Labour Protest Activity in Sierra Leone during the Early Part of the Twentieth Century

Bibliographic Data

ID2744644
AuthorsHugh E Conway (corresponding author)
Year1968
Issue15
Pages49
Publication date1968-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLabour History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0023-6942 • E-ISSN: 1839-3039
PublisherLiverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/27507909
OpenAlexW2334708144
LanguageEN
Citations received16

Wage employment on any scale on a more or less continuous basis had developed in Sierra Leone by the latter half of the nineteenth century.1 This growth inevitably made demands upon the Colonial Administration for effective recruitment, supervision and control of the emerging wage labour force. Since little difficulty was experienced in recruitment of labour, primarily for construction work in Freetown, government attention from the late 1800s focused upon supervision and control of wage labour. During the first decades of the present century disturbances, often in the form of worker strike action, drew the attention of government officials. Reaction to such disturbances w7as usually suppressive. Not until the late 1920s and the following decade was the adminis tration persuaded to experiment w7ith a more liberal policy. The con ventions of the International Labour Office and the increased concern of the British Colonial Office for labour matters throughout the Commonwealth generated pressures on the Sierra Leone Government to adopt a new course. Complementing this outside pressure were internal developments in the form of labour protest demonstrations, fast-growing wage employment in the mining industry, and the emer gence by the late 1930s of the Sierra Leone Youth League, an outspoken, nationalistic political group. In this paper, the focus will be on the nature of these internal forces for change and the reaction to them on the part of the Colonial Administration and the British Colonial Office. The time period will cover primarily the inter-war years. During this period three forms of urban-based protest can be defined and each related to a given combination of economic, social and political currents.2 The sequence of movements progresses from the mass demonstration of popular unrest throughout the country which came shortly after World War I. The cause of the disturbances was primarily economic and it followed in the wake of the 1919 strike by daily-paid railway workers. The second important protest movement was the 1926 strike among all grades of the African staff in the Railway Department. Both the nature of this protest form and the cause of the strike provided marked contrasts with the 1919 disturbances. For example, the growth of the Railway Workers' Union during the early 1920s gave the strike an

Economic history · Ethnology · Political science · Sierra leone · African history and culture studies · History

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