely what I wanted. I had deter-
° n f the 8 eneraI hnes and priorities of law reform, but the
W, '7 r j DeW a "' S ’ a . hl S hl y specialized task, was outside my field,
and'm act T t0 ^ ccrn com petent experts from abroad

work wh'TV 7 ^ lanaian rec ruits to this exacting branch of legal

Mined t Vi "T b u'“ “P™ t0 lh “” P">P' rl >'

influence T L j ana ai ?^ I was able to use what political

similnr tp 1 , 3 - 'i" seem S t l lat this Interpretation Act and many other
r u S r r^ 1Ca T SUreS Wereena «ed. There can, I think, be no
existed hirhe't ^ succee ^ e< l l 11 producing the best basis which
lezislarinn TT ° m c< ? mmon l aw countries for the interpretation of
egislation. Unquestionably it was immeasurably ahead of the

332 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Subjectively, Western thought shrinks from considering the
a ternatn e consequences to mankind which would flow from the
banning of the malign explosions.

In a less politically oriented journal, Punch, I tried to answer this
and similar arguments by putting the case, of which by 1061, 1 had
ecome convinced. All my experience as Attorney General in
‘ ■ , Cmp in = 1ITUted reform along conventional lines, seemed to me
ither premature or valueless. If individuals from developed

rnnlV^V'T 0 j° °f an y service in the less developed world, it

■ -r 0 ^ , e ? ne by their challenging accepted basic political,

j i C f n , SOC1 j theories which pre-supposed the existence of a

het-\wJ )C >i, an r 3 de ^ e °P\ n £ world, doomed for ever to be divided

m t i • , e T C "' r . 1C1 nat ‘ons and the many poor ones. The argu-

this fnrn! C if trlC * c? h Ut * n rc Piy to Mr Killick, ran something in

Domilnti'n A 7 Car ! countr y> hke Ghana, cannot support the

that the ind' f C - \ ev ® °P ed country like Britain can, the reason is

it did not df rev ° lu t tlon in the West eliminated the horse but
it did not do away with the cow.

appliecTto tit'' 12 ' Progress produced a revolution of power
vested landed ? ^ an . manu facture but, perhaps in deference to
form Revolnf' ln C - reStS ’ ir eft a griculture essentially in its neolithic
as Areas'! Productive capacity has been defined

So far as minnftV * r j efo d dur * n g the life span of an individual,
the West in the it * C . ^ oods are concerned, this was done in
century and is n and hrst half of the nineteenth

history of man P l° bab J ^ done a S ain today. It has never in the
scieS has been Tn 1 °^ “ the ' aase of Culture, In so far as
true have been C t0 a g r i cu hure, two ears of corn, it is
possibly at the £ F™ W ^? ere one grew before, though

has been no am-i P i nse ,° Pdle nutritive value of the flour, but there
been an indusS ltural revolution in the sense in which there has
become a mythical atside f h e racecourse the horse has now
measurement of the nT 1 Wh ? S - C Pormer prowess is today the unit of
us, still performing ^u Wer ° btS su Pplanter but the cow is still with
Stone Age. ° 6 Same econom ic function as it did in the

to ^eat S grass alld sbce man first employed the cow

cheese fhe protebS P “? 4l bad ‘ W Hm 38 meat > milk; butter and
protein he could not otherwise extract. In hese far off

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAFSTAFF HOUSE 333

days the conversion factor of the cow was, so far as science can
calculate it, just over 5 per cent. Today the most cosseted and well-
fed cow has a conversion factor of around 15 per cent and the
animal is still limited to its ancient narrow range of diet. The Stone
Age cow wasted from man’s point of view 95 per cent of its protein
intake. The cow of this supersonic age wastes 85 per cent. Such is
a measure of the agricultural lag in the last nine thousand years.
Yet there is no reason why it is not possible mechanically and
chemically to eliminate the cow as well as the horse. The production
of protein direct from leaf is already scientifically possible and to do
it on an industrial scale, thus producing an agricultural revolution
capable of feeding all the mouths humanity could produce would be
no more expensive nor require more scientific skill than a journey
to the moon.

Why is the one attempted and not the other? May it not be that
there is a barrier in men’s minds in the developed countries pro-
duced by the very prosperity they have attained which forces
research into the trivial? Faced with the problem of a globe three-
quarters of whose inhabitants are growing poorer and poorer and
one-quarter richer and richer, scientific energy seems concentrated
on escaping from its surface into space rather than looking at that
surface and determining how it could be adapted better to support
its inhabitants. Decadence implies turning one’s back on progress,
refusing any longer to interrogate nature or to continue the process
by which man, step by step, has conquered his environment.
Nowhere in the West is there this trend. Nature is challenged more
and more daringly but, if looked at from an undeveloped continent,
more and more pointlessly. It is not the energy that is lacking. It is
the insight to direct it where it is needed. In material things the less
developed world cannot compete with the developed but it can
provide by its challenge to existing values the stimulus to direct
world energy into new channels and at least compel us to ask
ourselves whether science and progress have not broken adrift from
their moorings to humanity.

It was because I had begun to think like this by 1961 that I
wanted to be rid of law and the duties of administering a depart-
ment. Ghana, I thought then, was a country that, with all its short-
comings, was one in which at least the ability and will to challenge
existing values existed. It seemed to me Ghana was somewhere

l!l \1> ‘ 1 II}. Vi Illr.t.V !ND

n ,! 1 ;! 0 ? ^,r sU,lc V’. pruu,kc a fcimcw of ideas restrained by
V° ° t ’ lui , ' lrrKr: ’- 1 be real objectives to work fur, it seemed to
(.riil.-lV!’ '.V! ' l - IKU y‘l UCiIU, n.ii .system and at the top institutions
niL'iiMHi*" nr C ' 11011 " Uck c<ndd *' c forcing ground for a funda-
... ‘ * u truu . a PP ruJc1 ' t«> the problems of mankind. Talking

tou ink* 1 “r "** !• ?. r * N 'l- ruill 'l 1 , 1 said that 1 hoped to work
the Pr< ; l' 1 , 'I’ °.! 1 sort * u 'd he suggested J might take one of

1, d V at the University. '

sav for tlir”- 1113 ’ “ UC ' u]ctl tu smc it,r ,MO normal tours, that is to
to* deil ubh W" ; \T lK K C ’^l 1 had stayed on in the post
out of ii l '| L ^ pul)llcan (■•‘institution and the matters arising

<luil . wrl > *« September, vhen I
and ] hid ts^'^*! ° r lour ) CJr!>> lasers thing had been arranged
annronriio. I "r'l 3M C ' )nsU . tUliolul ljs} '. *c»t to the President an
my 0 flj cc ra 1 utcr iur ^‘ ,n 10 send back to me, relies ing me of

to stay on °for ^ I ^ I ' str '^' c and * ls aftermath, once again I was asked
month that the p ^ i° r M> ?! ld so 11 " Ji not until' the end of the
Mmc time , * '7 tUkI n,c hc send off to me at the

the fair copy of theTeUer f 1 , d, . a " sc \ lo <)thcr Cabinet Ministers,
agreed 1 lud P ra, °usly drafted. I should, we

suggested adding to 17"'’ •' S ud becn planned, and Dr.N’krumah
appointed J SuU? ToT* of >* retirement that 1 was being
nothing to do with" he u ro . fcs:>0 . r - 1 llou gh these appointments had
more tactful if he ‘ Umvc«.uy, I thought it might at least be
I thought w as a 1TZ ^ ,n . ad ™« md so agreed on what

‘asked to remain in G1 nu>mnm,a l phrase, namely, that 1 had been
remain m Ghana to carry out certain assignments’.

papers, Vndmv C mhem° Ut my ° W cncmics .» thc Beaverbrook news-
On thc front p a <r C of " 7 co, ! vcrtcti Int0 a one-day sensation,
spread : P ° f thc Slwd V Ex P r ™ there w as a seven-column

A ‘ for tough talking

kkrumaii sensation

HE SACKS DING, Q.C.

“t keeps him in Ghana for special tasks.'

On thc eve of thc visit to Ghana by Mr Duncan Sandys, the Com-

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 335

monwealth Relations Minister,’ explained the Sunday Express political
correspondent, ‘President Nkrumah caused a sensation yesterday by
sacking Mr Geoffrey Bing, Q.c. — former Left-wing Labour m.p. —
from the post of Ghana’s Attorney-General. . . .

In London the news caused widespread speculation; especially so as it
comes at a time when the Queen’s visit to Ghana, due to take place in
six weeks, is in the balance, and when Mr Sandys is to try to heal the
widening breach between Britain and Ghana. . . . For Mr Bing’s role
in Ghana has won him no acclaim in Whitehall or Westminster. . . .
He is believed to have been chiefly responsible for devising Ghana’s
Republican Constitution which gives President Nkrumah almost dic-
tatorial powers. . . .’

and naturally there were many more paragraphs to this same
effect.

By this time I was hardened to it. I moved out of the Attorney-
General’s office and settled into an office at Flagstaff House, the
former residence of the British General commanding in West
Africa, but where the President lived and worked. The two rooms
where I established myself were in a one-storey temporary building,
among the cluster of other similar hutments, outside the main
compound area of Flagstaff House.

This overcrowded agglomeration of temporary buildings grouped
in the grounds of a post-war colonial bungalow has subsequently
come to be represented as a mysterious fortified centre of intrigue,
policed by security officers from the USSR. To Dr Schatten,
Flagstaff House was ‘a Colonial Fort’ where ‘a President too
scared to appear among his people for months on end’ was ‘forced
to live cooped up’ behind a presidential guard armed to the teeth
with every modem weapon. Unfortunately, so far as Dr Nkrumah’s
Government w'as concerned, Flagstaff House was not so well
protected as this.

So many people have subsequently testified to seeing the Russian
guards that I feel like the odd man out at the party who always
missed the ‘flying saucers’. My only consolation is that my secretary,
Miss Margaret MacDougall, a Wren Officer from the last war and a
Colonial Civil Servant of many years standing, failed also to notice
them. The Presidential guard, which the mutineers defeated only
after a considerable period of fighting, was no Praetorian force but

336 REAP the whirlwind

training 2 Household ^00^ ^ .J rivilegeS 3n< !
guards for British nil , * roo P s who provide ceremonial

Led, „o by tp S ““ P “ b !! C buM "S s ' * W been ins.i-
British Commande/of tife Ghaim Army ^

“S’ ” Gh “ a >’ he "™“ '» b« book African

4 Z\! X G ““ d "»*■* w bose main

reliefs simpler and f™, ,1 , SC and Vlsitlng Vlp s. It made Congo
service.’ ' n 3 bome f° r °ld soldiers unfit for active

the circumstances 1 ' oftfT aWe mamtain so strong a resistance in
February ° n Flagstaff House on the a 4 th

matically with the rebel c A m- y means aP the army sided auto-
F ort’ or a stronghold with le ,?' F agstaff House was not a ‘Colonial
around the u..:,n h Wel1 Signed defences. There was a wall

Fort’ or a stronghold with JTj Flagstaff House was not a ‘Col —
around the main buildino- th f S - gned defences. There was a wal
for example, surrounds die * W f £ 0t S ° high as that which
outer perimeter defence so ® de ” s of Buckingham Palace. Th>
surmounted by ornament 1 s .P ea k> consisted of a waist-high wal
small boys but not Quite th tf” ' ngS> an Active protection agains
capture of this supposed^^dif 16 ’ W A cb tbe ^b^’s account of theii
The London S If ' ” B5 ' „ .

reported an account of Flagstaff u Februa ^ x 9 6 6 in all seriousness
the subsequent propaganda ° USe wbldl * s typical of much ol

un-

‘There

stocked with rnore°amlr SSaSeS ™ nnin S for some miles. These a:
Ghana Army and with fn ** * 3 ° tbat P ossesse d by the who!
booo security Jn ln J for something like six months for '

known number of Russians^ndChfneE^ Hous ^- in cIuding an

Nkrumah’s day" 11615 ° r the Ilke were built at Flagstaff House in I
No doubt because of rh

did not ahv ays advertise in ad van ° n his life Dr Nkruma

«nd because of his devotion to f ^ WS Ieaving the build in
P er baps, than many other Spent longer at his desl

egree of social S e C i us io n would h „° f state - Had I known that hi
could easily have kept a log- sin C< f- me 3 matter °f general conceri
P tog, since from the window of my office

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 337

could see his car entering or leaving. My impression is that he went
out during office hours, perhaps seven or eight times in a week but I
confess I have kept no statistics. As always with a head of state there
were difficulties in his making informal visits and I have no standard
of comparison to say whether he moved more or less freely than any
other President. V hat I do know is that he never accepted seclusion.
Even at the time of greater tension I used to occasionally bathe with
him and other friends some ten miles out of Accra at a little public
beach without so far as I could see any abnormal security precautions.

At the opening of the Volta Hydro-Electric Station, less than a
month before the coup, when for the first time the power was
switched on so as to illuminate the dam and the lighting on the hank
of the river switched off to emphasize the contrast, he walked in the
semi-dark through the vast crowd greeting those whom he could
distinguish in the half-light and was quite unguarded.

When Dr Nkrumah married, my wife came to know Madame
Nkrumah and, for a year or so, used to visit her nearly every day in
order to help her with her English. When Dr Nkrumah and I would
be away my wife would more often than not stay with her. These
were the days when Dr Nkrumah was Prime Minister and I was
Attorney General and Lord Listowel, the Governor-General, was
living temporarily at Flagstaff House, a residence incidentally which
we were told by experts on British protocol, was far too small and
undignified to be the permanent home of the Queen’s Representa-
tive and it was for this reason that the first enlargements to State
House were made. Dr Nkrumah was at this time living in a small
flat which occupied one half of the top storey of Christiansborg
Castle. This fort which had been built by the Danes m the eighteenth
century had been, until independence, the Governor’s official
residence. Under Dr Nkrumah it was converted from a minor
palace into a practical working centre and had to be hastily recon-
verted when it was used as the Residence of the Queen when she
visited Ghana in November 1961.

At this time Dr Nkrumah’s quarters consisted of a hving- room

opening onto a balcony overlooking the sea on one side with another

larger balcony overlooking the courtyard which was Used 33 a
second living-room. Leading off the main room on one side was the
main bedroom and bathroom and on the 1 other side two guest
bedrooms with a shared bathroom and one other small roo m which

33^ REAP THE WHIRLWIND

roomT\vJ' S k™ m ^ 1 , had dad ma de into a kitchen. The main living-

dri k n C ° onial da y s > 1 had had on occasion an informal

and the hill' a ovemor > were now only used for official receptions
and the bilhard r ° om was turned int0 offices

music hnnl? a ^ 1V - ed “ mforta bLv but simply. He liked good
enjoyed wh ’ OCCasiona hy hints and, contrary to his usual taste,
r 6 T the Beatles> «cord ‘It’s a Hard
and when w S wou d cad * n at the castle without ceremony

or o"the eLhr re ^ ^ W ° Uld ““ ° f US Sk taMn & ° n the ^

Se battlemen ts so as to watch the sea and

princbTe ^ He had n ° ob i ection whatever to drink in
Invariablv he \ S °!V '? pracdce that he was almost a teetotaller.

gU6StS ad vice on what to drink,
after tastine- if ^ anous suggestions before ordering and then
nonnall r leave it unfinished. He played tennis

when we went out done >° mS t0 leam t0 drive but never did > and

duty he was crav t h L ^ W3S m y w ^ e w h° would drive us. Off
y ne was gay and completely unaffected.

Flagstaff HouseThouffh 1 ] 16 be carried with him, so far as I know, to
If however officials and thJ h ™ S0C1 . all y much more seldom there,
the long lunch break h ^ , S f cretaries were working late or over
together at a 2 ble L tuo hX? SOm f a ^ ^ggest that we all ate
Head of State Droir>™l a T eranda °h his office. There was no

invariably served any

ministry and that ’if nmr ° senior . CIvd se rvant, did not visit any
concerned must come bad t0 ta ke place, the officials

be asked to take action in 1S ° ffice ' the Attorney General was to
the letter of request wac an ^ matter > standing orders provided that
personally by the Perman ° c I ° nored h it had not been signed

”• In .hf iaiSS 1 ?' Minist ^

prevailed and the atmncnt, a o st aff House, no such nonsense
chambers in England nm^i " ^ rat her like that of a barrister’s
informally and everyone talked dr0pped ln . on each other quite
any one of us might have ° Ver 3n ^ difficult piece of work

s concerned, directly or indirectly, on a wide variety of

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE TO FLAGSTAFF HOUSE 339

matters but all these questions were dealt with, not by one ‘Adviser’
but by an ad hoc group composed generally of Ministers and
officials. Someone would produce a draft paper which we would all
first discuss informally. In important matters the document might
then be cyclostyled and circulated to all ministries and others who
might be concerned. If the matter concerned External Affairs, the
Ghana Mission at the United Nations and the High Commissioners
or Ambassadors in the countries which might be affected were
almost always consulted.

During my time at Flagstaff House I worked on a wide range of
subjects but not on law, except in one or two special cases. I was a
member of the mixed police and legal committee which inquired
into the terrorist bomb outrages in Accra. I investigated some of
Ako Adjei’s financial dealings which had aroused suspicion and I, in
practice, had charge of an extradition case in which a man was
accused of conspiracy with a minister to defraud the Government
of some £2 million and had allegedly taken refuge abroad. Generally
speaking however I was concerned with civil service reorganization,
methods of preventing corruption, international questions at the
United Nations and the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Confer-
ence, in particular over Southern Rhodesia. I was closely concerned
with various negotiations over cocoa and with the ‘World Without
the Bomb’ Conference which was held in Accra in June, 1962 . 1 was
also concerned with the reform of Ghana’s educational system. This
last subject, which perhaps occupied the least of my time, was in
my view, by far the most important issue with which I was con-
nected.

CHAPTER TEN

EDUCATION

I never in fact went to the University and, as things turned out,
never was able to influence much what I believed then, and still
believe, was and will be, in Ghana and in other developing countries
the key issue. How can one begin to build an educational system
which is tuned to the needs of the country and which, for this very
reason, must be something other than a copy of any educational
system as it now exists in any developed country ?

In its broadest sense education consists of passing on and aug-
menting the knowledge which enables man to conquer his environ-
ment. The student’s mind must be so trained that he will for ever
after question, in accordance with scientific principles, the world in
which he lives. In short, education is the art of learning how to
interrogate nature. This was the attitude to learning developed in,
among other places, the Land Grant Colleges of the United States
from the third quarter of the nineteenth century onwards. It was
these colleges which, I used to argue, Ghana should have taken as
the prototype of the top of its educational pyramid and should have
adapted to Ghanaian conditions.

The universities in any country control educational policy
generally. The syllabus of the secondary school is designed to fit
their entrance requirements. Primary education is geared to provide
an intake to the secondary schools and which will have already given
the pupil the grounding which will enable him to pursue a course of
studies designed ultimately to lead to entry into the University. In
Ghana, the fact that only a tiny fraction of the children entering
primary schools were likely to go to a university did not affect this
general tendency to orient the whole system of education to ultimate
university requirements. To affect educational reform, it seemed to
me therefore necessary to begin with a university system which was
itself designed to provide for the needs of the country'.

As things were in Ghana this meant one had at the start to
challenge the principle of the English university in the form in

34 °

EDUCATION

341

which it had been imported into the Colonies and, indeed, in the
form in which in the previous century it had been imported into
India. During the heyday of imperialism it had come to be thought
in England that education’s most important function was not that
of teaching how the world might be improved, but of instructing
men how to rule men, and in teaching its corollary that the majority
of mankind should, as part of the natural order of things, submit to
the rule of the minority.

Originally the English Public Schools had been seen as the ideal
training ground for the Indian, and later, the Colonial administrator.
As the Clarendon Commission said of them in 1864, they were ‘the
chief nursery of our statesmen’. Haileybury College had been
founded by the East India Company in 1809 to educate their civil
servants and the virtues they instilled had at first seemed sufficient
equipment for the Colonial administrator. Schools were developed
to meet the need for an enlarged ruling class and were designed to
educate, on a basis of equality, the representatives of the old landed
families and the children of the self-made men of the industrial
revolution. Rugby, as reformed by Dr Thomas Arnold who was
appointed its headmaster in 1828, was the prototype. ‘It is not
necessary,’ wrote Arnold, ‘that this should be a school for three
hundred or even one hundred boys, but it is necessary that it should
be a school of Christian gentlemen.’ But what was the curriculum
which would train boys for this profession?

As a textbook for teaching how to be a gentleman, the Bible is a
very imperfect instrument. The boy destined to become a Colonial
Governor might learn what not to do and what type of Indirect
Ruler to avoid by studying the career of Pontius Pilate or Herod
Antipas, but where in the Scriptures was the prototype of the good
Colonial Governor or even the good Indirect Ruler? It might be
possible to conceal from the boys that a great part of the Bible
consists of denunciations of the propertied class and calls for revolt
against Colonial overlords. It might be possible not to over-
emphasize that the right to overthrow by force tyrannical rulers is
the main message of the prophets. All this might be contrived but it
still remained impossible to construct from the Bible a coherent
code of conduct for the Christian gentlemen of Victorian England.
Yet the social structure of English society and the fact that Britain
possessed a large Colonial Empire made it necessary to teach, to

342 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

justify the thesis of Colonial rule, that there were certain persons
born to rule and certain persons born to be ruled, that gentlemen
owed obligations to each other which they did not necessarily owe
to those who were not gentlemen, that loyalty to one’s fellow
gentlemen was the highest virtue and ‘letting the side down’ the
worst of crimes.

As late as the last decade of the nineteenth century, an English
poet had explained that even simple education at a minor Public
School, like Clifton College, was sufficient to enable the public
schoolboy to deal with the type of problem which arose on Colonial
expeditions.

‘The sand of the desert is sodden red,

Red with the wreck of a square that broke;

The gatling’s jammed and the colonel dead,

And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed its banks
And England’s far and honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks;

‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’

But what was the meaning of this invocation which was so much
more powerful than any counter-spell which the schoolboy’s
opponents could call to their assistance? An uninformed African
reader of Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem might think he had in mind
cricket, and be puzzled, not appreciating what was a commonplace
of England of the day, the mystique of Muscular Christianity.
This was the original colonial ideology and it united die missionary
explorer like Livingstone and the soldier administrator like Lugard;
and provided the moral justification for the annexation and Euro-
pean pacification of the African continent. It inspired men, who at
home were regarded as pioneers of Socialism, to preach a romantic
imperialism abroad.

The young Cecil Rhodes first based his ideology of Colonialism
on Jo n Ruskin but he soon found a sounder and more scientific
bas is Ihe Trekbocrs who had crossed the Vaal to found the
Republic of the Transvaal, had carried the Bible in their saddlebags.

*T n , eci Rhodes crossed the Limpopo to found Rhodesia, he
came in his, Aristotle s Politics and the Musings of that gentle

EDUCATION

343

neo-platonist, Marcus Aurelius, the most consistent persecutor of
Christians among the Roman Emperors.

This change in standard ideological reference books was a tribute
to the scientific theories of imperialism pioneered in Oxford and
later at Cambridge from the second half of the nineteenth century
onwards and based on Graeco-Roman political philosophy and
particularly on the political science of Plato, Aristotle, and their
disciples. History had perhaps always been taught, not as the story
of the means man has used progressively to conquer nature but as
the chronicle of the varying devices employed by him, from time to
time, in the science of ruling. However, from the reform of the British
civil service in the second half of the nineteenth century, the teaching
of a philosophy of rule based on history of this type and classical
philosophy of rule became linked with the actual recruitment of the
Colonial and Home civil service.

Benjamin Jowett, the famous nineteenth-century Master of
Balliol College, Oxford, had taken a practical part in the reform of
the Indian civil service and in framing the system of competitive
examinations for entry into the British civil service which followed
upon the Indian reforms. It was no coincidence that he was also the
rediscoverer and popularizer of Plato’s political philosophy. While
theoretically the examination system started under the Northcote-
Trevelyan Reforms of mid-nineteenth century opened a civil
service career to all the talents, in practice its effect was to limit
entry almost entirely to the products of Oxford and Cambridge and
particularly those who had studied either classics or conventional
history.

So successful was this policy of recruiting a largely class elite
under the guise of competitive examination that the Economist
reported in 1961 that though in theory, ‘the inner circle that keeps
vestal watch over the whole homogeneity of the ruling classes and
their policies is recruited by competitive examination’ by the Civil
Service Commission nevertheless:

‘the people they end up with are pretty much of a type. It has not
changed all that remarkably since the Northcote-Trevelyan days;
certainly it has not changed since before the war. Between 1925 and
1937 Oxford and Cambridge produced 78 per cent of the successes in
the administrative class examinations. Between 1948 and i960 they

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

344

have produced So per cent. A similar proportion of the success — the
trend is actually increasing — comes from the upper-middle or com-
fortably middle-class homes. While the working class is keeping up its
small entry into top Whitehall, the lower-middle class is actually being
squeezed out. Perhaps, inevitably, most of the successful candidates
prove to have read history or classics; even the economists and PPE
men, who might be thought to have acquired some vocational training,
are a dwindling race.’

Plato in his two great works, The Republic and The Lams, had
argued that the ideal political regime was one where the inhabitants
were divided into three rigidly defined classes, each with different
obligations and thus a different education. There were first the
rulers, a highly educated but numerically limited class who devoted
themselves to the welfare of the state occupying the top positions in
its administration and armed forces and directing its politics.
Below this class were the administrators; their modern equivalents
being the police and the other ranks of the army — the nco’s in
particular — together with what is known in Britain as the ‘executive
class’ in the civil service. On the lowest level were the producers
who, at least in Aristotle’s view, should have all been slaves but
who in practice at the time contained a class of free craftsmen and
technicians of various sorts. However, both to Plato and to Aristotle,
it was contrary to the very idea of freedom that free men should be
engaged in such lowly occupations. Plato’s form of ‘democracy’
fitted admirably into the philosophic theory of Colonial rule which
had already been developed in the eighteenth century.

Scientific British Colonialism can be said to have begun with
Edmund Burke. He had declared at the impeachment of Warren
Hastings, ‘If we undertake to govern the inhabitants of India we
must govern them upon their own principles and maxims and not
upon ours. We must not think to force them into the narrow circle
of our ideas; we must extend ours to take in their system of opinions
and rites . . .’ Here was, perhaps, the first theoretical British
statement of the principals of Indirect Rule. The logical applica-
tion of his theory of ‘natural law’ led also to a belief in a
preordained elite, a ruling class whose authority derived, not from
social or economic status, but from immutable divine authority.

We are all born,’ he had written, ‘in subjection — all born equally, high

EDUCATION

345

or low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable,
pre-existing law, prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our
ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by
which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe,
out of which we cannot stir.’

This belief in natural law, the conception that what already
existed was justified because, to exist at all, it must have been
ordained by some supernatural authority, was a philosophy which
could be used to justify colonialism far more satisfactorily than
philanthropy and commercial expediency. In the second half of the
nineteenth century Burke’s general proposition was developed in
Oxford into an ideology of an elite born to rule the world.

The practical value of this new Oxford teaching was understood,
as has been pointed out, at least by the greatest and most consistent
of colonialists. Cecil Rhodes was a man who believed that every-
thing could be done by money and conspiracy. He was determined
that when he died his wealth should be devoted to maintaining the
British Empire by these means. In 1888, writing to the lawyers
engaged on drafting his Will he said, ‘Take Constitution Jesuits, if
obtainable, and insert English Empire for Roman Catholic religion.’
By 1901, when he came to make his final draft and establish the
Rhodes Scholarships he had become convinced that Oxford edu-
cation, in the form in which it had then developed, would provide
everything which could have been obtained by copying the Society
of Jesus. Oxford’s new approach to the problems of power on a
platonic basis fascinated him and it is significant that the qualities
which he laid down in his Will, as necessary for Rhodes Scholars,
are exactly the same qualities which Plato had declared must be
possessed by ‘the rulers’.

Indeed, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards
Christianity became more and more relegated to the formal aspect
of education and the classics were refurbished in order to provide
an ideological basis for the gentlemen’s code. Dame Margery Perham,
it is true, in her biography of Lord Lugard, has pointed out that
Indirect Rule was not a British invention but had many ancient
justifications, some noticed in the New Testament. As she said, any
intelligent conqueror, however self-interested, who had come from
a country with a reasonably high standard of order, would hesitate

346 reap the whirlwind

to destroy the structure of the subjected society unless he had some
overriding reason for such action and the means to carry it through.
‘Rome, as Tacitus said, making even kings the instrument of its
rule, was the most famous empire to adopt this expedient,’ she
explained in regard to Indirect Rule, adding ‘and the story of the
three trials and sentence of Jesus Christ is a familiar example of its
working.’

This no doubt was true. On the other hand it was difficult to
escape the climate of disapproval with which this type of govern-
ment was clouded in the Scriptures. For Indirect Rule the Bible was
a hesitant and uncertain guide. Plato who believed that the university
should not, primarily, be a place for the training of teachers or of
priests but should, above all, be an institution where men learnt the
art of ruling men, seemed to be the better mentor. In the hard school
for teaching the management of colonial peoples in the early
twentieth century, Christianity offered too many hostages to
fortune.

Yet this change of ideologies had one fatal defect. The missionaries
who knew that Jesus had been apprenticed as a carpenter, saw
nothing incongruous in teaching the constructional and mechanical
techniques or in honouring those who practised them successfully.
Now through education itself, a distrust of education which always,
perhaps, existed in some British army and civil service circles, was
immensely strengthened and a similar distrust of the technician
and the professional man was passed on to the Colonial Service and
from them to the new African elite.

Lord Lugard believed soldiers to be the best administrators but
he intensely disliked those among them who plied a mechanical
trade. Commenting on some technical proposals for a survey of
Northern Nigeria he wrote of the officer of the Royal Engineers in
charge:

He seems to think that God made the R.E. first, and then, if not with

their approval, made the rest of the world. I am therefore of poorer

clay. . . .’

Sir Gordon Guggisberg, an r.e. then also serving in Northern
Nigeria, was refused transfer to the Administrative grade of the
Colonial Service. ‘Your application,’ he was told in 1912/ has been
noted in the Colonial Office and will be considered with those of

EDUCATION

347

other candidates on the occurrence of suitable vacancies’. In fact no
‘suitable vacancy’ occurred for seven years, until indeed Lord
Milner, the Colonial Secretary personally appointed him to the
Gold Coast Governorship. Even in his case the Colonial Office had
their revenge. When broken in health Guggisberg retired from the
Governorship of British Guiana and came back to Britain to die, he
was refused a pension. He had not been long enough in the ‘Adminis-
trative Service’ to qualify. There was too little money in his estate
even to pay for a tombstone and the grave of one of the greatest
British Colonial administrators would be today unmarked but for
the raising of a fund by the chiefs and people of the Gold Coast
who alone remembered him and provided him with a fitting
memorial. Such examples as this naturally reinforced the already
existing tendency for those intending to enter the Colonial Civil
Service or later the Ghana Public Service, to shun professional and
technical qualifications and to opt for the more acceptable classical
or historical education.

In 1964 Sir Eric Ashby, the distinguished botanist and Master of
Clare College, Cambridge, and who had been for twelve years
Chairman of the ‘Ashby Committee’ on higher education in
Nigeria, delivered the Godkin Lectures at Harvard University. His
subject was ‘African Universities and the Western Tradition’. He
called attention to the progressive line adopted by the Colonial
Office Committee of 1925 in their Report, Educational Policy in
British Tropical Africa. ‘Education,’ he noted they had said, ‘should
be adapted to the mentality, aptitude, occupation and traditions of
the various peoples, conserving as far as possible all sound and
healthy elements in the fabric of their social life’ ; but he pointed out
‘that a generation after this principle was announced there is no
record that it had been generally adopted’.

This Report had been produced not by products of the Civil
Service examination system in the Colonial Office but by a Com-
mittee, in Colonial Office terms, of progressive and even anti-
establishment figures who included Lord Lugard, James Currie, a
Director of Education from the Sudan, Michael Sadler who had
headed the Calcutta University Commission, Hanns Vischer who
had designed the educational system of Northern Nigeria, and J. H.
Oldham, one of the most forward-looking of missionaries.

Lord Lugard was certainly disappointed that there was not more

348 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

general recognition of the importance of his Committee’s document.
‘A future generation,’ he wrote, ‘may look back with amazement at
the comparative apathy of the British people today in a matter so
momentous and may regard this little-noticed White Paper as one of
the principal landmarks of Imperial policy of the twentieth century.’
In one way it was. It expresses perfectly the imperial dilemma over
African education. Despite its progressive approach it is shot
through with pessimism as to the possibility of any colonial edu-
cation at all. The real difficulty', say its writers, ‘lies in importing any
kind of education which has not a disintegrating and unsettling
effect on the people of the country’.

Education was only safe if it somehow bolstered up a belief in the
old order through which Indirect Rule was conducted. ‘Education,’
it states, ‘should strengthen the feeling of responsibility to the tribal
community . , . since contact with civilization — and even education
itself — must necessarily tend to weaken tribal authority and the
sanction of existing beliefs, and in view of the all-prevailing belief
in the supernatural, which affects the whole life of the African, it is
essential that what is good in the old beliefs and sanctions should be
strengthened and what is defective should be replaced. The greatest
importance must therefore be attached to religious teaching and
moral instruction. Both in schools and in trainingcolleges they should
be accorded an equal standing with secular subjects. Such teaching
must be related to the conditions of life and daily experience of the
pupils. It should find expression in habits of self-discipline and
loyalty to the community. With such safeguards contact with
civilization may not be injurious, or the introduction of new religious
ideas have a disruptive influence antagonistic to constituted secular
authority.’

The wheel had gone the full circle since Arnold’s day. The
teaching of Christianity had become only permissible so long as it
was not antagonistic’ to the ‘constituted secular authority’ of the
Moslem emir or the Priest-Chief of an animist state, but if Chris-
tianity was to be muted it was the Boy Scout Movement rather than
technical training that was to take its place.

In the Gold Coast since the mid-nineteenth century there had
been continued agitation for a West African University and other
institutions of higher education. As an example of the demand for
the latter, as early as 1861 Dr Africanus Horton, the African Army

EDUCATION

349

surgeon whom Governor Pope-Hennessy had thought so much of
that he suggested him for appointment as Administrator of the Gold
Coast, had proposed an African medical school. Joseph Cascly
Hayford had taken up these proposals and, from 19x1 on, had
campaigned for a University in the Gold Coast. In 1920 the West
African Congress petitioned the British Government ‘to found a
British West African University on such lines as would preserve in
the student a sense of African nationality’. Sir Gordon Guggisberg
had pressed the idea but his successor claimed there was no real
desire on the part of the people for it. It was ‘premature’ and ‘too
expensive’.

By 1933 Lord Lugard’s Committee had come round to endorsing
this proposal. Their detailed suggestions were circulated by the
Colonial Office to the Governors of British Colonies in Africa for
their views. Three years elapsed before the Colonial Office had
received all replies. The Gold Coast Government answered that
they were satisfied that existing facilities were adequate and that
any sudden increase of opportunities for higher education would
only lead to ‘an over production of graduates’.

Up to the Second World War the line of policy thinking which
emerges is that in the first place, whatever the pattern of education,
any education was a dangerous experiment and was likely to under-
mine the authority of the traditional ruler. Secondly, whatever the
contents of the white man’s burden, it did not include any responsi-
bility for paying from his own pocket, for the education of those
over whom he had assumed the right of government. Education
should therefore only be undertaken provided that it could be paid
for out of taxes raised in the colony itself and, that which was the
important proviso, the Home Government did not consider that the
colony should devote these funds to some better purpose. In 1909,
despite its support by Lugard who was then the Governor, the
British Government vetoed a vote by the Legislative Council of
Hong Kong of a grant of £. 5 , 0 °° 3 Y 031 " t0 su PP ort 3 local university.
The argument was thus developed as follows, primary education,
though dangerous, was permissible. Secondary education was
beyond the financial abilities of the Colonies and in any event ‘not
wanted by the Africans’ and it was useless to build a university
except on a sound system of secondary schools— a curious view-
coming from a Colonial Office staffed almost entire \ from Oxford

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

or Cambridge Universities which had flourished long before there
was any sound system of secondary education in Britain.

Ghana had been fortunate in one respect. Sir Gordon Guggisberg
was prepared to defy the Colonial Office policy on secondary edu-
cation and Gold Coast revenue was at least sufficient to endow and
build fee-paying boarding secondary schools. Of these the most
famous was Achimota. It was the only African school to put into
effect in the inter-war period the progressive side of Lord Lugard’s
Committee s recommendations. It openly stated its aim was ‘to
produce a type of student who is Western in his intellectual attitude
towards life, with a respect for science and capacity for systematic
thought, but who remains African in sympathy and desirous of
preserving and developing what is deserving of respect in tribal
life, custom, rule and law’. But even in the Gold Coast the old habits

0 thought persisted. Thus education was largely excluded from the
Northern Territories which contained a fifth of the population on
t e grounds that the Northern people would not accept teachers
trom the South and there were no Northern teachers available. The
segregation of the North from the rest of the country, socially and
educationally, was carried to the extent that it was considered a
remarkable concession when the Government allowed three boys
a year to be sent from the North to be schooled at Achimota and

au *f 3S . 1 teac ers - At the time of the Watson Commission, through-
°u ew o c orth there were only 3,970 pupils enrolled in primary
schools and only 8 o receiving secondary education. Nevertheless,

, er ® '' as a su cient secondary school output from other parts of
ie o °ny, even before the war, to have provided an intake for a
niversity. y then should the idea have been turned down in 1939
and yet so enthusiastically welcomed in 1945?

^ ~ 03 j Perhaps be found in platonic reasoning. Faced

fnnnrl TT, V1 °^ s . exoneration of chiefly rule, a new elite had to be
Thi'c C so utl0n was a un iversit) f designed to produce them.

1 • r i cer am >' was how the two commissions which dealt with

Colonial IT 1 - 10 " — t l . e Coast, the Asquith Commission for
w . niversities m general and the Elliot Commission for

Comm id' Ca / n P ar * ac ul ar > conceived their mission. In the Asquith
the n i net eenth-century Oxford theory' that

trains irs S ° U ^ rSt anc ^ foremost be the place where a nation
trams its rulers was stated clearly and without equivocation.

EDUCATION

351

‘In the state preparatory to self-government universities have an im-
porant part to play; indeed they may be said to be indispensable. To
them we must look for the production of men and women with the
standards of public service and capacity for leadership which self rule
requires.’

In 1945, when the two Commissions reported, ‘self rule’ in
Africa seemed a far-off goal, perhaps to be attained in twenty to
thirty years. Meanwhile, it was presumed that there was going to be
time to train the new platonic African elite. It was perhaps because
only in England had the idea that universities were designed for
this purpose been fully developed, that neither Commission con-
sidered other types of higher education which have grown up in the
English-speaking world to meet different educational needs, though
two of these traditions must have been familiar to many members of
the Commissions, the Scottish system and that of the United States.
They set their faces against creating anything except exact copies of
the British ‘red brick’ universities of pre-war days. The reason was
made clear by Sir Eric Ashby in his Godkin Lectures. As he said:

‘The founders of these universities worked in the belief that the social

function of a university in Africa was to create and sustain an intel-
lectual elite.’

The medieval clerical tradition had endowed the original English
universities, Oxford and Cambridge, with a form of academic self-
government, later to be adopted by the new English universities of
the nineteenth century. Medieval universities had been ecclesiastical
agencies, and their ‘self-government’ had followed simply from the
autonomy of the clergy. Academic freedom in the nineteenth century
at Oxford and Cambridge had essentially been the right of Colle"e
ruling bodies to impose their collective decisions as to 7, 'bom they
would admit and what they would teach. The demand, Jomr after
religious toleration was accepted elsewhere, that the two universities
could refuse to admit anyone but a professing mernU-r of the
Church of England and terminate the Fellowship <,[ ' Don
who broke the monastic rule and married, had its parallel in the
twentieth century in the British universities generally insist in"- that
they should control the content of secular teaching. The fact that 2
university teacher was able at times to hold extreme political or

352 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

otherwise unconventional views was due, not to any overall policy
of allowing intellectual or personal freedom, but to a part of the
ancient clerical concept that a Church Living, whether in a parish
or in a university, was property of which the holder could only be
deprived by due process of law.

On the other hand academic freedom in the United States sprang
from the puritan and anti-colonialist belief in the right of protest
and dissent. It was enforced not, as at the older British universities,
by the governing body but in opposition to it. Even before the rise
of the Land Grant Colleges — indeed even in Colonial days
American colleges had been controlled by the community in whose
area they were situated. The proper sphere of control to be exercised
by the managing body and that to be exercised by the staff had
been long established by convention. The Land Grant College,
with its direct state management, fitted into this pattern and
provided a model which could have been followed in Africa.

The English university system, like, for that matter, the British
Parliamentary system, is housed in a medieval edifice and all its
most picturesque and noticeable features are those which are the
most antique. Its actual method of working, again like that of the
British Parliament, is hidden behind an ancient fafadc but it is m
fact the product of a compromise struck between those who were
originally in power in the universities and the great reformers of the
Victorian era. Again there is a parallel with the reforms of procedure
in the 1 louse of Commons in the nineteenth century, which adapted
Parliament to entirely different purposes but left the outward aspect
of its proceedings unchanged. Both these sets of reforms were
carried out with the object of providing British industrial and
commercial development in the particular circumstances of the
time, while in the case of the universities, as part of the compromise,
preserving some of the former privileges of their ancient ruling
bodies.

In the social and economic conditions in ninctccnth-ccntury
Britain, it was understandable to re-design a university to produce
an elite and it was essential to establish standards. In fact, of course,
these standards in Britain were continuallv varied in response to
social pressures and therefore continued to conform in fact with the
qualifications required of university graduates at any particular
time. Nevertheless, because of the retention of much of the medieval

EDUCATION

353

constitution of English universities, their ruling bodies came to
regard themselves as the absolute arbiters of these standards to
which they attached a supernational value.

To be fair to the Asquith Commission, its Report does not make it
absolutely clear whether they accepted these English standards
being necessarily always applicable in the colonies. The key passage
is:

*. . . universities serve the double purpose of refining and maintain-
ing all that is best in local traditions and cultures and at the same time
of providing a means whereby those brought up under the influence of
these conditions and cultures may enter on a footing of equality into
the world-wide community of intellect.’

Once the colonial universities were established, the doctrine of
academic freedom came into play. Those appointed to them — in the
early days hardly ever citizens of the colony in which the university
was placed — regarded themselves as the sole custodians of the
‘Asquith doctrine’ which it was their duty to see implemented to its
last detail, and, where the Report spoke in ambiguous terms, as in
this case, it was their right, and their right alone, to say what it
meant. Fifteen years later the Principal of the University College of
Ghana in a memorandum to the Government laid down what had
now become in academic circles, the accepted meaning of the
passage in question.

‘Ghana cannot afford and would not wish to have the graduates of its
University considered as of lower standing than those of other univer-
sities in “the world-wide community of intellect”. Only by maintain-
ing high standards for its university degrees can it expect that its
graduates will be accepted in Commonwealth countries, and especially
in Commonwealth universities, as the equal of their own . . .’

This authoritative pronouncement begged the one question vital to
Ghanaian development and which had two years before been
posed by the head of the Agricultural Department of the Kumasi
College of Technology, the only other establishment of higher
education in Ghana. He had said:

‘I am convinced that since we in this country are not producing agri-
culturalists for any other country there is very little point in basing our
course on an imaginary universal or even British standard. The whole

354

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

question of standards is relative. ... A standard in education is high
enough when it can adequately serve the needs of the community for
which it is designed. As the problems become more complex so the
standard must grow to deal with them.’

He was angrily contradicted by the University. Standards he was
told are ‘unchangeable’. They were dictated by what was considered
the appropriate level of knowledge in London or Montreal or Mel-
bourne despite the fact that the great majority of students in Ghana
had no opportunity of ever reaching these standards. If they did,
they would have had to acquire much knowledge of no value to
them in Ghana and, because the ‘standard’ was external to Ghana
and ‘international’, there was no guarantee that they would be
taught what they needed to know for Ghanaian purposes even if
they attained it. In November 1965 I delivered one of the anni-
versary lectures of the Ghana Academy of Sciences on ‘Politics and
Education’ and made the point in this form :

One of the manifestations of neo-colonialism is a belief in academic
standards. This in essence is to accept without question what was
taught during former imperial times and to presume if the identical
knowledge is not acquired in the former colonial territory then the
level of education has fallen. Let me give one illustration from the 1964
syllabus from the West African Examinations Council. Section 5 of the
prescribed Chemistry curriculum is concerned with the combustion of
carbon and carbon-containing substances in a plentiful or a limited
suppjy of air. It deals with the combustion of coal, coal fires and coke
fires, all of which are at present rare in West Africa. It does not deal
with the chemistry of charcoal, which is one of the commonest forms
of African fuel. The note to this item states that “While a detailed
description of the gas works is not required, candidates should be
familiar with the following states, distillation, removal of tar and
ammonia, and the removal of hydrogen sulphide”. The use of coal gas,
o\\ e\ er, is unknown in West Africa. On the other hand, the chemistry
o 01 refinining is important in West African industrialization. It is not
dealt with in the Chemistry syllabus.’

In the outside academic world these things were realized. For
example, in his Godkin lecture, Sir Eric Ashby put in other words
the same points as I have made :

EDUCATION

355

‘Policy . . . became hardened into dogma, resistant to criticism and
change. People talked of the “Asquith doctrine” and referred to uni-
versity colleges in Africa as “Asquith colleges”. The doctrine was a
vivid expression of British cultural parochialism: its basic assumption
was that a university system appropriate for Europeans brought up in
London and Manchester and Hull was also appropriate for Africans
brought up in Lagos and Kumasi and Kampala. . . . The funda-
mental pattern of British civic universities — in constitution, in stan-
dards and curricula, in social purpose — was adopted without demur.
Colonial universities were . . . from the outset ... to be self-
governing societies, demanding from their students the same entry
standard as is demanded by London or Cambridge; following curri-
cula which might vary in detail but must not vary in principle from
the curricula of the University of London; tested by examinations
approved by London and leading to London degrees awarded on the
recommendation of London external examiners.’

He endorsed also the view that the object of the new universities was
to provide a platonic ruling class.

‘. . . as for their social functions,’ he said, ‘the colonial universities
were to be completely residential, and their prime purpose was to
produce “men and women with the standards of public service and
capacity for leadership which self-rule requires”. In short, they were,
as in England, to nurture an elite.’

Nevertheless, there was never a concerted counter-move by pro-
gressive Commonwealth academics who could perhaps have
salvaged the position. On the contrary, when ultimately the Ghana
Government attempted fumblingly to challenge the pretentions
of the ‘Asquith doctrine’ the progressives found, for one reason
or another, that they must stand by their university colleagues
and the English theory of academic freedom behind which they
sheltered.

So far as the proposed new university on the Gold Coast was
concerned the British Secretary of State for the Colonies had
reserved the right to nominate the first Principal. His choice fell on
a classical scholar and student of Plato who believed there was one
civilization, the European, and that this civilization had but one
origin, in Greece.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

356

David Mowbray Balme, the first Principal, who held office from
1948 to 1957, had been a classical scholar at Cambridge and subse-
quently a Cambridge Classics Don and everything which he did, it
would appear, was conditioned by this experience. He had had a
distinguished war record as the Commander of a Bomber Squadron
winning, like Ulric Cross, the dso and the dfc. He was an excellent
administrator and, within the limits of his philosophy, an enthusi-
astic exponent of African advancement. As he explained to the
assembled students of the Gold Coast’s new university college:

The whole issue has been bedevilled by our careless use of the
phrase “European civilization”. It may be justifiable that the things
which are studied at universities ... are themselves the instruments
of civilization. If so, then it follows that there is only one modern
civilization. It happens to have started in Greece ... and spread first
through Europe. But it is high time we stopped calling it European as
though there were some other from which to distinguish it . . .’

Within his one world civilization’, Dr Balme had grudgingly to
admit diat there were varying national cultures but he considered
these should be allowed to fade away and that it was not part of the
job of a university to try to keep them alive by teaching them. To a
new country like Ghana, seeking out its cultural past as part of its
credentials for. international recognition, he explained that folk
WaS y “ s , ou * in England and hand looms had been replaced

CnlW^Tn,' r d m ^ Unk We need weep,’ he told the University
Si! f ° P the , Gdd Coast > <w hen national traditions go . . . it’s
only a matter of pride in superficial things.’ b

imnorf 0I rhp Ct d sup ^ r h ci 'al things, at least, he was determined to
****? ° f 1116 Univer$ity 0f Cambridge,
because there harl h 6 ° 0Wned- The college had to have a Manciple,
had to he or. , CCn T at bridge. The students and staff
K:st rr d r^ Ha,1S ° f resid ence, each with their own
Steward to the hm, ‘Cerent and with sinecure officials, like the
tSs of an Afr^ S T aU * 35 k Was at Cambridge. The incan-
as irreverent barhiU St °5 dle P our ing of libation was dismissed
St bu < dle recitation of a grace in Latin and the

s SSS dbed (I m the pr0per direction at Hi S h Table, as the

the sec?ecv of r n T atl0n SU1Ce this was done at Cambridge in
secrecy of the Combination Room) was essential for the proper

EDUCATION

357

education of tire scholar. To the African politician these things
could be, and were, dismissed as harmless religious observances. It
would have been thought unfair and contrary to the general toler-
ance in such matters upon which the CPP prided itself to have
deprived the Principal of his ju ju when clearly he was so genuinely
convinced that his magic would improve the educational prospects
of his undergraduates.

Had Dr Balme’s eccentricities ceased at this point the conflict
between the Ghana Government and the University would not
later have arisen. However, he proceeded to run the University in
accordance with three principles which he conceived to be the basis
of the Cambridge system. The first of these was that no one not on
the roll of graduates had any voice whatsoever in the University
College affairs. The second was that sovereignty over the University
resided, not in the College Council, the body appointed by a Gold
Coast law which had been enacted in a form drafted by the Colonial
Office, but with the whole body of the Faculty. His third principle
was that the bodies appointed to prepare policy to put before the
Faculty in general meeting should not be composed of the most
senior or the most responsible officers of the University, but of
elected representatives of the staff on which Europeans were at the
time in a majority. Staff, curriculum and standards of admission
were all decided in this way without reference to the Council. In
fact the Council had been persuaded to hold only two formal
meetings a year and was so starved of information of what was going
on that for four years it was unable even to publish the Report
required of it by law.

The body thus excluded from power by this academic coup d’etat,
was no revolutionary assembly or collection of Party nominees. On
the contrary, it included three senior members of the academic
staff, two members nominated by British Universities and seven
Africans, including the Chief Justice and two chiefs. In the words
of Sir Eric Ashby, ‘The Government of the College, still de jure
conducted according to the Ordinance, was de facto being conducted
according to a set of by-laws which followed with touching fidelity
the- archaic and exasperating procedures of the University of
Cambridge. The Gold Coast Government never approved these
by-laws; nor was the original Ordinance (giving sovereignty to a lay
Council) amended to conform to them.’

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

358

After Independence, in proportion to its per capita national
income, Ghana was spending ten times as much on education as
Spain and yet its Government was excluded from any say in how its
university should be run in consequence of the imposition of a
mechanism of rule, not sanctioned by Ghanaian law nor even
approved by the outgoing Colonial Administration. It might have
been supposed that some at least of the leading figures in British
academic life would have dissociated themselves from this high-
handed disregard of the ‘Asquith doctrine’, if from nothing else.
On the contrary, Dr Balme’s unilateral declaration of university
independence was acclaimed as academic freedom’s greatest hour.

When Dr Balme left in 1957 Dr Nkrumah was anxious to secure
a new Principal of a different style. Even then he was thinking of
someone of the type of Conor Cruise O’Brien, and I was sent off to
the United States, England and Ireland to sound out academic
opinion as to who might be available. Plenty of advice was offered
but no suitable recruit came forward. Among those whom I con-
sulted was Sir Eric Ashby who considered the matter should be left
to the Inter University’ Council for Higher Education in the
Colonies. With the departure of the Principal who had over-
shadowed it, the University Council in Ghana had emerged from
long seclusion and was anxious to exercise its constitutional func-
tions. Though Dr Nkrumah would have wished to defer the appoint-
ment of a new Principal even longer to see if someone of exceptional
calibre could not be obtained, the Ghana University’ Council
decided to follow Sir Eric Ashby’s recommendation and to appoint
the British Inter-Universities body’’s nominee. This was a Dr R. H.
Stoughton, Professor of Agriculture at Reading University. As Sir
Eric Ashby had pointed out in his Godkin lecture, Dr Stoughton
was unable to persuade his staff to reverse Dr Balmc’s unilateral
declaration of independence. He proposed an ‘Asquith doctrine’
type constitution and this was put to the staff. ‘There followed,’
said Sir Eric Ashby, ‘two long and stormy sessions of debate . . .
I here was among the academics a powerful preference for Balme’s
experiment and a determination not to retreat to the more con-
x entional institution . . . We have to recollect that the staff was still
essentially European ... in 1959 only sixteen per cent was Ghanaian
and there was not a single African Professor.’

Dr Stoughton, to his credit, at least saw to what the acceptance of

EDUCATION 359

he Cambridge pattern had, in practice, led. In his Memorandum to
he Government he wrote:

‘The University holds a unique and dominating, and in a sense un-
supported, place in the structure of higher education. If we should
turn to the familiar image of education as a pyramid with university as
the apex and primary school at the base, we would visualize a con-
siderable gap in the middle ... So far as the school leaver is con-
cerned, it is a degree or nothing. . . . From the national point of view,
the most significant feature of this situation is the serious wastage of
talent’.

He admitted to a fear that ‘post secondary education in general’
was ‘perhaps insufficiently diversified and possibly’ was ‘becoming
even less so’. Yet he was prevented from suggesting any remedy of a
practical nature by his uncritical acceptance of restricted university
entrance and the maintenance of standards. He admitted the
existence of a large class of people in Ghana ‘who, though not quite
of university calibre, crave further education and possess abilities
having a potential value equal to those of graduates’. He agreed that
in other parts of the world there were suitable ‘forms of education’
for such people. These were provided ‘in the United States of
America, for example, by community colleges, two-year colleges
giving diplomas, liberal arts colleges, land grant colleges and
universities, and many other types of institution .

The bankruptcy of the ‘Asquith doctrine’ could not have been
made clearer. It was admitted that, in a country whose whole
progress depended upon technical and professional training,
there were many students craving for a higher education and who
had potential abilities equal to the elite for whom that education was
now reserved. The example of the United States m devising means
to develop such abilities was actually quoted. Yet throughout Dr
Stoughton’s long Memorandum there was no suggestion whatever
that the University, as such, had any duty to provide this training 0r
could help, in any practical way, to organize it.

"With the failure of the new Principal to secure University agree-
ment to operate even the ‘Asquith doctrine a. clash over the um_
versity’s relationship with the State was inevitable and > it arose as a
result of a report made in April 1959 of the university finances by a
Committee composed largely of expatriate experts. They 5^

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

360

reviewed w hat seemed to them various extravagances in the adminis-
tration of the university and in particular the}’ went on to say:

‘ 1 he item w hich especially captured our attention is that of leave-
passage allowances. The estimated cost of providing passages to the
United Kingdom for the Academic and Senior Administrative stall' is
more than £100,000 a year, or about one-ninth of the total estimated
expenditure of the College. This is because the senior members of the
College have the right under the terms of their appointment to go on
lease to the United Kingdom every year and arc entitled to first-class
air passages.’

I he President’s office referred this issue to the University and the
battle for academic freedom was joined. Even Sir Eric Ashby in his
Godhin lecture has given the impression that in so doing the
Government were in the wrong. As he told the story:

\\ ith great sympathy and understanding, Adam Curie (at that time
I rofexsor of Education at the University) has traced the melancholy
storx which first became notorious in 1959, a couple of years after
independence. At that time Dr. Nkrumah’s office issued directives to
the University College requiring changes in the system of leave-
passages to Britain, and in other matters internal to the college. The
co ege stall constantly on the alert for infringements of academic
freedom , resisted these directives.*

. ^ acutc an observer as Sir Eric Ashby did not perceive the

significance of the event which produced this first struggle for
ac..t emic rcedom . What the university staff were asserting was
not t le rig 11 of individual dissent, the essence of academic freedom
as un erstoo in the United Slates, but the right to a corporate
prn i Cj,c w itch placed the Don in a superior position to non-
academic travellers on the same salary scale. What was being

ofTht^clhc 10 t lC !nc ^* cva * tcncls of Cambridge and the prerogatives

in!-! 'i'c ^ n ‘' cr ' SIt >' s spending of one-ninth of its total income on
. ; first-class air passages to Britain was to be defended on the
- L “ t : cnuc freedom, what hope had the Government of
V c or [H in ‘he curriculum or the policy of the University.
1CrC . , . >!X ' n a hundred empty places but the college

..icss r-ixcd its entrance requirements ‘in conformity with

EDUCATION

361

the requirements of the University of London’. In consequence, it
was more difficult at the time to get into the University College of
the Gold Coast than it was to enter a university in Scotland, Ireland,
Canada, Australia or most of the universities of the United States.
This limited entry was persuaded to engage in excessive and quite
pointless specialization. What was needed from the Art side of the
university were secondary school teachers and administrators who
had a broad academic background in sociology, so as to understand
a society in transition, economics so as to understand and deal with
problems of planning and organization, and sufficient law to enable
them to understand the principles of Government and of just
dealing in administrative matters. Yet of the 140 students who
graduated in Arts subjects from 1957 to i960, 95 studied single
subjects and only 45 took a general degree. No African language
could be studied at university level, not even Arabic, but in the
session 1959 to i960 12 undergraduates were devoting their full
time to Latin, Greek and ancient history.

Above all, in the words of Sir Eric Ashby, the University and their
graduates were:

‘Isolated from the life of the common people in a way which has had
no parallel in England since the Middle Ages’.

It was a situation about which something had obviously to be done
and in 1961 Dr Nkrumah asked various members of the Academy
of Sciences, of whom I was one, to submit papers with ideas.

I proposed that since the University College was to be transformed
into a full-scale university this would provide an opportunity for a
new start and that we should attempt to reorganize it on a basis
similar to that of the Land Grant Colleges of the United States. It
seemed to me from a legal point of view that the employment of the
existing staff came to an end with the disappearance of the existing
University College, and that therefore the simplest plan would be
to make a break by saying that all the staff must apply for re-
employment with the new University under new and clear con-
ditions. For those who did not apply there was, as always in Ghana,
compensation to be paid for a loss of career through the disap-
pearance of the University College.

While the way in which the University had been previously
conducted had not aroused any academic criticism, this attempt to

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

deal with the problem was greeted as a major assault on academic
freedom.

* 1 his clumsy intervention provoked a storm of protest,’ said Sir Eric
Ashby, ‘not only within the college but from all over the world.’

I his reaction both from the world and Sir Eric Ashby is interesting.
Nobody has better described than Sir Erie the shortcomings of the
University College in Ghana. If the Ghana Government which not
only paid for the total capital and running costs of the University
but provided ever}’ student with a scholarship into the bargain was
not entitled to reorganize it — who was?

Dr Nkrumah’s plan to deal with the question of University
organization was a typical example of how lie had tried to apply
co-existence in practice. A group of leading academies from Britain,
the U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. and Africa were invited to Accra to devise
some more sensible method than those which had previously been
tried for running the University College of Ghana and the Kumasi
College of I technology. Those appointed to this Commission of
.nqutry were nicely balanced politically as well as academically. The
two United States representatives were Miss L. A. Bornholdt, the
can of \\ omen and Professor of History at the University of
ennsyhania and Dr 1 Iorace Mann Bond, a foremost Afro-American
cducanonahst. From Britain came E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Fellow of
' ‘ Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford, J. D.

r . n '? ’ ‘ ^lessor of Physics at London University and the Principal
l i. ... ' c . London University’s agricultural wing, Dr D.

CC ’" T i ot l lcr Lad lege Principal from outside Ghana was an
- rican, r Davidson Nicol, from the oldest Institute of higher
cumin in \ est Africa, Fourah Bay, bv then known as the Univer-
sity College of Sierra Leone. From the Soviet Union there was
'r‘ fU .| CXf I r * c' 1 °rochesnikov, an expert on Inorganic Chemical
the Mendeleyev Institute in Moscow,
ic mamixsion s Chairman Kojo Botsio was the member of the
‘.h 10 ’ 1 experience of education during the Colonial
I t' } - - 1CC Chairman was my old friend Daniel Chapman. He
“v’ C3rccr * n colonial times by teaching geography at
y ’ m l", j' l . :t ‘ lc dicn become tlic I lonorary Secretary of the All
’ J ' ! ‘ ! '' 1! | cc ’ 3 body whose aim was to obtain by constitutional
‘“dependence of both British and French Tozoland. For

EDUCATION

363

this he had been dismissed from his teaching profession by the
Colonial Government but, after a period of unemployment he had,
through the good offices of the Indian Government been found a
place in the Secretariat of the United Nations. Despite this it was
necessary after Independence to promote a Special Bill in Parlia-
ment to restore to him the right to teach and his claim to his pension
which had been forfeited at the time of his dismissal. When after
1954 the Cabinet was no longer presided over by the Governor Dr
Nkrumah had brought him back to be its Secretary. On Indepen-
dence he was appointed Ghanaian Ambassador to Washington and
Permanent Delegate to the United Nations. He had given up these
important posts to return to Achimota School as its first African
Headmaster.

The Secretariat of the Commission, upon whom the major pre-
paratory work fell was similarly balanced. David Carmichael was
one of the few British civil servants to stay on in the Ministry of
Education. The other two members were Dr Thomas Hodgkin,
formerly Secretary to the Oxford University Delegacy for Extra
Mural Studies but now a Research Associate at McGill University
in Canada in Islamic Studies. The third secretary was the only chief
with a Doctorate in Philosophy, Nana Kobina Nketsia IV, who now
combined his chiefly role with that of a civil servant in the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.

I was appointed a consultant to the Commission and thus had an
insight into how they approached the problem. Their work which
extended from December i960 to May 1961, showed what might
have been achieved in the past if only the British Government,
theoretically committed to the United Nations, had, when originally
planning the post war universities of Africa, consulted its educational
agency UNESCO. A surprising degree of unanimity was achieved and
such divisions of opinion that there were were on organizational
rather than ideological grounds. The United States representatives
and those of the Soviet Union were united in urging against the
British representatives a number of changes, in particular that the
two institutions of higher learning should not be combined as the
Government had originally proposed, and this was ultimately
accepted.

Their other recommendations were in the main frustrated by
academic inertia. At their suggestion a Council of Higher Education

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

was appointed and Dr Nkrumah, to mark its importance, appointed
A. L. Adu who had succeeded to Daniel Chapman’s post with the
Cabinet as its Secretary. However this body of which I was a
member never functioned as intended and such overall planning
as was done, was carried out by the Academy of Sciences. As a
gesture to the British connection Prince Phillip had been appointed
its first President. Its members included Ghanaians of all political
views. At a dinner at Flagstaff House given by the President to those
elected to it I found myself sitting next to Dr Danquh who had been
only a day or so before released from his first period of preventive
detention. While the majority of its membership was Ghanaian it
contained a proportion of non-Ghanaian academics such as Miss
Barbara Ward, Dr Joseph Gillman, a white South African expert on
Public Health and British scientists connected with agricultural
research in Ghana. However neither the Academy nor the Council
of Higher Education was able in practice to alter the path upon
which the University had been set by its previous administration.

n deference to the world outcry, few changes were made in the
academic staff and the President set his hopes on obtaining a new
Vice-Chancellor with progressive ideas. The choice fell on Conor
raise O Brien. In fact the appointment came too late. The long
iso ation of the University from the life of the country produced in
modern form the sordid brawling between ‘town’ and ‘gown’ which
tv *sg ra ced medieval Cambridge. The Government newspaper,
he Lrhanatan Times, said in February 1964 that the Universities
have become the fountain heads of reaction and fertile ground for
imperialist and neo-colonialist subversion and counter-revolution’.

. ~ c ar “ c ^ as un true. The crime of the University was its passivity

in ace o t e crying economic and social needs of the country.

ie arm which it did was that it failed to produce the type of civil
servant an army and police officer that was required. Above all, it
contributed nothing directly or indirectly to the solving of the basic
pro em 0 c angmg the nature of Ghanaian education generally so
as o prow e the skilled personnel necessary for development.

orse sti its influence on the secondary schools produced there
too the idea of an elite trained in the classics.

V e ! r Eric Ashby, Dr O’Brien’s mistake was that he did not
a a " ade ™ c freedom of the University of Ghana which he
e wi such skill, courage and pertinacity was not intended

EDUCATION

365

by most of those who most vigorously proclaimed it to be a licence
for the free expression of opinion in academic circles. It was merely
the modem version of the ancient claim of the academic clerics to be
the sole arbitrators of truth and to have the sole right to punish and
expel the heretic from their midst.

A month after the National Liberation Council seized power, the
new Chief Justice, Eric Akufo Addo, appointed Chairman of the
University Council, addressed the academic body assembled in
Congregation; Dr O’Brien, invited back for the ceremony, was an
honoured guest among them.

‘This occasion,’ he began, ‘will perhaps go down in history, that is if
history is properly nursed, as the greatest day in the life of this
University.’

The University, he went on to tell them, had never had the chance
to develop academic freedom or those ‘concepts and values —
freedom of thought and expression — which alone constitute the
true characteristics of a true University’. What was meant by
‘freedom of thought and expression’ he explained as follows:

‘There may still be members of the staff whose intellectual faith in
Kwame Nkrumah, his ways and his manners has not suffered a change
in spite of recent events. Such men if they exist may not find the new
going easy or congenial. On the assumption that such people are sin-
cere in their faith and will hold on to their faith as all believers do, I
say to them with all due respect to be patriotic and leave the campus
for the good of the campus.’

In the old days, Mr Henry L. Bretton, professor of political
science in Dr Nkrumah’s last year in power, used regularly to
deliver what he has described as ‘my non-Nkrumaist lectures’. With
the re-establishment of ‘academic freedom’ such unorthodoxy was
now to be suppressed and in Congregation itself, the new dissenters,
the ‘pro-Nkrumaists’, were warned off the campus by the University
Council amid the plaudits of the Don s.

It was this preoccupation of the University with the production of
an elite with all thinking alike that led to the neglect of the essentials
of higher education and the ‘gap in the middle’ of the educational
pyramid. Despite this, particularly in certain spheres where the
President could act outside the framework of the University’, the

3^6 reap the whirlwind

West African Examination Council and the Ministry of Education,
remarkable progress was made in filling die gap though this, on
occasion, involved creating bodies such as the National Educational
Trust so as to by-pass the delays of the still colonial oriented
organization of the Ministry of Education. For example, there was
no top-level nursing school until 1945. The single school of nursing
established in that year had only achieved an annual output of eight
nurses by 1951 when the CPP came to power. By 1962 six schools
° nursing had been established which provided 265 new nurses and
md-wwes in that year alone. Nevertheless the overall effort was
an 'eted by the inertia seeping down from Legon Hill, where stood
t e mversity, which in Sir Eric Ashby’s words ‘established in
palatial premises . . . outside the city, drew its skirts around its

a airs an became (as an architect boasted of its quadrangles)
inward-looking” ’. n & /

Mr Tony Hillick, the former University of Ghana lecturer

rjjr 111 " 1 ' 3 L Cr ^ IC C0U P ' not unfairly, in an article in the magazine
westAJnca, the various shortcomings of the Nkrumah Govern-
en s economic policy. He noted that the rate of the investment in

rr,i, a ^ a - WaS VCr ^ U “ r1 ’ even if judged by the standard of developing
Louncries *

n fact, the rate of investment, as a proportion of the national income,
mpare we even with the achievements of many of the rich coun-
tries, including Britain.’

But he remarked

w t;i . n relati0n t0 tbe s * z ® °f the effort the results were poor, and
c , nvestm ent w as claiming more and more resources, the growth
of he economy was slowing down . . . in 1955 . . . Highly twelve

wrntW 1 n CUrrent ° UtpUt "’ as obtained f tom each pounds-

oniv ahn ?T' ta . -ir ^ Same amount of capital was providing

sintr n l n SS " VOrth 0f 0Ut P ut and faur years later it had
slumped to eight shdlings-worth.’

growth^e^ref ° . tb * s P aradox of high investment and slow

roncentrate mt * Planning and the failure to

concentrate more on agriculture but then went on to say:

The biggest mistake of aU . . . was, however, to believe that the one

EDUCATION

367

important thing in development is a lot of capital investment in con-
structions and equipment. Basically, CPP policies were based on the
equation, Development = Investment. What they ignored was that
investment in things will only produce satisfactory results if it is
accompanied by investment in people. Trained manpower, not capital
goods, is the crucial bottleneck in the future development of
Ghana . . .’

He pointed out that the Seven-Year Development Plan had estimated
that in this seven-year period something above 100,000 additional
skilled personnel would be needed if all parts of the plan were to be
fulfilled. This would have meant that the existing supply would have
to have been roughly trebled in seven years. This, he said, was ‘an
impossible target’.

Was it in fact so impossible? If the University from the start had
played its part, if ‘the gap in the middle’ had been filled, would there
not have been a sufficient output of pupils from the secondary and
even from the primary schools, to profit from the technical training
which should have been provided but was not? Certainly set against
what the Watson Commission thought conceivably possible, the
achievements of Dr Nkrumah’s governments in secondary and
primary education are extremely impressive.

The universal desire for the education which had been denied
under a colonial regime was one of the main springs of the Indepen-
dence demand. ‘Nothing impressed us more,’ said the Watson
Commission in their Report, ‘than the interest of the people of the
Gold Coast in education. Practically every African who sent in a
memorandum or who appeared in person before us sooner or later
started to discuss education ... the general complaint appears to
be that the education provided in the schools actively discourages
pupils from turning to trades and crafts. It is realized that literary
education alone is doing great harm in the Gold Coast.’

To the Commission however it appeared it would take an almost
indefinite time to secure universal primary education. ‘We have
been told,’ they said, ‘that it would take at least twenty years to
achieve, if finance and other factors are taken into consideration.
This, however, appears to us to represent a minimum time.’ They
thought it quite impossible that current school education could
quadruple itself in the next twenty years. ‘We feel,’ they said, ‘that

3^8 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

it would be more realistic ... to base plans for die future on a
longer period than twenty years.’ In fact, Dr Nkrumah’s Govern-
ment proved that it was more than possible. By 1961 compulsory
primary education had been introduced. By 1962, that is to say
fourteen years after the Watson Commission Report, the number of
children in primary schools was five times as large as it was at the
time of their Report.

At the time of die Watson Report the majority of the children
enrolled were in the infant junior schools, for those from five to
e even years old, and not in the senior primary catering for children
up to sixteen years, the figures being 237,026 in the infant junior as
compared with 46,662 in the senior primary. At the time the standard
o teaching in both was, according to official reports, low. Thanks
arge y to the influence of Sir Gordon Guggisberg’s reforms, there
was good secondary education, but in 1948 only 6,490 pupils were
enrolled and only 457 teachers were in training. When this is
contraste with the position as it was on the eve of the coup the
success 0 the CPP Government’s educational policy stands out
clearly. At that time there were enrolled 1,480,000 pupils in 10,388
primary an middle schools, of which 400 schools had been opened
npw^ reV1 ° US j 1 "' ^ ere were I0 i secondary schools, including 11
° ne A^ ene m a tota ^ sec ondary school enrolment of

tp ' u°' > °^ C - ren l ar kable even tiian this, were strides made in
ers training. In 1966 there was an enrolment of 12,720 and the
mber of teachers training colleges had almost doubled since the
- 10US ^ £ar r 0 at beginning of 1966 as compared to 44 at the
° 1C ' > r' ^hramah’s Government had achieved in

hw 6 n ye mi mUCh , m0re than the Watson Commission thought
Colnniaf 0551 ' e ’ Un ^ ^ m ? st f avoura ble circumstances, for a
Killick’c XT t0 aim t0 ac ^‘ eve twenty years, and yet, if Mr

enontrTi t nC Ur£S 3re correct > even this stupendous effort was not
enough to support a modest development plan.

ffrnwffi i,, 1 ? TJ- We ? 1 wrong w hh education in Ghana was not its
invesritrafin 1 ‘ lreC o°! 1 ' Watson Commission made tlieir

for everv n U ^ there were 50 children in the primary schools
1066 X "ft. a secon( iary education. Eighteen years later, in
stifl X X lH NkrUI ? ah Govern men t was overthrown, there were
secondary tX “Xi? P ” mar y schools against each one in the
r Y’ 1S an t ^ e a bsence of technical training, had been a

EDUCATION

colonial heritage which the educational system of Independent
Ghana had never been able entirely to discard. Technical education,
rather than book-learning, had always been the African demand.
The programme of the Fanti Confederation of 1871 had provided
for ‘normal’ or technical schools to be attached to every State and
Missionary school ‘for the express purpose of educating and
instructing the scholars as carpenters, masons, sawyers, joiners,
agriculturalists, smiths, architects and builders’. Missionary
schools have been accused of teaching only such subjects as would
enable their students to study the Scriptures, but the charge is by no
means just. The Basel Mission had always tried to provide technical
training and the skills they taught penetrated far beyond the class-
room. Even today the Akan carpenter saws his wood in the Swiss-
German method, exactly as taught a hundred years ago by the
Basel mission, with the teeth of the saw away from him holding it
upright and following with his eyes directly above it, along the
cutting line. As early as 1858 the Basel Mission had even established
technical training for wheelwrights, locksmiths and bookbinders
and their example was copied by the Wesleyan Missions.

Technical education was not developed because the Colonial
Authorities thought, or pretended to think, it was opposed by the
Africans. Even in the face of the positive finding of the Watson
Commission that ‘the general complaint was that the education
provided’ discouraged ‘pupils turning to trades and crafts’ and that
‘literary education’ in isolation was considered by African opinion
to be ‘doing great harm’, the Colonial Office stuck to their assertion
that only literary education was possible because of African odoo-
sition to any other type, and that it was to meet African wishes that
most of the Gold Coast education effort was concentrated on the
infant junior schools. ,

In the British Governments Statement on the Report of th„
Commission, it w. conceded that ,t m,ght
technical education that:

37 ° REAP THE WHIRLWIND

So far as the Watson Commission’s recommendation that a greater
emphasis should be placed on senior primary and secondary
education, the British Government replied:

This could only be done at the expense of children u ho are at present
enied junior primary schooling. The present policy of the Gold Coast
overnment, again based on popular demand, is to extend junior
primary schooling over as w ide an area of the Territory as possible
existing educational policy in the Gold Coast is based on the
recommendations of a representative local Committee.’

n it was to this Committee that the Watson Committee’s recom-
men ations were sent. Ihc attitude of mind of this ‘representative
ommittee and of the British Government can only be understood
*- tS "! contex t. The reasons why education was never better
j ’ eit ler before or after independence in Ghana, in reality
d(-vpV,r, S U ^° n tlC ,^ as * C a PP roac h of those planning educational
mind £” len |> whether British or Ghanaian, and this attitude of

those m aS U tln J atcl T> ar >d probably decisively, influenced by what
thc^e concerned had themselves been taught.

oonosedtn^ SUppo “ cd concept of an elite were violently
could nnlv i C 5 Cner: ! extcns ‘ on education which in their view
which rbev ° °? £ / lowering those educational standards by

reasonS en C °, n ! lde - ed , aI1 “"6 musC be J ud S cd - One of the

cation had lie ' ngadier -^Crifa for the coup d’etat was that edu-
cation had become universal and thus debased. As he put it:

field of edn ar , Ca ' n T Vdl ' cb Nhmmah’s rule planted havoc was in the

the Accelerated Educrtioiwl^ai^^^Th a ®

certain m„„r , 1 rian - • • • The direct result of this was a

every staJ^f A 0 '? nng of educational standards which effected
enSed n o 1 3tI0n “ thi$ COUntr >’- • • • The Education Trust
high renutari 6 P . reS . erve op Education Department, w'hich had a
to set UD sern° A Unn i? dl6 ccdon ‘ a l administration, and proceeded
was enoueh SCh °° ls aI1 over the country, whether or not there

already ordJ^T p0 j ,ulatIon in , the area to fill these schools. Into the

colonial days wat . eC ° I V?' e d uc ation pattern, nursed and built in the
days, was pushed a haphazard programme.’

Academy of Sciences had in 1 960 promoted the writing of an

EDUCATION

371

overall Study of Contemporary Ghana. The first volume, published
in 1966, contained a detailed review of the economy by, among
others, Mr Tony Killick who was later to attribute, in the article I
have noted, the absence of sufficient investment in education as the
main reason for Ghana’s economic difficulties. Yet in the preface to
this first volume, which Mr Killick himself helped to edit, Mr E. M.
Omaboe, one of the general editors of the project — who was then
the Government Statistician and is now head of the National Econo-
mic Committee set up by the military regime — pointed out the
inescapable dilemma of all developing countries. In 1963-64,
he noted, out of a total central government expenditure of £144
million, 31 per cent went on educational and health services while
only 29 per cent was spent on economic services. The expense of
these he said was ‘now running at levels far ahead of the capacity of
the economy’.

H. G. Wells once remarked that ‘human history becomes more
and more a race between education and catastrophe’. It was a race
in which Ghana could not win.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LAST YEARS

In all I was Attorney General for four years, from September
I 957 to October 1961, and thus intimately involved in the legal
c langes made during this period. Then for the next four and a half
years I sat on the touch-line, like some substitute player at a football

m u tC a ’• WatC ^* n ° tbe & ame ad the time but only occasionally being
ca ed in to play, always in different positions on the field and for
s lort periods only. Then in February 1966 the Government was
overthrown and I spent my last month in West Africa pondering
over Ghanaian affairs in the slave fort that the Dutch had built two
centuries before to house their captives in before selling them over-

rison ife under any conditions, as is no doubt one of its objects,
orces one to review, without illusion, one’s previous career and to
examine with concern the mistakes one had made to bring oneself
ere. nj estimation of what I originally thought w'as right or
wrong to do must now be subconsciously tinged with the hindsight
us prison re-appraisal. In the little prison yard, where in previous
inTn S ^ c . ncra j 1 ? n a ^ ter o encra tion of slaves had been assembled,
3 l M 3I ? d r r n ndcd before shi P ment to the Americas, I used to
™ r a UlC fC - ° W pnsoners fr om our cell, still, as when I first
resets r a SlXtCen years before and visited Neif Halaby there,
tritinn or . stran S er j to Africa. In the prisons of Ghana, segre-
crimimk m A mC and r most m y companions were Lebanese
lenmh ‘ ^ A”* .° f ex . ercise , was short of a cricket pitch in
of nrknn n^ C t0 tbc Wa * st a £ ablst the heat, wearing only a pair
talkinc .nr™ tr °r n CrS ’ ^ us . ed to walk up and down endlessly
Ghannim it™' 0nc , j c ! °" Pobbcal prisoner, H. M. Basner, a non-
home in wA t n A Sdf ’ r Ut a wb ‘ te S . ou th African who had made his
imnelled m ! 1 nC ^ some thing of the same motives as had
Member of C p° r tay *" Ghana : Hc ’ likc had been a lawyer and a
the Smuts nerA A'a r nt e ^* bcnd Senator in South Africa during
P 0 . After the Sharpevillc massacre he was, like many

THE LAST YEARS

373

other progressive Europeans, imprisoned by the Verwoerd Govern-
ment, and had served some seven months in various South African
gaols. Then, when released under restriction, he had succeeded in
escaping with his family and, after many wanderings, arrived
without passport or travel papers in Accra and here settled down.
He was a brilliant journalist and a man of high personal courage.
Though not deeply religious in a conventional sense he always
maintained the observances of his Jewish faith despite the pressures
from Arab Africa to whom he looked for support in the liberation
of the South. His integrity paid and his open acknowledgement of
his racial origin never prevented his articles being reprinted in the
Cairo press. Accra had seemed to him then the best centre from
which he could continue the political objective he had set himself in
South Africa, the destruction of apartheid and the creation of a
planned economy throughout the African continent. His complete
acceptance by Ghanaians as an African like themselves, despite his
colour and his faith, had symbolized Nkrumah’s dream of a united
Africa free of prejudice on grounds of race or religion. His imprison-
ment signified more clearly than anything else, that the old values
were gone.

The Nkrumah system had been destroyed overnight in circum-
stances neither of us had anticipated. It was obvious thatwehad both
miscalculated, but how and where? Was what had happened, in
fact, inevitable? Could Dr Nkrumah in practice have followed
another policy and, if he had been able to conduct such a policy
would it have been any more successful? Had the new state of
Ghana been born with such congenital defects that it could never
have long survived or was the collapse of the Nkrumah system due
to a series of subsequent miscalculations, mistakes and crimes
which, with ordinary prudence and honesty, could have been
avoided ?

Before any of the questions can be answered they must be seen in
their broad perspective. What the Nkrumah Government was
attempting was, in the twentieth century, to achieve what the
developed countries of the world had achieved in the previous one.
This aim was to some extent acknowledged and even applauded. It
was however presumed by the world, and indeed in Ghana, that one
could secure the grandeurs without the miseries and that the class
exploitation and repression that accompanied the industrial revo-

374

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

ution in Britain, the Civil War which was its necessary precursor
in the United States and the profound political upheavals which
" ere an esscnt ' a l P art °f the industrialization of Western Europe,
\\ ere none of them inevitable to development but could be avoided in
t e light of latter knowledge. What happened in Ghana may only be
t e partial answer to the question as to whether this presumption
vas justified but it provides a reason for studying the Ghana
experiment objectively; but this cannot be done if one attempts to
isolate Ghanaian events from those of the rest of the world.

IT . *7 entieth century is not the nineteenth. Britain and the
mte fates were never undeveloped countries in the sense that
e great majority of the poorer nations of the world are today,
ere are some few states which are still undeveloped in the true
ense. epa and the Yemen are perhaps examples, but the majority
e poor countries have an economy which has been developed in
response to nineteenth-century pressures from the developed world.

the W , 7 C ° Untries in S eneral are not isolated cases where

ZS TT 1 ? C0I T y of P r e-industrial Europe has continued
. ' f j . Ci . avc become the raw material producing counter-

[he niol cM. trlahZ " d WOrld - 0f this Ghana was perhaps
two- third<: n i . n o CYam Pl e - Its main export, cocoa, which provided

to die indni- 1 T eamingS > W3S * n ° Way rel2ted

£ 2 0r agricultural needs of the country. It was a
the indusr ' UCCd t0 satls fy a demand which had arisen out of
its world nrir(‘ /a Rowing wea ith of the developed world and

Ghanai m 1 T T*- ° fitS USe > Were almost entirely outside
new industrhlk ? th . e ni r icteen th century the products of the
Britain like thit7 Sb ° rt su PPty- The industrialization of
and devcloninn- m ° i T”’ Was basc d upon the existence of a free
came to indent ^ manufactur ed goods. By the time Ghana

permitted to grow coSabS if d °° rS closed ‘ Ghana might b<3

nude the tarifT wnlk' but f anyattempt to process it at home was
effective exStlof 1116 mdustrialized ™rld prevented its

potential wcalth'-md C °, Unt ^ cs ob world developed first their
ciplcs The child i afterwards, their social and moral prin-

i n d ust rializa ti on^ £SS 1 C ° mp ° nCnt ° f Britai "’ S ^

accepted the obligation of ! mpossible m an a ge which
S of compulsory education. Inadequate

THE LAST YEARS

375

housing and sanitation, disease, poverty and ignorance existed as
automatic regulators of the growing population of the states which
developed in the nineteenth century. It was only when prosperity
was assured them that their national conscience expanded to the
extent of communal action to provide public sanitation, working-
class housing, free education and health services. Until then, death,
the traditional adjuster of population balance, ensured there were
not too many old or young to support. The less developed world in
general, and Ghana in particular, accepted, without query, the
responsibility for these recently established social obligations of the
West and thus assumed a burden never borne by the industrialized
countries in their developing days. For every child per member of
the working population in Britain in 1960, there were in Ghana in
that same year, two.

On top of these difficulties in the way of development which were
common to most poorer countries, Ghana had two additional
problems of her own, the fragility of its monocrop economy and the
inexperience and understaffed public service with which she had
been endowed. In an editorial headed ‘A Frightening Position’, the
Financial Times of the 16th July 1965, using cocoa as its text, spelt
out the implications for the less developed countries of the failure
by the developed nations to pay a fair price for the primary products
which they purchased :

4 . . . Cocoa prices yesterday stood at roughly half the level reached
at the beginning of the year, which was itself below the average for
1964; allowing for changes in the value of money, the real worth of a
ton of cocoa is actually lower than in the depression years of the early
thirties . . . For the countries who rely heavily on these commodity
exports, this is a frightening position. . . . The position of workers in
these countries’ main industries is similar to that which would face
operatives in the Western automobile industry if the price of motor
cars halved in six months, except that employees in the developing
countries have few savings and little social security on which to fall
back.

The economic dislocation caused by falling export prices and the
failure of investment plans is bound to have political repercussions, of
an extremist sort. The climate for a gradual progress towards demo-
cratic concepts could hardly be worse.’

THE LAST YEARS

377

first seven months of 1965 had averaged £139 a ton. These figures
suggest that even the British public did not benefit from the
impoverishment of Ghana and that the profit had been absorbed by
manufacturers, brokers and speculators.

One of the other difficulties in obtaining a fair cocoa price was the
practice of speculation in commodity futures. After the great Stock
Exchange panic in the United States in 1929 most developed
countries have protected their ora nationals against speculation in
shares, which is watched and controlled. It is otherwise with the
primary products of developing countries which are now one of the
main bases of the gambling which previously took place in domestic
shares and stocks.

The sterling area is a major producer of cocoa, providing over
60 per cent of the world’s supply of beans. While Ghana and
Nigeria are the main suppliers, cocoa is an important crop in some
of the 'West India Islands and is vital to the economy of New
Guinea. The cocoa price in the world markets is therefore of
concern to the sterling area as a whole, particularly as this area is a
comparatively small consumer of cocoa beans, taking less than
10 per cent of the world’s total output. It had for long been realized
that the maintenance of the position of sterling depends upon, to a
considerable extent, the obtaining of fair prices for the primary
products produced within the area. On this Air Harold Wilson had
written, as long ago as 1953:

‘It is, however, becoming widely realised, even in the United States
that the dollar problem of the Western world cannot be solved on a
stable or secure basis without American co-operation in the establish-
ment of international agreements and long-term purchasing arrange-
ments for primary raw materials, to put a floor in the market for dollar-
eaming primary products.’

In July 1965 cocoa had fallen as low as £91 6s. a ton and, if such
a low figure continued for any length of time, it would affect the
overall earnings of the sterling area to a significant degree. The
Ghana Government therefore proposed at the Commonwealth
Finance Ministers meeting in that September that the developed
countries of the Commonwealth who were in the sterling area
should undertake to purchase sufficient cocoa as to raise the price.

It was su oTr ested that they should keep this cocoa off the market

THE LAST YEARS

379

with the many problems that cocoa brought m its tram, Gha
required a first-rate Civil Service, not only of officials who were
honest and hard-working but even more important, who understood
the complications of import licensing and of st " n | en 5 f ® e gn
exchange control. Neither the service which Ghana had inherited at
Independence, nor the training provided by the University p

duced the class of official required. r , .

How necessarv it was to have had already developed m Ghana at
Independence a broad educational systein which cou!d have
produced a new class of public officer can be shown by the un-
fortunate history of the public service up to n epen e •
was placed in a position of finding practically from scratch md
viduals to man the whole apparatus of state. The University fro
which the new entrants were supposed to come considered
above giving the down-to-earth technical 1 ' 1 v j t ^

at this critical time, Ghana found itself with officia s to de al with
abstruse problems of international trade whose only p ofessio
qualification was a degree in Ancient History, English Literature

^By Second half of the nineteenth century the Gold Coasted

been well on the way to developing its own rican A frican

Even with the limited education available, first-cl s ^ African

administrators emerged and were appointed to p®i ° , capital

G. E. Eminsang, an African and ‘Free Burgher’ of
of Elmina, was appointed by Governor Pope Hennessey,
of authority included both the Gold Coast an j Oold

Colony, Civil Commandant of " even

Coast possessions were ceded to as Admin i s trator

proposed to have appointed Dr At -whole of the

Is the Gold Coast, that is to say as fLImake this

future Colony. Though the ‘higher

ro?tLThedt Mri»ns io held seven of the then twelve

Services and his reports wo P lgg a sierra Leonean

Webb, then a Colonial Offi ‘ . Court Jud°-e and in 1892

lawyer, Franz Smith, was ^ in M D edica i Officer and at about
another Sierra Leonean became cjuei

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

380

the same time a third African from Sierra Leone was appointed
Solicitor General. George Ekem Ferguson, though nominally a
chief surveyor, and another African civil servant H. Vroom, later
to be awarded a cmg, were the chief negotiators of the treaties by
which the Gold Coast frontiers were extended to die North. Vroom
even acted at dmes as Secretary for Native Affairs, a post carrying
ex-officio membership of the Executive Council. It seemed at the
rime that within ten years or so the majority of the judicial
and public service posts might be occupied by Africans. The
reverse happened. The fact that in the last century Africans had
occupied leading positions in the Colonial Government had, fifty
years later, so far faded from British memory that the appointment
of two Africans in 1942 to the junior posts of Assistant District
Commissioners was hailed as the first great advancement towards
Africanization of the service.

Already in the nineteenth century there were within the Colonial
Office officials who strongly objected to Africanization and with the
appointment of Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary', this
group got the upper hand and racialism became, for the first time,
official British policy' in Africa. In 1903 Chamberlain had minuted
that he thought it

pretty clear to men of ordinary' sense that British officers could not
have confidence in Indian or native doctors” ’

and the pamphlet drawn up for the new West African Medical
Service stated that applicants must be of ‘European parentage’.

The young Dr Nanka-Bruce, then a medical student at Edin-
burgh and intending to enter the Gold Coast Medical Service, as
many African doctors had previously done, persuaded the Dean of
the Faculty to write to Joseph Chamberlain. The reply set out
c ear y t e racialist theories of the new Secretary of State:

There are special difficulties in the way' of employing native doctors,
even if fully' qualified, to attend upon European officers, especially
when stationed in the bush or at outstations.’

In 1901 a Nigerian graduate of Edinburgh was appointed as an
sistant olonial Surgeon. It was the last such appointment to be
made for three decades.

By 1908, of the 247 officials recorded in the Civil Service list only

THE LAST YEARS

381

five were Africans. One was Franz Smith, the Judge, whom the
Colonial Office had tried unsuccessfully to transfer. The remaining
four were a District Postmaster, an assistant Chief Clerk, a sub-
assistant Treasurer and a third-class Supervisor of Customs. By
1010 even these posts were not occupied by Africans and there was
only in the Civil Service one single Gold Coast citizen, Woolhouse
Bannerman, who was a District Magistrate and who came of the
family which had fifty years before supplied the Lieutenant-
Governor of the Colony. His appointment had been made as a
special gesture by the previous Governor and was regarded as
something special not to be repeated. No place
for any other representative of the great African families who ha
had so long a tradition of public service in the previous century.

Governor Bannerman’s portrait in the uniform of his o
might hang in Temple House, the family home of the Hutton-Mills
but no member of this highly educated and cultured familj
others like them, could obtain public employment on the basis 0
their professional qualifications. It was not unti , more
decade later, Alex Hutton-Mills, old Thomas’s son a bams er and
also a pianist of concert standing, was appointed a Magistrate, that
a policy of limited Africanization of the judicial services bega •

The same racialism was applied to the
was made at the turn of the century not to appom a y
officers to the Gold Coast Regiment despite the P ro ^t, even of h
Chief Commissioner of the Northern ^Territories who raWhoj
valuable they had been. The army and police, whl J^ P izc J

contained a number of outstanding African officers becamc o pnized

P“rdy on a colour basis. No. only

Europeans but Africans were even beach in

nco appointments. When I used to go g BORS

the .950’s the most prominent buildmg was one labe led BORS
‘British Other Ran J. It was the a™y's segregated bmhtng hut.

At Independence,

the army was that of Major. O seven

officers including medical staff, there were in W54 °™y seven
omcers, including risen tQ sixty . All the senior

Ghanaians. By i960, ranks and usually not through the

officers had c0 ™ e . up r r °°Vi q w t he first Ghanaian Commander,
fighting arms. Major-General O , tn Major-General

had been an army schoolmaster ana f j

382 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Ankrah had been a sergeant in army records. This denial of technical
employment to Africans in the army was paralleled in other Govern-
ment employment. For eighteen years, from 1901 on, Africans were
no longer recruited even as engine drivers on the state railways.

Sir Gordon Guggisbcrg was determined both on grounds of
economy and for political reasons to secure Africanization. By 1926
he had already made twenty-seven African appointments into what
were then classed as ‘European posts’, and he announced a twenty-
year plan, carefully phased with internal training programmes.
Pressure from die Colonial Office compelled him to bar Africans
from either becoming Judges or entering the so-called ‘political
service’, that is to say, diey could not become Chief Commissioners
or District Commissioners or hold other posts directly connected
with the political management of the country'. Otherwise said the
Governor:

Neither an African nor a European will have any' claim to promotion
... on account of his colour but because he is the best man for the
appointment.’

It all came to nothing. As a sessional paper of the Legislative
Council of 1950 put it:

The ambitious and noble vision of Sir Gordon Guggisberg remained
an elusive mirage, while the lofty structure which he had designed
was destined never to be erected.’

Guggisberg’s plan was that by 1935, 148 high Civil Service posts
should be held by Africans and that by 1945 this number should
ave been increased to 229. He failed, not unnaturally, to take into
account t e great increase of the Civil Service as a result of war-time
an „ P ost-war conditions and his 1945 figure was based on a total of
55 European posts of which therefore, according to his scheme,
rtcans would hold two-fifths. The plan was approved by the
o oma nice and, when Guggisberg was retired, sabotaged. In
193 > ten years after Guggisberg’s departure, there were only
nrty one Africans in senior posts, only two more than when he
e t, an in 1948, at the time of the Watson Commission, when there
'\ere more than 1,300 senior posts, Africans only occupied ninety-
wf ot them - If the proportions laid down by Guggisberg had been
adhered to, there would have been 520. In 1888, with an admittedly

THE LAST YEARS

383

far smaller service, 23 per cent of the higher posts were held by
Africans. By 1948 the African share had been reduced to 7 per

cent. . , .

Nevertheless the Watson Commission, which presumably was
not told of the Guggisberg plan, let alone about the nineteenth-
century Africanization, were impressed by this figure of ninety-tour
not realizing it was less than half the target even on a numerical
basis set in 1926 for 1945. The Colonial Office had the records on
their file and must have known better. This did not prevent a hig
note of self-praise creeping into the Government’s official comment
on this passage in the Watson Report:

‘The Commission have recognized that it is the settled policy of the
Gold Coast Government to encourage to the maximum possible ex-
tent the entry of Africans into the higher branches of the public ser-
vice. His Majesty’s Government are glad to note the Commissions
opinion that there had been no lack of good faith in recent years in
promoting this policy.’

In truth, the policy begun in 1901 of closing the Civil S
to qualified Africans had only been hesitatingly a nd judgm 0 y
reversed. There was thus during the preparatory peno
dence no hard core of experienced African ^ f-a^The new
recruits were those mainly who came from e n £\ -

were therefore taught to believe themselves as beloign n

elite and yet they had neither the knowledge, background or

training to equip them for thar mk- effect ofthis concep t

Sir Eric Ashby has spo 'en 0 , ^ ^ particular its effect

of higher education on African “ c ^ ^ ^ between Uvo

on the African Civil s ^“t 11 horizons of thought. In

spiritual worlds, two systems of cth , ^ Western civilization;

his hands he holds the “ instrument to the welfare of

. His prob ern is how to on this problem
his own people. But he has no opportune r

the -an between himself and his people is very great. . The
. . . tne gap oerween nur tured and where his ideas

umversuy * the nursery “ Cities and their graduates are

to of the nineteenth century

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

384

had been dispersed their British successors had been a strange lot.
One of my predecessors in office as Attorney General, Sir William
Nevill Gear}', after he left die Gold Coast entered into private law
practice in Nigeria and in a book, Nigeria wider British Rule,
published in 1927 and dedicated by permission to Joseph Chamber-
lain, then long dead, he thus described the ‘2,005 white officials’ of
that Colony:

‘For some of the departments professional and technical qualifications
are of course necessary (except for the Judiciary in the Provincial
Courts), but for the general Civil Service it was a mystery how and
why men got their appointments; still I have only known of one
official who had previously “done time”, and he was an excellent
public servant and retired on a pension. One mercantile house made
it a practice if they had in their employment a “dud” to pass him into
Government service. . . . Some men enter the service young perhaps
because they cannot pass the examinations required for the pro-
fessions. There is another class of older men, frequently the best, who
enter the service because they have had “troubles”, pecuniar}' or
amorous, elsewhere.’

By the time I came to the Gold Coast in 1950 all this had changed
and there was a new type of able and efficient officer. For example,
I do not think I could have run the Attorney General’s office
without the assistance of an old hand from the Colonial Public
Service, Hilary Battcock, who served with me practically through-
out as Solicitor General. However, in die administrative service
particularly, the theories of British colonialism of die nineteenth
century lingered on. The tradidon remained that the ‘political
officer must be in charge — and the British officer’s African successor
equally resisted on principle any alteration of rank or salary scale
which might disturb the original hierarchy as set up in Colonial
times.

A personal experience of my own when I was asked by die
resident to look into certain cases of corruption, may illustrate the
e ect of this rigidity. I had been appointed as a sole Commissioner
t( ? CX ,^‘ ne , the workin S of such State and mixed enterprises as I
ax/? 11 ° e . ected * ^ act ^ was not a general roving assignment.
What was intended was that I should look at certain specific
m ustries but in order that they should not appear to be singled out

THE LAST YEARS

385

as under suspicion, my Commission was put in general form. In
fact in the end I only examined, in detail, one industry. What
became immediately apparent, was that, whether there had been
any corruption or not, the mechanisms for checking it were wholly
absent.

The account of all such enterprises had to be, in theory, audited
by the Auditor-General but if he lacked the staff to conduct the
audit of any particular one of them, he was entitled to arrange for a
qualified firm to do it on contract terms. The salary scale offered by
the Government was too low to attract competent Chartered
Accountants to the Auditor-General s department in face of the
high salaries offered to qualified Ghanaians by local firms. Therefore
the Auditor-General had to arrange, not for one, but for all of these
boards and firms to be audited by private enterprise on his behalf,

on contract.

The cost to the Government of contracting out this work would
have paid two and three times over the increases in salary necessary
to tempt Ghanaians into the Auditor-Generals department. In
consequence, in my report, I proposed that a sum equivalent to that
spent on contracting out the auditing of State enterprises should be
devoted to recruiting and maintaining a special department of the
Auditor-General’s department, which would not only audit the
books financially but would carry out, at the same time an efficiency
audit. I discussed my proposal m detail with the Auditor-General
and the senior officers of his department, and worked out with
them proposals based on efficiency audit practice as apphed in the
United States and Britain. These were turned down not because of
any political objection but because the sa ary cales ; we thought
necessary to attract the Chartered Accountants and other pro-
fessional staff required for an efficiency audit were ro 0 high. The
issue was not one of spending. have

cost rather less than did the exis o > - • j ? audlts out on

contract. It was turned down on fe P^e ^that my report
offended against the salary grading of the Civil Serv.ce, and that

W Wms"'the inherited prejudice against the p rofess ;

worse stm, me u reform much more diffi- » ~

technical civil servants mad pJy ^ Gh The

idea that some special skill obtained by offerbw , " d
short of direction of labour, 0 Co - 7 npetitive

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

386

salary, was regarded in the Establishment Secretary’s office as
entirely disruptive of the principles of the Service.

Social prestige and precedence in the Civil Service depended
upon salary grading. The administrative officers had therefore to be
the most highly paid. To increase the salary, say, of a geologist
would involve a pay rise all around and this, it could easily be
demonstrated, could not be afforded. The consequences of this
policy were reflected in the progressive denuding of the technical
ministries. Despite the fact that the Watson Commission had
commented, in particular, on the deficiencies of the Government’s
agricultural services even in die colonial period, the Colonial Office,
with all its resources, had not been able to fill the many vacancies.
After independence the deficiency of die educational system was to
make it almost impossible to find sufficient Ghanaian recruits with
the necessary technical qualificauons.

In 1961 when I left the Attorney General’s Office I had been
able, through my continued but successful struggle over lawyer’s
salary scales to leave behind me a fully staffed department. At the
same date, in the Ministry of Agriculture, out of an establishment for
267 Agricultural Assistants, it had only been possible to fill 147
posts. In the higher grades die position was almost as bad. The
Division of General Agriculture, which dealt with the key questions
of increasing food supplies and lessening the dependency of the
economy on cocoa, was supposed to have 173 technical officers
above the rank of Agricultural Assistant. Fifty three of these
positions were, at this date, vacant.

It might have been possible to have recruited more technicians
from abroad but for the past history of the subterfuges used to
sabotage the Guggisberg plan and to prevent Africanization of the
service. Now every such suggestion was quite naturally suspect and
this was particularly so when key posts were involved.

Shortly after independence Michael Collins, the Commissioner
o Police under the Colonial regime, whom it had been decided to

ee P m office, died and his British deputy was due shortly to take
U P * ® P os *- Secretary to the Henley Regatta. I suggested that we
s ou take advantage of this unexpected vacancy to borrow from
Hritam, for a one- or two-year period, a police officer of distinction
w 0 cou d reorganize the force and select, without prejudice from
previous colonial connections, the Ghanaian officers most worthy of

THE LAST YEARS

387

encouragement, promotion and specialist training. The name I put
forward was Colonel A. E. Young, then Commissioner of Pohce of
the City of London but whom I discovered was available for
secondment. The Cabinet, I afterwards learned, argued over this
proposal for hours. There was general agreement that the Ghanaia
pohce officers had not had sufficient experience but against ffi
was the fear that the Party would alienate the police lf the Y brou S
in a senior police officer from outside as Commissioner and 1 did m
appoint to the post the Ghanaian otherwise entitled to it according
to the colonial rules of succession in the force. In consequence Ae
senior Ghanaian pohce officer, E. R. T. Madjitey, a former school-
master, was appointed. c . • n t

In the end it did him little good. A product °f AfnC ™ tl0 f ^ 0 ^
the top himself, Madjitey was unable to resist the pre
below to remove the remaining British police ofitesbgj
technical posts, though there were not yet a su cien , ^

mined Ghanaian substitutes. I fought hard tc .ream a Scodand
Yard expert on fraud and even succeeded in ge mg
the Attorney General’s department, but he
very short period. When the contracts 0 e
British pohce specialists were terminated, he cons ' dercdb
should Eesign. Madjitey was, in the end, left with a force not

sufficiently technically equipped or trame to 01 <rp[ ouse

In JantLy .964 an armed constable, on duty at . Fhp itaff .Hou*,
shot at the President and killed a Snpenntendent of Pol ^^L
to disarm Urn. The subsequent investigation into police g
revealed numerous deficiencies and shortcomings j p

the Special Branch, John Hartley, who tad been long : “

Eric Madjitey’s running of things, was »PP““ . or P gan n, ers 0 f
Harlley was to be, two years later, o P

th My 'o.h« unsuccessful attempt to have appointedskilied Brinsh

professional men to fill an0 *^ r ^pp’fp^t-independence pohey
of success. In accordance with Je ^m po V t0

of separating executive and over the run-

recruit a considerable number of D .| rict Commissioners , now re-

mng of the courts of the form^ ^ ^ enQUgh t0 find

christened Government n ; nce t0 be junior magistrates.

Ghanaian lawyers with sufficient experience j

388 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

It was impossible on top of it to expand the judiciary if, as was then
desired, a legal structure similar to that of England was to be built
up.

As a stopgap measure I suggested we should fill the middle grade,
that is to say the positions which corresponded to that of County
Court judges, full-time Chairmen of Quarter Sessions and the like
in England, with experienced retired British or Commonwealth
judges who would serve for two to three years. By then there should
have emerged from the growing body of Ghanaian lawyers, sufficient
individuals to fill the posts. The Cabinet approved my plan and my
office drafted ‘The Commissioners of Assize and Civil Pleas Bill’
which was to provide Parliamentary' authority for their appoint-
ment. Again the idea was subject to violent attack, this time in the
National Assembly and led by Ako Adjei, the most narrowly
nationalist of the Ministers. The Bill was passed but at his insti-
gation a proviso was added, limiting those who could be appointed
under it to Ghanaians. In consequence the whole scheme fell to the
ground. The Act in the form finally passed was used to enable a few
retired Ghanaian magistrates to be re-employed but for all practical
purposes it was still-born and was repealed three years later.

Cocoa and the Civil Service have always seemed to me to lie at the
root of Ghana s problems and that without examining their impli-
cations in detail, it is impossible to understand what took place.
This however is not the view taken by o titer observers. Mr Henry L.
Bretton, for example, the author of The Rise and Fall of Kwame
Nkrumah, had visited Ghana in 1956, 1959 and 1962 and was in
1964-65 Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of
tana. Since he had already written a book on Nigerian politics
and had, before completing his book on Ghana, spent a year at
e University College at Nairobi in Kenya, one would at least
suppose that he would have possessed a basis for comparison. He
was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan
and his visits to Africa were financed by the Rockefeller Foundation
and by Michigan University’s Developing Areas Fund. He had the
time, t e experience and the money to produce an expert study of
ana and his book, with its elaborate ‘Selective Bibliography’ and
its trw enty pages of notes on the authorities on whom he relied for
S lves a H the appearance of scholarship in theory,
ne Central Intelligence Agency of the United States Govern-

THE LAST YEARS

389

ment thought so highly of the work of American scholars visiting
Mric a that S in many^ases when funds from voluntary sources wer
insufficient to finance their visits, these were <ro m 'he

CIA’s secret reserves. The real interest of Professor Bretmn s ^boot
and similar articles and studies on Ghana y 0 er
developed world, is whether a dangerous system of sdf ' decep °
has been set up. To what extent have studies of Africa by such
persons been objective and to what degree, on the other hand, toe
die skilled observers from the Western World returned the rn^ern
which they believe would be most in accord 1 wnh ^ what ta m
power in their own countries, wanted to hear . ' - ■ j ^

die calculated supply of misinformanon, which bedeviUef ' Br «™
Colonial policy in its last days, been revived m a grander more
dangerous form with thevisiting Western Professor ""VS
place of the illiterate chief. Britain’s failure to understand vh w
happening in the Colonial Gold Coast arose, as I have «r 'd earlie
to explain, through reliance on information supplied by ^the duds
whom the British authorities maintained m power. V ry y

these chiefs gave the answers which they though would be most

pleasing to those who kept them in 0 s , . . ar r : ca t i, a t
through United S “ es ^^“^uTe shnilarly biased?

lSSTS? ffiHeSaSon if is in any even. ** -

examine how Professor Bretton treats the issues I have briefly

'tt £ £ g 5 £u Civil Service is

as ‘slow-moving, red-tape addicte. “ atriat ’ e commercial

‘geared largely to 0 „ t0 examine what seems to me

interests . However, he does not extent t h eS e continuing

to be the important issue, namely, Nkrumah’s

defects in the Pff^^^toprSeding colonial
Governments or the inevitable - f A main lssues

regime. This in itself is a pUy because on ^ it ig

raised by the Ghanaian ex^ene ■. dismantle the existing

necessary in all former on a new basis.

Civil Service machinery and Financial Times, had

Ax m the cocoa q« J ^fmost pressing problems-the
highhghted one of the • t that this is having on

weakness of commodity prices

39 ° REAP the whirlwind

the plans of developing countries’, Professor Bretton’s analysis is
restricted to the following passage:

‘Of course, the steady drop in the world price of cocoa contributed to
Ghana’s over-all economic weakness. Considering the heavy depend-
ence on the sale of cocoa — about 60 per cent of all export trade — the
drop from £467 per long ton in 1953 to £191 per long ton in 1963 was
critical indeed. However, to insist, as Nkrumah did, that the Ghanaian
economy was deteriorating simply because the consumers of the
world’s cocoa refused to pay higher prices was something of an exag-
geration. The overextension and mismanagement, the erratic course
of Ghana’s industrialization, the fanciful fiscal policies, and the mis-
appropriations could not be ascribed to the consumers of Ghana’s
cocoa.’

The fact that the figures he quotes are wrong is only of marginal
interest in indicating the extent of his scholarship. What is of
importance is the automatic supposition that what went wrong in
Ghana was in the main the result of internal mistakes and crimes.
With Professor Bretton, as with other critics, there is no attempt
made to evaluate how far the matters commonly held against Dr
Nkrumah arose as a consequence of external pressures 'which would
have equally affected any other government in Ghana, however
chosen or run.

The average world price of cocoa beans in 1953 was not £467 a
ton but only £287. It was the sudden jump to £467 a ton the
following year which produced the political crisis that followed the
J 954 general election. Again the price of cocoa in 1963 was not £ 19 1
a ton but £208. It was the subsequent fall in 1964 to an average of
£191 and, more particularly, the fall to £140 in 1965 which are the
politically significant figures. It was this movement in the cocoa
price which largely explained ‘the over extension’ of the economy,
t e erratic course of industrialization, and, what Professor Bretton
calls the fanciful fiscal policies’.

. thirty-one per cent of Ghana’s total capital stock was locked up
m cocoa trees. If the farmer did not receive a return which at least
met is outgoings then he would neglect to spray his trees or to cut
out diseased ones and, as the Watson Commission had pointed out,
, swollen shoot’, the dread malady of the cocoa farm, was not
always kept under control, the whole of the Ghanaian cocoa

THE LAST YEARS

391

planting would be destroyed into a generation I liras I *erefae
Lential to subsidize spraying and cuttmg out to « P»J '
farmer a price guaranteed in advance, mespecroe of the »™uiu
coco, he produced or the price at which his produce could be sold

on the world market. ...... _ nil u he

While this was the only policy by which the mdu try ced

kept ahve, its side effects were serious. If fa ™< 5 P ^
large quantities of cocoa the world price e an r f ore ;^ n

was thus deprived, both of revenue and o e r Board

currency which were accumulated by the ocoa ; ntema l 3n d

when there was a substantial difference between the m =mal and

external prices. A big crop stimulated a demand
semi-durable imports since the farmers overall earn! P_

However, as external earnings declined proportion s
of the crop the foreign exchange earned was no gre ate r w totever
size the crop. The licensing of imports-what “““

calls ‘fanciful fiscal policies’-became , ' c “ ssa ^ b “'” , d the
disbalance between internal and externa earni g same

fluctuation in the size and price of the cocoa crop. For to*
reason the economy became ‘over extended'. The togs '“f s
reasonably anticipated through increase cocoa p ’

not available since the fall in external pnce canned out tn
increased earnings expected from a bigger crop and 1

industrialization was set on ‘an erratic c0 ^ rs ? ) ' f Bretton and
How are these errors and misanalyses by r . ^es 0 f f act
other like minded critics to be interprete . e r acts w hich

and the failure to draw obvious conclusions from th f
are right, due merely to chance or is it due, as d •

days, to m attempt to find arguments to justify the existin*

the world ? i. nrnvc usinsc

Broadly speaking Professor Bretton se s o tke p 00 r

Ghana as the example, that the latent co f nm 0 f the

nations of the world and the wealthy ones poorer while

dissatisfaction of those who are growing poo conspiracy

they see others growing richer and richer °f a
inspired by the anti-Western feeling o ^so^ ^ exp loi te d for

Western intellectuals. It ,^ s th g’ ^r Nkrumah, who, had they
their own purposes individuals, decent and

been left to their own devices, would have turned ou

392

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

honest neo-colonialists. To Professor Bretton, Dr Nkrumah’s error
was that he started out on this course as a crypto neo-colonialist for
Britain and not for the United States. According to him ‘London
completely accepted Nkrumah’ and he comments that ‘a glance at
the trade balance over the years shows that the choice had actually
not been a bad one’. He complains bitterly that Dr Nkrumah’s
opposition to neo-colonialism ‘did not apply to Great Britain to the
same extent as it did to the United States’.

This is a complete and fundamental misunderstanding. In so far
as Dr Nkrumah can be accused of favouring any Western country
it was the United States and in so far as any of his development
projects were of a neo-colonialist nature, the Volta Hydro-Electric
Scheme best^fittcd this pattern. It involved as Mr Tony Killick has
pointed out, an extraordinary generous agreement’ with two United
States firms, the Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation and
the Reynolds Metal Company.

The Volta project was originally planned at a time of aluminium
s ortage m the sterling area and was devised as a scheme to develop
the very large bauxite deposits in the Colony of the Gold Coast as it
was t en. Aluminium production proceeds in three distinct and
separate stages. The least profitable is the first stage — the mining by
open cast methods of the raw material, bauxite. The second stage is
he conversion of this bauxite into pure aluminium oxide or ‘alu-
mina as it is called. The third stage is the reduction of this alumina
m a sme ter into metal by a process which consumes such large

t ai ? le j! 0 e < j ct:rlc ity that aluminium has been described as
packaged power .

v J h lT rn whicbGhana obtaine d from its bauxite exports was
5 chn r° UI , ld IOi ' a ton> In 3 x 956 inquiry into mining it
Z iT 5k th u c » !t . 0f shi PPi”? <»“>*« to Scotland, where it
between j , e 't'"^ Aluminium Company into alumina was

SX* ““ it tmti transporting

orodiirincT S< ? m — h subse 9 uent development, the original idea for
GntSJTTT metal locaU >: had from Sir Gordon

based nn karri C l a ,P ro P ose ^ an integrated aluminium industry
be processed ^ 6 eCt £ 1C P? w . er br . om the Volta. Local bauxite would

would be red •" £re ^ * S m ' ned an d the alumina so produced
would be reduced in a smelter in the Colony into the final product,

THE LAST YEARS

393

aluminium metal. The post-war British Government proposal [for a
Gold Coast aluminium industry were likewise based on the whole

manufacture taking place in the Colony.

The Volta River Project as finally established was of quite a
different character. It was unconnected with any proc«amg of tal
bauxite Valeo the aluminium Company established m Ghana by
SI firms, merely undertook to «* a redu«m plan
which would reduce to aluminium alumina powder p oduerf^

the two firms in fire United States

The only obligations of the American firms to Ghana were first to
build a smelter Ind secondly to pay annuaUy m foreigi excl hang
sum for a quantity of power from the Volta ^^^f^fter!
rising from £542,000 in 1967 to £2,464,000 in 1973
AH such power as the smelter might require had to be sold ^
Volta Hydro-Electric Authority at a fixed £

which is equivalent to just under \d. a unit T^^f^dted
power could be obtained by the companies United

States it would have cost them up to 4 nulls m Weston Europe
between 4 and 6 mills and even m Japan, where power is cheap,

between 2-7 and 4 mills. had to

In order to supply this power fire Ghana °T™f 4 e y olta
undertake to construct a dam behind whic w There

lake, 250 miles long and with an area of 3,275 s 9 Qhana and
was thus flooded 3 per cent of the former land surface
farms which had previously produced some £500,

annually, were submerged. Ghana had to

To pay for this immense hydro-electric complex ^Gham had ^

expend £40-4 million in foreign exc ang was on ly possible

local currency. Of the foreign exc ange n g ^ ^ « so f t > rate of

for Ghana to borrow £9-6 mi 10 The Governmen t had to

3 i Per cent over a period oft 3 ^ reS erves of foreign exchange

find £5 million from their own p Intemational Bank, the United

and to obtain the remainder h^ ^ Unked Kin g d oni Export

States Export and Import cent tQ 6 cent

Credits Department at Aeharfia 1 W *5* P ^ ^ ^ has
repayable wthin twenty-fiv y further costs 0 f some £7 million,

estimated that Ghana had t ancillary work. Further, Tema

much of it in foreign exchange, m ancillary

harbour, essential to the scheme cost £27 millio .

394 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

Writing off any return on these items of expenditure, the hoped
for profit on the Ghana capital invested in the Volta Scheme was by
no means excessive and it had to depend entirely on the expected
sale of surplus electrical power. The current to the smelter was,
under the Master Agreement to which the United States Govern-
ment was a party, supplied virtually at cost price. In the coming
years the Volta River Authority will have to find just under £3
million annually in foreign currency for interest and repayment
charges and not even after 1973 does the promised payment in
foreign exchange by Valeo amount to this figure. On the most
optimistic estimates the Volta Authority cannot make a profit until
1971 and the maximum return w'hich Ghana can hope to obtain
on the capital invested is, even on a fifty-year average, only between
8 and 8-5 per cent. Even these figures depend on a continually
growing demand by industry for the power surplus to smelter
requirements and a rapidly rising standard of living which would
increase, at a fast rate, domestic consumption.

In short the Volta project was not, as is so often represented, a
generous investment by the Western world in Ghanaian develop-
ment. In reality, it was, on the one hand, a scheme for processing
alumina powder produced elsewhere by foreign companies enjoying
substantial tax exemptions and obtaining electric power, one of the
main costs of aluminium smelting, at a cheaper rate than that
obtainable almost anywhere else in the world. For Ghana, on the
ot er hand, it was a calculated gamble. The construction of the
smelter made possible the building of the hydro-electric complex
ut its profitability ultimately depended upon industrialization in
* n *^s turn postulated the creation of an all-African
mar ct. evertheless it might have been reasonably supposed that
minimum benefits would come to Ghana in return for the highly
favourable terms granted to Western industry.

o give one example. The Volta power production would in any
C% a r m ^ xc . ess Ghana’s immediate needs. Power was badly
nee e or the industrialization of Ghana’s neighbour Togo, whose
capita ome was closer to the generating station than Accra.

estern pressure in support of African sharing of the current
pro ucc rruglu at least have been expected. Togo could have been

“ Ia ?, CU j 3 ent on t ^ le vcr y favourable terms offered to it by
r rvkrumah s Government. No such support for African-based

THE LAST YEARS

development was forthcoming. In the interests of African industria-
lization Ghana made every concession to Western financial interests.
No encouraging move was ever made in return.

After all, the Volta project did not stand alone as an example of the
effort which Dr Nkrumah’s Governments made to reach a basis for
co-existence with Western capitalism. When the gold mines pro-
ducing almost one half of Ghana’s total output of gold threatened
to close down unless granted large Government loans, the Ghana
Government bought them out by a take-over bid on the London
Stock Exchange I was one of those in charge of this operation and
though a number of individuals in Ghana, who have now been
charged with wholesale corruption, knew what was gomg on, not
one of them, and this I was able to establish positively, ever attemp-
ted to make the very large sums which could easily have been made
by speculating in the shares of the companies concerned before the
terms of the offer were announced. As it was no shareholder was
offered less for any share than he might have paid for it at any time
since independence. The shares in the largest of the companies
concerned which were currently quoted at 3d. were bought for 15.
and the other companies’ shareholders obtamed terms which were

almost as generous. . ,

The British Treasury has power to remit stamp duty on such

transactions at their discretion. In vien o e samp utj in
question having to be paid by a less developed Commonwealth

country which had compensated, lf g “ eroiKl A

individual British shareholders, we asked that Treasury discretion

should be used in Ghana’s case. The

It should have been a warning to us of things to come. Lnder no

. MIUU1U , under Dr Nkrumah, receive ce^-r.u-

circumstances would Cjhana, unuer u>. • ’

treatment in return, however well foreign interests uere !« 5 ;ed
after.

39^ REAP THE WHIRLWIND

i^n 5 mHIi0n f industrialists and other creditors in the United
states, Britain and the countries of Western Europe.

even L7 aS r< j? uired was not foe writing off of these debts nor
lemrfheni' 11 SC f 75 d °™' ^ . t ^ at was as k ed for was merely a
The Sn ; r 6 PCn ° d durin S which they had to be repaid,
sooner S V “ 8rced - The Western countries refused. Yet no

Western m 7 ^ ”7^ re lP me established itself than these same
extending iLp !- eS 3 p tened t0 °fo er t0 foe mutineers a scheme for
hand, to Dr Nlaumah. Why 7** they had ° Ut ° f

foemselvetGn^ S Governments even if they had not conducted
Bretton Ins « neo " c °fo^ ladst a way towards Britain as Professor

period. It was^the^Gol if' S . Upported sterIin S in its critical
afterwards Ginn ? c C ° 3St C °lony under Dr Nkrumah and
sterling area with 7 ^ ^ independent . which had provided the
criticaf ^. GlZ * * ddkr

investment of ire c • 7 , }een . re P aid by the unfortunate ill-

Ghana’s reserves ° d S ed in Britain which had resulted in

the fault of Britain i 6 ? e 5 ed £6o million. This was entirely

difficulties were also tea b r Charge ° g the reserves - Ghana’s present
manufacturers of rfip w r g e extent due to the fact thatthechocolate

Pledges con ^ “ P “ ^
Conferences by leaders of th beha f at Intern ational Cocoa
of cocoa Ghana produced rlJ ^ dustry > that whatever the quantity
at a price of betwppn r Western world would purchase it all
foe foreign 3 t0n ‘ Ghana’s failure to find
considerable part the result nf^ sh % t : term obligations was in
average, in ^ 31 ° nly 3 t0 "’ ° n

purchase price had hppn u i a< ? t lat ln previous years also, the

^ „c„ s “ ItX S ,h = pr0 ™ sed "tatam.

assist Ghana under Dr Ml- dev<do P ed countries for refusing to
extravagant and cornmt md l 4 W3S that the re S ime was s0

that to give it anv nr * , ad . £ enera by been so mismanaged,
indebtedness. Y accommoda tion would only lead to further
Of

the absence of sufficient- 1 ru7 en - ent ex \ sted - It was due in part to
Part to nepotism and to theT™ 5 - in ma nagement, and in
enterprises of individual* PPomtment to the Boards of State
individuals not capable of running them effectively

THE LAST YEARS

397

Thus, for example, General Ankrah when retired, was made a
Director of the Ghana Commercial Bank. Had he not become Head
of State as a result of the mutiny, his appointment no doubt would
have been given as an example of a choice made from motives of
political expediency, rather than of banking experience.

However, a great deal of this attack was misdirected. The object
of State enterprises was often to save foreign exchange, rather than
to make internal profits, and this was true of the two Corporations
which made the greatest losses, and are most often attacked, the
State Mining Corporation and Ghana Airways. Looked at from the
pure angle of profit, Ashanti Gold Fields, foreign owned and
foreign managed, made enormous profits, while the State Mining
Corporation incurred an annual loss of £i million a year. In large
part this was due to the fact that the Ashanti concession included the
richest ore in the country while the State mines had to exploit ore
which a commercial firm might not have considered it worthwhile
to mine. For example, in 1962 Ashanti Gold Fields were producing
one ounce of gold for each ton of ore mined. At the main State
mine it was necessary to process five tons to obtain the same
quantity of gold. Nevertheless in terms of foreign exchange
earned the State mines were more valuable to Ghana than Ashanti
Gold Fields. In 1961-62, £5,225,000 worth of gold was produced
at Ashanti. The State Mining Corporations only produced
£4,740,000. Yet in terms of net foreign exchange earned for Ghana
the State mines produced £ 3 , 75 °> 000 Ashantl Gold Fields

only produced £3,325,000.

In the same way the utility of Ghana Airways an . indeed of the
Conference buildings constructed for the rganization of African
Unity meeting in Accra at a cost of £7 ml 10n an cited as the
supreme example of Dr Nkrumah s extravagance must both be
regarded in the light of their potentia orei 0 n exc ange earnings.

Looked at in theory a large tourist industry could have been
built up on the basis of the Air Ghana services and its fleet of
aircraft was justified on this account. ® P e . n la l passengers
existed. What was lacking were the skilled ad mstrators to work
out the technical details and the whole supporting sk llIs r equ i re d
for a tourist industry, from chefs to p ° V” peak, ng Spanish.

Experts did not exist in the Civ.l Service or elsewhere to ex p l oit the
expansion of air traffic possible, throu a h the f urable geographical

39 §

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

„ i 10n , 0 ^ cr f; Often an opportunity was opened up but some-
re a ? ng 1 e Ine tbe specialist, the administrator, the technician

■ ™ e t ' V f >Ist neede d to despatch the letter was missing and the
project came to nothing in consequence.

rnnr^ Xa ? ple ’ Ghana ’ s purchase of British VCio aircraft has been
nf thee nC as unjustifiable expenditure, though in fact the features
anv niti aCr ° P a f S L Were better suited to African conditions than
with rmJ / tben _ obtainable. If they could have been flown
have nrnvprf , 6 0ads f° r tbe i r maximum flying time, they would
the asking wif^ P robtab J e and tb e passengers were to be had for
rivhN th' at " as lacking was diplomatic negotiation of landing
planning t SCle . I ! tl ^ Prospecting of new routes and technical
equidistant r ° 0ne P art icular case. Accra is almost
large Lehi r ° m Uenos A lres and Beirut. There are comparatively
wWch haveTnt TT mtleS in West ^a and Latin America
Buenos Aires rt, r am u y connect * ons - An air service from Beirut to
the ^avaihWe t f ^ by VCl ° aircraft could be shown on
Accra-Bdrur ? "TT *' be most Potable. The existing
that its extensiorTtnV Pa ‘ d but avaiIa ble figures indicated

Paying and Ghana hacTth USing a VCl0 > would be hi S hl >'

was missing wac m d aircr aft to provide the service. All that

arrangements nee ° Sta ^ 6 t0 WOrb out m detail the complicated
arrangements necessary to establish it.

firmest bSs C ° n , ference buiIdin S s ‘ The

of international m r start a tourist industry is the promotion

AgaiXr,l“ c*S„r d W-

tad the disadvantage of not A dd» ''baba, which

and of having a high altlo a a g ° n main communication lines
Hall equipped whh fnll S. T " WaS ’ ^ its new Conference

with GaSetS SL“| l° r r uta "““ i-«Pr« ! »S » d

only other place i n Af 6 lbe °f mternational standards, the
intwnational conferences 03 ’"$«'>* Sahara where full-sctde

P»tcy had, i„7h?“Sd “ bE no„-ali g „ed

never, in practice exnlntWi T mmerclal implications which were
which, for exanmle hni-t, ft. ’ . Was one °f tbe f ew countries to

ambassadors were accredited “ d N ° rth Vietnameae

large but came from nil fi, ’ . e dl Plomatic corps was not only

shade of opinion AnH 6 contlnents and contained almost every
opinion. And not only the political but the physical

THE LAST YEARS 399

infrastructure for international conferences also existed. There was
adequate hotel accommodation and the facilities for expanding o
meet demand. There were excellent world connections to Accra
which was served by many airlines and its cable and telephon
facilities were, in my opinion, in many ways superior to ^neva.
Indeed, with all its advantages, once it had the conference budding ,
Accra could have, if not rivalled, at least emulated Geneva whose
start as an international centre had arisen f ron ^ its repu a
non-alignment gained by its citizens who forme an con r°
International Red Cross. There was no reason why Accra like
Geneva, should not have become the home of a num er o ,
increasing International Agencies of the Unite a ons
world organizations.

The greatest problem of any less develope coun ry ^

balance on invisible account which is a continued dram die limtied_
foreign currency which can be obtained from lts ex P° ' t

mittee of British National Export Council pointed o m a T
Britain’s Invisible Earnings, published 7 only m seven yearn ^
the hundred and seventy years smce 1796 has Britain ^ p
than she imported. This almost invariable adverse balanceo

trade has however nearly always been made up y a p p^tain’s
on the invisible side. In .966 toy-seven pe. of Bntams
overseas earnings came from invisible paymen P. .. tour jst
dends from overseas investment, sluppmg and aitos, , tounst

traffic, banting brokerage and marketing, ays ly • n exchange

of the United Kingdom's total gross balance in forei . b g
came from evports. The United States mv,s.bl = re “ f A „ s Sa a„“
running at around the same Bgnre as have those of Italy, Austria

Norway. ^ Pr pfnrp not afford a deficit on its

A less developed country can ^ ^ of dlis much 0 f

invisible balance of payments ac ^ has been beside the

the criticism of, for examp e, - n A much of this was in foreign

point. The airline mad= thpor, charges The^e

currency by way of fuel, ex p f exc hange on the pur-

was, in addition heavy capi n ncve 5 hdess by which Ghana

chase of aircraft. The P™P er . d d is whether if ms passengers
airways P crf ?™. C f orei<Tn Clines the cost in foreign exchange to
had been carried bj = Further the very existence of an

Ghana would have been higher, rurui

400

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

211 l £ j 1S a stimulus to tourism and tourism is one of the few quick
met o s by which a developing country can promote invisible
exports, e tween 1952 and 1964 Yugoslavia largely in this way
increase er invisible earnings from $22 million to $326 million,
jor an was able, over the same period, to maintain, again largely
011 o tourism, the fourth fastest growth rate per head of the popula-
1011 in invisible exports of any country in the world. Ghana which
per aps more than any other African state has most to offer to

Af™” 1 e ^ 1Can tour ' sts who in increasing numbers were visiting
nca, ia every justification in spending Iavishingly on a con-
ftrence centre But for the military revolt Ghana might well, like

class°of cou 3 tr’ ^° rdan ’ bave broken through into the tourist earning

be P a . me independent foreign investment was already
indue? 11 ^ 1. C mmm S an d timber industries and such secondary
the clp!?d aS 1 Cre W3S ’ re P atr i at i° n of profits therefore cut into
of foreio-n 61 re ^ ources op foreign currency necessary for the purchase
tial fond •^ qmpment ’ ra ' v materials, semi-durable goods and essen-
there wrrp ?° S ' n ac ] dlt: i on the fact that such flow of tourists as
had to bp trJ? S ” utwar d s grom Ghana, that every professional man
to be born / r .° ad and t ^ at insurance and shipping costs had
Mble tapom g " CUrrC “ y 8,1 P iW “P » >>4 burden of

world o,;S r K ,h 'r C “” cro P . c ^ e b>wer the price per ton on the
tonnaae In rnr? e cost °f shipment remained proportional to the

the cost 'in forei^Tu^ncy infhi ^ ?° C ° a aVeraged £l40 * ““
cent of the fnrii • ? ln s n 1 Ppmg the crop was over seven per

to be Led tTd fr ° m f S3le - Ever y method had therefore

to increase invisihl mS . ex ^ erna i spending on invisible account and
lines was not alwaysSSuiS 1 S* 1 Wasa ! tem P ted along these

ing is that in the criticism nf n,^ s J ur P nsm S- What is surprl ?‘
purpose of whir b?? of Ghana under Dr Nkrumah the basic

presumed that if Gb? S was never appreciated and it was

conference cem^ ^ Shlppin g or airlines of its own or built a

W3S merdy the rCSuIt oPdelusions of grandeur.

were undoubtedly dp? 1 ' 6 eXte ? t and aJs ° corruption did exist and

thing eSoutGh ??’ t0 1116 econom >’ hut, as with every-

it difficult to put ffie problem*^ ^ beCn S ° distorte d as to make
put me problem in its true perspective.

THE LAST YEARS

401

I received, roughly speaking, the same salary and allowances as a
Minister, £4,000 a year together with provision for expenses under
various heads which probably averaged around £1,700 a year, n
the ten years I was in the Ghanaian Civil Service I saved on y some
£600 in Ghanaian Bonds. Had I been more careful and economical
I might perhaps have set aside twice or three times this amount but
the high cost of living and taxation would have made it impossib e
for me to have saved more than this. Therefore when one saw
Ministers, Senior Police Officers, Judges and civil servants who
were apparently only dependent on similar or sma er sa aries,
building large houses, running new cars and entertaining freely one
had at once the suspicion that this wealth had been some ow
acquired dishonestly. It is however much more difficult to e certain
that this was so in Ghanaian conditions. Their extra mcome mig
come from family property or through trading y rien s an
relatives. Nevertheless in Ghana under Dr Nkruma , corrup 10 ,
which had previously existed, was never eliminated and it is posstbe
to argue, though I do not think it could necessarily be proved, tha
it was worse after the control of justice and po ice P ass ® * n
African hands. The difficulty of assessing the problem is tha
many wild and unsubstantiated accusations are ma e
difficult to separate the true from the false. Ta e or exa p
charges against Dr Nkrumah himself. .

He has been accused of salting away funds amounting to any* g
from M million to £5* million. Much of this alleged 1 P rsonal
fortune of Dr Nkrumah has been made up by attribunn P Y

to him property held in the name of the President Tbs had on*
nally before the establishment of the Republic, stood m die name
of tb: Crown. There were, for example, m Ghana pensive Crown
Lands’. With the establishment of the Republic sue P P ^
automatically transferred into the name of the Went bu Dr
Nkrumah exercised no more personal control over it than does the

British Monarchy over British Crown an S - „.; ven at

Apart from this the allegations come from ewdence given a
Commissions of Enquiry by Emmanuel Ayeh i Kunu » «™or
official in the President's office and a promment member of the
CPP and W. M. G. Halm, the former' Gove nor al F the Bank of

Ghana and Treasurer of the Party. Their evidence h been in
unana ana 1 reasui i nf ! CTe d abroad in their names was m

terpreted to mean that monies lodged aoroau

THE LAST YEARS

4°3

all, completely of refined non-commercial gold (which in anyeve
was not available in Ghana) it would have been worth £13,200. Jo
this reason to me the idea of he or anyone else personally carrying
through the customs in Egypt or elsewhere the large sums in go

suggested is absurd and can be written off. , f •

To back up these allegations the rebel regtme also put ' Wore ‘hem
Commission of Enquiry a certain Henry Ktvadjoe D ! aba ^
odd coincidence, was also a fellow prisoner 0 in , .

One of my cell mates was a Lebanese receiver of stolen goods and he
was friendly with Djaba and used to pass on to me what -he said

about events. Djaba was then awaiting his ppea S million
of twenty— four— years 5 imprisonment for having stole £ ^

from the Government. In short the case agains 1
he had conspired with the then Minister of Agriculture and a cm
servant in the Ministry to inflate the price of spraying
cocoa farmers and had pocketed the difference. Hl ^ h

that a good part of this illegal profit he had paid over to .Dr Mkruma .
According to the Daily Telegraph of the 21st April 1966.

‘In 1963 Djaba secured another order for 25,000 spraying machmes
from which he stood to make £400,000. This time, he sa.d,
Nkrumah asked for £100,000, a bullet-proof car and a glider.

Irrespective of Djaba’s guilt or innocence m regard

for which he was convicted in Dr N ' ^ nQ dealings

complete certainty that he and Dr ceased to be

together. This was one of the rare occasions a ter I ceased tob^

Attorney General that I was involved in a » Uce were
President called me in because ^ s ^ peC e Scape abroad when his
sheltering Djaba and had allowed 1 ^tinces pj r Nkrumah
arrest had been ordered; in these circu • proce edings. It is
asked me to take general charge of ffie » were in league

quite inconceivable that if Dja m these specia l step s to see

together Dr Nkrumah would I D j aba was tried with a former

that he was brought to trial. Fu > tbe t i me of his arrest a

Cabinet Minister, F. Y. 0 f a Government Board.

Member of Parliament and t j ie £ W es and to me it was

Asare had considerable to g Ct rfd of corruption in high

an example of Dr Nkrumah s a i s0 be prosecute d

places that he was anxious that Asare sno

4°4 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

although the bringing of such charges would obviously involve
political difficulties for him.

It has been usual in liberal circles in Britain to defend Dr
krumah on the ground that his personal fortune was irrelevant and
that he should be judged on his achievements rather than on what
e may have gained monetarily as the head of the Government in
ana. There is good historical justification for this approach. No
one, or example, attacks the Dutch Royal family though they have

c t e [ ast f c T entUry amasse ^ a fortune estimated at £100 million,
e lah of Iran, whose father jumped from army NCO to Head
ot State, is not criticized because of the extent of the Imperial
ega 1a w rich forms the specie backing for the Iranian currency.
Potentates from Asian countries are not disqualified from making
f 1S , US . to Britain because they have, by a judicious management
ng ) usiness, acquired very considerable personal fortunes,
ow ever, it is not necessary to plead any such excuse in Dr
won iff S CaSC ’ ^, lc been interested in a personal fortune he
" Utside Ghana ‘ If various Commissions of
it ifw n Mn S ied . by the milltar y regime have proved anything
foreign r ru ^ a l never transferred a penny from Ghana to any
nersoml f C< f Unt " T u- re rema ‘ ns the charge that he had a large
and no n V" 6 " U f ln Ghana. If this w-as so it was easily proved
cave civile Ha r f ° rWard t0 P rove it- Dr Nkrumah’s Will, which

staff hniicpt. 0 its stood in his name, was found at Flag-

publish dT„ ’ e They have quomd from it but neve,

\Yh v not ? n “ ered K at an y °f their Commissions of Enquiry-
were therefor ' Uma never handled money personally. If there
vans „Z vo, nr PC ; dCali ” SS thcre ">"= live been civil set-

called to give ctidmce MVh," ° f ' hen1 ' Wh S' hav,! the y bccn
against him ' '' b ' was lC necessary- to rely for the case

financial irremq " - persons "’h° were either already in prison for
In Tddit of f UleS T WCrC subse< I ucn tly to be convicted of them ?
with a rominri ^ goob Treasure Dr Nkrumah has been endowed
charge that f ‘ Whether there is any substance in die

women whose n aintaiacd c ' osc friendship with the innumerable
LibmtioJ TLnT h3VC bGCn bandied about by the National
discrcedv in the ° S pro P a f a nda service and rc-cchoed more
arc true then the f if °. lbt ^ ^t’ * not know. If the allegations
ic\cment was one of note in that he consistently

THE LAST YEARS

405

-worked an eighteen-hour day. I, in common with other senior
civil servants would often be telephoned by him on matters ot
policy often as early as 4.30 a.m. and occasionally as early as 2.30 a jn.
and it was quite usual for him to call me at 1 1 at night. e pro a
bility is that much of these subsequent slurs are the result ot ta es
originally invented as a compliment. With many peop e in ana
fecundity not monogamy was the ideal. When I was in prison one
of the warders who had a sincere admiration for t e ationa
Liberation Council said to me in praise of one of its members, A
great man; twenty-two children already and two wives sti wor
producing.’ Whether there is the slightest basis for this intended
compliment I do not know, but I presume that is story w ic a
wide circulation among this officer s admirers wou , 1 e we
fall from power, be used in a similar way to disparage him.

The truth is that, contrary to the views of Professor Beetle
cocoa crisis and lack of experience and training m t e 1V
governed events almost from the establishment of the Republic
onwards. The type of fair-weather budgeting associa e ' ’

Gbedemah, who represented the right wing of the Party,
longer possible. Indeed, the Ministry of Finance a
without any idea of planning in mind and was t YP 1< "f , ,

that the Civil Service was still subconsciously assumed to
old centralized pre-1951 basis and was never P r( T ei W
into ministries. It in fact only worked when put back n o its old
shape and, therefore, once an executive resi en , t

been established, the Civil Service of its own momentum began ^

gravitate towards the President. The o vl ° us

Budget Bureau in the President’s office which would take over

budgeting from the Ministry of Finance. figure in the

Kojo Botsio had been traditionally the most power gu

cp’p after Dr

Mrnisoy and i was % into effect in r 9S 3

Nkrumah and I had discussea ^ advice 0 f an expert on

was revised, and it was decided t Qkoh the Head of the

finance, and at the suggestion Dr’ Nicholas Kaldor,

Civil Service and Secretary o^ &bme ; ^^ ^ ^ ^
then Reader of Economics at Umona^,

he l p - , . rPP in general was becoming resdess over

In the meantime the Lrt m a

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

the apparent corruption and obvious high living of some Ministers
and Party officials. In April 1961 Dr Nkrumah, speaking on the
radio at dawn, the traditional hour when a Chief made a solemn
pronouncement, launched a wholesale attack upon it.

Corruption is endemic in every society. The extent to which it
prevails depends first on the mechanism which exists to detect and
check it, and secondly on the opportunities for it which the state
organization at any time affords. In West Africa it was nothing new
and the Watson Commission had referred to it as a major feature
of the life in the Gold Coast, in the period long before Dr Nkrumah
came to power. Dr K. A. Busia had exposed it among the Ashanti
Chiefs. When I was Attorney General we held two Commissions
of Enquiry, one into the administration of Nana Ofori Atta I’s old
traditional State, Akim Abuakwa, and the other into the affairs of
the Kumasi State Council. The State Council of Akim Abuakwa
was shown openly to have devoted its funds to supporting the
opposition. A month’s salary was for this purpose taken from the
pay of each chief whether they agreed or not. Entered in the State
ooks, we found records of the purchase of crate after crate of soda
water, paid for again from the State funds of the traditional area. In
a hot climate a bottle of soda water well-shaken and thrown into a
crow will explode and can inflict serious wounds from flying glass
sp inters. The soda water had been bought for the 1956 election to
isperse CPP meetings. At Kumasi, £19,000 accumulated by a local
tax of two shillings a load on cocoa in order to build a new palace
or the Asantehene was discovered to have been handed over to the
National Liberation Movement.

It cannot therefore be said that the CPP had any monopoly in
rruption. evertheless, corruption by a Minister was likely to be
on a ar larger scale than by a chief. Yet from a national point of
view so ong as the money is kept within the country there may be
no very great effect on the economy. Indeed, corruption in the
” 6 , tates ln 11 e ^ ast century may have materially assisted capital
pi l ' nU1 a , t10 ? y concentrating wealth. In a small country like
na > e arm likely to occur was far greater because the holder
money corruptly obtained was likely to lodge it abroad and not
r - CS l f ln ln ustr i a l development at home, as was done with the
fruits of corruption m the United States in the last century.

ny rate, it looked at this time as though a determined attempt

THE LAST YEARS

407

would be made to clean up the Government .and the Party .The
drive was led by Tawia Adamafio who, with Ako Adjei, had ong
nally supported the opposition but had joined the arty e or
Independence, obtained a scholarship to read Law m London had
returned, been called to the Ghana Bar and then rapidly risen m
the ranks of the Party. By i960 he was its General Sec ^tary. H ,
no doubt, was much of the drafting and the inspiration for t
Dawn Broadcast. When he became a Minister I thought that he
would prove an effective ally for the President an 0 , contro i

who were attempting to get corruption m ig _P a work-

Such was the situation when Dr Kaldor arrived a o once
ing on new budgetary ideas. Any plan or new . an ^

revealed how rickety was the whole Civil l Service s machine
Dr Kaldor’s fiscal planning was circumscribed by w

c tzS r tiiTuptaTt

foreign exchange reserves which ha ^ een u cQuld nQ

difference between the buying and selli g p -world

longer be built up from this source owing to the
price. There were growing demands for oretgu «cta
capital goods needed for developme . ' fot tlie | os t cocoa

to impose additional taxation not on y Y et the channels

revenue but also to check consumer limited and inefficient,

through which taxation could be app ie were s i wa tion was bound
Any budge, honestly desired - teason why

therefore to cause discontent. Inis

corruption had to be dealt with. , 0 f Ministers,

A Committee had been set up to composed

Party functionaries and Members 0 stayed on from

of the Auditor General, a British * "“^of the Civil

Colonial days, Sir Charles Tachie f-"-’ general the Ghanaian
Service Commission and the new 0 1 ^ ^ ^whaitey case

lawyer Mills-Odoi, who had appeare had been c i er ks together
and was an old friend of Adama - when the report was

in the Supreme Court and were ^ ^ Mem h ers were now
presented it was clear that many 0 f w h a t they could have

in possession of property far m

earned in the normal way. hudeet was introduced. It

It was at this stage that the new *

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

408

affected particularly the industrial workers and political strikes
broke out. There was no doubt that the opposition joined in
organizing them and was attempting to use them for propaganda
purposes abroad. The Government replied with the Preventive
Detention Act and Dr J. B. Danquah was, for the first time, detained.
Behind it all, however, was genuine discontent, heightened by the
knowledge that the corruption denounced by the President in the
Dawn Broadcast still continued. Both Dr Kaldor and I urged that
at least those Ministers and officials shown to have large amounts of
property should be asked to resign, though no allegation could be
necessarily made about something for which there might have been
a genuine explanation. The President agreed. Both Kojo Botsio and
Ivomla Gbedemah were forced from office, as was Ayeh Kumi, then
the Executive Secretary of the Development Secretariat, and others.
It seemed to me that the President must justify his position by
publishing the Investigating Committee’s report and we had it
actually in print ready for distribution.

It was at this stage that Tawiah Adamafio intervened. Pie brought
every pressure to bear to prevent publication and even succeeded in
enlisting the support to the Secretary to the Cabinet, Enoch Okoh,
the most powerful of all civil servants, the trusted confidant of the
President and now a high official serving with the rebel regime. In
t e en d, Dr Nkrumah gave way. The incident illustrates the effect
of the various pressures that had built up. The Civil Service from the
top post downwards, were opposed to any showdown which might
imperil the existing structure of power. The President was cut off
rom making a popular appeal against the corrupt elements of the
arty 1 e could get no support from Adamafio, the inspirer of the
Dawn Broadcast, since he could no longer turn to the industrial
si e o t e Party which he had alienated through the budget. Even
the engine-driver, Biney, who had defeated Sir Tsibu Darku in
I 95 1 ) was among those detained for organizing the strike. The
puzzle is why Adamafio took the stand that he did.
lie was intensely unpopular with most of the CPP old guard.

aT ° • 1 st00 ^ by Dr Nkrumah in 1954 when almost all

Asnanti had been persuaded by the promise of a higher cocoa price
to side with the Asantehene, his chiefs and the National Liberation
o\ ement. erhaps more than any other individual Krobo Edusei
save t e Party at the 1956 elections. In consequence of his

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

410

me were disturbed by corruption, as to what he should do but, like
the opposition groups from which he had come, he distrusted and
despised the people. His broadcasts while the President was out of
Ghana during the 1961 disturbances showed it. He called the
strikers ‘rats’ but it had been these ‘rats’ who had put the CPP into
power when Adamafio had been in opposition.

Unless a popular movement against corruption was organized
over the head of the old guard the President was powerless. The
District Commissioners who controlled, if Dr Nkrumah did not
have sufficient support to intervene, regional and local opinion, had
in many cases been nominees and supporters of the Ministers now
displaced and the overall economic situation allowed Adamofiio’s
position easily to be undermined.

Then came the attempt on the President’s life at Kulungugu.
The stop at the little village just inside Ghana, as the President
returned from a visit to the Upper Volta, had only been arranged at
the last minute. It was obvious therefore that the bomb-thrower
must have been told of the change of plan by one of the few in Dr
Nkrumah’s entourage who knew of it and Adamafio could be made
to fill the role.

A month after the attack he and his fellow Ga Minister, Ako
Adjei, were arrested and held in preventive detention. I had been
concerned with looking into Ako Adjei’s dealings, but I had no
connection with preparing the case against Adamafio. However,
trom talking over both cases with the then Director of Public
Prosecutions, Austin Amissah, who was an old protege of mine—
later to become the first Attorney General of the National Liberation
rc 5 ' mc and to sign the papers authorizing my own detention
an in ee to take over the house in which we lived — I came to the
cone usion, despite Austin Amissah’s views to the contrary, that the
evi ence oth against Ako Adjei and Adamafio was, even if it was
T e ? ta , Is e ln . cour t) insufficient to secure a conviction,
n t0 it av ? m August 1963 for the Security Council meeting on
. er T n , nodesia in New York, shortly after the trial began, but
re 1 left I told the President that I thought the two former
ms ers w ould both be acquitted and I questioned the desirability
a trial when the evidence against them, seemed, to
to h a i/r St ’ S0 ^satisfactory. Dr Nkrumah replied that it was wrong
to hold termer leading members of the government in prison under

THE LAST YEARS

4 1 1

preventive detention and that a trial would decide the : issm one way
or another. I certainly was left with the impression that he thoug
they would be acquitted and that in this event there was no questio

of his not accepting the verdict. Presided over

The court proceedings were m every way dramati . ^

by Sir Arku Korsah, the other judges were J B Van L , ^

bench since Colonial days, and Eric Aku o_ o, Q overn0 r
Six’ who had been imprisoned with Dr Nk ™ ma f / < Bi six >
Creasy in 1948. In the dock was a second member of tl^ “ 1 ** \

Ako Lid, but the trial was

dead man. Obetsebi Lamptey had fled the country he kter

at the time of the .96. brfore ^

returned to organize terrorism, but had aieci in

"FdSgupon the Kulungugu grenade-throwmg thet^occurred

a series of organised terrorist bomb ^J^tee'tu "deed
of these thirty people had £“">"3 ubBc meeting the police
injured and maimed for life, iunaii} rnneealed between his

succeeded in arresting a man with a gr . Obetsebi Lamptey,
legs. Investigation of his contacts revealed tta. Obets ^ ^

who had returned clandestinely from 0 y ^ actual

exile, had supplied die grenades and rec: ™‘“ d “7“ the

assassins. It seemed also clear *at .those ^

Kulungugu attack on the Presiden w w j t h the Accra

later teVorist outrages. Seven per* f^Sced to death
bomb-throwing were tried, five o w deatdl sentences were

and two given terms of imprl ^° n ,™; n J alled t0 give evidence in the
commuted and those concerned Kulunmigu attempt. In

trial of those supposedly behind B . Otchere,

addition to an Opposition Member ’ ^ about tea> the former

and Yaw Manu, the man who had ass0 ciate Tawia Adamafio
Foreign Minister Ako Adjei, his on Coffie Crabbe were

and a former Executive Secretary o Ad ^ afio an d Obetsebi

now in the dock.

Lamptey, was a Oa. L.raDoe i

succeeded him in his party positions. Dennis Austin thus

In his book Politics in Ghana 1946-19™
described the trial and its seque

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

412

‘A strange muddled tale was unfolded of intrigue, fraud, party quarrels,
witchcraft, and “money doubling” by resort to the magic world of the
spirit Zebus from the kingdom of Uranus”. (So Ako Adjei pleaded in
defence of his misuse of government funds.) That plots had been
hatched in Lome and elsewhere by former opposition members —
notably by Obetsebi Lamptey — was clear. And, indeed, Otchere
pleaded guilty. But that Tawia Adamafio, Ako Adjei, or Coffie Crabbe
had anything to do with the Kulungugu attack became increasingly
doubtful as the trial continued. And on 9 December all three were
acquitted. No one who examined the evidence could have supposed the
verdict would be otherwise. Nevertheless, on 1 1 December, Nkrumah
acting within the terms of the constitution — dismissed Sir Arku
Korsah as Chief Justice. On 23 December the National Assembly met
m special session and passed the Law of Criminal Procedure (Amend-
ment No. 2) Act empowering the President to quash any decisions of
t e Special Court; and on 25 December Nkrumah declared the judg-
ment null and void.’

In September I had gone down with cerebral malaria, a pleasant
lsease to tave since one merely becomes unconscious, but it does
ave, un ortunately, a high mortality rate. My doctors would not
ear 0 me returning to Ghana until the following year when the
woe constitutional upheaval which arose out of the trial was over.

rom w at I learned when ultimately I returned in the following
' the Crisis had arisen because the Chief Justice had

°i™ d TL Nkrumah what the verdict was likely to be and Kwaw
• J’ e Uorne y General, left him with the impression that a
convicuon was certain. Had Dr Nkrumah been forewarned he could

He m,/ry Cd - ^ j lC was wa s caught completely off balance.

when V. 6 3 t ; er 'j vards '•bat the first he had heard of the verdict was

the newt "'T 1 - IS and k' s steward, who could not believe

the news, asked him about it.

no’:;^ k° wev f the issue went deeper. The Chief Justice was
was Chairmi ° !: he J udlcla . r y- He was also a political figure who
administered Jt, ° ^ Presidential Commission of three which
un till nnw v, . countr y w ben Dr Nkrumah was abroad. He, who
no Colnniil a Wa ^ S ^ported the regime, suddenly behaved as

remSe“ f tt ft haVe done ' This Colonial standard still

that to which it was expected he would conform. Whether

THE LAST YEARS

413

to acquit or not was of course the prerogative of the judges, even m
Colonial days, but in any Colonial political trial the Govern
would certainly have been kept informed as to how 1 : was pro-
gressing and given the opportunity to discontinue e p ’

if an acquittal seemed likely. . , , . , 1 1 _

Dr Nkrumah’s policy of internal co-existence had involved l dose

cooperation with Suit section of the African Establishment which
had in the old days supported the Colonial administration In hi
youth Sir Arku Korsah had broken with the Abor ^ n “^ g the
Protection Society, of which he had been Secre ary
Society opposed the Guggisberg Constitutiona re • . - .

connected bv family and association with t at g r0U P National
aristocracy who had in the early days tned to organise .he Nanona
Democraric Party in opposition both to the UmKd Gold
Convention under Dr Danquah, and the Convention Peoples

Party under Dr Nkrumah. t> ^ wpre nick-

Those belonging to the National Democratic P V ^e

business men. . imnnn ni ir w ith the rank

These ‘Domos’ were always intense y P w hen their

and file of the CPP and I can remember in 1938 or 959 . g Dr

Party had been out of existence some s^or^ dem y onstr ’ ating w ith

Nkrumah greeted at the airport by they had

placards ‘Down with the Domos'. It ™ J* J ons of

been allowed to come in at the top and occupy tn P

P° wer - . • ,whar<m Sir Tsibu Darku who had

There was justification in th h ^ ^ was now Chair-

bitterly opposed the CPP P n0 , sir Charles Tachie Menson,
man of the Cocoa Marketing B ■ riye Council in Governor
who had been a Member 01 -.her of the Legislative Assembly
Burns’ time, and an opposition 1 e Service Commission. Sir

after 1951, was Chairman ° ^ had been elected to the Accra

Emmanuel Quist, who before ^ bad been Speaker of the

Town Council on the Domo ^ Independence. Nana Ayirebi
National Assembly at the t J me r , • ^ aut horities in the inter-war

Ackuah who had sided with e

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

414

years and had in consequence been removed by his people from the
famous Stool of Winneba, once occupied by the founder of the
hand Confederation, King Ghartev IV, was Chairman of the
National Educational Trust. Two of the most prominent judges,
N. A. Ollennu and K. A. Bossman, had been respectively Vice-
President and General Secretary of the National Democratic Party,
and in 1951 had stood as the ‘Domo’ candidates in the Accra
election not only against the CPP candidates, Dr Nkrumah and
*1 homaS' Hutton Mills, but also against the UGCC candidates,
Obetsebi Lamptcy and Ako Adjei.

1 he judges at the Treason Trial were all in a sense ‘Domos’.
Even Eric Akufo Addo, though UGCC in origin, fitted into the
pattern as did the third member of die court, W. B. Van Lare, who
ad been appointed a Colonial magistrate as long ago as 1943.

The acquittal fanned to flame die long smouldering resentment
of CPP rank and file stalwarts against these aristocrats and chiefs
who had somehow clung to power. This rank and file resentment
was supported from the Party’s old guard who saw, in the result of
t le trial, an attempt by the ‘Domos’ to strengthen their hold by
associating themselves with Adamafio and others like him who
attacked the old guard on the one issue on which diey were par-
ticularly vulnerable, corruption.

The conception that it was part of some system of natural justice
o accept automatically that all the judges in office when the colonial
regime came to an end, should continue as judges of die newly
independent state, had little logic behind it. It was not what had
lappene , or example, when the American Colonics became
n epen ent, though the United States system of electing judges
•n 'T- 0 ! ’ n ?. t . ro , m ^ le ^ ar °f Independence but from the older
<dinnLi t™ 1Ca th ,?°7 °^ t * ie seventeenth century, that the judiciary
shown cont . ro b y t * le Legislature. In Ghana the judges had
snrinl 1 . ei ? ls . e ves man y ways reactionary in their attitude to
thpir !P S atl ° n Lantnstically and exasperatingly technical in
ship l Sements. They had been appointed before diere were many
out for'^ ei f S rom . w ^ om t0 choose and a good case could be made
Benrh au some °f them to remain indefinitely on the

fatal mistake 16Se ^ ressures com bined in the making of what was a

Irrespective of the desirability or otherwise of reorganizing the

the last years 4 j 5

courts there was no case whatever for doing it a ® a °.^ ^ r j' ts>

which any impartial observer would have supp edeed The

The setting aside of the verdict was of cour f ’ d ^t^ e re also
death sentences on the MP, R. B. Otchere and Yaw Manu were also

quashed and so far as the three prisoners acquitted ."nheTttom'ey

their position was no worse than it wou ave .

General had, before judgement, done what was often done
Colonial days, discontinued the proceedi £ gS ' A tbe President’s

No d„ubt y d. howl of disapprove
action in Western countries was, m s Y .. £ t

General de Gaulle had dealt sundry with

acquitted rebel officers from Algiers, -i <- ome months

nation and when the National Liberation

after their coup d’etat carried out z .^^ eorpus proceedings and
judges who had ruled against them ‘ com ^ t Jm the Western
the like, their action received no adverse ^ removed from
press. The Chief Justice was not, ^ of Appeal and the

the Bench. He remained a member of the Co J P that he was

limitation of the action taken against 1 judicial, short-
being penalized for his administrative, n Q f tbe other

comings. No action at the time was ta eng^ ^ being set

judges. Van Lare resigned in pro S ^ ^ following year ,
aside but Akufo Addo continued t , , b pj ead 0 f State to

when the Constitution wvas amended

remove judges. He and others th ^ vicdmize d in any way.

compensation for loss of office an stan ds. It might well

Yet the basic criticism of wha P - n progre ss, but it was
have been justified if a social rev0 f h ‘Domos’ and by this
not. Dr Nkrumah needed the support ot me

action he lost it. , - ra i consequence of the breach

The 1964 Plebiscite was the logic^ ^ & 3 emonstrationj no£ of

with the old Establishment. 1 ^ Government still controlled

popular opinion, but of the ta and that its grip over the

the Civil Service machine an P elimination 0 f the ‘Domes’. It
country had been unaftecte . * k -up of the old alliance between

was an empty victory. Witn . ling classes, the way was left

the CPP and the G han a and outside it which, for one

open for all those elements against Dr Nkrumah _

reason or another, had lon 0

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY

At independence, the Ghana Armed Forces were in a run-down
state. General H. T. Alexander, who was their last British Com-
mander, in his book on his Ghanaian experiences, African Tight-
rope, accepted this as a natural state of affairs. ‘As Britain was
preparing to grant the West African territories their independence,’
he wrote, it was natural that very little money should be spent on
modern equipment for the armed forces.’ Sir Victor Paley, his
predecessor and the first Commander after Independence, he
explained, had ‘had quite a time preventing the Ghana Government
from spending a disproportionate amount of money on the armed
forces . When General Alexander took over, he found that the army
had only one new barracks at Accra. ‘Most of the others were very
old and dilapidated. . . . Very little had been spent on equipment
and transport’, with the result, according to General Alexander,
t at most of it was worn out. ‘For example,’ he wrote, ‘in one
battalion, of the six 3" mortars on establishment, all but two were
U ',! SC, x V1C J e ? le ’ and ’ n a mortar platoon I could find only one man
W mi r , rc< ^ hi s mortar within the last three years.’

While General Alexander considered that it was perhaps an error
0 a ow t e run-down to continue to this extent he accepted General
laleys premise that developing countries could not afford armed
iorces of a size or with the equipment which was capable of taking
any ecisive military action abroad. ‘So far as the navy and air force
ere concerned, he said, ‘there was very little reason for a small
ountry like Ghana to have either,’ and after all his experiences in
Stl t0 t ^ s v ‘ ew - The judgement is political, not
, le e f am P le of tile Congo showed that a minute body of
rry t r ? ie , an well-trained men could dominate any situation.
mnt° n | 6 S S ^ cess > ’ n l * le military sense, was that he had under his
ontrol a small number of highly trained mercenaries whom he was

wfipr^i^^ S t0 t ^ e pla< : es w here he wanted them at the times
C " ante them. In this type of warfare everything depended

416

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY 4 I 7

upon mobility. The lesson of the Congo was that military success is
not determined by numbers but by armament, training an , a

^GknXnatural orientation militarily was towards the United
Nations. A non-aligned policy had, among its asic assu ’

the propositions that Ghana would never need to P r ® vl
contingents which would be called upon to coopera e
power block outside the African continent and t at it ,^ ou • t

itself in military alliance with any State outsi e a .

However, if it was to fulfil even United Nations e omI ^ militarv
on the African continent it had to have not ° n y. m trans-

forces, but these had to have their own means 0 air

portation to the area where they were ' *? *J e XfvsW be taken into
In considering Ghanaian strategy it had y neces-

account that tasks on the African continent w c ^ f a n

sanly the responsibility of any J

to their lot. At the Commonwealth Prime sierra Leonean

Lagos in January 1966, Sir Albert Marg ’ * nd the British Prime
Prime Minister, had urged military ac , for gun b 0 at

Minister had sharply retorted that h D

diplomacy when he had not even got on 5 ®^ sibl g f or one African
Dr Nkrumah always saw that it was P Tbe most which
state to afford a fully integrated tha j element which its

any one country could do was to con ^ renc i er ed possible,

strategical position and techmca , ld be argued out on

Whether Ghana had a navy or an air cou ld take place, he

its merits. In order that this sort 0 p Union Government

was in favour, even before any f° r ®°. _ Command’. Once

was established, of setting up an A ” ; nten ance of the link with
again the policy of gradualism an ^ of African Unity. In

Britain came into collision with tne ^ ^j. ab states of North
any such high command, the mtegra , eoend ence came less than a
Africa was essential and Ghana s

year after the Suez war. maintain the British military

Technically Ghana needed 0 ^ ;t were a l mos t insurmount-

connection. Politically the objec 0 ^ c j asb 0 f interests, the

able. Subconsciously maybe, ^ ^ Ghana Armed Forces

British Commanders and 0 C p. na > s army’s only task was the
accepted the assumption tha

REAI» Till. WHIRLWIND

418

securing of internal .security. All their military planning was based
on this supposition. Their views became orthodox theory with
the Ghanaian ofiicers whom they trained. The leadership of the
military revolt condemned support by Ghana of the United
Nations in the Congo and among the grievances which the) listed
in their propaganda justifying their mutiny was the complaint
that it was planned to use the army again outside Ghana. Ihc
duty of being ‘non-political 1 had come to mean the resisting of
Ghana forces being used for anv purposes of police by the Ghana
Government.

I he basic error of General Alexander and those other liritish
ofiicers who believed in a non-political army was the assumption
that it was in fact practical. Kveryonc who enters an army must still
retain, to some degree, the political views which he had before he
enlisted. If the army had been recruited so as to represent a true
cross-section of Ghanaian opinion this might not have been so
important. As it was, the ofiicers had been trained to become an
e ite and the rank and file, in the infantry at least, were largely
recruited from the North. They had very little education and their
a egiance had been to local tribal chiefs. They were therefore, in
General Alexander’s words, ‘simple, respectful, still holding to
many tribal beliefs and suspicions’. Such men could be persuaded
them anylhmB Unckr thc ortic « of those immediately superior to

• Kon 'Poetical so far as these soldiers was concerned, of course
involved, as did colonialism generally, the maintenance of super-
ion an t ic bclid in an irrational supernatural. Nothing is more
revealing than the account in the London Obscnrr from Cameron

rm, 0 * °i’ 3 . 1 , anai! J n "* 10 " as their correspondent in Accra after the
A describing thc assassination of General Barwah:

When Colonel Kotoka’s troops got to General Barwah’s house, he
'as already m uniform and armed with a pistol, lie tried to shoot
0I1C ° t0 a a, ’d thc newborn legend lias it that “Colonel Kotoka,
no is well versed in juju magic, collected thc pellets as they flew and
re" them back at General Barwah. One of Colonel Kotoka’s men
meanwhile riddled General Barwah with submachine-gun bullets.’

assuming ^ ataona ], Liberation Council’s first radio broadcast on
g power, Colonel Kotoka announced ‘The myth surround-

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY 4 9

ing Nkrumah is shattered’. In the situation of *e time thiscodd

only he attempted by the revival of every ° ter individual the
rejecting unified state leadership, pers°m e m ^ ^ dei ^ on _

army had already been forced to substitu

't-*c tank and file from the North and its *^drawn

from the elite or from former Southern 3 necessary for the
little community of interest. For this ^ to

leaders of the revolt to proclaim as one o c ^ T y s W as the

better by force the living conditions of the ^ ^ o he ; ourna list
motive given by an officer prominent m the coup to J

Cameron Duodo :

‘The public thought the Army tsTSoffite

therefore did not like us, whereas clothes and had no

r-* . . .

boots on but wore canvas shoes. 01

Here was a new and privileged class in *=

weapons but who were yet being enie dtey were not

national cake. Unlike the armies o cnrietv. They resembled

defending thevested interests of any c ass ^ - ts me mbers to

a trade union which took the strike ac ances . This was the
secure the legitimate redress of err o army in Africa

strength and the weakness of it.

cannot be for long divorced from -p . - g a ff e cted by the

Every soldier is a member of a fami y g* . . ' w - tb t } ie army. Their
welfare of many relatives with no ct® strength but upon their
fate depends not on their own m , ® on ex ternal factors

internal cohesion which m its tri j irrL ^ nternat ional cocoa price or
ovet which they have no countries. .

the terms of trade as they aff had been the mutinous

If, however, the welfare of them V and less ris k y ways
officers’ first concern, there Tn er thtir n L S nffitions an indeed, General
of securing improvements Ghanaian soldier was less

Alexander gives the impression tn ^ {o his British on e and
attached to his Ghanaian o c tbat t he British officer cared

that perhaps the reason f° r 1 mu tinv in the Congo, he remarks,
more for his welfare. Discussi D beaten up ... it was

‘Although one or wo British officers

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY 4 21

the Divine Right of the army to nm its own affairs without pohocal
interference and without respect for democracy or

°That the armed forces should be an autonomous body, ruling

themselves and deciding without interference w military

which command is an idea not unknown even in

circles today. The struggle in Britain durmg thirst WoMVtet

between the Generals and the Government was its mostnoticeab ^

expression and Earl Haig’s direct representations 0

good example of it. Lloyd

points but their victory was not decisive. t j ie j r

and Air Marshals were at least able to preserve norL _ po li t i C al
authority by the development of the theory o . contro i

Army’ over which civilian Ministers shoul ave w hich

This idea was transplanted m theory to t e World W ar.

Britain organized in Africa at the time in the C0 l 0 nial

The trouble with it was that it could no P ^ t : t was no t

circumstances of the time. Troops could e au„ Conservative or

their duty to prevent the installauon m ntam be

alternatively a Labour Governmen . Y struggle

instructed that it was their duty ^^wndence an d those who
between those demanding colonial in P , r anc l with-
were supporting the existing order. NamraUy, ^

out any conscious indoctrination, dur g . j se nse that

Armed Forces were taught to be ‘non-politmal m the se^ ^
they should be against all politicians, t wa ^ cdvej S o far as
were, after all, threatening the coloma o P ^ were Dr

the Gold Coast Regiment was concerned, whether tn y

Nkrumah or Dr Danquah. _ . }n Ghana are full of

General Alexander’s memoirs Politicians who can secure

examples of this Sines the

a mass following are describe v0 ; ce of the veranda

Convention People’s Patty j&ime it was, according to this

boys, the poorly paid fid th PP this ‘rabble’ and law,

theory, the Party of' ^ in colonial times, the
order and constituted authority, ^ neu tral.

Gold Coast Army was not taug 1(joical attern became more
When Independence came ° t p ara llel with those

confused because Ghanaian conditions P

422 REAP THE WHIRLWIND

in Britain. Once there was a move towards a one party State, the
British compromise was impossible, as General Alexander saw
clearly:

‘The British argument is,’ he wrote in his book African Tightrope,
1 “Keep the army out of politics and politics out of the army — their
loyalty should be to the President and to the state”. President
Nkrumah’s argument is that the Convention People’s Party is the
state; the President himself is loyal to the Convention People’s Party,
and therefore loyalty to the state means loyalty to the Convention
People’s Party.’

This was a situation for which the English theory of a ‘non-political’
army had no answer. In fact what happened, as a result of the British
teaching of officers that they must remain neutral, was that they
accepted, as a neutral view of Ghanaian affairs, the highly prejudiced
accounts appearing in the Bridsh press. The ‘non-political’ officers
set out to destroy not the regime that existed in fact but the regime
which they had been told existed by the experts of the Western
world on Ghana.

t Afrifa s book is, in essence, an elaborate defence of the theory of
martial freedom’, the idea that an army, like a university, should be
a sovereign entity and that it must be entitled to determine for itself
t\ho will or will not exercise command. He thus describes the final
event which in his mind made the coup inevitable.

In August 1965 something else happened. Major-General Otu, the
then Chief of Defence Staff, and his deputy, Major-General Ankrah,
"ere retired from active service. Ghanaians were informed that they
had been retired”, but most of us in the Army knew they had been
dismissed. I was only a junior officer and had no means at my dis-
posal for finding from them the reason for their sudden “retirement”.
But this was not the way to treat Generals.’

^ ' h) the change was made and the two Generals retired I also do
not know but there was nothing unusual about it. There had been a
1 erence of polity with General Ankrah, who wished to expand the
arm} at a faster rate than President Nkrumah thought prudent, but
t doubt if this had much to do with it. General Otu’s predecessor,
General Alexander, had been appointed for a three-year term,
cnera s Otu and Ankrah had served in their present position for

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY 4 2 3

four years. General Otu’s appointment was in any case onl^^ ^
gap one. The man being groomed to succeed ene • 1 d

Brigadier Joe Michel, an old friend incidentally ^of my wife and
myself, and who had been best man at our we , ^ t

choice’ of both President Nknunah and General ^^but
shortly before he had been killed m an air cr • jjave

other officers of almost equal seniority whose effici y Y
been considered greater than these two w o C on o - 0 it

substituted when, owing to the then Bntis po icy had'held

was decided to retire the not

these two command posts, lne tivo r . . „ nnn : nte d to

penalized in any way, but, as is often ^likely tha? they even
the Boards of state organizations and it j

suffered any drop in income. d h; succeS sor

As to the relative efficiency of General Otu ana n

General Aferi, Brigadier Afrifa had this to say .

‘I knew very little about Major-General Otu * j^JTcon-

Chief of Defense Staff. I did not like 1S “^ blic and in un if 0 rm was

sidered that cigar-smoking by a Genera P and w hether he

a sign of a certain ineptitude. This did not impr
was a good General or not, I do not know.

On the other hand, General Aferi, '“iTdered fhafceneralOtu
just these qualities which he apparen y

IflpVpn

he wrote. ‘He is a most religious
l I knew General Aferi very well, - nd appointment as

man, and a fine officer. Before his P™ - n the Ghana Army who

Chief of Defense Staff he was the o y approach to staff

had passed the Joint Services Staff Cou«e. His PP

problems was good, and under him I .

, Brigadier’s mind, affect the issue.
This however did not, • t0 1 ^eshmed to provide openings at the
Any interference, even if it was °-r done by a politician, a justi-
top for better qualified officers, explained it:
fiable reason for mutiny. As h • P

, jr wamc Nkrumah was one of the

‘The dismissal of our Generals y f ^ 2 ^ th Fe bruary. As a result of
major factors that led to the coup f e l t that the profession of

this action the Ghanaian officers

424

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

men-at-arms had been disgraced and that their Generals as well as
they themselves had been humiliated.’

General Ankrah, now Chairman of the National Liberation Council,
is even obliquely criticized for not organizing a mutiny the moment
he was retired:

The dismissal of this General in 1965 gave me a shock,’ he wrote.
Because of the amount of confidence I had in him, I anticipated he
would take some military action to extricate himself from this humilia-
tion and all it implied for the freedom of Ghana. I knew that the
majority of the officers and men in the Ghana Army held him in great
respect, just as I did. I knew that if he was to take any action, he would
have the full support of the young officers and the men.’

So far as his other arguments against Dr Nkrumah’s government
were concerned, they were merely a repetition of the Opposition’s
case. The Nkrumah regime is condemned on five main grounds.

irst, it was not based on an elite, but on ‘one man, one vote’. The
o jection to Dr Nkrumah was that he believed in democracy. He
used it, according to A. A. Afrifa, to stifle the true intellectuals who
must always be in the minority. As he put it:

Though constantly employing the slogan “one man, one vote” he
rendered ineffective the few sober-headed members of the Nadonal
Assembly.’

Secondly like the Opposition, Brigadier Afrifa supported chief-
amcy. . n e est Dr Nkrumah had been much critized for his use
t Ut r sagy ?/° . w h'ch it was suggested meant ‘Messiah’ and
t ‘ 1S , f1 er r rC s ^ cri i e gi°us. To Afrifa there was nothing wrong with
the title but it belonged to the Asantehene.

He also, he "rote of Dr. Nkrumah, ‘without authority abrogated to
umself the paraphernalia of our chiefs ... He took upon himself
A vf * 't. ^ Sa ° ye ^°” an£ i “Kantamanto” which belonged to the
a ' U , C ! ngs • • • Chieftaincy is an institution that must be re-
cc c an protected. It is the embodiment of our souls. The chiefs
arc traditional focal points of a people’s collective activity . . . chief-
taincy provides the momentum for our people’s advancement.’

Under this head the coup was, according to A. A. Afrifa, designed

THE NON-POLITICAL ARMY ^5

to restore chiefly power which he appeared to equate with the British

Thirdly, he held that the despatch of “asm

Congo had been wrong, though, as he rnise a ^ he felt,
why it was wrong was not clear to him. controlled by the

should have been left to a British Genera an n ^ other,
Ghana Government. This criticism, more P er P re h e ls -were
reveals how, at any rate subconsciously t e Ghanaian

influenced by British «

attitude to the Congo crisis of 19°°" 9 “ f ] Como and it is
great length in Dr Nkrumah’s book “ d eta ii but essentially
unnecessary for me therefore to deal x N • . even w hen the

Ghana’s policy was to support the Uni e * ’ critical

Ghanaian government were, rightly as it turn ^ armed forces
of U.N. actions. At no time whatever were the ^

employed other than in strict accor an ^ preve nting Patrice

this involved on occasion such m , • his position w'hen

Lumumba using the Leopoldville ra loto e ‘P p j e Minister by

he had been unconstitutionally removed .as Pnme^ ^ ^
Kasavubu. Though under considers e P ^ ^ withdraw the
radical African states, Dr Nkrum insisted throughout

Ghanaian troops as other states had done and ^ United

on a solution being found within *L d o f his policy it was that
Nations. If there is any cr ^ clsm ^ ab e ;u or wi ll to solve the Congo
he put too much trust m the U. 1 N. j

crisis. . Af-f. apparently terrified

Fourthly, the Army was, ac . c0 * ^pLja. How such a rumour got
of being committed to action m avhich I was involved and

about I do not know. This was a matter 1 ^ of many staff

to my knowledge it was nev “ the question of how effective

talks which were solely conaena , A{ ycan States acting as a unit in
a force could be mounted by _ t .i inr ; 7 in 0 ' military action. General
the event of the United Nations a . African Unity’s Com-
Aferi was Chairman of the kept senior officers informed,

mittee on this subject and p par that this rumour was deliber

On internal evidence it worn a PP Q f w hat 0 ne might call the
ately put about to obtain e

‘pacifist group’ in the army. Southern Rhodesia was purely

The whole of this argumen

REAP THE WHIRLWIND

426

political. Whether military action should or should not be taken was
not, in these army officers’ view, a question for the Ghanaian
Government. It should have been settled by the army, who were
well informed on the subject. As Brigadier Afrifa puts it, ‘I person-
ally knew that Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom
was quite capable of dealing with the Rhodesian situation’. In his
vievv, the matter should have been settled by the four million
Africans in the territory. ‘All they could do,’ according to Brigadier
Afrifa, was to throw a few petrol bombs when they could have done
so much more in fighting for their country.’ In fact it was this very
issue which General Aferi, the then Commander so much admired
by Afrifa, was investigating at the time of the coup — Why had
resistance within Southern Rhodesia not been more effective? If
resistance were encouraged, would it help to deal with the situation
or would it merely result in a useless waste of life? Nevertheless,
according to Afrifa one of the reasons why the troops participated in
the coup d etat was so as to avoid being sent on a military expedition
to assist fellow Africans.

The fifth reason put forward by the military conspirators was the
general charge of dictatorship,