Living with Nkrumahism. Jeffrey S. Ahlman
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the vast majority of those living under colonial rule. Furthermore, just as Du Bois and Lenin had done with the First World War, the delegates in New York insisted that European imperialism lay at the heart of the twentieth century’s global wars, and, should it continue, only promised more violence to come.46
In his Manchester address on West and North Africa, Nkrumah would again pick up on many of these themes. According to the congress’s minutes, Nkrumah reminded the delegates that “six years of slaughter and devastation had ended, and peoples everywhere were celebrating the end of the struggle not so much with joy as with a sense of relief.” He, then, went on to warn that, given the inherently violent and rapacious nature of capitalist imperialism, this relief was sure to be short-lived “as long as Imperialism assaults the world.”47 The longtime Sierra Leonean trade unionist and activist I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson, who earlier in his career had written regularly for Gold Coast newspapers, echoed his younger Gold Coast colleague. In his speech, he rejected the arguments of those within Europe’s empires who suggested that colonial rule served as a protection against “the tribal wars which took place in bygone years, and which might break out again if they [the Europeans] left West Africa.” Perhaps waxing a bit too romantically about Africa’s precolonial past, Wallace-Johnson, then, insisted that “Africans had been living in peace until the Europeans taught them to fight.”48 Others, likewise, returned to the necessarily undemocratic nature of the colonial system. In doing so, they presented a call to action in Africa, with the Gambian newspaper editor J. Downes-Thomas—whose address also gained the attention of the West African Pilot—asserting that “history shows that independence always has to be fought for.”49
The Manchester Pan-African Congress culminated with a direct assault on the fundamental ethos underpinning the European imperial system, particularly in its African and West Indian manifestations. The congress’s cadre of diverse delegations, with origins ranging from the continent itself to the West Indies to Europe and to North America, undertook a systematic dissection of nearly every official and popular justification of colonial rule—both contemporary and historical. Questions of African and other colonial peoples’ suitability or preparation for self-government or self-determination were met with comparisons to the global violence Europe had just inflicted upon the world.50 Meanwhile, promises of political reforms and technical and infrastructural development at best faced skepticism in light of the colonial powers’ past record on the continent and elsewhere.51 At worst, delegates depicted them as new examples and tools for the colonial powers’ future exploitations.52 Others took direct aim at the relationship between the European liberal ideals of individual freedom and democratic governance and the necessarily undemocratic and racially exclusionary nature of colonial rule.53 Pointing to a problem that had long vexed European thinkers dating back to at least the nineteenth century, the Manchester delegates thus presented the political and philosophical gymnastics undertaken to justify the colonial project as more than mere hypocrisy. Instead, they viewed the contradictions embedded in European justifications of colonial rule as mechanisms designed for the colonized’s continued subjugation.54
The world powers’ own wartime rhetoric only provided further ammunition for the congress’s critiques of the imperial system, most notably in regard to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 signing of the Atlantic Charter. For Manchester’s delegates, the charter’s proclamation of the universality of a people’s right to self-determination supplied a language with which to challenge Europe’s imperial powers on their own terms. Even more significantly, with Churchill’s clear refusal to acknowledge the possibility that such a universal right could extend to colonial peoples, the charter created a vehicle for the Manchester delegates and others to make clear the contradictions and double standards embedded within the imperial system.55 As the Nigerian F. O. B. Blaize, representing the London-based West African Student Union (WASU) at the congress, is reported to have argued in his address before the congress, “British democracy seemed designed only for home consumption. Nigeria has been given a new Constitution, but her people cannot accept it because it is undemocratic. They demand that if the Atlantic Charter is good for certain people, it is good for all.”56 Speaking on the West Indies, J. A. Linton—reading a memorandum from a group of workers’ organizations from St. Kitts and Nevis—also turned to the charter. In doing so, he noted how Great Britain’s failure to recognize the rights of all of those living on the islands had led to a range of political and economic policies—such as a forced mono-crop economy and a property-based suffrage system—that had been detrimental to the islands’ peoples. In response, the St. Kitts and Nevis workers’ memo explained that what the Atlantic Charter provided them was the inspiration to begin exploring “greater unity, which can be attained only by a federation of the islands.”57
At the heart of the Manchester congress was a sense of a world in transition and a belief that Africans and other colonial peoples had an important role to play in that transition. In preparation for a volume celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the congress, F. R. Kankam-Boadu, who in 1945 was a Gold Coast delegate representing the WASU and who later in his career would direct the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Board, recounted how “without doubt all who accepted to attend the Conference must have had their minds geared to finding a new way for humanity.” As Kankam-Boadu reminded his audience in his reminiscences, the congress occurred just as the Second World War had concluded, and that this was a war that had “been fought to save the world from the ravages of racial oppression, dictatorship and all manner of inhumanities.”58 In that light, the congress provided an opening for explorations into an alternative, and many delegates expressed a sense of personal and collective obligation in bringing forth this alternative. Writing in his 1990 autobiography, another Gold Coast WASU delegate and close Nkrumah friend—later turned bitter opponent—Joe Appiah, reflected on how “the journey to Manchester as a delegate . . . evoked in me all the emotion and sentiments of a Moslem pilgrim to Mecca.” For Appiah, as with many of the congress’s other delegates, the only answer to colonial rule had to be “force.”59
AFTER MANCHESTER
The close of the Manchester congress left questions as to the exact actions to be taken in the months that followed. In London and Manchester, Padmore, along with the Guyanese pan-Africanist T. Ras Makonnen, undertook the task of publicizing the congress’s resolutions and declarations via Padmore’s Pan-African Federation (PAF). “After this publicity campaign has been crystallised,” Padmore explained in a 1946 letter to Du Bois, “we intend to consolidate the organisational structure of the Federation by drawing in all Colonial organisations of a progressive character as affiliated bodies.” As Padmore continued, he insisted that “objectively the task we set ourselves is fairly easy.” The real obstacle for the PAF, he anticipated, would be the unfortunate lack of “cadres in England” willing to engage in the work of the struggle.60 Yet, as Padmore’s most recent biographer, Leslie James, has noted, more fundamental challenges afflicted Padmore’s PAF in the late 1940s, particularly relating to the organization’s funding structure.61 As James explains, the organization’s failure to secure a stable funding source not only required that Padmore write and publish the congress’s report himself, but it also forced him to establish the PAF’s headquarters in the cheaper city of Manchester as opposed to his own London base. As a result, Padmore became distanced from the day-to-day operations of the PAF as much of the organization’s work fell upon the Manchester-based Makonnen—who, like Padmore, would later become an influential advisor to Nkrumah following Makonnen’s 1957 arrival in the Gold Coast.62
As Padmore and Makonnen worked to establish the administrative infrastructure of the PAF, many of the congress’s West African delegates turned their attention to the continent. For them, including a number from the Gold Coast, the congress was a moment of radicalization which they now sought to turn into a pathway toward political mobilization, a pathway that became embodied in the late-1945 formation of the West African National Secretariat (WANS). Founded by I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson, Kojo Botsio, Bankole Awooner-Renner, Ashie Nikoi, and Bankole Akpata, the organization nominated the elder Wallace-Johnson as its chairman and invited Nkrumah to serve as its general secretary.63 In name and membership, the organization was foremost a West African organization. However, it was also one largely formed