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The Gambia Section of the National Congress of British West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

J. Ayodele Langley
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Extract

The Gambia was the last of the four English-speaking West African colonies to organize a local branch of the National Congress movement. As in Sierra Leone the local committee was dominated by ‘middle class’ Creoles, although active Muslim members included Sheikh Omar Fye, who played a leading role in local politics up to the early 1950s and was a leading spokesman of the Muslim community in Bathurst. Other Muslim members were Njagga Saar, a local carpenter; Omar Jallow, described as a ‘prominent agriculturist’; Amar Gaye Cham, vice-president of the 1923-4 local executive committee and a dealer. Creoles active in the local committee came largely from the mercantile and legal professions. Isaac J. Roberts, who was president of the 1925-6 committee, was a prominent solicitor of Sierra Leone descent. He was a merchant before going to England to read law; he practised in Bathurst and Lagos despite the loss of his eyesight which occurred during his student days in England. He represented the Gambia at the Lagos Session of the NCBWA in 1930. He died in Freetown in April 1933 at the age of eighty-two. M. S. J. Richards, one of the vice-presidents of the 1923-4 local executive committee, was a local trader; J. A. Mahoney (later Sir John Mahoney and Speaker of the Gambia House of Representatives) was formerly a government employee who later worked for the French firm C.F.A.O. as a mercantile clerk; the Hon. S. J. Forster, first president of the local committee, came from a distinguished Creole family and served for several years on the Legislative Council; J. E. Mahoney was the nephew of S. J. Forster and was also a trader. B. J. George, local secretary of the committee from 1921 to 1923, and delegate to the Freetown Session in 1923, was a commission agent; Henry M. Jones was a wealthy trader and was one of the Gambian delegates to the NCBWA London committee in 1920-1; until the 1921 slump and the depression of the 1930s, ‘Pa ’ Jones was influential in both business circles and in local politics. Other prominent Creole traders associated with the local committee were E. F. Small, delegate to the Accra Conference and the London committee; E. A. T. Nicol, E. J. C. Rendall, and E. N. Jones.

Résumé

LA SECTION DE GAMBIE DU CONGRÈS NATIONAL DE L'AFRIQUE ANGLAISE DE L'OUEST

Le but de cet article est de présenter une étude détaillée de la section de Gambie du Congrès National de l'Afrique anglaise de l'Ouest, mouvement politique inter-territorial qui a existé entre 1919 et 1930, en se servant largement de matériaux inédits. On peut situer ce mouvement en même temps dans le contexte pan-africain de 1920 et comme une des premières tentatives pour créer un mouvement nationaliste organisé et coordonné en Afrique de l'Ouest. Il se réclamait donc à la fois de l'idéal du pan-africanisme et des nécessités concrètes constitutionnelles et économiques. La prise de conscience raciale se combinant avec les contrôles économiques imposés par le gouvernement de l'Empire au début de la guerre, les crises commerciales d'après guerre ont engendré un mécontentement parmi l'intellizentsia côtiere de l'Afrique de l'Ouest à l'égard du gouvernement colonial de la Couronne. Les nationalistes demandaient que ce gouvernement réalise une réforme en faveur d'une représentation électorale plus ou moins limitée afin que les Africains puissent avoir leur mot à dire dans l'élaboration de la législation; faute de quoi, la position de la classe des juristes et commerçants, dont le mouvement représentait les intérêts, continuerait à décliner.

La section de Gambie du mouvement était composée en grande partie de la classe des commerçants et des propriétaires, tous musulmans et chrétiens; il était cependant évident que seuls quelques membres, politiquement engagés, de la communauté musulmane de Bathurst menés par Sheik Omar Fye (et à un certain moment par l'Almami de Bathurst) y étaient activement impliqués.

Les peuples du Protectorat étaient en pratique en dehors de toute influence du mouvement, alors que, dans la colonie elle-même, l'opposition d'Alhadji Ousman Jeng au mouvement eut pour résultat la non-participation des Musulmans. L'agitation, pour obtenir une franchise relative, menée par E. F. Small, J. A. Mahoney, Amar Gaye Gham et Sheik Omar Fye échoua d'une part à cause de l'opposition du parlement et de rivalités personnelles, d'autre part à cause de l'amélioration de la situation économique après 1920, et à cause de l'absence de leader capable de créer un mouvement vraiment national à partir du noyau d'un mouvement urbain essentiellement petit-bourgeois.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 1969 , pp. 382 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1969

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References

page 382 note 1 The West African Nationhood, April 1933; Macmillan, Allister, The Red Book of West Africa (London, 1920), p. 294Google Scholar. He was born in 1851 in Freetown; studied at the Collegiate School of the Rt. Revd. Dr. James Johnson; he came to Bathurst in 1877.

page 382 note 2 There is a profile of him in Macmillan op. cit., p. 292.

page 382 note 3 J. A. Mahoney, Secretary of NCBWA (Gambia) to the Acting Colonial Secretary, 31/10/23, GAMBIA 3/46, File No. 498. Gambia Records Office.

page 383 note 1 Welcome Address to the Overseas Delegates by I. J. Roberts, Esquire, President Gambia Section, December 1925. G.R.O.

page 383 note 2 Ibid.

page 383 note 3 Ibid.

page 383 note 4 The Sierra Leone Weekly News, 11/10/1919, p. 9.

page 383 note 5 Ibid., also The Gold Coast Leader, 6–13/12/1919 quoted in Denzer, La Ray, ‘The Gold Coast Section of the National Congress of British West Africa ’ (University of Legon M.A. thesis, 1965), p. 40Google Scholar.

page 383 note 6 GAMBIA, 4/11, Secret Minute Paper No. 63, 26/4/1922. The Hon. Colonial Secretary to The Travelling Commissioner, Karantaba, MacCarthy Island Province. According to B. J. George, a Committee of Gentlemen, with the Hon. S. J. Forster as president, formed the nucleus of the Bathurst local branch of the Congress: B. J. George, Secretary Bathurst Section to B. P. E. Bulstrode, 30/8/1923, GAMBIA 583/23, File No. 2/575.

page 383 note 7 Letter intercepted by the Gambia police, enclosed in Gambia Confidential Minute Paper, No. 663/21, File No. 3/53, E. F. Small to Ebenezer MacCarthy, 20/6/1920. For E. F. Small's part in NCBWA activities see GAMBIA Confidential Minute Papers 498/20, 633/20, 766/20. G.R.O. West Africa, 3/9/21, p. 1009: ‘The Congress Movement in the Gambia Colony.’

page 383 note 8 Minute to GAMBIA 3/291 by the Hon. Colonial Secretary, 18/5/37. G.R.O.

page 384 note 1 CO. 554/51, Governor Armitage to the Secretary of State for the Colonies CO. 26557, 7/5/21.

page 384 note 2 Ibid., also GAMBIA 3/140 and 3/212.

page 384 note 3 GAMBIA 4/42, Secret M.P. No. 140, vol. 1, 29/3/34, H. R. Oke to the Rt. Hon. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 29/3/34.

page 384 note 4 For Small's alleged affiliations with Comintern and with Malcolm Nurse see GAMBIA Confidential M.P. No. 1308/30, File No. 3/165. G.R.O.

page 385 note 1 Ibid., C. R. M. Workman, Acting Governor of the Gambia, to Lord Passfield, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 2/6/1930.

page 385 note 2 Ibid., Minute to, 22/5/1930.

page 385 note 3 Valuable information about the origins and growth of the Gambia co-operative movement can be found in: GAMBIA 4/42: ‘Activities of E. F. Small, 1918–1931 ’ and File No. RCS/EDU/12 (Gambia Co-operative Department) especially the papers prepared by students on co-operative course, 1961: ‘A Historical Research: Co-operation in the Gambia.’ The irony of the career of this ‘agitator’ is that his services were finally recognized in 1953 when he was awarded the then much coveted O.B.E.

page 385 note 4 The Hon. Dr. Thomas Bishop was born in Freetown in 1868; educated at the Wesleyan High School and at Birmingham, Durham, and Edinburgh universities; he set up medical practice in Bathurst in 1904 after serving in Freetown; appointed member of the Bathurst Legislative Council in 1916: Macmillan, op. cit., p. 294.

page 385 note 5 E. F. Small to the Colonial Secretary, 11/6/1920 GAMBIA 3/62, Colonial Secretary's Office, File No. 766. G.R.O.

page 385 note 6 Ibid., E. F. Small to the Colonial Secretary, 7/6/1920.

page 385 note 7 Ibid., Minute to, 7/6/1920; cf. p. 382, n. 1–3.

page 386 note 1 See Gray, J. M., A History of the Gambia (C.U.P., 1940), pp. 440–1Google Scholar.

page 386 note 2 Garigue, P., ‘An Anthropological Interpretation of Changing Political Leadership in West Africa ’ (London University Ph.D. thesis, 1953), pp. 183–6, 204–6, 225–6, 312–14Google Scholar; Porter, A., Creoledom (O.U.P., 1963), pp. 119–28Google Scholar; Fyfe, C., A History of Sierra Leone (O.U.P., 1962), passimGoogle Scholar; Kopytoff, Jean Herskovits, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra Leonians’ in Yoruba, 1830–1890 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), chs. 9–10Google Scholar. For a critical review of this book see The Journal of African History, vol. vii, 1966, no. 3, pp. 522–4 by A. F. Afigbo.

page 386 note 3 Kimble, D., A Political History of Ghana: the Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism 1850–1928 (O.U.P., 1963), p. 399Google Scholar.

page 386 note 4 B. A. Finn, Minute to Confidential 776/20, 4/7/21. G.R.O.

page 387 note 1 The Colonial Secretary to the Almami, GAMBIA 160/1925, File No. 2/671, 2/5/1925. G.R.O.

page 387 note 2 Ibid., the Almami of Bathurst to The Colonial Secretary, 4/5/1925. G.R.O.

page 387 note 3 Minute to Confidential 776/20, File No. 3/62 by C. R. M. Workman, 19/11/22. G.R.O.

page 387 note 4 Alhadji the Hon. Ousman Jeng to the Hon. Colonial Secretary, 423/20, File No. 3/62,19/10/1922. G.R.O.

page 388 note 1 Ibid., Omar B. Jallow to the Hon. Ousman Jeng, 18/10/1922. Omar B. Jallow to the Colonial Secretary, G. R. M. Workman, 18/10/1922. Omar B. Jallow to C. R. M. Workman GAMBIA 221/1922, File No. 2/507, 6/3/1922.

page 388 note 2 ‘Among the muslim community there is a distinct difficulty in the way of elective representation since as they themselves admit, “we are divided into castes and classes ”, and the election of any one man to represent their interests would lead to further dissentions.’ GAMBIA 3/433, Confidential M.P. No. S. 2831, 17/12/1942: ‘Historical Notes on Executive and Legislative Councils ’. G.R.O. There could have been other differences of opinion, probably of a religious nature among the leaders of the Mohammedan community. I owe this suggestion to Mr. Lamin MʼBye of Birmingham University.

page 388 note 3 Ibid.

page 388 note 4 Ibid.

page 388 note 5 Ibid.

page 388 note 6 Ibid.

page 389 note 1 Ibid.

page 389 note 2 Ibid.

page 389 note 3 Herbert Macaulay Papers (Ibadan University Library), v. 35, pp. 14–15, Henry M. Jones to Herbert Macaulay, 11/8/31; GAMBIA No. 249, C. H. Armitage to the Colonial Secretary, 31/12/26; GAMBIA Confidential M.P. No. 3/46: ‘Conference of Africans of British West Africa’, especially the ‘Report on the Bathurst Branch by Commissioner of Police, Captain C. Greig’, Confidential No. 28, 26/3/26; The Gold Coast Leader, 6/2/26; Dailey, Finden, ‘The Trade System of the Gambia is Ruining the African Middleman ’, West African Review, October 1936, pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

page 389 note 4 GAMBIA 2/575, 581/1923: ‘Legislative Council: Request for Elective Representation’, Minute to 2/575 by C. R. M. Workman, 11/8/23, para. 2.

page 389 note 5 Ibid., Minute by C. R. M. Workman, 27/3/24. G.R.O.

page 389 note 6 Ibid., ‘Petition of the Gambia Branch of NCBW A to Rt. Hon. Secretary of State for the Colonies’, 6/5/24.

page 389 note 7 GAMBIA 581/1923, File No. 2/575, Workman to the Secretary, Gambia Section, NCBWA, 28/3/24. Ibid., B. A. Finn, Acting Colonial Secretary to Secretary Gambia Section of NCBWA, 30/7/24; J. H. Thomas, Secretary of State for the Colonies to Captain C. H. Armitage, 18/6/24. West Africa: ‘The Gambia and Electoral Representation’, p. 866, 23/8/24 and pp. 1252–3: ‘The Gambia Government and Municipal Politics’, 8/11/24.

page 390 note 1 West Africa, 8/12/24, pp. 1226, 1252–3.

page 390 note 2 J. A. Mahoney to the Colonial Secretary, GAMBIA 581/1923, File No. 2/575, 26/3/24. G.R.O.

page 390 note 3 Ibid.

page 390 note 4 Ibid., the elections referred to were those of 1923 when the Nigerian National Democratic Party of Herbert Macaulay, among whose candidates was Dr. C. C. Adeniyi-Jones, who was of Sierra Leone extraction, won all the seats in Lagos. Tamuno, T. N., Nigeria and Elective Representation, 1923–1947 (Heinemann, 1966), pp. 79–82Google Scholar.

page 390 note 5 B. J. George, Secretary Gambia Section to B. P. E. Bulstrode, Officer-in-Charge, Secretariat, 30/8/1923. GAMBIA 581/23, 2/575. G.R.O.

page 391 note 1 Africana Pamphlets, Ibadan University Library, S. R. Wood to editor of The Lagos Daily News, 6/10/31, No. 186/1931/F11: ‘Resolutions of the Third Session of Congress Held at Bathurst, Gambia, December 1925 to January 1926 And of the Fourth Session Held at Lagos, Nigeria, January 1930. Drawn up in parallel form, with footnotes and appendices containing previous resolutions therein referred to. General Secretary's Office, Axim. Gold Coast, West Africa.’

page 391 note 2 Resolution 3–4 of the Lagos Session, 1930.

page 391 note 3 Ibid.; GAMBIA, M.P. 160/1925: ‘Resumé of the Proceedings of the Third Session of the NC of BWA, held at Bathurst, River Gambia, from December 24th, 1925 to January 10th, 1926.’

page 391 note 4 Resolution 8, Bathurst Session, 1925–6.

page 391 note 5 Ibid., Resolution 2.

page 391 note 6 Ibid.

page 392 note 1 GAMBIA Confidential M.P. No. 3/46, Colonial Secretary's Office: ‘Conference of Africans of British West Africa. Report on the Bathurst Branch by Commissioner of Police, Captain C. Greig ’, Confidential No. 28, 26/3/26. G.R.O.

page 392 note 2 Ibid.

page 392 note 3 Ibid.

page 392 note 4 Ibid.

page 392 note 5 Ibid.

page 392 note 6 Ibid.; also Appendix A, Confidential No. 11, 3/46, the Commissioner of Police to the Hon. Colonial Secretary, 19/5/24: ‘Report on Congress Meeting held on 17/5/1924’. G.R.O.

page 393 note 1 Ibid., para. 6; paras. 8–9 of Appendix B, Confidential No. 17, 12/11/25, 3/46; Ibid., No. 84, the Hon. Ousman Jeng to the Hon. the Acting Colonial Secretary, 2/7/24. Ibid., No. 87, 9/7/24, B. A. Finn to Ousman Jeng; also the Hon. Ousman Jeng to the Colonial Secretary, 3/46, No. 58, 30/10/22 in which after reporting that he had already communicated the Government's attitude to the Congress to the Almami of Bathurst, Jeng assured the Colonial Secretary that ‘it will take a very long time to awaken real interest in this movement, amongst the rank and file of the Muslims ’.

page 393 note 2 The Gambia Outlook and Senegambian Reporter, 18/1/1936, p. 2.

page 393 note 3 Ibid., 28/11/1936, p. 4.

page 394 note 1 The Gambia Outlook and Senegambiatt Reporter, 21/11/1936, p. 7, reproduction of speech by J. W. Quye at Third Session of the NCBWA, Bathurst, 1925–6. Mr. Quye is one of the few surviving members of the Bathurst Committee of the NCBWA.

page 394 note 2 Apter, David E., ‘Political Organization and Ideology ’, in Moore, Wilbert E. and Feldman, Arnold S., eds., Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas (Social Science Research Council, New York, 1960), p. 356Google Scholar.

page 394 note 3 For details relating to the politics, ideology, and economic aspects of the NCBWA, see the author's thesis ‘West African Aspects of the Pan-African Movement: 1900–1945 ’ (University of Edinburgh Ph.D. thesis, 1968), chs. iv-vGoogle Scholar.