University of Birmingham Reading, Writing and Rallies: the Politics of "Freedom" in Southern British Togoland, 1953-6 Skinner, Katharine DOI: 10.1017/S0021853706002519 Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Skinner, K 2007, 'Reading, Writing and Rallies: the Politics of "Freedom" in Southern British Togoland, 1953-6', Journal of African History, vol. 48, pp. 123-47. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853706002519 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal Publisher Rights Statement: This is a final version of an article published in The Journal of African History / Volume 48 / Issue 01 / March 2007, pp 123-147. Copyright © 2007 Cambridge University Press. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853706002519. General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. 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Oct. 2021 Journal of African History, 48 (2007), pp. 123–47. f 2007 Cambridge University Press 123 doi:10.1017/S0021853706002519 Printed in the United Kingdom READING, WRITING AND RALLIES: THE POLITICS OF ‘FREEDOM’ IN S O U T H E R N B R I T I S H T O G O L A N D, 1953–1956 BY KATE SKINNER* Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham ABSTRACT: Examples of chant, song and written propaganda from the mid-1950s are examined here in order to probe the debates and relationships which influenced the political future of the Ewe-speaking areas of southern British Togoland. While microstudies have been important in explaining sources of division between communities in these areas, propaganda provides a means of understanding the arguments, idioms and ideas about the state which brought many different people together behind the apparently peculiar project of Togoland reunification. The main source of tension within this political movement was not competing local or communal interests, but the unequal relationships that resulted from uneven provision of education. Written and oral propaganda texts, and the rallies where they were performed and exchanged, point to a surprisingly participatory and eclectic political culture, where distinctions between the lettered and unlettered remained fluid and open to challenge. KEY WORDS: Ghana, Togo, ethnicity, nationalism, education, Christianity. INTRODUCTION T HIS introduction has three purposes: first, to explain the particular status of southern British Togoland and the bitter struggle that emerged over its future in the mid 1950s; second, to suggest what an analysis of political propaganda can add to the existing scholarship; and third, to outline the main arguments of this article. The area surrounding the southern quarter of the present-day Ghana–Togo border has a complex political history that has fascinated and mystified scholars in a variety of disciplines. A border was first drawn through the Ewe-speaking peoples during the creation of the British and German colonies of the Gold Coast and Togo at the end of the nineteenth century (see map).1 Following the carve-up of German colonies after the First World War, the Ewe-speakers were divided by a three-way split, between the British Gold Coast Colony in the south and west, and the British and French spheres of Togoland in the east. The latter became mandated territories of the League of Nations in 1921 and then trust terri- tories of the United Nations in 1947. * This article is based partly on Ph.D. research that was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (ref. 98/3023), and partly on post-doctoral work that was funded by the Nuffield Foundation (ref. NCF/00174/G). 1 The British and German governments signed agreements in 1887, 1890 and 1899, each aiming at a more precise division of territory. 124 KATE SKINNER Map 1. Ewe-speaking area and changing colonial borders. The particular international status of the two Togolands bequeathed a series of records which scholars have consulted in their studies of the border. African inhabitants of the Togolands complained bitterly about the obstacles that the border placed in the way of economic and cultural activity, and about the particular disadvantages afflicting those in the French-administered zone. These complaints were investigated by United Nations Visiting Missions in 1949, 1952 and 1955, and were discussed at both the Trusteeship Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations on many occasions. POLITICS OF ‘FREEDOM’ IN SOUTHERN BRITISH TOGOLAND 125 While the colonial administering authorities did not resolve the issues raised by African petitioners, some administrators appeared to accept that it was natural and even legitimate for the Ewe-speaking peoples to seek a greater measure of political unity.2 Early academic studies of the border area also shared this assumption. Western political scientists were concerned with the challenges that ‘primordial attachment’ among the Ewe-speakers might pose to the newly independent states, and to the pan-African blocs, which emerged from artificial and shifting colonial borders.3 The first major study produced by an African scholar, D. E. K. Amenumey, worked within the same paradigm, but approached the prob- lem from the opposite angle, highlighting the obstacles that colonial bor- ders and policies had placed in the way of political expression of common ethnic identity.4 Amenumey suggested that, from the late 1940s, the movement for ethnic unification – that is, across the Ewe-speaking areas of the southern Togolands and the southeastern Gold Coast – was compli- cated, and ultimately undermined, by the machinations of the colonial administering authorities, and by the emergence of competing African associations. These associations, while superficially sympathetic to aspir- ations of Ewe unity, prioritized the reunification of the two trust territories as a means of protecting particular interests. The basic dynamic, then, was one of ‘legitimate’ ethnic identity being undercut by ‘selfish’ interest groups which had sprung up in response to divisive aspects of colonial government and economy.5 This article focuses on the period in which the complex and competing demands of African associations within southern British Togoland were reformulated and simplified under the pressure of British moves to prepare the neighbouring Gold Coast colony for independence. In 1949, specific proposals for constitutional reform sent out a clear message: in order to participate in organs of self-government, the people of southern British Togoland would have to exercise their votes within units that combined them with people from the neighbouring colony in a Trans-Volta Togoland Region.6 Political leaders in southern British Togoland disagreed bitterly 2 Michael Ensor, who served as Britain’s special representative to the United Nations and hosted both the 1952 and 1955 Visiting Missions in British Togoland, described initiatives such as the Joint Consultative Commission for the two Togolands as a means of ‘reducing the nuisance of the border’ but acknowledged that, unfortunately, it had not satisfied the people. Interview with Michael Ensor, Travellers’ Club, London, 25 Feb. 2000. 3 C. E. Welch Jr., Dream of Unity: Pan-Africanism and Political Unification in West Africa (Ithaca NY, 1966); W. S. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957–66: Diplomacy, Ideology and the New States (Princeton, 1969). The expression ‘primordial attachments’ is borrowed from C. Geertz, ‘The integrative revolution: primordial sen- timents and civil politics in the new states’, in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies, New States (New York and London, 1963), 109. 4 D. E. K. Amenumey, The Ewe Unification Movement: A Political History (Accra, 1989), particularly 59–117, where Amenumey details the deliberate moves of colonial administrations to inhibit pro-unification activity among Africans. 5 Ibid. 118–55. Teachers and cocoa farmers in southern British Togoland were ident- ified as important interest groups. 6 In October 1949, the Coussey Committee submitted its recommendations on constitutional reform, including a proposal to create a Trans-Volta Togoland Region, 126 KATE SKINNER among themselves over whether it would be possible or desirable to resist this British attempt to ‘integrate’ the trust territory with a self-governing Gold Coast, and