Beginning Of Modern Politics
The demands for a political voice for the Creoles in the Colony government in the 1850s and 1860s had become moribund through lack of success, the seating of two or three Creoles in the legislative council notwithstanding. Even the appointed Freetown municipal council had been allowed to languish. Demands for its renewal as an elected body were voiced in the 1880s but were without success until 1893. The new council (hen created was to have fifteen members, twelve of them popularly elected, and responsibility for markets and public health. The municipal elections in 1895 were the first since 1798.
The municipal elections in 1909 saw the beginning of modern politics in Sierra Leone when a city party formed to contest the election. In the nineteenth century two Sierra Leonean intellectuals, Horton and Edward Wilmot Blyden, published works that stirred the imagination of the black elites in the country and the rest of West Africa; but it was not until the post-World War 1 era that modern nationalism in British West Africa really began. Several openly political organizations appeared in 1919 and 1920 — the most significant the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA). Its first convention in 1920 was attended by a large delegation from Sierra Leone. This political interest was limited to the Creole community, however, and by this time the Creoles had come to recognize the threat that improvements in the political power of Africans in the Protectorate could represent to their own position. Active support for the NCBWA largely ceased within a few years.
Bitterness between the Creoles and the Africans appeared. The Creoles, in addition to fearing the Africans as rivals, resented the fact that Africans coming to the Colony were able to live under a modern legal code, being treated equally in the courts and in landownership. Creoles in the Protectorate were subject to trial in native courts without the protection of British law and had no property rights. The Africans at the same time resented the superior attitudes adopted by the Creoles toward them and the Creoles’ greater wealth and opportunities.
In 1924 a new constitution was promulgated by the British government. The changes added ten unofficial members to twelve official ones in the legislative council. Of the ten, three were elected from the Colony under a very restricted educational and financial franchise. Two were selected to represent European business interests. The rest were appointed by the governor. These included a paramount chief selected from each of the three provinces into which the Protectorate had been divided by the Colony. The Creole community strongly but unsuccessfully objected to the arrangement, which in effect gave them at most six seats to the Europeans’ thirteen and the Protectorate’s three. Their strongest objection was to the last, as they feared future subordination to the Protectorate majority.
Overt resistance to British rule and the administrative order in the Protectorate was notably limited. The one rebellion that did occur was of very limited scale and confined to the followers of a Muslim religious leader. Nonetheless it has been argued (by Martin Kilson in his work on political change in Sierra Leone) that the nature of the small-scale riots that occurred with some frequency demonstrated the common people’s awareness of the changes that were taking place and their desire to have a voice in politics.
By the 1930s a new force had made its appearance — the educated minority in the Protectorate. In most areas sons of chiefs were the first to he sent to school, and some had succeeded their fathers. This new generation of literate chiefs was allied with the gradually increasing number of professional men and civil servants who retained their African ties rather than become assimilated into the Creole community.
For several reasons the great majority were from the southern portion of the country, predominantly Mende rather than Temne. The northerners had stronger Muslin ties and had in the previous fifty years largely become Muslims. Christian missionaries had advanced farther in the south, bringing education with them. The position of chief among the Temne was much stronger, whereas among the Mende and associated peoples the chieftaincy had been linked to personal ability, and its power had been hedged by secret-society leadership and other factors. Finally the railroad and other elements of a modern economy were concentrated in the south.
In 1938 a relatively minor change in the constitutional order created a standing finance committee in the Legislative Council. What was noteworthy was its composition: it was the first organ of government to have a Sierra Leonean majority; seven of the nine members were Creoles or Protectorate representatives, and only two were officials. As a standing committee it exercised the function of full-time oversight over government expenditures.
In 1943 Sierra Leonean representation on the Executive Council occurred for the first time when a Creole and an educated paramount chief, George Caulker, were appointed. Although Creoles had served on the Executive Council as early as the 1870s, the new members were representatives of their communities, not simply black officials.
During World War II Sierra Leone's leaders gave firm support to the British. The changes the war caused in British attitudes began to be translated into more liberal policies toward development in the African colonies immediately after the war. In 1945 a double layer of consultative bodies was established in the Protectorate for the first time, one for the district level and the other for the Protectorate as a whole. The number of districts had been increased from five to ten and then to twelve, and each was given a district council consisting of two representatives from each chiefdom — one from the paramount chief and the other a nominee of the Tribal Authority. The representatives were intended to advise the district officer, but by 1950, when the size of the councils was increased to include six representatives from each chiefdom, they had been given some executive responsibility as well.
Above the district level the forty-two-member Protectorate Assembly was created to advise the central government on Protectorate affairs. Of the seats, twenty-six were held by paramount chiefs selected by the district councils. The other seats were held by European officials and by single individuals representing Creole, European, and missionary interests. Finally two men were selected to represent the educated African minority.
Educated Africans had created a voice for their political interests for the first time in 1946 in the form of the Sierra Leone Organization Society (known as the SOS) under the leadership of John Karefa-Smart, Milton Margai, and others. Margai had earlier organized an unofficial council of chiefs that met annually beginning in 1940.
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