Wallace-Johnson and the Sierra Leone Labor Crisis of 1939

Abstract

During 1939 a political crisis developed in Sierra Leone which had far reaching implications for colonial policy in British Africa. At the end of January workers struck the War Department defense works and the Mabella Coaling Company. Simultaneously some gunners in the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) stationed in Murray Town refused to go on parade, in army eyes an act of mutiny. In the midst of these events an intense campaign to rouse working-class consciousness began in the African Standard, the newly founded weekly published by the West African Youth Leagus (WAYL). This campaign focused on the wage-earning sector of Freetown, particularly the police and laborers engaged in essential works like defense construction. Editorial warnings published at the same times that Sierra Leoneans should not support the coming world war sounded a more ominous note as far as the authorities were concerned. The colonial administration responded to these developments by initiating legislation, six bills in all, designed to suppress anticolonial opposition and contain the labor movement. While these bills were still under preparation, miners in the Marampa iron mines conducted the largest and best organized strike to occur before 1940, thus increasing the urgency of the situation. The administration hastened the drafting of its repressive ordinances and presenting them to the Legislative Council for enactment. In the meantime the Sierra Leonean community combined in a massive effort to oppose the bills, culminating in the largest mass demonstration against the government to occur in Freetown up to that time.

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