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Cold War and Colonial Conflicts in British West African Adult Education, 1947–1953

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Roger Fieldhouse
Roger Fieldhouse*
Affiliation:
Department of Adult & Continuing Education of Leeds University
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Extract

The British Government's once comfortable assumption that, whatever might happen in India, colonial administration would continue for an unlimited time in Africa, was undermined by a number of complex and interrelated factors after the Second World War. These included the emergence of the United States and Soviet Union as two superpowers both hostile to colonialism; the anti-colonial principles written into the United Nations Charter; the victory of the British Labor Party in the 1945 general election and the agitation of the African nationalist movements. Until 1948 these factors hastened the progress towards decolonization without causing undue friction. In 1947 the British Government took a giant step towards divesting itself of its empire by conceding independence to India, and a year later Arthur Creech-Jones, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, declared that British colonial policy was simply “to guide the colonial territories to responsible government within the Commonwealth in conditions that ensure to the people concerned both a fair standard of living and freedom from oppression from any quarter”. But in 1948 a number of events shattered this complacent air of dignified, peaceful and paternalistic progression towards eventual independence in British Africa. The communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia followed by the Berlin blockade heralded the ending of peaceful coexistence and the beginnings of the cold war. It was not long before British imperial forces were locked in an anti-communist war in Malaya. Meanwhile in West Africa the Colonial Administration was stunned by the outbreak of violent nationalist agitation, demonstrations, strikes and rioting following Kwame Nkrumah's appointment as general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention in January 1948 and the sporadic echoing of his ‘Positive Action’ campaign amongst the Zikist nationalists in Nigeria. Fear of cold war communist intervention in Africa and a determination to resist the ‘extremist’ nationalists created a very different atmosphere in the West African territories after 1948. During the next three years Nukrumah's militant Convention People's Party in the Gold Coast [Ghana] and the radical Zikists in Nigeria waged a violent revolutionary struggle for independence against a more sullenly antagonistic colonial power.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , Fall 1984 , pp. 359 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Young, C., ‘Decolonization in Africa’ in Colonialism in Africa 1870–1960 edited by Gann, L.H. & Duignan, P., vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 452–67; Aluko, O., “Politics of Decolonization in British West Africa 1945–1960” in History of West Africa edited by Ajayi, J.F.A. & Crowder, M., vol. 2 (London, 1974), pp. 622–40. This article, which was first presented as a research paper at a History of Education Conference in Birmingham and at a research seminar in the Adult Education Department at Leeds University in April 1982, forms a part of a more extensive investigation into political and ideological influences in adult education between c. 1924 and 1951 which has been made possible by the grant of a year's study leave by the University of Leeds and by the award of a research grant by the Leverhulme Trust, for both of which I am much indebted.Google Scholar

2. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), 5th ser., vol. 166 (1950), 607–661.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 619 & 634.Google Scholar

4. Wigg, Lord, George Wigg (London, 1972), pp. 79–87; Scrimgeour, C., Fifty Years A-Growing: The History of the North Staffs District of the W.E.A. (Stoke-on-Trent, 1974), pp. 48–57; Interview with Lord Wigg (June 1980).Google Scholar

5. Lord Wigg's personal papers: Report to the Director General of Army Education.Google Scholar

6. Oxford University Department of External Studies archives at Rewley House, Oxford (hereafter cited as Oxford Archives): box file marked ‘Nigeria to 1952,’ Proposal Regarding University Extension Courses in West Africa, 9 March 1946; box file marked ‘West Africa 1947–9,’ copy of letter received from the Colonial Office, 29 May 1946; Oxford Delegacy for Extramural Studies Annual Report (1947), p. 14; Wigg, , George Wigg, pp. 108–12; Callaway, Helen, ‘A Conversation with Thomas Hodgkin,’ Convergence, vol. 11 no. 1 (Toronto, 1978), p. 23; Interview with Lord Wigg.Google Scholar

7. Oxford Archives: staff tutors files; West Africa box file, letters from McLean, J.A. to Hodgkin, T.L. (n.d. July 1947), Dowuona, M. (future Assistant Registrar at the University College, Gold Coast) to Hodgkin (9 August 1947) and Bradley, K. (Acting Colonial Secretary, Accra) to Secretary of University of Oxford Extramural Delegacy (8 September 1947), McLean's Report on his visit to the Gold Coast (1947) and Report on Conference held at Achimota College, 2 August 1947; Nigeria box file, notes of meeting at the Colonial Office 7 October 1947 and of meeting of Delegacy West Africa sub-committee, 18 December 1947; Oxford Delegacy Annual Reports (1947), p. 14; (1948), pp. 12–14; Delegacy, Oxford, Adult Education in the Gold Coast: Report for 1948–9 (1949), p. 3; McLean, J.A., “Extramural Work in West Africa” Rewley House Papers, vol. 2, no. 10 (Oxford 1948–9), pp. 44–8; Kimble, D., ‘Progress in the Gold Coast’, Rewley House Papers, vol. 3, no. 1 (Oxford 1949–50), pp. 45–53; Callaway, , “A Conversation,” p. 19; Bulletin of Society for Study of Labour History, no. 20 (1970), p. 9; Lord Wigg's personal papers: Oxford Delegacy interim report on West African Study Courses by Hodgkin, T.L. (28 July 1948) and Report by McLean, J.A. on his teaching adult education groups in Nigeria (May–August 1948); Interviews with Wigg, F.V. Pickstock (November 1979) and Coltham, S. (March 1980). The University College of the Gold Coast took over responsibility for adult education in that country from Oxford with effect from April 1949 when Kimble's secondment was extended for a further three years, although he remained officially on the Oxford staff until 1956 (Kimble, D., Progress in Adult Education (Oxford 1950) p. 3 and Oxford Archives: Kimble's staff file).Google Scholar

8. Oxford archives: Tutorial Classes Committee minutes (5 June 1948 and 5 March 1949) and Reports and Memoranda, Report of the Special Sub-Committee set up to consider Green's, E. statement concerning tutors (June 1948).Google Scholar

9. Hodgkin and McLean both left the Communist Party in or around 1949; Collins remained a member until the late fifties.Google Scholar

10. Oxford Archives, West Africa box: letter addressed to Wigg, G., 20 February 1947; Nigeria box: various papers relating to selection of tutors; Interview with Coltham.Google Scholar

11. Kimble, D., “Progress in the Gold Coast,” p. 45; Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Report of Extramural classes held in Nigeria (May–June 1949).Google Scholar

12. Hodgkin quoted in Callaway, , “A Conversation,” pp. 23–5.Google Scholar

13. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Hodgkin, to Dokubo, M., 11 May 1951.Google Scholar

14. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Reports of Delegacy tutors taking extramural courses in Nigeria (May–August 1949); Wigg papers: McLean's Report on his visit to Nigeria in 1948; Callaway, , “A Conversation,” pp. 23–5; McLean, , “Extramural Work in West Africa,” pp. 46–7; Kimble, , “Progress in the Gold Coast,” p. 53; Delegacy, Oxford, Adult Education in the Gold Coast, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

15. Young, , “Decolonization in Africa,” pp. 463–4.Google Scholar

16. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Provisional Scheme drawn up in December 1946.Google Scholar

17. Oxford Archives, West Africa box: Report of Extramural Courses taught by McLean in the Gold Coast in 1947, Kimble's syllabus (1948), Gold Coast file, and letter from Dowuona, M. to Hodgkin, , 17 March 1948; Nigeria box: copy of McLean's syllabus; Delegacy, Oxford, Report on Adult Education in the Gold Coast (1948–49) and Annual Reports (1947), p. 14; (1948), p. 12.Google Scholar

18. Kimble, , ‘Progress in the Gold Coast’, p. 46.Google Scholar

19. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Reports of Extramural classes in Eastern and Western Provinces of Nigeria (1948) and McLean's, and Collins', syllabuses; Oxford Delegacy Annual Report (1948), p. 13.Google Scholar

20. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: McLean's, , Coltham's and Nicholson's syllabuses and Report of Delegacy tutors taking Extramural Courses in Nigeria (1949); letter from McLean, J.A. to author (19 March 1982).Google Scholar

21. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Reports of Delegacy tutors … in Nigeria (1949).Google Scholar

22. McLean, , “Extramural Work in West Africa,” pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

23. Ibid, p. 46.Google Scholar

24. Bulletin of Society for the Study of Labour History, no. 20 (1970), p. 9 Google Scholar

25. In The New West Africa edited by Davidson, B. and Ademola, A. (London, 1953), pp. 102–40.Google Scholar

26. Hodgkin, T., “Towards Self Government in British West Africa,” ibid, pp. 56–101 and typescript of articles on “The National Movement in the Gold Coast” in Oxford Archives, West Africa box (n.d. ? c. 1950).Google Scholar

27. Hodgkin became a renowned African scholar and much respected confidant of militants in the independence movements. In 1962 he became the first Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana: Callaway, , ‘A Conversation’, p. 19 and see bibliography and biographical note in African Perspectives: Papers in the History, Politics and Economics of Africa Presented to Thomas Hodgkin , edited by Allen, C. and Johnson, R.W. (London, 1970).Google Scholar

28. Gupta, P.S., Imperialism and the British Labour Movement 1914–64 (London, 1976), pp. 337–42.Google Scholar

29. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Report of Extramural classes held in Western Provinces of Nigeria (1948); letter from Dokubo, M. to Hodgkin, , 14 March 1951; West Africa box: Programme of Oxford Summer School on “Adult Education in the Colonies” (1949); Oxford Delegacy Annual Reports (1947), p. 15; (1948), p. 12 and 14; Delegacy, Oxford, Adult Education in the Gold Coast, p. 13; Kimble, , ‘Progress in the Gold Coast’, p. 53; Wigg papers: McLean's Report on his teaching in Nigeria (1948); Williams, R., Politics and Letters (London 1979), p. 80; Creech-Jones personal papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, MSS. British Empire S.332, 34/1, ff. 91–2; Interviews with Wigg, Pickstock, Coltham and Hodgkin. An added factor which may have made the authorities uneasy was that the extramural classes in both colonies recruited students almost exclusively from the “literate minority” of Africans (particularly teachers and clerks) who were most likely to formulate the ideas of the nationalist movements. (Oxford Archives, West Africa and Nigeria boxes: reports on Extramural classes taught in Gold Coast (1947) and Nigeria (1948 and 1949)).Google Scholar

30. Oxford Archives, Nigeria box: Hodgkin's proposal for Extramural Courses in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia; confidential note on Adult Education in the Colonies by Hodgkin, T.L. (n.d. ? November 1949); letters, Read, Margaret to Hodgkin, (21 November 1949) and Hodgkin, to Read, (6 December 1949); Creech-Jones papers, loc. cit., MSS. Brit. Emp. S.332, 34/3, ff. 34–6.Google Scholar

31. E.g. during 1954 F.J.E. Ogwuazor, an extramural tutor at the University College of Ibadan, visited Leeds University to study English adult education and this was followed by an invitation to Professor Raybould, Director of Extramural Studies at Leeds, to act for two terms as Visiting Director of Extramural Studies at Ibadan. Close relations between the two extramural departments were established. Shortly before Raybould's return, McGregor, J. was seconded to Ibadan for a year as Deputy Director of Extramural Studies and during 1955 Ayo Ogunsheye, Acting Director at Ibadan and four organisers from the same departments visited Leeds: 8th and 9th Annual Reports of University of Leeds Department of Adult Education and Extramural Studies (1953/4 and 1954/5). Boyden, H.J., Director of Extramural Studies at Durham University, developed similarly close links with Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, at this time and seconded staff there.Google Scholar

32. Interviews with Dees, Professor N. (January 1980) and Boyden, H.J. (April 1980) and correspondence with Wiseman, D. (April 1980).Google Scholar

33. Leeds University Extramural Department archives: Raybould papers on Academic Freedom, letter from Manchester Guardian , 2 June 1953; Manchester Guardian (16 June 1953); Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), vol. 516 (18 June 1953), 1195–6 and vol. 517 (15 July 1953), 2036–7; Information from Professor J. Rex. Raybould told Rex that in Nigeria there were objections raised to his application which “would have to be investigated” and that there was nothing that he personally or the university authorities could do about it. Rex was a frequent contributor to the correspondence columns of the Manchester Guardian and other newspapers on the Central African Federation issue at that time.Google Scholar