At a mass meeting of the Sekondi Location Branch of the Railway and Ports Workers' Union on 21 January 1970, a majority of the assembled workers resolved to secede and to form themselves into a new union. This splinter group, officially terming itself the Railway and Harbour Employees' Union, but known in local parlance as the ‘Biafrans’ (in distinction from the ‘Federalists’), explained its action in terms of the fact that ‘There has been no improvement whatsoever in the administration of our former union since we passed a vote of no confidence in the national officers in May 1967’. Almost two-thirds of the Location manual workers (i.e. some 900 out of a total of 1,580) became members of the new union, and they were soon joined by approximately a quarter of the workers employed at Takoradi harbour (i.e. some 1,100 out of a total labour force of nearly 5,000), together with small groups in Tema and Kumasi.

The leadership of the new union (hereafter referred to as the ‘splinter union’ in distinction from the ‘mother union’ – terms also used by the railway workers themselves) then proceeded to extend the object of its criticisms to the leadership and structure of the Ghana TUC. In June its general secretary, K. G. Quartey, called on the government to repeal the Industrial Relations Act (inherited from the CPP regime) and to proscribe the TUC.