The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa: The 'Wind of Change', 1957-60 (Britain and the World) 303089455X, 9783030894559

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BRITAIN AND THE WORLD

The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa The ‘Wind of Change’, 1957–60 Rosalind Coffey

Britain and the World Series Editors Martin Farr School of History Newcastle University Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Michelle D. Brock Department of History Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA, USA Eric G. E. Zuelow Department of History University of New England Biddeford, ME, USA

Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth century to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society. Britain and the World is made up of people from around the world who share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities around the world that study Britain and its international influence from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain and the World peer-reviewed journal. Martin Farr ([email protected]) is General Series Editor for the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu. edu) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow ([email protected]) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795

Rosalind Coffey

The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa The ‘Wind of Change’, 1957–60

Rosalind Coffey Department of International History London School of Economics and Political Science London, UK

Britain and the World ISBN 978-3-030-89455-9    ISBN 978-3-030-89456-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my family

Acknowledgements

I had a lot of help from many people during the course of my research and writing. I would like to thank them all at the same time as emphasising that they bear no responsibility for any deficiencies present in my work. I would like to thank the librarians and archivists who helped me to access the material I used for my research and who answered my queries. Thank you to the staff of British Library Newspapers (first at Colindale, and then at King’s Cross); The Times Archive; Rhodes House Library (now a part of the Bodleian Library), Oxford University; the Jagger Library, University of Cape Town; the William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand; and the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. I am particularly grateful to the entire team at British Library Newspapers, as well as Nick Mays, Anne Jensen, Clive Kirkwood, and Lucy McCann. For helping to guide and to support me academically during my doctoral studies, I am grateful to Dr Joanna Lewis and Professor Antony Best. I would also like to thank my two examiners, Professor Simon Potter and Professor Philip Murphy. For their words of encouragement, then and subsequently, and/or for reading and commenting on ideas or drafts of my work and presentations, I would like to thank Dr Erica Wald, Dr Marie Rodet, Professor Keith Somerville, Professor Saul Dubow, Professor Stuart Ward, Professor Bill Schwarz, Professor Sarah Stockwell, Juliana Bosslet, Dr Christine Whyte, Dr Taylor Sherman, Professor Piers Ludlow, Dr Paul Horsler, Dr Sue Onslow, Professor Alan Sked and Dr Alessandro Castellini. I am grateful to Professor Diana Jeater and the anonymous readers at JSAS for helping me to improve my written work. I would also vii

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like to thank my employers, the Department of International History at the LSE, ‘LSE100’, and the History Department at SOAS, for providing stimulating and supportive work environments. I am grateful to Professor Antony Best, Dr Jessica Templeton, Dr Chris Blunt, Dr Jillian Terry, Dr Marie Rodet, Dr John Parker and Dr Eleanor Newbigin. Four journalists were exceptionally generous with their time, helping me and sharing with me their professional experiences reporting Africa during the ‘wind of change’. I offer them my profound thanks. William Kirkman provided a lot of help during the project’s initial stages, spending an afternoon with me, kindly buying me lunch and providing me with helpful contacts. Derek Ingram welcomed me, a complete stranger, into his home and patiently helped me with my many questions. Peter Younghusband devoted a considerable amount of time to replying to my questions over email. Stanley Uys also welcomed me into his home to talk to me about his experiences and kindly offered to lend me a book. I only hope that the arguments contained in this book correspond to their experiences. The errors are all mine. Thank you to the editing and production teams at Palgrave Macmillan and Springer Nature. And lastly, thank you to my family and friends. Friends and colleagues whose support helped me so much include Karen, Juliana, Liz, Clare, Laura, Dave, Bronwen, Patrick, Hiroko, Ayeh, Alana, Sara, Rich, Jennie, Mi, Melissa, Rian and Emily. My mother and father, Hilary and Patrick, my grandparents, Melva and Brian, my brother, Alan, sister-in-law, Catherine, and my two nieces Isabel and Ella were brilliant throughout, offering so much support, including during the more difficult moments. Thank you for being there for me.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Nkrumah’s Ghana, 1957: The Press and the Post-colonial State 25 3 Colonial Violence in Kenya and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1959: Frameworks of Representation and Patterns of Practice of the Press 71 4 Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ Tour of Africa, 1960: British Policy, Civic Cultures and Political Practices117 5 The Sharpeville Massacre, 1960: African Activism and the Press169 6 The Congo Crisis, 1960–1961: Emergent Mini-Frames in a Post-colonial Environment213

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7 Conclusion249 Bibliography263 Index281

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the early fifties, the European colonial empires in Africa were still intact. A decade later, decolonisation in Africa appeared irreversible and coloured the times. This was the beginning of the years of the ‘wind of change’, a period in which the European colonial empires became increasingly unstuck. In Britain, newspaper cartoons depicted African nationalism as a giant ocean wave towering above the human defenders of empire—settlers and colonial officials—dithering on beaches, or as water bursting through hard, fortified constructions such as walls and dams. A little later, small babies and jungle animals denoted the first leaders of independent African states, while white settlers in the south of the continent in areas still under colonial rule were pictured running around with truncheons and whips, lashing at African people madly and mercilessly. Throughout it all, Britain appeared at once in the form of a tired, bemused, crest-fallen prime minister and as a ray of light and justice. This book is the story of the role which British newspaper coverage of Africa, including these images, played in the history it is often assumed merely to have described. It takes us through Ghana, Kenya, Nyasaland (Malawi), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), South Africa and the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), examining developments which included resistance, independence, colonial violence and neo-colonialism. The book analyses how the coverage was formed and its reception to arrive at conclusions regarding its role. It argues that the articles affected British perceptions of decolonisation in Africa, British policy towards Africa and African and settler political and civic cultures. In Britain, the coverage provided self-affirming narratives on Britain in Africa, African © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_1

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nationalism and post-colonial developments, which may have helped the British public to weather the onset of imperial decline on the continent. For the government, it affected policy directly, by goading officials in the direction of African nationalism in the white settler colonies of Central and South Africa, and indirectly, by conflicting with several of the government’s own pronouncements on race relations, governance and the pace of political change, which compromised the government’s ability to control the ‘British’ narrative in Africa, causing concern on the ground amongst some communities and in the process damaging cross-cultural relations that sustained structures such as the Commonwealth. Crucially, British newspapers were read not only by British people, but also by Africans and white settlers, who responded to their contents. People in Africa also influenced the coverage. Newspaper articles informed the political strategies and civic cultures of African activists, liberal whites, the staunchest of white settler communities, the first governments of independent African states and the governments’ opponents, who interacted with them in efforts to influence political outcomes as well as to nurture cultures of belonging and of blame. British newspapers, which linked the British public and political spheres with African and settler ones in a shared discursive space, cast a transnational ‘web’ of influence over the decolonisation process, which offered vectors of influence in changing times.

1.1   Decolonisation in Africa European colonial rule in Africa had always met with resistance from the peoples who lived in the colonised lands. Yet it was not until the period following the Second World War that resistance began to solidify into mass movements whose goals were the creation of nation-states, within the borders that Europeans had aggressively etched a generation before, and whose leaderships were popular and well-networked enough to achieve it.1 The world wars were turning points for the independence movements. Not only did the political, social and economic forces which informed a desire for freedom from colonial rule continue to intensify during the wars and in their immediate aftermath, owing to factors including economic hardship, conscription and mass mobilisation, but European countries, 1  For these political developments, see: Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002); and Robert D.  Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy, 1938–1948 (London, 1982).

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during this period, weakened and reformist embarked on a series of new interventions, including political ones, that helped to pave the way for political parties to gain ground. These included opening spaces for the limited inclusion of Africans in government. Diasporic influences were also vital. These linked to the ideologies of Pan-Africanism and Négritude. During the interwar period, African, African American, Caribbean and Asian intellectuals often present together in European capital cities for political and educational reasons, exchanged there and in other settings experiences, ideas and strategies for achieving rights, freedoms and independence and forged political groups and global networks that would enable them to attain it.2 Ghana was the first of the British Empire’s colonies in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence, in 1957. In 1980, Zimbabwe was the last. The Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique had to wait until 1974; Namibia became independent in 1990; and South Africa achieved African majority rule in 1994. Yet in the space of those forty years, political leaderships across the continent were entirely altered. Decolonisation processes across the continent varied. In regions with a small white settler presence or none, independence generally came sooner, and in a comparatively peaceful manner, involving less violence. In colonies such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Algeria, where large white settler populations vehemently resisted the calls of African politicians and activists for political inclusion, with European collusion in support of these prosperous white societies steering powerful political lobbies in London and Paris, decolonisation was only achieved after long colonial wars.3 Algeria won independence in 1962, following a liberation struggle that had begun in 1954. Kenya gained independence in 1963, after nearly a decade of war (‘the Mau Mau War’). Zimbabwe’s War of Liberation lasted fifteen years (1964–1979). Anti-colonial wars involved a number of different actors and should be understood also as battles between Africans over the future composition and direction of independent states.4 Nevertheless, even in respect of this, the settler presence was integral in translating this political contention, a feature of all decolonisation processes, into violence early 2  Marc Matera, Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (Oakland, US, 2015). 3  Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London, 2005); Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962 (New York, 2006). 4  Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009).

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on, due to the timing, the extent and the manner of the settlers’ resistance, which necessitated a physical response and which introduced political violence into the regions of Africa which accommodated Europeans. Settler societies with autonomy from European governments, such as Southern  Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), self-governing from 1923, and South Africa held out for longer against political challenges from Africans than those with less autonomy or none (Kenya) because for these white communities, safeguarding their perceived interests trumped any other considerations, including conflicting external public and political strictures, by which European metropoles were bound. African majority rule only came to South Africa, fully independent since 1934, and independent of the Commonwealth, too, from 1961, in 1994. During decolonisation, British Central Africa posed a particularly complex set of challenges for all groups involved in the process.5 These concerned the region’s demographic and political composition, which linked, in turn, to the area’s mineral resources and topography. British Central Africa was comprised of three territories: Southern Rhodesia (subsequently, Rhodesia, and then Zimbabwe); Northern Rhodesia (Zambia); and Nyasaland (Malawi). Together, the territories comprised the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, an entity created by the British government in 1953 as an ostensible experiment in multi-racialism and as a bulwark against South African expansion. Southern Rhodesia, mineral-­ rich and fertile, was a settler colony. Northern Rhodesia, also mineral-rich, and Nyasaland were both protectorates—the former with fewer white settlers than Southern Rhodesia; the latter with very few. The territories’ different statuses translated into different sets of relations with Britain. Yet, at the same time, the Federation’s existence, which threw an umbrella over them, nullified some of the differentials. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, as protectorates, were governed from London. Southern Rhodesia’s white settlers had self-governed from 1923. The latter nominally headed the Federation, much to the chagrin of the African majority. Africans in all three territories had, from the Federation’s very inception, opposed it because it was exploitative and worked to deny them 5  Three very helpful books which concern Britain’s relations with the Federation are: Colin Baker, State of Emergency: Crisis in Central Africa, Nyasaland 1959–60 (London, 1996); Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918–1968 (Cambridge, 2006); and John McCracken, A History of Malawi: 1859–1966 (Woodbridge, 2012).

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fundamental political, economic and social freedoms twice over. In the 1950s, opposition to the Federation intersected with the growth of national independence movements centred on each of the territories. A critical year in the history of decolonisation in the region was 1959. By the late fifties, African activism was gathering apace. Settler communities, witnessing decolonisation elsewhere in the world and in 1957, closer to home, in Ghana, were becoming increasingly nervous. A review of the Federation’s constitution, planned for at its inception, was imminent, with its independence a possibility. Tensions ran high. The year 1959 was marked by intense nationalist activity in the region and colonial violence and repression as well as the beginnings of a consequential and not uncontested process of political devolution in the region’s two protectorates directed towards greater African representation. This heralded the so-­ called ‘wind of change’ in Africa, when moves to independence began to become more numerous. The Federation was dissolved in 1963, and in 1964 Zambia and Malawi both became independent. Frederick Cooper’s emphasis on the processual nature of the end of empire is helpful because it highlights the limitations of an interpretation of decolonisation which centres the formal transfers of power.6 Independence’s antecedents included labour movements, ethnic and agricultural associations, and anti-colonial activism and political organisation. Following independence, new states continued to battle internally in pursuit of a lasting resolution to the conflicting political, social and economic visions held by the different political groupings active within them. This included Ghana and the Congo, whose immediate post-colonial environments this book explores. These battles often occurred along the lines of ethnicity. Ethnicity was one of the core organising principles of precolonial societies. Colonial rulers knew this and exploited it to varying degrees across the continent as a strategy of rule, often deepening interethnic tensions. Yet the key moment, arguably, occurred at the point of the political transition to independence, with the planting of Westminster-style parliamentary processes and institutions in Africa. The idea of structuring political activity formally along the lines of a governing party and an opposition was better suited to classist societies, like Britain, as opposed to societies with different organising principles, such as ethnicity, and which, by virtue of the new borders, now comprised multiple ethnic groups. Michela Wrong writes of ‘our turn to eat’ in her book on post-colonial Kenya, 6

 Cooper, Africa since 1940.

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which encapsulates well the pattern of the successive exchanges of power in post-colonial societies in Africa, which linked to ethnicity and patronage, and where, due to the precarious economic position of the new states, the stakes were extremely high.7 In addition, former colonial powers continued to want to exert an influence in the independent lands buoyed by what soon came to be understood as the structural nature of global political, social and economic inequality, that operated like a straitjacket on the plans of the people of the developing world, who sought both to develop their countries’ economic capacity and to carve out a new place in international affairs.8 The post-­war global financial system—the so-called BrettonWoods System—which revolved around the new institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was oriented in North America and Europe’s favour—the latter retaining its centuriesold dominance of global affairs—and held cash-strapped developing states to political, economic and social ransom in a process known as conditionality, whereby loans were distributed on the proviso that leaders employed particular political and economic policies. In the Anglophone world, the Commonwealth operated as a further instrument of influence in post-colonial times; in Francophone Africa, ‘overseas France’. In places including the Congo, neo-colonialist influences merged with regional and/or ‘ethnic’ ones to create an environment which artificially heightened internal political divisions to the detriment of the stability of the post-colonial state. All of these momentous events, which constituted decolonisation, were covered by the world’s newspapers.

1.2   The British Press Indeed, the years of decolonisation were also years of great change for the press—and perhaps none more so than in Britain.9  Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower (London, 2009).  Andre Gunder Frank, ‘The Development of Underdevelopment’, Monthly Review (1974). 9  Books which trace these changes within the context of the different papers’ histories include: Peter Catterall, Colin Seymour-Ure and Adrian Smith (eds.), Northcliffe’s Legacy: Aspects of the British Popular Press, 1896–1996 (Basingstoke, 2000); Richard Cockett, David Astor and the Observer (London, 1991); Jeremy Lewis, David Astor: A Life in Print (London, 2017); Maurice Edelman, The Mirror: A Political History (London, 1966); Bill Hagerty, Read All About It! 100 Sensational Years of the Daily Mirror (Lydney, Gloucestershire, 7 8

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The different papers in Britain had their own character, but the latter had dynamism and evolved with the times. Two features were perennially relevant: political leaning (‘Right’ or ‘Left’) and format (‘broadsheet’/ so-called serious press or tabloids/so-called popular press). Right-leaning popular papers included The Daily Express and The Daily Mail. Right-­ leaning serious papers included The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post and The Times. Left-leaning popular papers included The Daily Herald, The Daily Mirror and The News Chronicle. Left-leaning serious papers included The Manchester Guardian/The Guardian and The Observer, which was also a Sunday paper. Additional defining characteristics included the Express’s claim to be the paper of Empire, and the Mirror’s being the representative of youth. Around the mid-twentieth century, in the aftermath of the two world wars, press partisanship, though ever-present, declined comparatively, informed by British domestic social change and development and a certain amount of political consensus. Editorial authority devolved away from the previously mighty press barons. And foreign news coverage increased, which manifested in an expanded foreign press corps. During decolonisation, some papers made reporting overseas events, including in Africa, central to their mission. Over these years, The Observer’s offices came to be dubbed ‘the capital of Africa’ due to the paper’s unique resource commitment to Africa and its African nationalist ties. The Observer and The Times both appointed colonial (later ‘Africa’) correspondents: Colin Legum and Oliver Woods, respectively. Yet many more papers shared The Observer’s interest, devoting considerable amounts of page space to Africa during decolonisation. As we shall see, news from Africa often hit the front pages, editorial comment on Africa was manifold, and it was not uncommon for most of the papers cited above to have between two and ten articles on Africa present in any one edition.

2003); Duff Hart-Davis, The House the Berrys Built (London, 1990); Iverach McDonald, The History of The Times, Volume V: Struggles in War and Peace 1939–1966 (London, 1984); Huw Richards, The Bloody Circus: The Daily Herald and the Left (London, 1997); and Geoffrey Taylor, Changing Faces: A History of the Guardian, 1956–88 (London, 1993). Broader histories include: James Thomas, Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics (London, 2005); Colin Seymour-Ure, The Press, Politics and the Public: An Essay on the Role of the National Press in the British Political System (London, 1968); and A. C. H. Smith, Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change 1935–1965 (London, 1975).

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1.2.1  British Newspapers and the End of Empire in Africa Given the considerable changes in both fields during the middle part of the twentieth century, as well as the degree of press interest in decolonisation, the intersection between press coverage and the end of empire warrants close consideration. 1.2.1.1 The Press and Decolonisation There is no comprehensive study devoted to this subject. Existing works on decolonisation and the press are few, focus on different events and processes associated with the end of empire, employ different methodologies and possess different emphases. This makes it hard to judge whether it is possible to formulate overarching observations about the intersection between press coverage and the end of empire which span regions or events. This would be useful if it is possible, but the picture is patchy. Relations between British papers and the British government during colonial wars and crises have formed one focus. Works on this topic tend to draw on government documents and emphasise the British government’s ability to influence press content. Susan Carruthers has documented the government’s efforts to shape British media, including press, coverage of Kenya during the Mau Mau War.10 Tony Shaw has written on the government’s relations with the right-leaning press during the Suez crisis.11 Joanna Lewis and Philip Murphy have examined the relationship between the Colonial Office (CO) and the British press during 1959.12 Carruthers and Shaw describe the role of British newspapers in relation to the Mau Mau War and Suez, respectively, as essentially that of reproducing a Conservative government-inspired narrative of events for those sections of the British newspaper-reading public which British politicians deemed it the most important to influence. Lewis and Murphy’s study explains how officials and MPs used British newspapers to achieve policy-related goals. During 1959, the Colonial Office nurtured the British media as a stick with which to beat the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) into 10  Susan Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency, 1944–1960 (London, 1995). 11  Tony Shaw, Eden, Suez, and the Mass Media: Propaganda and Persuasion during the Suez Crisis (London, 1996). 12  Joanna Lewis and Philip Murphy, ‘“The Old Pals’ Protection Society”? The Colonial Office and the British Press on the Eve of Decolonisation’ in Chandrika Kaul (ed.), Media and the British Empire (Manchester, 2006), pp. 55–69.

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confronting difficult issues concerning British policy towards Central Africa. The tension between the two departments revolved around the degree to which settler or African needs were to be privileged. The Colonial Office, which had responsibility for the two protectorates (Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), was, it is suggested, keener to privilege the rights of Africans; the Commonwealth Relations Office, with links to self-­governing Southern Rhodesia and the Federation, the interests of the settlers. A second focus of works on the press has been the coverage itself, which some authors have used as a means of exploring British attitudes to events and issues linked to decolonisation. Joanna Lewis has examined the Mail and the Mirror’s coverage of Kenya during the Mau Mau War.13 Håkan Thörn, in a study of global civil society and the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), considers the significance of the print media in Britain.14 Lewis argues that the popular press’s ‘demoralisation of empire’ during the war, reflected in increasingly negative portrayals of white settlers and increasingly positive ones of African nationalists, may have contributed to Britain’s relatively peaceful decolonisation. Thörn suggests that press coverage of the Sharpeville massacre in 1960—an event during decolonisation in which 69 Africans died at the hands of the South African police and a further 180 were injured—reflected increasingly critical opinion in Britain towards apartheid. Between them, studies of the press, then, emphasise government influence over the press at moments during decolonisation and posit a connection between press content and British public attitudes. For some, the content shaped opinion. For others, the content reflected it. 1.2.1.2 Beyond the Press: Popular Opinion and the End of Empire In the majority of books on decolonisation, such as those which coalesce around the major themes of British policy, African nationalism, white settler cultures and the international context, British newspapers feature fleetingly, chiefly in the form of passing quotations from ‘the paper of record’ (The Times), which writers use to introduce a topic or to develop 13  Joanna Lewis, ‘“Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Mau Mau”: The British Popular Press and the Demoralization of Empire’ in E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale (eds.), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority, Narration (Oxford, 2003), pp. 227–50. 14  Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke, 2006).

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an argument about the public context to political initiatives. Yet the press also links to a consideration of public opinion and low politics, and on these topics, a good amount of research has been undertaken. Therefore, to add a further layer of complexity to the matter of the role of press content, the arguments of three additional bodies of work must be considered. Popular Histories of Sixties’ Britain and Studies of the Left and the End of Empire Popular histories of sixties’ Britain and studies of the Left and the end of empire contend that British low politics and public opinion bore little relation to decolonisation. Historians put forward two main reasons for this: firstly, that the British public knew little and cared less about Africa, empire or decolonisation; and secondly, that the primary protagonist in the process, often regarded as the British government, was not influenced by those of the public’s ideas that did trickle out. Some studies, such as Dominic Sandbrook’s Never Had It So Good, forcefully argue the case for their marginality.15 Sandbrook claims that ‘the reaction of the general public to the end of empire was one of almost total indifference’.16 ‘Even at the 1959 election, at the height of the post-war imperial crisis’, he argues, ‘colonial issues were strikingly unimportant’. Studies of critics of empire, such as Stephen Howe’s Anticolonialism in British Politics and Nicholas Owen’s ‘Critics of Empire’, reach conclusions which are comparable to Sandbrook’s in terms of emphasis, yet which concern the role of anticolonial activists and intellectuals.17 Howe argues both that the government was not substantially influenced by the views of anti-colonial groups in its handling of decolonisation, and that anti- (and pro-) colonial movements were popular only with a small minority. Although critics’ aims were achieved, in the sense that the empire was soon no more, Howe suggests that this owed less to the efforts of activists and intellectuals than to global and colonial circumstances as well as to changes in Conservative thinking, which pushed towards the same conclusion. David Goldsworthy’s Colonial

15  Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good, 1956–63: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London, 2005). 16  Ibid., p. 302. 17  Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, 1993); Nicholas Owen, ‘Critics of Empire in Britain’ in A.N. Porter (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 4: The Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 188–211.

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Issues in British Politics makes a similar argument.18 Goldsworthy finds evidence of fluctuating degrees of political partisanship on colonial affairs in Britain, which points to the presence of disagreements. Yet he also states that during his research, he came across ‘few examples of obvious and direct influence (of domestic political activity) on policy-making’.19 A bipartisan consensus on decolonisation is often understood to have existed. ‘Internal Decolonisation’ A related body of literature on the domestic cultural impact of imperial decline reaches little consensus on the degree and nature of decolonisation’s effects. In contrast to the aforementioned group of works, however, the emphasis is on British public knowledge, interest and engagement. Stuart Ward, Bill Schwarz and Wendy Webster have each observed links between decolonisation and increased British domestic fears and anxieties over immigration to Britain and ‘race’, for example, or the loss of values, such as stoicism or gentlemanly conduct, which had been perceived to be implicated in the imperial experience.20 In some contrast, Joanna Lewis and John Darwin have each suggested that certain ideas or institutions helped to cushion the psychological impact of decline: ‘the Commonwealth concept’, for example, which promised a future role for Britain at the forefront of international affairs,21 and the popular press’s ‘demoralisation of empire’, which reflected a shift in Britain towards a more ‘liberal’ worldview that was critical of privileged white settlers who lived overseas and less racist and which helped its readers to negotiate Britain’s changing status, albeit unknowingly.22 Stephen Howe, in contrast, has expressed

18  David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961: From ‘Colonial Development’ to ‘Wind of Change’ (Oxford, 1971). 19  Ibid., p. 382. 20  Stuart Ward, ‘Introduction’ in Stuart Ward (ed.), British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester, 2001), pp. 1–20; Bill Schwarz, Memories of Empire, Volume 1: The White Man’s World (Oxford, 2011); Bill Schwarz, ‘“The Only White Man in There”: The Re-racialisation of England, 1956–1968’, Race and Class, 38: 1 (1996); Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire, 1939–65 (Oxford, 2005); Wendy Webster, ‘“There’ll Always be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948–1968’, Journal of British Studies, 40: 4 (2001), pp. 557–84. 21  John Darwin, ‘The Fear of Falling: British Politics and Imperial Decline Since 1900’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5: 36 (1986), pp. 27–43. 22  Lewis, ‘“Daddy Wouldn’t”’.

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scepticism over whether there was a notable impact of any kind.23 Howe has urged caution in respect of the methodologies used to determine public attitudes from cultural resources and reminds us of the processual aspect, such that the cognitive impact of a long event like decolonisation might be ‘delayed’. Post-Imperial Britain? More recent studies in this area have examined the ways in which decolonisation in places including Africa permeated British society broadly. They examine Britain’s transition from a colonial power to a post-imperial country in a practical as well as an ideological sense, tracing developments ‘on the ground’. Jordanna Bailkin, Camilla Schofield, Elizabeth Buettner, Sarah Stockwell and Anna Bocking-Welch have all investigated the reshaping of British society and British institutions in addition to ideas and beliefs which circulated in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s as a result of processes of exchange, migration, memory and adventure that followed in the wake of the age of empire or were bound to the process of the empire’s demise and which involved ordinary people as well as elites.24 These works highlight themes including the restructuring of everyday life and relationships,25 the unseen dependence of post-war welfare on the end of empire,26 the relationship between British social democracy, racism and the politics of imperial decline,27 the birth of multiculturalism and cultural diversity,28 the colonial roots of British post-colonial aid29 and the transformation of middle-class associational life.30 Of these works on British cultural and societal developments, only Lewis’s chapter on the Mau Mau War concentrates on British newspapers 23  Stephen Howe, ‘Internal Decolonization? British Politics Since Thatcher as Post-colonial Trauma’, Twentieth Century British History, 14: 3 (2003), pp. 286–304. 24  Jordanna Bailkin, The Afterlife of Empire (London, 2012); Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, 2013); Elizabeth Buettner, Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge, 2016); Sarah Stockwell, The British End of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2018); Anna Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society at the End of Empire: Decolonisation, Globalisation, and International Responsibility (Manchester, 2018). 25  Bailkin, Afterlife. 26  Ibid. 27  Schofield, Enoch Powell. 28  Buettner, Europe after Empire. 29  Stockwell, British End. 30  Bocking-Welch, British Civic Society.

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13

and press content, despite the centrality of the press to definitions of low politics, public opinion and culture. Questions remain. What was the precise role of the press during decolonisation? Did it bear a significance; and if so, how? Is it possible to make overarching observations about the importance of the press, which span regions and events? Did the press link to public opinion and low politics; and if so, in what way/s? Were the latter significant factors in decolonisation, or not, as many have claimed or implied? What are the methodological challenges involved in investigating this topic, and how might they be overcome? 1.2.2  The Transnational ‘Web’ of Influence of the Press This book was motivated by the expectation that these questions can only be answered by adopting an in-depth approach to the material. For that reason, it focuses on four to five eventful years. The content of ten British papers is examined in relation to a range of political and cultural processes concerning decolonisation across four regions of Africa: West, East, Central and South.31 It considers several important events chronologically, which include independence in Ghana (1957), colonial violence in Kenya and Nyasaland (1959), the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ tour of Africa (1960), the Sharpeville massacre (1960) and the Congo crisis (1960–61). In addition to newspaper articles, the book uses official government documents; newspaper and other archives, which house individual papers’ internal correspondence, politicians’ and journalists’ private papers and the papers of political and other groups which had close dealings with the press; interviews; memoirs; autobiographies; and articles printed in African and white settler newspapers. The range of sources allows for a deeper probing of the causes and the consequences of the news coverage. It provides insight into how the articles were shaped, received and acted upon by readers, making it easier to disaggregate primary from secondary influences. In addition, this book uses works from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, which help to determine which of the coverage’s features are likely to have impacted the readers for whom archival evidence is absent: namely, the British public. 31  The Daily Express, The Daily Herald, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, The Manchester Guardian/The Guardian, The News Chronicle, The Observer, The Times, and, occasionally, The Daily Sketch.

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The argument which emerges is that the cultural and political history of the end of empire in Africa cannot be understood without the British press, which offered transnational channels for communication somewhat similar in kind if not in substance, significance nor impact to the transnational exchanges identified by Bailkin, Buettner and Bocking-Welch in respect of other societal realms. Importantly, British newspaper articles travelled beyond Britain to Africa—a dynamic of the decolonisation process which has not previously been explored. British newspaper coverage informed the British public and political context to decolonisation to a greater extent than previous accounts have acknowledged (and in different ways). Yet it also influenced the experiences of decolonisation for peoples on the ground in Africa, informing the political and civic cultures of nationalists, activists, settlers and incumbent and opposition parties, who sought engagement with it in bids to influence political and cultural outcomes. Dynamics such as these were not discrete nor linear in their operation, but complex, and fundamentally interconnected with other political and cultural dynamics, sometimes thousands of miles away. The process of decolonisation in Africa cannot be understood without them, nor without acknowledging the mediating power of British newspapers, which linked the realms of British politics, the British public, and politics and publics across Africa in the same ecosystem, shaping the voices which found expression in them along the way. 1.2.3  British Newspapers, the British Government and British Policy Kenya during the 1950s, the subject of Carruthers’s, Lewis’s and Lewis and Murphy’s work, is a good place to start thinking about relations between the press and the government during decolonisation. The Mau Mau War (1952–c.1960), when disenfranchised and demoralised Kikuyu, the ethnic group hit hardest by the dictates of British rule in the colony, began a campaign of violence against the colonial state, shook Britain and its colonial representatives in Kenya at an important moment—just five years following the independence and partition of India (1947), a time of increased intervention in Africa, a continent the British hoped still to hold. The war was brutal. Colonial violence formed the subject of heated debates in the British Parliament, sparked by the interventions of Labour and the Liberals, both opposition parties. When, in 1959, news reached government figures that eleven African detainees in Hola, a detention camp

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

associated with the war, had died in suspicious circumstances, a deep apprehension set in. Unluckily for them, these events coincided with the declaration of a State of Emergency in another colonial territory, Nyasaland, following an alleged perceived threat of assassination of white settlers in the British protectorate by African activists from the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), which led to a brutal crackdown on nationalist activity that involved the incarceration of over a thousand activists and forty-eight further deaths at the hands of the colonial authorities. The fact that a general election had been scheduled in Britain for later that year only added to the government’s malaise. In its empire, Britain had long prided itself on apparent government by consent and on its peaceful methods, which included ruling by force of personality.32 These violent events, though not new in kind, were somewhat new in scale, and laid the paucity of those self-affirming conceptions bare a further—critical—time. This book bears out the influence of the government on the press regarding Kenya and the colonial violence of 1959, which existing works have emphasised. Yet, over the period of decolonisation and the African continent as a whole, the book emphasises the reverse relation: namely, the impact of British press content on the British government, particularly concerning Central Africa, which formed the press’s main preoccupation during the ‘wind of change’. Official documents reveal that the coverage of Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia, and journalists’ wider initiatives, including their overtures to British politicians, which were supportive of nationalist activity in instances which politicians deemed to matter, helped actively to set the agenda for British policy towards the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, goading the government in the direction of African nationalism. In the case of the colonial violence of 1959 in Kenya and Nyasaland, moreover, this book emphasises press content’s relative independence from the government overtures which sought to affect it, whilst confirming that the coverage performed functions that served British self-perceptions well. Newspapers, as overseas actors with a wide reach, also indirectly affected British policy goals, such as regarding fostering Commonwealth solidarity with the government of Ghana at independence, the white communities of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and white society in South Africa. The British government regarded the 32  Kathryn Tidrick, Empire and the English Character: The Illusion of Authority (London, 1990); Ronald Hyam, Understanding the British Empire (Cambridge, 2010).

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Commonwealth as the natural successor to the empire and a means by which it might preserve its global influence. The government aimed to conserve good relations with all the groups it hoped to keep within the Commonwealth fold and, as a result, engaged in a delicate rhetorical juggling act in speeches and other communications that was designed to appeal equally even to people vehemently opposed to one another. British newspapers inhibited the government’s ability to monopolise the British narrative which circulated in Africa. Newspapers served as an irritant and an obstacle in the path of officials’ claim to sole authorship of ‘Britain’s view’ in Africa. British papers claimed to speak on behalf of the British public, or were perceived to, and overseas readerships took note. This was evident during the ‘wind of change’ tour in 1960, for example, when the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the journalists who accompanied him passed through West, Central and South Africa delivering quite contrasting messages on vital issues which included the feasibility of future multiracial harmony in societies with large white settler societies, the capabilities of the figure-head of African nationalism, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and the popularity of the British government in Africa. The dissonances sometimes scuppered foreign policy outcomes, including regarding nurturing positive cross-cultural relations, as reflected in politicians’ public and private utterances, newspaper coverage in Africa and—eventually—the policy of governments in Africa. 1.2.4  The African Dimension to British Newspaper Coverage of Decolonisation No previous studies have analysed this topic in depth. Yet the content of British papers travelled far. In South Africa, in 1960, Anthony Sampson, a journalist working for The Observer, commented on just how quickly British newspapers sold out.33 News of British press coverage of events in Africa travelled further. African papers, such as the Accra Evening News (Ghana), and white settler papers, such as the Rhodesia Herald (Southern Rhodesia) and the Nyasaland Times (Nyasaland), printed and responded to British newspaper articles frequently. In addition, political parties, such as the Malawi Youth League (Nyasaland), the National Liberation Movement (Gold Coast/Ghana) and the Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga (Congo), recognised the significance of British press  Observer, 17 April 1960, p. 8.

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content for the fortunes of leading political figures in their countries as well as for British and foreign publics and acted upon this realisation to influence it during campaigns for independence and the consolidation of new nation-states. British newspaper articles fomented conflict between Britain and Africa as well as among competing social and political groups in Africa, both powering and stalling decolonisation processes. British newspapers provided a means by which African nationalists and Europeans living in Africa who were supportive of political reform contested colonial rule, and African opposition parties following independence confronted and destabilised their first governments. The Malawi Youth League used the presence of British journalists in Nyasaland during Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ tour in 1960 to amplify their calls for freedom. From the mid-­1950s, in Ghana, the National Liberation Movement cultivated relations with the British right-leaning press as part of a bid to undermine the ruling Convention People’s Party. During the ‘Congo crisis’ in 1960, it seems that Moïse Tshombe, the leader of seceded Katanga, a mineral-rich region in the country’s southeast, also courted British journalists as a means of attracting international sympathy for his cause and in opposition to Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s rule. In addition, in South Africa, both Africans and the South African Liberal Party and its members, which included journalists, took active steps to influence foreign media treatment of the country under apartheid, a system they fought. In this way, British press content contributed to denting the efficacy of both the colonial and the post-colonial state. In the case of the white settler societies which possessed either total or a substantial degree of political independence from Britain (Southern Rhodesia and South Africa), however, it also contributed to a hunkering down of the settler societies, consolidating the fortress identities, it seems, of these ‘islands of white’.34 For large sections of the white settler communities of British Central Africa and South Africa, British press coverage of these regions, then, appeared provocative and fuelled retrenchment. Its characteristics were born not only of the influence of external parties, but also of internal press practices with which the former elided, as well as of the strength of African nationalism, which journalists understood as significant. The abrasive commentary of the left-leaning popular press, in particular, 34  A term coined by Dane Kennedy. Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham, North Carolina, USA, 1987).

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but—significantly—over time, expanding to include that of papers on the Right, on the perceived outmoded, if not alien, characteristics of settler society and the estimated likelihood of total and imminent decolonisation prompted settlers to question their relation to Britain, fed fears as to the future direction of British colonial policy and focused their frustration externally, providing a means by which people of European origin resistant to change were able to avoid more discomfiting issues such as African agency, discontent and the necessity of domestic reform. This found expression in more aggressive foreign and domestic policies and political and civic cultures firmly oriented against Britain, as reflected in politicians’ public and private deliberations, and in sections of the print media. With academic works on the ‘break-up’ of ‘Greater Britain’ in mind,35 which focus on the rupturing of white unity over time across the greater empire, this book will endeavour to show that the impact of British press coverage in Africa can and should be divorced from that of British policy and official utterances by comparing the rather muted settler responses to policy to the outcry amongst settlers over the press reporting of it. 1.2.5  The British Press and the British Public British press content provided British readers with self-affirming narratives on decolonisation that may have helped them to weather the psychological impact of imperial decline. Representations of African nationalism, action, power and violence; and of the increasing inevitability of decolonisation and the unfeasibility of empire featured most prominently in the coverage. Nevertheless, most British journalists discussed the events of these years in terms of accruals, which included beginnings, the formation and onward march of nations and nationalism, independence and the bestowing of freedom rather than finalities, metropolitan decline or ‘the end of empire’. In conjunction with this, the press also tended to present Britain’s role in Africa positively, expressed a supercilious attitude towards white settlers and Britain’s colonial representatives in regions such as Central and South Africa, whom they portrayed as distant and alien, and 35  Donal Lowry, ‘“Shame Upon ‘Little England’ While ‘Greater England’ Stands!” Southern Rhodesia and the Imperial Idea’ in Andrea Bosco and Alex May (eds.), Round Table: The Empire/Commonwealth and British Foreign Policy (London, 1997), pp. 305–41; Schwarz, White Man’s World; Stuart Ward, ‘Whirlwind, Hurricane, Howling Tempest: The Wind of Change and the British World’ in L.J. Butler and Sarah Stockwell (eds.), The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 48–69.

1 INTRODUCTION 

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depicted post-colonial ‘black Africa’ negatively, managing to separate it from what had gone before. 1.2.6  Mediated Space: The Press’s Web of Influence Through the medium of the British press, the British government, groups in Africa and the British public cohered in a transnational web of influence that is one of decolonisation’s hidden histories. It is essential to grasp if we are fully  to understand the cultural and political history of the end of empire in Africa. The British government was influenced by sections of the British press and ‘British’ public opinion whose characteristics were informed by the actions of Africans and liberal whites in Africa in no uncertain terms or whose voices found direct expression in British newspapers. The application of British policy to Africa was scuppered often by the press’s provision of an alternative British voice there that was regarded as bearing a political significance in post-war Britain and was often consciously provocative. The British press and British public opinion infused the lived experiences of the end of empire of African and white settler groupings in Anglophone Africa, which sought engagement with them in bids variously to undermine colonial rule, to shore it up or to compromise the authority of newly independent states whose leaders either needed or desired the support of foreign opinion to rule effectively. British press and public opinion at the end of empire formed a hotpot of ideas and influences from more than one country whose characteristics were historically rooted, as we shall see, yet which were amplified and exploited during decolonisation by a range of actors intent on advancing their varied and conflicting interests. 1.2.7  Structure and Outline Chapter 2 considers coverage of Ghana during 1957, the year the country gained its independence from Britain. It discusses the effects of negative press characterisations of independent Ghana, both in making the country harder to govern and in frustrating the British government’s efforts to retain strong positive relations with Kwame Nkrumah, and Commonwealth solidarity. In accounting for this, it foregrounds the relationship between British right-leaning papers and the main opposition party, the National Liberation Movement (NLM), which exploited links and sensibilities to confront the governing Convention People’s Party (CPP). The chapter

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also examines the influence of journalists’ perspectives on these relations and the coverage; the origins and consequences of Nkrumah’s strained relations with the British press; the public relations challenges which confronted post-colonial states, such as Ghana; and the effects of the translation to Ghana of British domestic political tensions made possible by the presence of expatriate officials (including ex-MPs) serving the new government and a very interested—and political—British press. The resultant negative depictions of post-colonial Ghana, in conjunction with the press’s positive portrayal of the independence celebrations and the absence of comment on the negative features of colonial rule, are also analysed in the context of the debate on the cultural impact of the end of empire in Britain. Chapter 3 examines the coverage of the colonial violence in Kenya and Nyasaland during 1959. It shows that a burgeoning British press consensus regarding events in British Central Africa and journalists’ ideas for action began to set the agenda for British policy towards the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, goading the government in the direction of African nationalism. Concurrently, the chapter reassesses aspects of British policy and policy formation. It also begins to discuss the response to the coverage of white settlers and nationalists in Central Africa and the implications of press content for civic cultures and political strategies. Primarily, however, the chapter emphasises the press’s role in continuing to reinforce self-affirming structures of understanding within Britain on Africa, empire and decolonisation, contrary to the weight of the historiography on 1959. For Central Africa, enveloping depictions of colonial brutality in newspapers were powerful descriptions of African nationalism, action and violence, as well as of white settler power and madness. Importantly, this imagery appeared in the context of legacies of region-specific narratives which concerned Federal power and British protection of Africans, and which meshed with a more recent (yet as frequently voiced) desire to preserve Britain’s future influence overseas. In accounting for these representations, the government’s public relations efforts, the focus of earlier works, are examined but not emphasised. Rather, the chapter underscores the influence of the Africa Bureau, with its close links to the press; in addition to nationalism itself, the Labour Party, the press’s quest for sensation, its Anglo-centric focus, journalists’ interactions with settlers on the ground and racism. In this way, the chapter positions the press not only as a motor for decolonisation in Central Africa, independent of the government, but also—in its protective emphasis regarding Britain’s role—as a possible

1 INTRODUCTION 

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neglected factor which lay behind the re-election of the Conservative Party in October of that year. Chapter 4 examines the coverage of Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ tour of Africa, which took place at the start of 1960. The chapter continues to analyse the ways in which British papers affected British policy goals in Central Africa, and African and white settler interactions with the press content. The fact that this was a Commonwealth tour (vs. ‘Africa’ tour or ‘the wind of change’ tour), during which ‘partnership’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘multiracialism’ were the predominant themes in official British pronouncements on the Federation, yet were ignored or trivialised by the press, which opted to focus on nationalism and settlers, is emphasised. The efforts of Malawi Youth League (MYL) activists to shape the British news coverage form a related focus. In addition, the chapter considers the relation between the press, policy and groups on the ground regarding South Africa, a country with similar demographics. Throughout, it pays special attention to the complexity of the dynamic—in other words, how the press and ‘public opinion’ operated in practice and the multiple ways in which both influenced the historical process. The press’s role as an obstacle in the path of the government’s claim to sole authorship of ‘Britain’s view’ in Africa is emphasised. The chapter culminates in a fresh interpretation of the ‘wind of change’ moment, which, it argues, was less a policy statement than a press construction, and one which gained its potency in the white settler regions in Africa, moreover, owing not to a perceived alignment between coverage and policy, the focus of previous studies, but to perceptions of the phrase’s public (i.e. press) reception in Britain. The chapter also considers the implications of the press’s commandeering of the ‘British view’ for British readers’ understanding of Britain’s involvement in decolonisation. Chapter 5 examines coverage of the Sharpeville massacre, which occurred in Johannesburg, South Africa, in March 1960. It shows that the press’s continued focus on African nationalism, action and violence, in addition to its equivocation on British involvement in the country, facilitated inaction on the part of the British government despite the press’s wholehearted critique of apartheid. Concurrently, the chapter reassesses both elements of British policy and policy formation as well as existing interpretations of international media treatment of the massacre, which focus on colonial brutality, African victimhood and passivity, international outrage and the growth of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM). The similarities and contrasts with press treatment of Central Africa are

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explored in depth, and the lack of direct British responsibility for events in South Africa is emphasised. The implications for British cultural understandings of the end of empire, including Britain’s role, are examined. The chapter also investigates the consequences of the coverage for South African policy, the Afrikaner and English-speaking settler communities and the Commonwealth, in addition to the activists of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), who organised the demonstration at Sharpeville, and the African National Congress (ANC). The relationship between the British press and the South African English-language press on the one hand, and the English-language press, the South African Liberal Party and the PAC on the other, forms a special focus. Attention is also paid to the evolution of political and civic cultures firmly oriented against Britain, the place of the Afrikaner stringer in South African society and the crackdown on press and other freedoms two weeks following the massacre. Chapter 6 takes us out of the British sphere of influence to the Congo. In echoes of Ghana, it considers the role of the coverage in fomenting conflict and division on the ground in Africa, papering over historic European wrongs and denting the efficacy of the post-colonial state led by Patrice Lumumba. In accounting for this, the relationship between the British press and African opposition parties forms a focus. However, the chapter foregrounds journalists’ experiences on the ground in conditioning the coverage in the relative absence of existing frameworks of understanding, expression and interaction on the Congo in comparison to the other regions (of British influence) examined in this book. Perhaps more so than for any of the other examples, it positions the press as an independent neglected external actor which affected events. The chapter discusses the negative implications of the coverage for the British government’s dealings with the Congolese government and for UN peacekeeping operations, yet emphasises the role of press content in defending the interests of the West, including Britain, in the light of its hidden objectives. The implications for British readers of these press depictions are also examined in the context of the debate on the cultural impact of the end of empire in Britain. In particular, the chapter considers the press’s affinity with Belgium and the surprising absence of a narrative of British exceptionalism. The final chapter concludes the book by summarising the main running themes concerning British policy, British public attitudes, African and white settler political and civic cultures, and the transnational ‘web’ of influence of the press. In addition, it prises out from the chapters further

1 INTRODUCTION 

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methodological insights to which the story bears witness. These include the press coverage’s passive utility (vs. ‘active’ function) in the hands of readerships, the significance of public opinion’s perceived (vs. ‘actual’) nature, the triangular nature of the press, public opinion and policy, the sheer scope of the ‘British public sphere’ during decolonisation (which extended to Africa) and the importance of historically embedded frameworks of understanding and patterns of practice of the press in informing the coverage, which linked to new actors’ efforts to influence it, which played out in regional patterns and which spoke to the intrinsic power of the British press in informing events by 1957. The chapter also emphasises that the coverage gives pause for thought about the political and cultural contexts within which governments and publics resided. British news content calls into question aspects of the historical record that concern British policy towards Central Africa, the role of African nationalism in decolonisation, the place of conservative ideology in the same process and the significance of cultural tropes prolific in the West that include representations such as ‘Africa is a country’ and ‘the hopeless continent’.

CHAPTER 2

Nkrumah’s Ghana, 1957: The Press and the Post-colonial State

On 6 March 1957, the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African territory to achieve independence under a democratically elected leader: Kwame Nkrumah of the Convention People’s Party (CPP). Within a few months, British newspaper coverage of Ghana mushroomed, painting the new leader as the ultimate dictator. It had not always been that way. During the period of colonial rule, the British referred to the Gold Coast as a ‘model colony’.1 Economically, trade links with Britain were well established. These stretched back to the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade, when West Africa became a main source of traded humans to the Americas, but which endured following abolition in the form of ‘legitimate commerce’, a term which referred to the trade in things other than humans. The Gold Coast possessed many natural resources such as gold, timber and through human hand cocoa, a lucrative export crop. During the colonial era, the Gold Coast also became an important market for British exports. Socially, the term referred to the territory’s perceived educational and political status. Certainly, West Africa, including Ghana, was a region where a great many ex-slaves and their descendants (émigrés), some of 1  For the modern period, some of the best accounts of the political history of Ghana include: Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946–60 (London, 1964); Jean Marie Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (London, 1993); and Richard Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–60 (Oxford, 2000).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_2

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whom had been schooled in the United States of America and the Caribbean, emigrated following abolition, bringing with them language, ideas and behaviour with which the British were familiar. ‘Western-style’ education in the Gold Coast can be traced to the 1800s, pioneered by African and European Christian missions in addition to private ventures and, later, during the period of colonial rule, Britain. British colonial education in West Africa, as elsewhere in Africa, was often very rudimentary. However, these influences contributed to the emergence of a comparatively sizeable section of society literate in English and in newly transcribed African vernaculars, at the apex of which sat an ‘intelligentsia’. The Ashanti people, who had, from the seventeenth century, ruled a vast and powerful empire of their own in West Africa, with their rich political, cultural and economic heritage, dominated the Gold Coast’s geographical heart.2 The Ashanti had fiercely resisted British attempts to conquer their land, Asante, during the nineteenth century. For much of the colonial period, the British coupled with chiefs, including in Asante, whose authority they had initially sought to contain, in a bid ‘indirectly’ to rule the masses in the absence of a great deal of white manpower. Initially, the relationship proved mutually beneficial. Chiefs, whose authority was kept in check by democratic processes before the period of colonial rule, as allies of the colonial state, began to possess almost untrammelled power. Yet here lay a disadvantage, too, with the intensification of a crisis of legitimacy, whose implications became starker still over the years due to the social and economic changes that characterised the colonial era, and which generated a growing body of Western-educated, thwarted young men (‘commoners’).3 The first actions since the ‘Scramble’ from Africans seeking freedoms from British dictates, which began to shatter this relatively stable state of affairs and which caused the British to enact decisive reforms, occurred during the 1940s.4 The 1930s had witnessed the beginnings of some popular ‘unrest’, which included cocoa hold-ups and the establishment of a Youth Conference Movement and a radical penny press.5 The late 1930s was also the period of the inauguration of the Burns Constitution, which represented part of a bigger programme of political advancement in  For a history of Asante, see: Allman, Quills.  For a history of chiefdom in Ghana, see: Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs. 4  For a full account of the politics of these years, including colonial, see: Austin, Politics. 5  Austin, Politics, p. 10. 2 3

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Britain’s colonies during the post-war period.6 British officials believed that independence, in most of the Empire, would lie at least a generation away, maybe two. In the 1940s, however, in places including the Gold Coast, the pace and the nature of protest and reform accelerated. In 1947, a small group of lawyers and teachers formed the United Gold Coast Convention  (UGCC), the first political party in the territory to call for ‘self-government in the shortest possible time’. The men who created the party were motivated by a desire to confront unfair colonial practices and to achieve self-government for Ghana. They were also largely opposed to chiefly power and believed that the future of the territory lay with self-­ made men such as themselves. Soon after its foundation, J. B. Danquah, the party’s co-founder, invited Nkrumah to become its secretary-general. In the months which followed, Nkrumah helped to create a mass base for the party. The following year (1948), a series of riots occurred across the Gold Coast, which represented a further turning point in the ramping up of political reform in the territory. Twenty-nine people died and more than 200 people were injured.7 The riots resulted from a groundswell of discontent, which owed to several converging factors. Unforgiving British agricultural policies aimed at the eradication of swollen shoot disease, which affected cocoa crops, provoked horror and fear amongst farmers, who faced immediate hardship and feared for their way of life and livelihoods. African ex-servicemen, who had returned home from the battlefields of Europe and Asia following the Second World War, faced economic difficulty owing to the petering out of war gratuities alongside high prices, which linked to the changes affecting the cocoa industry as well as to a world shortage of shipping and of consumer goods.8 In addition, in colonial contexts such as the Gold Coast, which persisted following the Second World War and where little formal relation existed between political power and the consent of the governed, returning ex-servicemen saw through fresh eyes that the emancipatory ideals for which they had fought brutal wars were not deemed as applicable to Britain’s colonial subjects. Shortages and price rises affected everyone but the elite, black markets proliferated and essentials including foodstuffs and petrol were also hit. Ghanaians knew that European trading firms were keeping prices deliberately high  Hyam, Declining.  Austin, Politics, p. 11. 8  Ibid., pp. 66–68. 6 7

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for their own benefit.9 At the same time, other, longer-standing social and political processes reached tipping points, converging with the more recent economic hardships to produce political outcomes that were characterised by their increased radicalisation. With urbanisation proceeding apace and increased unemployment, a new generation of elementary school leavers found themselves with nowhere to go.10 Rural areas were also impacted. The conflict between the chiefs and the commoners in the native authorities intensified under the weight of these economic pressures.11 And thus it was that politics in Ghana acquired more of a popular basis. Thereafter, the battle for independence represented not only a fight against colonial rule, but also a class struggle. Nkrumah’s formation of the CPP, which split from the UGCC in 1949, reflected these two dimensions. The CPP was not a party of Ghana’s men of property and standing, but of its young men and ordinary people, who sought a more equitable distribution of power in Ghana along the lines of class in addition to ‘self-­ government now’. Britain responded to the riots by calling the Watson Commission of Inquiry into their causes and enacted reforms in response to the commission’s findings. It then set up the Coussey Committee to create proposals for constitutional reform in the Gold Coast. The committee made provision for greater African representation in government, but it stopped short of recommending self-rule. Nkrumah opposed the committee’s findings on this basis and advocated for ‘positive action’—further protests geared towards achieving substantive change. He was jailed for his efforts, a move which seemed only to increase his popularity. Further political advances were proposed. In 1951, elections were held, the CPP won, and the British Colonial Governor in the Gold Coast Sir Charles Arden-Clarke invited Nkrumah to form a government. During the 1950s, the country experienced a period of ‘co-governance’, yet moved through three elections (1951, 1954 and 1956) successfully to independence. There were not insignificant hurdles. The 1956 election is evidence of this. It was unanticipated. The election was called at the behest of the main opposition party, the National Liberation Movement (NLM), formed in 1954, and which represented an alliance of sorts between the old UGCC intelligentsia, chiefs, including in Asante, and other groups  Ibid., pp. 68–69.  Ibid., pp. 13–18. 11  Ibid., pp. 18–28. 9

10

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within Ghanaian society that opposed the CPP and were concerned for the position of regions and minorities in an independent state. During the period of its rapid growth, the NLM was also supported by the ‘young men’ of Asante and disaffected members of the new intelligentsia who had helped to lead the CPP in previous years. The CPP’s electoral victory failed to soothe the political tensions in the country. To address this, the NLM called on the British Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd to help to broker a deal on the constitution. The agreement provided for the creation of interim regional assemblies and the insertion of entrenched clauses to meet the demands of the Opposition for constitutional and minority safeguards.12 Dennis Austin emphasises that independence represented a critical juncture. A lot, he suggests, depended on what each side decided to do next. Would the CPP respect those aspects of the new constitution which the NLM had pressed for? Would the NLM accept the election result and CPP authority as the ruling party? The answer would be no on both counts. The battle for control of the centre endured. The British press informed the struggle, the right-leaning press painting Nkrumah as the ultimate dictator. During the first three months of independence, British right-leaning papers, whose ideologies and interests meshed with opposition groups, provided a means by which the NLM challenged Nkrumah’s rule—at once denting the efficacy of the post-colonial state in international context and providing fodder for domestic political cultures that consolidated Ghanaian nationalism as articulated by the CPP. The negative coverage also affected British policy towards Ghana. It compromised the British government’s ability to retain positive relations with Nkrumah within the nascent Commonwealth. Additionally, British newspapers provided self-­affirming depictions of Britain in Ghana, which may have helped British readers to weather the beginnings of British imperial decline in Africa.

 Ibid., p. 30.

12

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2.1   The Independence Celebrations, the Gold Coast and the British Three main themes characterised British newspaper coverage of the independence celebrations on 6 March. One theme common across the press turned on the perceived peaceful, unbloodied and consensual nature of the country’s transition to independence, which journalists conflated with the absence of a struggle.13 ‘Let no one claim hereafter that Ghana “fought” for independence’, an editorial on 9 February told Mail readers: ‘This has been granted freely, as with other countries who now speak of their “struggle” against the British’.14 A second shared theme foregrounded the long process of negotiation and, as part of this, the apparent ‘tutelage’ of Ghana by Britain.15 ‘For thirty years we have been patiently leading an impatient people to their independence’, the Mirror reported on Independence Day: ‘Now we have done it, and it is a remarkable achievement’.16 An additional common theme was that Ghana’s independence set Britain on the road to further distinction because it bolstered the Commonwealth—the latter depicted as the embodiment of Britain’s future power and influence. For British newspapers, the defining image of the celebrations was not of Nkrumah on the podium with his colleagues,17 as Richard Rathbone, writing on the celebrations, has noted of the broader international coverage,18 but of the Duchess of Kent, Britain’s representative, pictured on the dance floor in Nkrumah’s arms, clothed in white chiffon, sequins and pearls,19 a vision which seemed to encapsulate Britain’s continued greatness, as well as the mutual affection of Britain and Ghana, which journalists considered likely to characterise the independence era. John Hall, covering the celebrations for the Mail, wrote that the 13  Mail, 9 February 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 4 March 1957, p. 2; Mirror, 6 March 1957, fp & p. 2; Mail, 7 March 1957, fp. 14  Mail, 9 February 1957, fp. 15  Mail, 9 February 1957, fp; Mirror, 6 March 1957, fp & p. 2; Observer, 3 March 1957, p. 10; Guardian, 6 March 1957, p. 8. The Express went a step further: it presented independence as the intended culmination of a long-standing British imperial mission. Express, 5 March 1957, p. 6. 16  Mirror, 6 March 1957, fp, continued p. 2. 17  The photo appeared in only one of these papers, the Guardian, on 7 March 1957, p. 7. 18  Richard Rathbone, ‘Casting “the Kingdome into another mold”: Ghana’s Troubled Transition to Independence’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 97: 398 (2008), pp. 705–18. 19  Herald, 7 March 1957, p. 2; Mirror, 7 March 1957, p. 13; Express, 7 March 1957, p. 2.

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popularity of the British at the time was ‘overwhelming’.20 Nkrumah’s refutation that Ghana might leave the Commonwealth in the future was widely quoted in British papers on both Left and Right;21 so too were his comments that ‘We part from the former imperial power…with the warmest feelings of friendship and goodwill’.22 Evaluating the veracity of these representations begins to provide insight into the role of the press. Its coverage served to distil the recent history of the country in Britain’s favour, which may have affected British self-perceptions. This is not to say that the themes of peace, cordiality and mediation were entirely untrue. Rather, it is to suggest that they formed features of a more complex chain of events. Certainly, Ghana’s recent history had been more peaceful than parallel developments elsewhere in the British Empire, most notably Kenya and Cyprus, where colonial wars had lasted for much of the fifties.23 Political negotiation and ‘tutelage’, in the form of the expansion of Western-style education, and co-government during the 1950s were important characteristics of British rule in the territory. Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence, too, meaning that the British had been pioneers in granting it. Yet this story contains omissions whose inclusion would have given British readers cause to reflect more demurely on the past. The fact that most journalists conflated the lack of blood spilled during the 1950s with the absence of a fight for independence diminished the role of Africans, including Nkrumah and the CPP, in fuelling the decolonisation process in the Gold Coast as well as in conditioning its pace and form. Few papers chose to recall Nkrumah’s imprisonment or the 1948 protests, and no paper recounted the story of the CPP’s battle against the more moderate UGCC, the party which Britain had initially favoured. That this was not wholly surprising does not make it insignificant. In a different context, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reminds us of the ‘danger of a single story’ in accounts of people and

 Mail, 1 March 1957, p. 2.  Guardian, 6 March 1957, fp; Express, 8 March 1957, p. 2; Mail, 8 March 1957, p. 5; Telegraph, 8 March 1957, fp. 22  Mirror, 7 March 1957, p. 24; Express, 7 March 1957, p. 2. 23  States of Emergency had been declared in both countries: Cyprus 1955–59; Kenya 1952–60. 20 21

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places.24 Adichie explains that the ‘single story’, which reduces people and places to singular depictions, impedes cross-cultural understanding and tends to reinforce damaging power dynamics of which the representations are also often themselves born. At independence, British newspapers professed to have gathered for their readers the story of the country’s colonial past in order that they might move forward knowingly. Only the Herald’s Basil Davidson chose to refer to independence as ‘the happy ending to a long and bitter chapter of history’.25 Davidson would become one of the world’s foremost authorities on Africa, working tirelessly throughout his later years to educate Britain and the world on Africa’s rich pre-colonial history and the implications for Africa of the European colonial legacy.26 Yet, in this instance, even he did not elaborate. Debates on the cultural impact of the end of empire in Britain turn on the nature of British perceptions of decolonisation and self-perceptions. This example begins to provide support at a popular level of Darwin’s contention that the ‘Commonwealth concept’ worked to mitigate the psychological consequences of imperial decline.27 It also begins to support Lewis’s argument that the press helped readerships to negotiate Britain’s changing status28—yet, in this case, by valorising an historical empire of the imagination, rather than by ‘demoralising’ an outmoded empire. This valorisation would repeat itself across Africa during the period of decolonisation. It linked to the relative absence of ‘History’ in press accounts, an important feature of the coverage, which this book identifies as conspicuous in its absence. Press coverage portrayed an especial view of British involvement in Africa, which tended to be very self-serving. It did this partly by omission. In accounting for these positive representations, the opinion and the ideology of the people who produced them must be considered. The majority of works on ‘internal decolonisation’ foreground these as the 24  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘The danger of a single story’, TED Talk, July 2009. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story. 25  Herald, 5 March 1957, p. 4. 26  For a short overview of Davidson’s life, see preface to: Basil Davidson, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah (Oxford, 2007). His works included: The Lost Cities of Africa (1959); The African Past: Chronicles from Antiquity to Modern Times (1964); The African Genius: An Introduction to Social and Cultural History (1969); and The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (1992). 27  Darwin, ‘Fear of Falling’. 28  Lewis, ‘Daddy Wouldn’t’.

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predominant influences on British cultural output.29 They may have included a certain patriotism and/or a pervasive belief in the liberality of Britain’s empire.30 Yet, in the case of the press, more tangible influences should not be neglected. It is hard to consider opinion, moreover, as distinct from the factors which produced and sustained it. In Ghana, as elsewhere in Africa, both frameworks of (mis-)understanding and representation and patterns of practice of the press affected the newspaper content. They operated in an entwined manner, and can often be traced historically. In Ghana, deeply rooted press practices and representations, which were oriented towards positive depictions of Britain and negative ones of Nkrumah and the CPP, shrouded alternative voices. The imperial themes and iconography reflected familiar journalistic tropes associated with independence celebrations.31 According to Christopher Munnion, a Telegraph reporter, the journalists who travelled to Accra sought there a largely preordained story, inspired by previous independence days.32 On occasions such as this, journalists wrote articles before the occurrence of the events which they described, Munnion explains, in order that the writers could meet their papers’ final deadlines and were free to enjoy the celebrations. Independence came at midnight. In addition, most journalists flew in especially for Independence Day. The lack of a sustained press presence in the area prior to independence should be regarded as a factor which inhibited a deeper probing of the event. The historian, David Birmingham, has commented that of the 600 journalists who travelled to Ghana to report the celebrations, most of them had never visited Africa before.33 Oliver Woods, the Times’s colonial correspondent,

 For example: Ward (ed.), British Culture.  Joanna Lewis, ‘The British Empire and World History: Welfare Imperialism and “Soft” Power in the Rise and Fall of Colonial Rule’ in James Midgley and David Piachaud (eds.), Colonialism and Welfare: Social Policy and the British Imperial Legacy (Cheltenham, 2011), pp. 17–35. 31  For Ghana, see: Rathbone, ‘Casting’. For a case study of a different context (India), see: Nicholas Owen, ‘“More Than a Transfer of Power”: Independence Day Ceremonies in India, 15 August 1947’, Contemporary Record, 6:3 (1992), pp. 415–51. For a general work, see: Robert Holland, Susan Williams and Terry Barringer (eds.), The Iconography of Independence: “Freedoms at Midnight” (Abingdon, 2010). 32  Christopher Munnion, Banana Sunday: Datelines from Africa (Rivonia, South Africa, 1995), p. 80. 33  David Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism (Athens, US, 1998), p. 62. 29 30

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later hinted that even this large paper’s coverage had been relatively poor.34 Woods attributed its failings to the absence in the region of a European newspaper, and thus of ‘appropriate’ stringers, as well as to the costs of sending out special correspondents for two to four weeks when stories surfaced.35 In addition, the focus of the press as an institution on present events and its interest in forward-looking opinion pieces should be considered as relevant. This agenda mitigated against a deep consideration of the past in this and other African contexts during decolonisation, as we shall see.36 Africans tended to be denied anything but a general, secondary and rather oblique role in the story of independence. Most journalists’ references to Nkrumah appeared in a short time frame, between 5 and 7 March, when the celebrations were at their height. The press represented Ghana in a paternalistic way, too, diminishing it. Journalists brought the idiom of empire forward into the independence era. The language used to describe the country’s position in the world was replete with the imagery of birth, childhood and growing up.37 These representations recalled historical justifications for empire. They also ignored Ghana’s own empires and rich history, and belied the truth of the claim, stated elsewhere, that Ghana was, by virtue of its sovereignty, now regarded as residing in a position of equality with the older, industrialised states of the Western world.38 The press tended to portray Ghana, the first of its kind in Africa, as a precarious test case. Just as a naughty teenager let loose on the world might damage its siblings’ prospects of being granted the same freedoms, any inability to function as a ‘nation-state’ following the departure of the British, journalists predicted, would have unenviable repercussions for the other African territories fighting to end European colonial rule.39 Worryingly for Ghana, however, the press identified that the support the new prime minister had

34  Oliver Woods to editor, ‘Aide Memoire on re-establishment of Ghana Service’, 7 October 1957, MEM/Ghana file, Times Newspapers Ltd Archive (hereafter TNL Archive), News UK and Ireland Ltd for material relating to the archives of The Times or Sunday Times. 35  Ibid. 36  See, in particular, Chap. 6, on the Congo crisis. 37  Mirror, 4 March 1957, p. 11; Mirror, 5 March 1957, p. 11; Herald, 5 March 1957, p. 4; Mirror, 6 March 1957, p. 3; Mail, 6 March 1957, p. 6; Guardian, 6 March 1957, p. 8. 38  Express, 1 March 1957, p. 2; Herald, 5 March 1957, p. 4. 39  News Chronicle, 4 March 1957, p. 2; Guardian, 6 March 1957, p. 8.

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accrued was far from universal. As the Guardian put it, ‘To come of age is in part a deliverance, but more a challenge’.40

2.2   ‘Dictator Nkrumah’: British Right-Leaning Papers and the National Liberation Movement (NLM) Journalists’ concerns were centred on Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti, the heartland of the NLM, a party comprised of elements of the old intelligentsia who had been active in the UGCC from which Nkrumah’s CPP had split earlier in the decade; chiefs who felt their traditional status threatened by an increasingly centralised state dominated by a younger generation of leaders who owed little to heredity; aggrieved cocoa farmers, mostly in Ashanti, whose high yields in previous years had failed to reap the expected returns under Nkrumah’s socialism; Asante’s ‘young men’; and some members of the new intelligentsia—primarily prominent disaffected members of the CPP.41 The NLM was also comprised of many of the people of the northern regions as well as of Togoland to the east, a separate territory, which bordered the Gold Coast. Despite the results of a plebiscite in 1956, which had signalled Togoland’s desire to join an independent Ghana, regional disaffection remained strong. The latest manifestation of these ruptures concerned the threat by the NLM in early 1957 to boycott the independence celebrations if regional safeguards were not written into the constitution. The British press understood the matter to have been soothed just in the nick of time by Lennox-Boyd, who had visited the territory in January to mediate a resolution to the conflict. The difficulties were predicted to resurface in the independence era, however, and the jury was out on the question of whether Nkrumah would be able to cope without the ‘safety net of the British Colonial Office’.42 In conjunction with its triumphal depictions of British colonialism, then, the coverage of the week of the celebrations publicised the views of the Opposition in Ghana. This is significant regarding the precarious peace which Austin identifies as characterising the political situation in the country at independence. The presence of these voices in the coverage also calls into question the claim that foreign journalists tended not to venture very  Guardian, 6 March 1957, p. 8.  For the history of the NLM, see: Allman, Quills, and Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs. 42  Quote is from News Chronicle, 4 March 1957, p. 2. 40 41

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far from Accra and the country’s coast.43 Covering opposition voices entailed travelling inland to the heart of Asante as well as to the northern regions of Ghana. Richard Rathbone has claimed that journalists’ presence on the coast at independence contributed to newspapers’ presentation of a harmonious picture of the country.44 It is argued here that some sections of the press painted a negative picture of Nkrumah very early on, together with an image of the righteousness of the NLM standpoint, and that this reflected ventures further afield. The right-leaning press spearheaded this coverage. At the time of the celebrations, both the Mail and the Express published large feature articles on the fears of the people of Ashanti. A large Express article, which appeared on 25 February titled ‘The people who live in fear—A knife in the back when the British go?’, contained an exposition of Ashanti concerns, as described by John Redfern, reporting from Kumasi.45 ‘What is eating these Ashanti, a likeable, mettlesome people with a brave past?’, the correspondent asked: ‘They believe the new government wants to destroy the Ashanti unity which the new constitution safeguards. One of Nkrumah’s lieutenants sneers at “this man who calls himself Secretary of State” (Mr. Lennox-Boyd). This really rouses the Ashanti… Ashanti citizens are convinced that Nkrumah is going all out for a republic’. A large feature article which appeared in the Mail told of ‘a dramatic last-minute appeal…made to the British people through the Daily Mail by Sir Agyeman Prempeh, Ruler of the Ashanti nation’.46 Hall had been ‘summoned’ to ‘an urgent meeting’ in Kumasi by Prempeh, the Asantehene, who spoke of his fears for the future. ‘I am sorely troubled’, he explained to the journalist: ‘Three days ago Ashanti elders appealed to her Majesty’s Government through the Secretary of State for the Colonies to help the Ashanti people before it is too late. We have heard only silence… It is possible that Mr. Lennox-Boyd has not heard. Thinking that may be possible it is my hope that a message through the Daily Mail will be able to help us by explaining our worries to the British people. Through you I want to speak to the British people as an old and good friend’. The ruler was keen to cultivate a sympathetic audience in Hall, and his efforts found expression in the Mail.  Rathbone, ‘Casting’, p. 707.  Ibid. 45  Express, 25 February 1957, p. 7. 46  Mail, 4 March 1957, p. 6. 43 44

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The Mail and the Express did not appear to distinguish between the different elements of Ashanti society, which battled for power within the NLM in this later period. These included the Asantehene and the new intelligentsia, on the one hand, whose views they foregrounded, and the young men of Asante, on the other.47 This offered early indication that their influence was skewed in discussions of African politics as well as of Anglo-Ghanaian relations. The British press publicised the views of the Opposition, but it did not simply ‘right’ the balance regarding Nkrumah. Its articles also papered over the divisions within Ashanti society, which, in the pages of British newspapers, appeared united in its priorities. This may have reflected the differing tactics of Ashanti politicians and activists, a degree of ignorance of Ashanti politics on the part of the journalists or the appeal and familiarity of the ‘Establishment’ perspective to these two right-leaning papers.48 Regarding the first point, the Asantehene and the intelligentsia had a history of negotiating their position in the Gold Coast through external parties. Ever since the NLM’s formation in 1954, following the CPP’s second electoral victory that year and therefore lacking a parliamentary presence, these leaders had turned to vociferous public criticism of Nkrumah’s government as well as to ‘extra-parliamentary activity’, including a ‘propaganda campaign’ in London, to air and advance their case.49 According to Rathbone, the NLM campaign sought to portray the CPP as despotic and was supported by ‘elements in London who were either apprehensive about the dissolution of the colonial empire in general or about the imminence of the Gold Coast’s independence in particular’.50 They included the boards of companies like the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, a powerful mining company, and partisans of empire in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.51 Since 1954, Kofi Busia, the party’s leader, had plied these  Allman, Quills.  I thank one of the attendees at a presentation I gave at the African History Seminar, School of Oriental and African Studies in December, 2016, for offering me their observations regarding this last aspect. 49  Richard Rathbone, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Rathbone (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B, Volume I: Ghana. Part I: 1941–1952 (London, 1992), pp. xxxi–lxxviii, pp. lxii–lxiii. Also see: Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 57; L. J. Butler, Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World (London, 2000), p. 122; and Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Oxford, 2008), p. 177. 50  Rathbone, ‘Introduction’, in Rathbone (ed.), British Documents, p. lxii. 51  Ibid., pp. lxii–lxiii. 47 48

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groups with outspoken criticisms of Nkrumah’s government alongside praise for the British.52 His efforts appear to have been fruitful. Birmingham even goes so far as to say that sections of the British Establishment and media felt ‘duped’ when their predictions of a federalist victory in the 1956 elections proved wrong, ‘and so they fuelled a campaign of denigration against Nkrumah’ (my italics), which included portraying the CPP leader as a threat to democracy as well as broadcasting ‘the words rather than the deeds of the opposition to the west’.53 The fact that these overtures appeared predominantly in right-leaning papers suggests that political, economic and ideological factors informed the relationship. The NLM chose to approach right-leaning papers because it identified them as probable sympathisers. Right-leaning papers were generally supportive of Establishment interests—in industry, for example, including in the Empire. The British government’s support for an African nationalist and a socialist threatened to compromise these interests, creating some common ground between the papers  and  opposition groups during the fifties. For the Telegraph, as we shall see, any alternative looked rosier than the CPP, and the NLM knew they had an ally in it. To the Express, which characterised itself as ‘The Empire Newspaper’, the opposition narrative also sat well.54 Beaverbrook, its proprietor, took an active interest in the paper’s editorial stance and used it to promote his personal interests.55 Beaverbrook had financial concerns in Africa in places including Northern Rhodesia, where he owned shares in the copper mining industry.56 Indications that some Africans preferred the representatives of the British Empire to leaders like Nkrumah resonated with a paper such as this. Sentiment infused the pragmatism. The Ashantis’ apparent regard for the protection offered by the British Secretary of State, the Queen and the Commonwealth was flattering to papers with sensibilities such as the Express’s and seemed genuine. Redfern’s characterisation of the Ashanti as mettlesome people with a brave past meshed nicely, too, with traditional 52  Kwaku Danso-Boafo, The Political Biography of Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia (Accra, 1996). Especially pp. 33–71. 53  Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 60. 54  Top of editorial column, Express, 15 January 1957, fp. Also see Editorial: ‘A paper with faith’, 2 March 1957, p.  4 for a description of the Express’s editorial position: ‘Empire comes first’. 55  Material at the Parliamentary Archives indicates that Beaverbrook played a role in encouraging the paper to cover certain stories. 56  BBK/H/219, The Beaverbrook Papers, Parliamentary Archives.

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English views on magnificent warrior races and their apparent relative quiescence in empire.57 Again, existing frameworks of understanding, ­representation and patterns of practice of the press informed the coverage. At the heart of these were NLM/press relations, which can be traced to 1954, but which were themselves conditioned by a much older  set of industrial and cultural dynamics linked to the ‘great’ age of empire. During decolonisation, British newspapers provided one means by which African opposition groups, such as the NLM, challenged their countries’ first governments.58 As we shall see in later chapters, British newspapers also provided a means by which opposition groups contested colonial rule.59 By engaging British journalists, opposition groups aimed to shape constitutional arrangements prior to and at independence. In this way, British press coverage of Africa can be considered as a neglected factor which dented the efficacy of both the colonial and the post-­ colonial state. The sheer reach of the British public sphere must be appreciated. Histories of the end of empire in Africa which reject the significance of British low politics and/or public opinion to decolonisation consider their roles with reference to cultural and political developments inside Britain.60 Thinking more generously about how far afield British press coverage mattered, in addition to the many ways in which it was constituted, invites a reassessment. Opposition groups harnessed British newspapers to their political causes. British papers wanted to get involved with them. Throughout the ‘wind of change’, political contests in Africa played out in a very direct manner on the pages of British newspapers, and sometimes linked to British politics. Their contents also impacted events in Africa, as we shall see.

2.3   The Left-Leaning Press At independence, the left-leaning press also printed the substance of the Opposition’s attacks on the CPP. Yet it did so in a less conspicuous fashion. When left-leaning papers commented, their tone was cautionary as 57  Tidrick, English Character, pp. 172–93. Tidrick discusses the English fascination with the Maasai. 58  Also see Chap. 6 on the Congo crisis. 59  See Chaps. 3, 4, and 5. 60  Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good; Howe, Anticolonialism; Owen, ‘Critics of Empire’; Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues.

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opposed to censorious. They also tended to opt, in their feature articles, for a focus on the economy, development and Nkrumah’s policies for the independence era.61 It might be argued that an overly optimistic or forgiving stance on independent Ghana’s new leadership informed these characteristics and were allied to liberal worldviews.62 Yet in the case of Africa, and Ghana in particular, explaining the practical issues behind the comparative absence of a left-leaning press narrative in the early days of independence seems to be as significant as explaining its nature. The Herald and the News Chronicle, both left-leaning popular papers but ‘financially weak’, were limited in their coverage, ‘only occasionally sending staff writers to the African continent’.63 The Mirror, financially the strongest of the British left-leaning populars and the best equipped to cover events in Ghana owing to its links to West African journalism through Cecil King, the chairman of the International Publishing Corporation (owners of the Mirror and, from 1947, West African Newspapers Limited),64 found itself restrained by the same connections as it trod tentatively to safeguard a future for the Mirror Group in the region in changing times.65 John Chick explains that the editorial policy of the Ghana Daily Graphic, a Mirror Group publication, bought out by the Mirror Group (via West African Newspapers) in 1949,66 had originally been one of ‘constructive criticism’ of the Ghana government, which ‘became more and more difficult as the CPP consolidated its position and began to move against dissent’.67 This assertion might be taken as evidence of the accuracy of the right-­ leaning press’s emphasis on the limits of Nkrumah’s appeal, and therefore also of the relative insignificance of other factors affecting the nature of its articles, including its relationship with the NLM. However, the situation 61  On 6 March 1957, the Guardian, for example, published articles on ‘The Volta River plan’, ‘The economy of Ghana’, ‘The cocoa farmer’, ‘Timber in Ghana’ and ‘Social advancement in Ghana’. 62  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 90. 63  Correspondence with Peter Younghusband, May 2013. 64  King was chairman of the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), owners of the Mirror. For autobiographical information, see: Cecil Harmsworth King, Strictly Personal: Some Memoirs of Cecil H. King (London, 1969). For the Mirror’s role, see Edelman, Mirror: A Political History. For information on King’s involvement in West Africa, see John Chick, ‘Cecil King, the Press, and Politics in West Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 34: 3 (September 1996), pp. 375–93. 65  Chick, ‘Cecil King’, pp. 387–8. 66  Ibid., p. 380. 67  Ibid., p. 387. Nkrumah became prime minister of the Gold Coast in 1952.

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appeared to be more complex. In West Africa, the Mirror Group could not be regarded as a disinterested commentator. Its fortunes were intimately tied to the course of political change. For this reason, it had long been inclined to confront the Ghana government. The dearth of critical comment in the Mirror on Nkrumah at independence reflected the fact that the CPP, together with its party paper, the Ghana/Accra Evening News, had won the latest instalment of a ‘press war’, a term the British government used to refer to these sorts of relations,68 and thus the realities of power on the ground, as much as, if not more than, the character of Nkrumah’s rule. Here, too, existing patterns of practice of British papers informed the coverage. In the case of the Mirror, these had a ten-year history.

2.4   Nationalism, Nkrumah, and the ‘White Press’ Relations between the British press and Nkrumah were poor. According to the Mail’s Hall, ‘in spite of many requests’, the prime minister had declined to see newspapermen until after independence.69 In August 1957, George Padmore, a leading Pan-Africanist and writer, reporting from London for the Ghana Evening News, summed up the party’s core concern. Padmore argued that ‘certain British imperialist newspapers’ had over the years ‘consistently opposed the right of self-government and independence of the coloured races of Asia and Africa’ (including Ghana).70 Memories of this remained raw. The CPP reserved particular hatred for the proprietors, editors and correspondents of Ghana’s own ‘White Press’, the Graphic and the Ashanti Times, the latter the brain-child of Major-General Sir Edward Spears, the chairman of Ashanti Goldfields.71 The term ‘White Press’ referred to papers which linked to overseas interests and were run by white people. Papers including the Graphic and the Ashanti Times had arrived in West Africa at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, just as the decolonisation process was beginning, and Africans generally believed that  DO 35/9354; DO 194/13.  Mail, 4 March 1957, p. 6. 70  Ghana Evening News, 9 August 1957, p. 3. For a recent history of George Padmore, see: Leslie James, George Padmore and Decolonization from Below: Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire (Basingstoke, 2015). 71  See Chick, ‘Cecil King’, as well as John Chick, ‘The Ashanti Times: A Footnote to Ghanaian Press History’, African Affairs, 76: 302 (January 1977), pp. 80–94. 68 69

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they spoke for British financial concerns.72 They also sensed a political connection. No official link existed between the White Press and the Colonial Office (CO). However, the CO had been ‘helpful’ whilst the Mirror Group was considering establishing a paper in the Gold Coast. Prior to that, too, the CO had been of the view that a newspaper or a set of newspapers might prove useful in counterbalancing the African nationalist press during these important years.73 In the Gold Coast, African politicians, intellectuals and activists had long harnessed the press to their political causes, including the fight for independence, which involved the consolidation of a new nationalism. In doing so, they drew on a long tradition of journalism in the region, which can be traced, in part, to diasporic connections with the Americas that linked to the era of abolition and of the ‘return’ of some people of African descent to Africa. Yet, if Ghanaians held the White Press in especial disrepute, right-leaning British papers were believed to be part and parcel of the same game: suspected efforts to deny Ghana its hard-won freedom. The right-leaning press appeared to be both a boon and a curse for Nkrumah and the CPP. In the days which followed, the CPP would express concern about the overseas repercussions of the negative coverage. These fears linked to the desire for overseas investment in the country to help with development. The British coverage would also have destabilising effects internally in emboldening opposition groups such as the NLM as well as in providing a reason for external actors, including journalists, with vested interests in destabilisation to travel to Ghana to exert an influence in Ghana’s internal affairs. Yet, at the same time, the newspaper content also seems to have provided a means by which the CPP cemented its domestic political popularity. Significantly, British press coverage of the Gold Coast/Ghana travelled there by virtue of Ghana’s political parties. Local papers in Ghana reproduced British articles or sections of them, sometimes frequently. They included the ruling party’s own paper, the Ghana/Accra Evening News. In one sense, in reproducing these articles, the CPP merely promoted an awareness amongst its supporters of potentially dangerous attitudes and perceived threats. Yet this seems insufficient an explanation considering the country’s cultural and political history. Newspapers in the region were fundamentally political. The local press had played an important role in the fight for independence. Nationalism  Chick, ‘Cecil King’, pp. 375–6.  Ibid., pp. 375–80.

72 73

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in the Gold Coast had long linked to newspapers.74 Africans in West Africa placed a premium on press comment. The aforementioned articles which appeared in right-leaning British papers proved useful to the CPP because if the NLM and British journalists were in cahoots, then having contempt for one entailed having contempt for the other. The CPP’s use of British newspaper material indicates that identifying the role of British press coverage at the end of empire will require an awareness of its passive utility in addition to its active function. Because the CPP mediated British press/public comment by selecting specific articles for reprint and discussion or by summarising them for their readers, the impact of British newspaper articles in Ghana might tell us as much about the nature of the difficulties and the aspirations of the ruling party as it does the character and direct effects of the British opinion. Elsewhere in Africa, similar patterns of interaction will be discernible. These involved white settlers, too, whose presses in places including the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and South Africa, re-printed and/or summarised British articles for their readerships, often offering commentary on the spiciest of the reportage.75 Across Africa, ‘the British press’ and ‘British public opinion’ became incorporated into the political and civic cultures of the people who lived there.

2.5   ‘The First Draft of History’ Following independence, and by continuing in the negative vein, the British press played a direct role in helping to shatter the precarious peace which Austin identifies. Right-leaning papers continued to lead the charge. Yet some left-leaning press coverage also bore a similar significance during these weeks. In the first three months of independence, British newspaper coverage of Ghana was not as extensive as it was to become. Yet it is possible, even at this early stage, to discern a foreboding yet familiar pattern across the articles. Right-leaning papers, the most vocal, tended to focus on those of Nkrumah’s domestic policies which represented an affront to the 74  In addition to the works by Austin, Allman, Rathbone and Chick, see, for example: James, George Padmore; Stephanie Newell, The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa (Athens, Ohio, 2013); Harcourt Fuller, Building the Ghanaian Nation-­ State: Kwame Nkrumah’s Symbolic Nationalism (New York, 2014). 75  See Chaps. 3, 4, and 5.

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British, often as identified and/or relayed by NLM leaders. In this, their coverage represented continuity with previous press narratives and patterns of practice concerning British colonialism, opposition parties and the CPP. In April, the Express published a small report to the effect that Ghana had told Britain that it ‘does not want to be’ in honours lists for royal awards.76 The following month, the paper told its readers that Nkrumah had moved into Christianborg Castle in Accra, the ‘former residence of the Governor-General’.77 In June, the Mail reported that Ghana had banned the Queen’s message to Commonwealth youth.78 The Mail article drew on the content of an open letter which Busia had sent to newspapers in Ghana, in which he had protested against the ban. The following week, both papers gave prominence to the comments of Joe Appiah, a leading member of the NLM and husband of the daughter of a British Labour peer,79 who had recently spoken at a rally accusing the CPP of ‘acts of sedition and treason against Her Majesty the Queen’.80 Appiah’s attack had centred on the ban on the Queen’s message and on ‘God save the Queen’ being played with the Ghanaian national anthem, as well as ‘Nkrumah’s decision to set up a 20 ft. bronze statue of himself in Accra, to establish a workers’ brigade, State farms, and to relegate the Governor-General to an inferior residence’.81 Appiah reportedly accused the CPP of following ‘Communist theory’ at ‘developing in the leader of the party the cult of the personality’, and positioned the NLM as the party which would ‘rise up in arms if necessary against a Government which by its own actions would have proved itself disloyal to the Queen’.82 The day Nkrumah arrived in London for the June meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers (the 18th), the Telegraph published an editorial which summarised events thus far. It was one of the first opinion pieces. The author thought that Nkrumah’s presence at the conference was ‘a signal demonstration of Ghana’s new status and his own enhanced importance’, but that ‘less impressive assertions of both of these factors  Express, 2 April 1957, fp.  Express, 20 May 1957, p. 2. 78  Mail, 4 June 1957, fp. 79  Peggy Cripps, daughter of Sir Stafford Cripps. 80  Express, 11 June 1957, p. 2. Also see: Mail, 11 June 1957, p. 2. 81  Mail, 11 June 1957, p. 2. The governor-general was the representative of the monarch in Ghana. 82  Quotes are from ibid. 76 77

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have come from Accra in a disconcerting spate since independence day’.83 All of the examples the Telegraph cited to support this argument concerned the relationship between Ghana and Britain or questions of symbolism, most of which concerned the Queen. Other less symbolic moves which Nkrumah had taken following independence garnered much less attention. Those that were arguably more indicative of authoritarian tendencies, such as Nkrumah’s appointment of regional commissioners accountable to the Ghana government, failed to attract the same degree of publicity.84 The tendency of some British papers to latch on to examples of Nkrumah’s behaviour, which they regarded as a slur to the British, and then to extrapolate conclusions regarding incipient authoritarianism—and this at a very early stage—suggested that the nature of press content owed more to the resurfacing of latent tensions and concerns as well as to established patterns of reporting than it did to observable behaviour. This distinction matters when defining the coverage’s role. It suggests that the chief function of the coverage was not that it perceptively chronicled what is sometimes referred to as Ghana’s ‘slide to dictatorship’. Rather, it served as a repository of older sentiments and patterns of practice that reinforced the latter, and only secondarily, and fortuitously perhaps, as a ‘check’ on power. Narratives of perceived slights or affronts jarred with the apparent promise of the independence celebrations. The sources the press used recalled the efforts of the Asantehene to approach papers including the Mail. In framing Nkrumah’s moves critically, right-leaning newspapers continued to disseminate a self-affirming view of colonial rule by contrast or by implication. The way the press portrayed post-colonial states, such as Ghana, may have contributed to softening the psychological impact of decline in Britain. The editorial in the Telegraph (18th) linked Ghana’s ‘status’ and ‘importance’ to the degree to which the country conserved links with Britain. It did not frame Ghana’s gradual severing of the links as indicative of a decline in the importance of Britain. In addition, references to Nazism, fascism and ‘Communist theory’ were inherently negative from a British perspective. Britain had recently fought the former, and now positioned itself in the ‘Western’ camp of a ‘cold war’ against the USSR. During the period of decolonisation, Western countries were very fearful that newly independent states across the world might fall prey to  Telegraph, 18 June 1957, p. 8.  This story was getting good display in the opposition paper, The Ashanti Pioneer.

83 84

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wily communist ones.85 The implication of papers’ references to these extreme ideologies was that there had been something supportive or protective about the colonial presence. The framing did not include space for a consideration of colonial responsibility for the current perceived precarity. The newspapers’ portrayal of Nkrumah’s moves as dictatorial was problematic. There is an argument for claiming that all governments in all countries should be held to the same standards, and if signs of authoritarianism emerge, these must be exposed in order that the principle of justice is upheld. Holding power to account is one of the British press’s core stated functions. It would also be inaccurate to suggest that people living in Ghana were not concerned to monitor the same thing. Popular support had been an important principle of rule within pre-colonial African societies and remained so. Yet there is also a case for arguing that post-colonial states were different. History was important. The problem was not that the press identified areas of concern, but that the interpretative elements of its analyses were very narrow, representing again a ‘single story’ of sorts. This had significant impacts, including exacerbating the issue that the press understood itself merely as describing. British colonial sensibilities and the press’s links to the NLM are important in accounting for this narrowness. Yet so too were the challenges of ‘Reporting Africa’ during decolonisation, a difficulty on which British and other foreign journalists later reflected.86 Newspapers produced more foreign news coverage during this period and employed a greater number of foreign correspondents, who, owing to their pioneering status, often had to ‘learn on the job’. During decolonisation, Western journalists often travelled to unfamiliar environments, which their papers had not covered directly before, during a moment of unprecedented change. This had implications for the nature of the articles which they produced. These were partial not only on historical matters, but also on matters concerning the nature and strictures of the post-colonial state. Davidson’s seminal work on this would not appear until 1992.87 As Rathbone reminds us, African nationalist politics had a two-pronged agenda, which consisted partly of the ‘forced expulsion of colonial

 Frank Furedi, Colonial Wars and the Politics of Third World Nationalism (London, 1994).  Olav Stokke (ed.), Reporting Africa (Uppsala, Sweden, 1971). 87  Davidson, Black Man’s Burden. 85 86

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overrule’, but also of the ‘commitment to ushering in a new kind of state’.88 The development agenda tended to be the chief preoccupation of the new state.89 Yet of equal importance was the consolidation of the governing party’s own authority, which included a ‘legitimation imperative’ that concerned itself in part with issues of symbolism directed to demarcating the new state from its colonial predecessor.90 Those of Nkrumah’s actions which British journalists identified as indicative of authoritarian tendencies—the beginnings of a ‘personality cult’—were in part imperatives or strategies of rule in many ways specific to post-colonial states. They cannot be viewed simply as African versions of ‘Stalinist’ or ‘Hitlerist’ policies, as the frequency with which journalists deployed the terms ‘fascism’, ‘Nazism’ and ‘communism’ to describe Nkrumah’s symbolic moves suggested to readers. Nkrumah’s actions were also influenced by Ghana’s colonial heritage in other, seemingly rather contradictory ways. Stamps and statues bearing the likeness of the country’s leaders, and the decisions of those leaders to live in grand residences such as the Castle, were not innovations. Birmingham thinks that one of the most harmful legacies of colonialism in Africa was ‘the material lifestyle of its white rulers’.91 Historical precedent was significant. As Cooper has observed, ‘historical (sequences)… brought into being states that had all the trappings recognized around the world as “sovereignty.” But the particular characteristics of those states were consequences of the sequence, not merely the sovereignty’.92 The emphasis which the majority of British journalists placed on independence as the moment at which responsibilities, and thus blame, shifted hands, foregrounded sovereignty over sequence. Lacking the interpretive frames used or built in later years by historians such as Rathbone and Cooper, journalists tended to decipher Nkrumah’s moves through the lens of their own anxieties and concerns, using the language communicated to them by both the Opposition in Ghana and familiar interpretive frames. 88  Quoted in Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Oxford, 2008), p. 174. 89  Cooper, Africa Since 1940; Crawford Young, The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010 (London, 2012). 90  Young, Postcolonial State, p.  131. Also: Harcourt Fuller, Building a Nation: Symbolic Nationalism during the Kwame Nkrumah era in the Gold Coast/Ghana (2010). PhD thesis, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). 91  Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 84. 92  Cooper, Africa Since 1940, p. 5.

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Even this early periodic coverage impacted events in Ghana, where latent tensions and concerns also resurfaced. Commenting in May on Nkrumah’s decision to move into the Castle, Kofi Baako, Ghana’s minister without portfolio, was reported to have accused the British right-­ leaning press of desiring to curtail Ghana’s hard-won freedom, the sentiment Padmore would reiterate in August.93 ‘It is obvious from the comments of such papers as the Daily Express, which has never supported our struggle for independence’, Baako had reportedly argued, ‘that they would have wished our country only to be a glorified colonial territory. We are not prepared for that’.94 At the time of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference, Nkrumah wrote an article for the London Daily Sketch in which he strove to dampen criticism of his government by promoting understanding of the moves which he had made since independence.95 The prime minister explained that the decision to put his head on the coinage was a symbolic move to show the people of his country ‘that they are now really independent’. The creation of the statue, the decision to place his image on the independence stamps and his move to the castle were likewise described as symbolic steps. ‘To my people’, Nkrumah explained, the castle is ‘the seat of government. The Governors have lived there for centuries. Now it is logical that their Prime Minister should live there’. He then reassured Sketch readers that the future governor-general would be housed ‘with great dignity and suitability’, that youth camps were part of a scheme to tackle vast unemployment and were ‘certainly not (a form of) Nazism or Fascism’ and ended with a tribute to the Commonwealth: ‘We are proud to be in the Commonwealth’, he wrote, and ‘I hope to ask (the Queen)… to honour us, as soon as she has time, with a visit’. This proposition was received with some enthusiasm by the Mirror.96 Yet, overall, Nkrumah’s reassurances fell on deaf ears.

 Express, 20 May 1957, p. 2.  Ibid. 95  Daily Sketch, 20 June 1957, p. 12. 96  Mirror, 11 July 1957, p. 2. 93 94

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2.6   Deportations and Press Freedom The situation soon deteriorated. In August, many British journalists thought they saw their worst fears realised when the Ghana government announced its decision to deport two Muslim leaders from the largely Muslim north, Alhaji Amadu Baba and Alhaji Osman Lardan,97 as well as the Sierra Leone-born deputy editor of the Ghana Daily Graphic, Bankole Timothy, on the grounds that their presence was ‘not conducive to the public good’. Timothy, an outspoken yet by all accounts a respected journalist, had written a highly critical article on 22 June (1957), titled ‘What Next, Kwame?’, which had taken the prime minister to task for his development of what Timothy claimed was a personality cult.98 The actions of the Ghana government in proposing the deportations provided a baseline for British press reporting of the country. These were of greater severity than Nkrumah’s previous symbolic moves, and therefore warranted critical scrutiny. Yet just as significant in informing the profusion of negative copy remained the historically rooted press-related factors concerning existing tensions between right-leaning papers and the CPP, the political perspectives and interests of the most vocal newspapers, and the NLM. Two further dynamics informed the coverage during this later period. The first was not entirely separate because it centred on the press. Yet it concerned fresh action taken by the Ghana government against individual correspondents and papers as well as its wider attacks on press freedom. The second, which surfaced a little later, concerned long-­ standing British domestic political feuds. These impinged upon the Ghanaian scene through the medium of the British press, a dynamic made possible by the presence of expatriate officials from Britain, including a prominent ex-MP, serving the independent state. British journalists homed in on the attacks on the press and press freedom immediately. Press freedom was one prism through which British newspapers understood decolonisation in Africa. It would come to preoccupy journalists operating in the white settler colonies of Central and South Africa, too, from the end of the 1950s. Major-General Spears of Ashanti Goldfields well understood the scale of what he termed journalists’ ‘muddle-headed sentimentality on the subject of the freedom of the 97  Alhaji Osman Lardan was also referred to in the press as Alhaji Lardan Lalemie, and a few other variations on this. 98  Bankole Timothy, Kwame Nkrumah from Cradle to Grave (Dorchester, 1981), pp. 153–6.

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press’, and learned to tap the feeling’s potential, retaining the Ashanti Times into the 1960s in part to give himself and his company ‘a degree of leverage over international opinion which he could achieve in no other way’.99 While ‘journalists as a group were, in the General’s opinion, almost criminally indifferent to the trials and tribulations of private capital’, ‘Had Nkrumah taken any action against the paper, he would have incurred the wrath of the world’s press corps’.100 Newspapers’ concerns for press freedom were in fact more context-­ dependent than Spears possibly realised. This is suggested by the fact that colonial restrictions on press freedom in places such as Kenya during the Mau Mau War did not attract the same degree of criticism.101 In the case of Ghana, in addition to Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, the nature of papers’ commentaries on government restrictions and the responses from Africa which they elicited indicated that discussions on press freedom were also fields on which longer-standing tensions played out. The Express’s John Redfern, present in Accra when news of the proposed deportations broke, was one of the first to report, with a highly disapproving article titled ‘An Empire Premier kicks out his critics’.102 ‘People are asking: Is this the beginning of a general “purge” of those who incur the displeasure of Nkrumah or his Convention People’s Party?’, Redfern asked Express readers. In accounting for the nature of the article, and in addition to the history of the Express’s tortured relations with the CPP, pre-existing interpersonal dynamics also appear relevant. Redfern, a ‘canny Derbyshire man’,103 known to his colleagues as ‘The Bishop’ for his strong Christian faith, was not well-disposed to Nkrumah.104 The two men went back a long way. According to Munnion, Redfern had met and interviewed the CPP leader in 1948 and had found him ‘a complicated character…extremely charming one minute and coldly ruthless the next’.105 Timothy had also previously worked for Redfern’s paper, the (London Daily) Express.106

 Chick, ‘Ashanti Times’, p. 92. The words quoted are Chick’s.  Ibid. The words quoted are Chick’s. 101  See Chap. 3. 102  Express, 1 August 1957, p. 2. 103  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 54. 104  Ibid., p. 81. 105  Ibid. 106  UK High Commissioner to Ghana to CRO, 31 July 1957, fol. 10, DO 35/10424. 99

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On 1 August, referring to Timothy’s imminent deportation, the acting chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union, Lord Burnham, sent a cable to Nkrumah ‘drawing attention to the grave concern that would be felt throughout the Commonwealth if any country appeared, for whatever reason, to endanger the freedom of the press in this way’, and asking him to ‘reconsider the whole matter’.107 This did not look likely. The government of Ghana stood its ground, in a manner which recalled its earlier confrontational dealings with the right-­ leaning press. Lingering tensions infused the interactions. The following day, Redfern recounted part of an interview he had conducted with Krobo Edusei, Ghana’s Minister of Communications,108 who was to become a notorious figure in British newspapers in the months to come. Edusei was a straight-talker, who appeared rough, headstrong and volatile to British journalists. He was also a prominent Ashanti politician, who had helped to grow the CPP’s support base in Asante. The press soon dubbed him ‘Crowbar’.109 ‘There are more deportations coming’, Edusei had told Redfern, adding that ‘you British have deported plenty of people in your time’.110 The same day, the Telegraph and the Guardian reported that Kofi Baako, now Ghana’s Minister of Information and Broadcasting, had held a defiant press conference during which he had told journalists that while ‘the liberty of the press was maintained’, the government would, ‘in turn, expect the press to respect its authority’.111 The day following the departure of Timothy for Freetown, Sierra Leone,112 the Telegraph printed a stinging editorial titled ‘High Hand in Ghana’.113 ‘Deportation of editors has never been a convincing sign of democratic rule’, the piece began: ‘Dr Nkrumah will only have himself to blame if people in this country begin to ask: “Is the Prime Minister of Ghana a dictator after all?”’. The paper’s reference to Nkrumah’s fulfilling certain expectations regarding ‘dictatorship’ pointed to the continued significance of pre-existing interpretive frames to the production of the

 The quotes are from Telegraph, 2 August 1957, p. 7.  Express, 2 August 1957, p. 5. 109  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 78. 110  Express, 2 August 1957, p. 5. 111  The quote is from Guardian, 2 August 1957, p.  7. Also see: Telegraph, 2 August 1957, p. 7. 112  He left on the 2nd to take up a place on the Mirror. 113  Telegraph, 3 August 1957, p. 6. 107 108

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coverage, and thus also to the influence of the NLM’s long-standing propaganda campaign. Left-leaning papers also began to step into the melee. The News Chronicle printed an editorial on Timothy in which the paper claimed that ‘The whole affair smacks of the sort of abuses rife in South Africa’.114 The Observer worried that Nkrumah’s failure to rescind his decision ‘would not only harm the standing of his own Government, but would injure the wider cause of colonial freedom he represents’.115 Here, too, press-related and extraneous factors informed the coverage. Timothy was an occasional reporter for the News Chronicle and had contributed articles to the Observer. If nothing else, these links allowed for a more prolific and emotive commentary on events. The two Alhajis received no such treatment. True to form, the Mirror was silent on the issue. Commenting on Timothy’s proposed deportation, on 31 July the UK High Commissioner to Ghana told the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO)  that ‘Daily Graphic management are naturally much concerned over possibility that this might be first step in a campaign by Government to close them down’.116 In reply, the CRO commented that the Mirror, ‘who have been in contact with us…seem to think that sacrifice of Timothy may be necessary to enable “Daily Graphic” to continue publication’, and were, as a result, ‘deliberately treating the whole matter quietly’.117 Attacks by and on the British press soon began to move beyond the issue of Timothy. On the 5th, the Express reported that the Ghana Evening News had criticised it for ‘(distorting) the news’ of the deportation order by claiming that the three men were being asked to leave because they were ‘critics’.118 This attack (by the Ghana Evening News) displayed continuity with earlier attacks on the Express, just as the Express’s attack on Nkrumah’s treatment of Timothy displayed continuity with its earlier narratives, and should be interpreted in the light of these pre-existing tensions. Relations remained hostile. Three members of the Ghana Cabinet whom Redfern had subsequently tried to approach had reportedly refused to answer any questions.119  News Chronicle, 6 August 1957, p. 4.  Observer, 4 August 1957, p. 6. 116  UK High Commissioner to Ghana to CRO, 31 July 1957, fol. 9, DO 35/10424. 117  CRO to UK High Commissioner to Ghana, 2 August 1957, fol. 11, DO 35/10424. 118  Express, 5 August 1957, p. 2. 119  Ibid. 114 115

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2.7   British Politics in Ghana: Colvin versus Bing The following week, the British coverage centred on Kumasi, where Baba and Lardan were appealing against their proposed deportations. Geoffrey Bing, QC, a British man who acted as constitutional adviser to Nkrumah, led for the Ghana government. Mr Justice Smith, also a British man, presided over the court as judge. Ian Colvin, special correspondent for the Telegraph, reported that outside the courtroom demonstrations by ‘Moslems and National Liberation Opposition supporters’ were ‘thousands’—strong and verging on violence.120 Opposition groups appeared to be taking advantage of the court hearing and the press presence, which it invited, to air their continued concerns about the position of regions and minorities in an independent Ghana. On the 10th, the Asantehene received Colvin in his palace ‘to repeat and affirm that the Ashanti people have no intention of surrendering to totalitarian rule’.121 Once again, pre-existing interpretive frames informed the coverage. In an accompanying editorial, the Telegraph accused Nkrumah of failing to allay the fears expressed by Busia and by the chiefs of Ashanti and of the Northern Territories ‘that his rule would be dictatorial’.122 When the court announced its ruling the following week, Colvin decided to make a pointed reference in his articles to the role played by the British throughout the proceedings. The decision would have important ramifications. According to Munnion, Colvin’s criticisms did not reflect the train of events on the ground as much as the journalist’s personal antipathy towards Bing. Colvin had met Bing on the plane flying out to Accra just days before, and had taken ‘an instant dislike’ to the QC, whom he regarded as ‘an assiduous, perspiring and ingratiating figure’.123 Colvin was no wallflower. Winston Churchill reportedly told him that he had been the man who had started the Second World War.124 The journalist’s network of contacts in pre-war Germany had provided him with information that Hitler was about to attack Poland, and Colvin dutifully informed Neville Chamberlain.125

 Telegraph, 9 August 1957, p. 14.  Telegraph, 12 August 1957, p. 11. 122  Telegraph, 12 August 1957, p. 6. 123  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 84. 124  Ibid., p. 82. 125  Ibid., pp. 82–83. 120 121

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The judge discharged the injunction on the understanding that the parties would not be deported pending an investigation into their claims for citizenship. The two men were transported to a jail in Accra. In his article, Colvin foregrounded the concerns voiced by NLM supporters gathered outside the courtroom, which cleverly played on British sensitivities. ‘British judgement bad’, a ‘toga-clad Moslem’ had reportedly told the journalist, ‘tapping his face to signify a blind eye in Mr Justice Smith. “Give us back our Gold Coast. Down with Ghana,” shouted another. It was British legal officers who had defeated the injunction, and a British police officer who drove the two Moslems out of Ashanti. To their followers it appears that the British are furthering sinister designs on the part of the government Convention People’s party’.126 Express coverage followed a similar pattern, homing in on Bing, former ‘Socialist’ MP for Hornchurch:127 ‘Bewildered Ashanti citizens, watching a British lawyer do Nkrumah’s work, hold Britain to blame. They shout reproaches like: “British justice is untrue!” Mr. Bing has said that he hopes eventually to return to the House of Commons. The British people should never receive him back in British public life’.128 Through the medium of British papers, British domestic political tensions and even personal vendettas impinged upon the Ghanaian political scene, adversely affecting coverage of the country. According to right-leaning papers, Bing was disliked in Conservative circles for his ‘legal ingenuity’, which had, they claimed, added to the burdens of past Conservative governments.129 Bing was a member of the radical Left and had been involved in the Spanish Civil War. The papers’ emphasis on the role of the British in supporting the CPP linked to the current court case, but it also alluded to historical matters, which gave them salience. Right-leaning papers disapproved that the British government had worked alongside Nkrumah, a nationalist and a socialist, for several years, and had cast off their original allies, the chiefs. The relationship had certainly been close. Arden-Clarke had worked with Nkrumah and the CPP throughout the 1950s. Nevertheless, successful appeals to Britain from opposition groupings had also been defining of the later years. A third election had been held in 1956 in response to NLM  Telegraph, 13 August 1957, p. 7.  Express, 14 August 1957, p. 4. 128  Ibid. 129  Quote is from Express, 14 August 1957, p. 4. 126 127

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concerns, and an agreement on regional assemblies was reached just prior to independence. Relatedly, while Nkrumah received British support throughout the 1950s, he was not a British appointee. In other words, the situation was more complex than the press narrative suggested. Rather, the roles the papers played appear to link to the pursuance of British political matters. Right-leaning British coverage of the court case functioned as a vehicle through which British political tensions were transported to Ghana. The coverage cannot be understood simply as a reflection of local Ghanaian realities. The divergence went beyond political spin. Specific British political battles impinged on Ghana directly through the medium of the British press. In this example, the presence of expatriate officials was relevant. Decolonisation heralded a new political context in which the British government had formally departed. Into this new situation travelled advisers or expatriates with skills that the new states required. Some of these advisers, like Bing, an ex-MP, had had a political career in Britain before moving to Africa, and had thus been tied up in political battles, some ongoing. The Ghana example indicates that newspapers which had different political leanings to the expatriates were able, if the situation so demanded, to carry on the task in independent Africa of holding their political nemeses to account. Their attacks on the expatriates, which linked to British domestic political considerations, played a part in tainting the image of the new African states. The press felt freer perhaps to critique these men and the governments to which they were allied than officials connected to British colonial government operations. Again, the sheer scope of the British public sphere must be appreciated in efforts to determine the significance of British low politics and public opinion to decolonisation. It was neither geographically nor temporally confined to Britain. British politicians, current and former, travelled to Africa and involved themselves in local politics. Journalists followed them. The Ghana government sprang into action immediately in response to the press criticisms, illustrating the continued unease with which it regarded the newspaper articles. On the 18th, Bing suggested in court that the case concerning the two Muslims be adjourned ‘until the Daily Express and some other newspapers had made “necessary corrections”’.130 According to Redfern, Bing had said that ‘the Express article singled out for attack people concerned in the case, including himself’ and ‘(as) the  Express, 19 August 1957, p. 2.

130

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judge, senior Crown counsel and he were English, such reports might bring hardship to their careers’.131 The following day, Redfern was brought in for questioning by David Graeme Carruthers, Assistant Commissioner of Police ‘and C.I.D. boss’, who probed him on the authorship of the editorial.132 Colvin also received a warning. On the 18th, the journalist learned that Bing was contemplating proceedings against him for alleged contempt of court.133 Two days later, at the same time the bail applications were denied, the Supreme Court granted an application for leave to issue writs of attachment against the editor of the Ashanti Pioneer, a pro-opposition daily paper published in Kumasi, against the directors of the Pioneer’s publishers and against Colvin.134 Two articles in the Pioneer were alleged to have constituted contempt of court, one of which had reproduced the Express editorial on Bing,135 in a manner which recalled long-standing Opposition/ British right-leaning press relations. Colvin found himself the subject of legal action because the proprietors of the Telegraph were outside the jurisdiction of the court.136 The motivations which lay behind the contempt of court proceedings appear to have been multiple. Right-leaning papers tended to underscore the role played by Bing in bringing proceedings, they believed, for ‘personal’ reasons. The Telegraph advanced this argument in court. Some truth certainly seemed to lie behind this claim, indicating that the British protagonists in the story played a significant role in fuelling the negative publicity given to Ghana. Even Bing, though strenuously denying it at the time, later admitted that he ‘probably gave too much weight to the feelings of the British members of the Judiciary and among the civil servants and police who looked to the Government to defend them against attacks which might prejudice their future employment once they had left Ghanaian service’.137 Bing (later) explained that press criticism of British officials active in Ghana, in articles ‘syndicated…throughout the Commonwealth’, did ‘damage’ to ‘the conception of a Commonwealth  Ibid.  Express, 20 August 1957, fp. 133  Telegraph, 19 August 1957, fp. 134  Telegraph, 21 August 1957, back page (hereafter bp). 135  Express, 10 September 1957, p. 2. 136  Telegraph, 21 August 1957, bp. 137  Geoffrey Bing, Reap the Whirlwind: An Account of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana from 1950 to 1966 (London, 1968), p. 223. 131 132

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Civil Service’.138 If civil servants were ‘not only to be saddled with the whole responsibility of the policy of the state they served’, he wrote in his memoir, ‘but also, if that state’s policy did not suite (sic) some British newspaper, have the secrets of their families, down to the marital vagaries of their great-grandfathers, published for all to read, then of course such recruitment would be largely inhibited if not entirely prevented’.139 A further factor which lay behind the bringing of the proceedings concerned the increase in political tensions in the country to which the British press reports had contributed. On 19 August, in his telegram which mentioned Justice Smith’s anger, the UK High Commissioner to Ghana also informed the CRO that the Ghana government’s decision to take proceedings against Colvin ‘is, I understand, influenced by their strong resentment at critical comment in United Kingdom press on deportations. Some of it has been reproduced in opposition newspapers here and this is apparently regarded by the Government as liable to prejudice pending Court proceedings on citizenship’ for the two Muslims.140 Again, deeply rooted CPP/British press antagonism was important and feeding into this. ‘Ministers’ attitude towards such comment’, the High Commissioner added, ‘is coloured by their view that certain sections of the United Kingdom press, after having tried to influence public opinion against the transfer of power, are misrepresenting events in Ghana to suggest that Ghana has proved unfit for self-government’.141 In December 1957, in a memorandum in which he reflected on these months, Oliver Woods told his editor (at the Times) that ‘Ghanaians believe’ that Colvin and another Telegraph correspondent were ‘sent out with deliberate instructions to run Ghana down in order to prove that the Daily Telegraph had been right all along in opposing self-government’.142 Woods was unsure of the Telegraph’s motivations, but was certain that Colvin and his colleague had written ‘a lot of hysterical nonsense between them’.143 In British papers, the case against Colvin and the Pioneer subsequently eclipsed the case of the two Muslims. Yet not before the Ghana  Ibid., p. 236.  Ibid. Some of the coverage ‘bit’ on a personal level. 140  UK High Commissioner to Ghana to CRO, 19 August 1957, fol. 21, DO 35/10424. 141  Ibid. 142  Memorandum from Oliver Woods to the editor, 4 December 1957, MEM/Ghana file, TNL Archive. 143  Ibid. 138 139

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government rushed through a special deportation bill to ‘deal with’ the two men. The bill faced strong opposition from the NLM, but it soon passed, and on the 23rd, the two men were deported to Nigeria. In the week which followed, British press criticisms of Ghana further intensified in editorials primarily but not exclusively on the Right, with titles such as ‘Time to retreat’,144 ‘Wrong route’,145 ‘Fear takes over’146 and ‘Joyful Ghana turns sullen and uneasy—Premier Nkrumah’s appeal slips as the taste of independence goes sour’.147 Numerous reports of opposition criticism of Nkrumah’s government reinforced this bleak narrative. Headlines in the right-leaning press included ‘“A black day for democracy” says Ghana M.P.’,148 ‘“Dictator Nkrumah” charge by rival party’,149 ‘Nkrumah told: It’s a police State’150 and ‘“Trend” to dictatorship—Ghana charge by Dr. Busia’.151 ‘If in fact totalitarianism is creeping up on Ghana’, the Guardian’s James Morris observed, ‘at least it will not come unheralded. The most readily bandied word here to-day is undoubtedly “dictatorship” and all the pessimists of the Opposition are doing their best to make our flesh creep… The Opposition, though pitiably impotent in the Assembly, is certainly exploiting the situation with skill’.152 The Guardian and the Observer stood out among British papers as offering their readers articles which interrogated the motivations of the Opposition and which put the Ghana government’s case. One further exception was the News Chronicle, which, at the end of August, also raised a point in Nkrumah’s defence. The Chronicle drew attention to the hypocrisy of some papers in condemning acts of which Britain, too, it claimed, had been guilty not long ago in its own colonies, such as deportation without trial.153 Colonial precedent would later form the core of Bing’s exposition of the events of the summer of 1957—particularly the deportations.154  Guardian, 23 August 1957, p. 6.  News Chronicle, 24 August 1957, p. 4. 146  Express, 27 August 1957, p. 4. 147  Mail, 27 August 1957, p. 7. 148  Express, 23 August 1957, p. 2. 149  Mail, 28 August 1957, p. 7. 150  Mail, 30 August 1957, p. 2. 151  Telegraph, 31 August 1957, p. 10. 152  Guardian, 31 August 1957, fp. 153  News Chronicle, 26 August 1957, p. 4. 154  Bing, Reap the Whirlwind. Especially pp. 216–38. 144 145

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‘British Colonial history is a long record of such deportations’, Bing would explain: ‘Occasionally they received publicity, as for example when Archbishop Makarios was sent to the Seychelles Islands, but never, so far as I can recall, condemnation from the Daily Express. The truth is that, in the eyes not only of the Daily Express but of other British newspapers as well, Ghana had committed the unpardonable crime of behaving, when independent, as independent and had acted in her own territory in exactly the same way as the British Colonial authorities would have done if they had remained in charge’.155 Archbishop Makarios was a leader in the struggle for union with Greece during the post-war period in Cyprus, when Britain occupied the island, and in 1959 became its president. In 1956, the British exiled Makarios to the Western Indian Ocean, as a part of their efforts to control the political evolution of the Mediterranean island. Bing thought that one of the reasons why such a negative commentary on Ghana emerged at this time was that British journalists, amongst others, ‘had no idea of how Colonial Government had been’ and were thus unable to understand that the actions they condemned as tyrannical were ‘in fact… the following by an independent government of past Colonial precedent’.156 Bing’s decision to pursue this line of argument was probably motivated by a desire to distance himself from the deportations and the contempt of court proceedings. Yet truth lay behind his assertions regarding both the character of colonial rule and the relative absence of a scrutinising British press presence to date. Historians were later to explain the former dynamic to which Bing referred, not in terms of ‘colonial precedent’ as such, but rather ‘colonial legacy’. The concept of the colonial legacy draws attention to the ways in which post-colonial states were influenced by the practices, structures and strictures of the colonial era. Frederick Cooper describes post-colonial states as ‘gatekeeper states’, a characterisation which illustrates the difficulty well.157 Colonial states, their predecessors, he explains, were very adept at managing the interface—the ‘gate’—between colonies and the outside world, especially regarding economic matters. They were far less successful at cultivating meaningful ties inwardly to the vast, diverse and often resistant populations which the states governed. In a similar way, the governments of post-colonial states, in inheriting several of the political,  Ibid., p. 237.  Ibid., p. 226. Emphasis added. 157  Cooper, Africa since 1940. 155 156

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economic and, to an extent, social strictures of the colonial era, found it a lot easier and indeed similarly lucrative to manage the country’s economic interface with the rest of the world than to cultivate bonds with their subjects. Additionally, profits, siphoned off at the interface, might be used to secure fealty from important men. Others might be ruled more forcibly through practices such as deportation, imprisonment and indeed violence. All of these practices had been features of the colonial era that were institutionalised and even, in many cases, legalised for reasons which centred not on criminal behaviour but on control.158 Dennis Austin’s seminal analysis of politics in Ghana is not uncritical of Nkrumah and the CPP, which makes it all the more noteworthy that Austin’s work conveys a clear sense that both the person and the party believed in the righteousness of their mission. Nkrumah thought that dissent and deviation from the CPP line would endanger the attainment of a more just and equable society for the majority. The strength and the character of this belief, taken alongside the concept of the colonial legacy, suggests that a reason for both the deportations and the bringing of court proceedings against the papers and the journalists who had criticised these linked to Nkrumah’s desire to achieve his vision for Ghana through the means available to him. He aimed to do this, moreover, in the context of a specific set of pressures, which related to a country made up of several competing political units, a development agenda and foreign interest and interference. The most vocal British newspapers did not discuss these matters. The actions of the government of Ghana were instead depicted as manifestations simply of dictatorship. The absence of a range of interpretative frames, built in later years by journalists and scholars like Davidson and Cooper, freed up space for other, more personal or familiar, self-affirming matters and frames which did little to enhance Anglo-African relations.

2.8   The Shawcross Debacle, the British Government and the Commonwealth On 9 September, the contempt of court case opened in the Supreme Court in Accra. Once again, British politics hung over the scene, affecting the volume and the nature of British newspaper coverage of the trial. In 158   David M.  Anderson and David Killingray (eds.), Policing and Decolonisation: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1917–65 (Manchester, 1992).

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the right-leaning press, news reports focused again on Bing, now attorney-­ general, who led for the Ghana government. Right-leaning papers were predisposed to opposing the actions the Ghanaian authorities had taken against Colvin by virtue of their shared plight. Yet the fact that Bing headed the defence further fuelled their fury. On the 13th, Henry Fairlie wrote a scathing piece for the Mail on Bing, ‘Nkrumah’s right-hand man, the influence behind the latest Ghana moves’.159 Fairlie accused Bing of being a communist, shrewd and overly legalistic.160 Christopher Shawcross, QC, heading the defence, also formed the subject of press attention, but of the opposite kind. British papers depicted the QC as the embodiment of British justice. Journalists on both Left and Right saluted Shawcross for taking Bing to task on what Shawcross alleged were unjustifiable motivations for bringing Colvin and the Pioneer to trial.161 The QC’s evocative accusation that Bing had perpetrated ‘a monstrous outrage upon the tender and infant freedom of Ghana’ by abusing his position of authority for personal reasons was widely quoted.162 The press also gave prominence to Shawcross’s contention that the matter was beyond the jurisdiction of the court, given that it was not usual for a contempt charge to be heard in a court other than that against which the contempt charge was alleged to have been made.163 This was the eventual reason why, on the 12th, the judge ruled that the proceedings against Colvin and the Pioneer had been brought to the wrong court. On the 13th, Colvin, en route to Nigeria, was stopped at the airport in Accra and forbidden to leave Ghana while the government decided how to proceed.164 He was eventually permitted to leave on the understanding that he would return for a further hearing. Meanwhile, Shawcross, who  Mail, 13 September 1957, p. 6.  Ibid. 161  Guardian, 10 September 1957, p.  14; Telegraph, 10 September 1957, p.  14; News Chronicle, 10 September 1957, p. 2; Mail, 10 September 1957, p. 2; Telegraph, 11 September 1957, p. 14; Guardian, 11 September 1957, p. 7; Express, 11 September 1957, fp; Express, 12 September 1957, p. 2; Guardian, 12 September 1957, p. 7. 162  Express, 12 September 1957, p. 2; News Chronicle, 12 September 1957, p. 2; Guardian, 12 September 1957, p. 7; Telegraph, 12 September 1957, p. 14. 163  Telegraph, 10 September 1957, p. 14; Express, 13 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 13 September 1957, p. 2; Telegraph, 13 September 1957, p. 16; Guardian, 13 September 1957, p. 9. 164  Express, 14 September 1957, p. 2; Mail, 14 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 14 September 1957, fp; Herald, 14 September 1957, p. 2; Telegraph, 14 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 14 September 1957, fp. 159 160

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had flown to Nigeria successfully on the 13th, was forbidden to re-enter the country. Across all its sections, British press coverage, though consistently high during these weeks, peaked again at this news.165 Some journalists believed Bing had been the brains behind the move. Bing formed the subject of a large feature article, this time in the Express, which described the ex-MP as ‘amazing’, ‘enigmatic’, ‘tall’, ‘plump’ and ‘communist’, with ‘slant-eyed, almost Mandarin features’.166 To make matters worse, the Telegraph told its readers that Colvin and the paper had filed writs ‘claiming injunctions and seeking damages’ against Nkrumah, Adjei (Minister of Justice), Bing (Attorney-General) and Collens (Commissioner of Police).167 All British papers gave prominence to the news of the banning of Shawcross as well as to reports that the British government had contacted the Ghana government with an expression of ‘concern’ at the turn of events.168 The British government was in fact very reluctant at this time to issue any declarations which the Ghana government might construe as critical.169 British ministers were acutely aware of the importance of avoiding giving the impression that Britain did not regard the country as truly independent.170 The fact that ministers did express concern is part testament to the weight of the public and political pressure the government found itself subject to at home. Yet appeasing British newspapers was never uppermost in its mind. Its chief concern remained safeguarding Commonwealth ties. Some British officials believed that in criticising Ghana so severely, British newspapers were furthering the cause of those groups within Ghana ‘who say that the Commonwealth is nothing but a mud-slinging organisation and that Ghana would be well-advised to leave it’.171 165  Telegraph, 16 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 16 September 1957, fp; Mail, 16 September 1957, fp; Express, 16 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 16 September 1957, fp; Mirror, 16 September 1957, p.  4; Express, 17 September 1957, p.  6; News Chronicle, 17 September 1957, p. 4; Herald, 17 September 1957, fp. 166  Express, 18 September 1957, p. 6. 167  Telegraph, 16 September 1957, fp. 168  Mail, 17 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 17 September 1957, fp; Mirror, 17 September 1957, p. 8; Mirror, 18 September 1957, p. 13; Mirror, 20 September 1957, p. 6; Telegraph, 17 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 17 September 1957, fp. 169  DO 35/6188; DO 35/6189; Memorandum from J.D.  Bishop to the editor, 19 September 1957, MEM/Ghana file, TNL Archive. 170  DO 35/6188; DO 35/6189. 171   A.W.  Snelling to Lintott, Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 17 October 1960, fol. 7, DO 195/29.

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Across Africa, during decolonisation, British newspapers would frustrate the British government’s efforts to impose its narrative on the politics of the imperial endgame. This was particularly significant for the government when it came to the preservation of strong bilateral relations, including within the Commonwealth, following the transfers of power. British newspaper content, and/or news of it, travelled to Africa, and, to the extent that it (or sections of it) conflicted or was perceived to conflict with the official British narrative, it contributed to undermining Anglo-­ African relations. In some contrast to the British government, it seems, British newspapers desired the Commonwealth to be a club of a particular kind, and helped through their coverage to define it. On the 18th, Shawcross attempted to re-enter Ghana in defiance of the ban. Again, his efforts attracted a lot of publicity.172 Some British officials suspected that Shawcross was courting the media to further his own ends and those of his clients.173 The UK High Commissioner to Ghana commented that Shawcross ‘has turned the case into a political affair’.174 The High Commissioner thought that the QC ‘appears not to have known when to stop’, and that ‘by allowing the conduct of Colvin’s case to appear to be degenerating into a personal vendetta against the Ghana Government he has given colour to the belief of the latter that they had here an example of a settled policy on the part of the Daily Telegraph to denigrate a newly independent Commonwealth country’.175 Shawcross’s attempt to re-enter Ghana appeared to be part and parcel of this campaign of insubordination, the High Commissioner thought, and courting the press, a tactical ploy on Shawcross’s part. British journalists certainly had advance notice of Shawcross’s plans. They were present at Accra Airport in large numbers when he arrived. He remained approximately thirty minutes in Ghana before being sent back to Nigeria.

172  Guardian, 18 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 18 September 1957, fp; Mail, 18 September 1957, fp; Telegraph, 18 September 1957, fp; Express, 18 September 1957, fp; Herald, 18 September 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 19 September 1957, fp; Express, 19 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 19 September 1957, fp; Telegraph, 19 September 1957, fp; Mail, 19 September 1957, fp; Mirror, 19 September 1957, p.  4; Herald, 19 September 1957, fp. 173  High Commissioner to Ghana to CRO, sent 17 September 1957 (received 18th), fol. 84, DO 35/6188. 174  High Commissioner to Ghana to CRO, 16 September 1957, fol. 78, DO 35/6188. 175  Ibid.

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Many British journalists were livid. The Express interpreted the move both as a vindication of colonialism and as an opportunity for Bing to bow out of public service once and for all.176 The Mail agreed: British guidance was needed now more than ever before.177 ‘At this stage it is imperative that Britain’s influence be sustained at the highest level’, it argued: ‘Dr. Nkrumah is obviously in even greater need today of authoritative and friendly counsel than he was before independence’. The Mirror, hitherto rather restrained in its coverage, voiced its concern directly for the first time. In an editorial on the 19th, titled ‘Ghana: The anxious weeks’, the paper expressed its ‘regret that the going is not smoother for this vigorous new nation’ and its ‘anxiety to see Ghana flourish as a democratic Commonwealth country’ lest its actions ‘turn back the clock in Africa for 50 grim years’.178 Accompanying the editorial was a cartoon depicting a small child labelled ‘Ghana’ toddling from light into darkness behind the figure of Nkrumah holding a book titled Freedom and justice, his head bowed.179 ‘Freedom and justice’ was part of the coat of arms of Ghana, introduced in March 1957. Only the Herald tried to imagine the Ghana government’s case. On the day the aforementioned editorials appeared, an article by Basil Davidson cautioned Herald readers against ‘(getting) Ghana wrong’.180 In it, Davidson explained that Nkrumah’s ‘strong line on certain key issues— such as the authority of the central government over Ghana’s different regions’ was part of his efforts to ‘weld’ ‘various peoples…into a single nation’. He also attributed Nkrumah’s recent moves, firstly, to lack of experience and self-confidence, which had affected his ability to run strong government and democracy ‘in the same harness’, and, secondly, to error and to the government’s tendency to persist in error due to the fact that any admission of guilt would damage its new-found authority. Davidson was keen to quash popular misconceptions rife in Britain, it seems, by taking the time to explain to his readers that Ghana was not new to democracy, but that ‘the peoples of Ghana have had a tribal system, from time immemorial, that was highly democratic in structure’. ‘They’re going through a difficult patch’, he concluded: ‘but they will come out of it all right’.  Express, 19 September 1957, p. 8.  Mail, 19 September 1957, fp. 178  Mirror, 19 September 1957, p. 2. 179  Mirror, 19 September 1957, p. 3. 180  Herald, 19 September 1957, p. 4. 176 177

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Again, these arguments tended to be clouded out across the press by a predominance of reports on Ghana’s slide to dictatorship, on the continued need for British guidance and intervention and, in some cases, on what was believed to be Ghana’s complete ‘failure’ just six months after independence. On the same day as Davidson’s article appeared, in a summary of recent UK press comment, the CRO communicated to the UK High Commission in Accra that ‘no comment favourable to the Nkrumah Government has come our way’.181 The negative coverage was undoubtedly causing concern in Ghana, where the Ghana Evening News again took the British ‘capitalist imperialist press’ to task for its reporting of the country since independence in an editorial titled ‘British press goes mad’, a piece which was subsequently reprinted, apparently at ‘popular request’.182 Colvin returned to London from Lagos, Nigeria, on the 19th. The Telegraph had concluded that the ban on the re-entry to Ghana of his legal representative freed the journalist from any legal or moral obligation to return to the country.183 Shawcross eventually followed suit. Following their departure from West Africa, British press treatment of events in Ghana focused on the Ghana government’s efforts to explain their actions as well as on additional political moves it took, which many British journalists regarded as further proof of mounting authoritarianism. These two trends often appeared indistinguishable to journalists because the manner in which the government justified its past and present behaviour continued to be taken as evidence of tyranny. Unfortunately, Nkrumah was not present in Accra at this time, but in Half Assini, a village near his birthplace, resting.184 The new prime minister found the scale of ‘world interest in the affairs of Ghana’ oppressive, his experience of which he likened to ‘living under a spotlight’.185 In his absence, Edusei, now Minister of the Interior, was one of the men tasked with dealing with the foreign press, and as the Guardian’s James Morris observed on 6 September, ‘almost nothing can do more harm to Ghana’s promising reputation than a press conference by Edusei’. ‘His manner is at once rough and facetious’, Morris thought, ‘his syntax confusing, his remarks almost sometimes unbelievable  CRO to Accra, 19 September 1957, fol. 104, DO 35/6188.  Ghana Evening News, 19 September 1957, p.  2. The article was reprinted on 30 September 1957. 183  Telegraph, 20 September 1957, fp. 184  Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom (London, 1973), p. 113. 185  Ibid. 181 182

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in their naivety or brashness’. They provided ready copy for correspondents in search of sensation. On the 20th, the Mail explained that Edusei had told a cocktail party in Accra that special courts were to be set up to try political offenders.186 ‘If I want to get rid of anybody, I’ll do it and nobody’s going to stop me’, the News Chronicle’s Frank Barber reported Edusei as having told the gathering.187 Nkrumah restored some calm upon his return from the coast with a speech on the 24th in which he explained the government’s recent moves with reference to Ghana’s ‘tribal, feudal, and other’ difficulties, and in which he announced that the charges against Colvin were to be dropped. Robert Jackson, a UN administrator working on the Volta project,188 had, according to an internal memorandum circulated at the Times, been the main influence behind this move, flying up to see the prime minster at his retreat and persuading him that ‘things were in danger of going over the edge with the outside world’, thereby jeopardising the confidence of foreign investors.189 Following Nkrumah’s speech, the CRO sent a private message to the Ghanaian prime minister, congratulating him on his ‘statesmanship’ and ‘(assuring) (him) of our anxiety here at all times scrupulously to avoid any interference in your domestic affairs’.190 The Telegraph subsequently withdrew the writs it had filed against Nkrumah and his ministers. Some journalists hailed Nkrumah’s moves as a welcome return to sanity, but most reserved judgement as to whether this signified a meaningful turn-around.191 Both Shawcross and Colvin were subsequently declared prohibited immigrants, a decision which unleashed a further wave of criticism.192 Another Telegraph correspondent, George Evans, was banned ‘by

 Mail, 20 September 1957, p. 9.  News Chronicle, 20 September 1957, fp. Also see: Herald, 21 September 1957, fp. 188  This was a scheme to generate hydroelectricity through the construction of a dam on the Volta River. It was the largest project associated with Nkrumah’s development plans. For a description of the scheme and the difficulties it entailed, see: Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah, pp. 63–69. 189  Internal memorandum, 2 October 1957, MEM/Ghana file, TNL Archive. 190  Personal message from the CRO to Nkrumah, n.d., fol. 135, DO 35/6188. 191  Mirror, 25 September 1957, p.  3; Herald, 25 September 1957, p.  2; Telegraph, 25 September 1957, fp; Telegraph, 25 September 1957, p. 8; Telegraph, 25 September 1957, p. 18; Guardian, 25 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 25 September 1957, p. 6. 192  Express, 26 September 1957, p.  9; Telegraph, 26 September 1957, fp; Telegraph, 26 September 1957, p. 10. 186 187

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mistake’ and then admitted to Ghana on the 27th.193 And through it all, Edusei’s comments continued to attract a lot of page space. On the 28th, coverage peaked once again with claims drawn from an article printed in the Pioneer that the minister had told a party rally outside Accra that he ‘(loved) power’ and that he was ‘going to use it sternly and strongly, no matter what people may say about me’.194 Baako later denied that Edusei had made such a speech and attributed the genesis of these words to an overzealous, vengeful Opposition.195 Yet Edusei continued to attract negative publicity during these weeks for other unfortunate statements such as ‘I have no ambition to be a dictator’, ‘The Premier—Kwame Nkrumah—is not a dictator, so why should I be one?’196 Across the British press as a whole, Edusei was widely dubbed Nkrumah’s strong-arm man and was consistently criticised and mocked.197 Even the left-leaning News Chronicle referred to him as ‘Ghana’s little Caesar’, and the Herald as a ‘dictator’.198 Munnion recalls that Edusei had, by this time, taken to giving press interviews from ‘a massive gold-­ plated bed he had ordered from Harrods’,199 and this probably did not help. Members of the British government seemed certain that Edusei was the ‘key’ to the continuing bad press and that ‘we could start getting a better press for Ghana if, for any period of seven consecutive days, Edusei could remain silent and no other news bearing any appearance of dictatorialism were received from Accra’.200 The British government was fearful that the negative publicity would persist. In a personal minute written on 26 September, Macmillan asked the CRO to ‘do all you can to dissuade

193  Express, 27 September 1957, p. 2; Mail, 27 September 1957, fp; Mirror, 27 September 1957, p. 24; Telegraph, 27 September 1957, fp; Guardian, 27 September 1957, fp. 194  Mail, 28 September 1957, fp; Mirror, 28 September 1957, p.  3; Guardian, 28 September 1957, p. 10. 195  Telegraph, 28 September 1957, fp; Mail, 28 September 1957, p. 2. 196  News Chronicle, 1 October 1957, p. 2; Telegraph, 1 October 1957, p. 15; Guardian, 1 October 1957, p. 11. 197  News Chronicle, 6 September 1957, p.  2; Mail, 30 September 1957, p.  2; News Chronicle, 30 September 1957, p. 2; Express, 1 October 1957, p. 11; Mail, 1 October 1957, p. 2; Express, 4 October 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 4 October 1957, fp; News Chronicle, 8 October 1957, p. 6. 198  News Chronicle, 7 October 1957, p. 5; Herald, 21 September 1957, fp. 199  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 85. 200  Snelling to Maclennan, 1 October 1957, fol. 162, DO 35/6189.

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the British Press and others from attacking the Government of Ghana’.201 ‘They are, after all, very new at the job’, he added, condescendingly: ‘Two generations ago they were savages: now they are supposed to be trained in the niceties of constitutional Government. We really must give them a chance’. Yet while the government of Ghana did undoubtedly take steps against opposition groups at this time and against freedom of expression, the government’s actions are insufficient alone to account for the wealth of coverage on Ghana, for which historical press-related factors were also key determinants. If the British press therefore kept the British public continually aware of Nkrumah’s increasingly authoritarian actions, this was, it seems, as much by luck as good judgement. The relationship of the British press to the local, post-colonial tale it documented, moreover, was nothing short of conjoined. British journalists were involved in ‘making history’ as well as in reporting it.

2.9   Conclusion Right-leaning press coverage of Ghana during 1957 contributed to denting the efficacy of the post-colonial state. It performed this function almost immediately following independence and in continuity with its earlier patterns of practice. While the CPP certainly exploited the negative British coverage in efforts to consolidate the party’s governing authority, the articles prompted a knee-jerk negative reaction which should be regarded as significant. It points to the coverage’s overall destructive role in exacerbating political divisions within the country and in doing damage to Ghana’s image overseas, which mattered for reasons including concerning foreign investment. In accounting for the emergence of the negative narrative, the relationship between the British right-leaning press and the NLM must be foregrounded. Right-leaning newspapers provided a means by which the main opposition party challenged the new government. Additional press-related factors which help to explain the coverage’s damaging contents included the political leanings of the most vocal papers and journalists’ perspectives; established patterns of investigation and reporting, which the latter had informed and which pointed to particular sorts of sources and interpretations; the relative absence of a left-leaning 201  Personal minute by Macmillan sent to Alport, 26 September 1957, fol. 173, DO 35/6189.

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counter-­narrative for reasons which linked to the history of the British press in Britain and Africa; the interpretive frames that journalists used to give meaning to information, which proceeded off the back of perceived comparable historical experiences that were anything but; the tortured history of CPP/right-leaning press relations, which had generated mistrust and which linked to much of the above; and the translation to Ghana of British political tensions, made possible by the presence of expatriate officials, yet jolted into life by the politics of papers. These influences contributed to the emergence of a broadly negative narrative whose characteristics were indicative of functions that stretched beyond the holding of power to account. By providing a British narrative which competed with that of the British government, the right-leaning coverage contributed to undermining official British efforts to maintain strong, positive relations with Nkrumah and Commonwealth solidarity. This was a goal that was threatened, too, some thought, by the papers’ lambasting of Commonwealth civil servants who had had political careers in Britain, who had caught the eye of Britain’s very political papers and who now served the independent state, with which the politics of the papers conflicted. Lastly, across all sections of the press, the coverage included a set of rosy representations of Britain linked to its depictions of Africa, empire and decolonisation. These portrayals owed to several interconnected factors, which included the skilful exploitation by the NLM of British sensibilities; press practices and frames concerning ‘event types’, such as independence days; and, most of all, the comparative absence of ‘History’ in press accounts of the then-contemporary developments. Incomplete depictions of the past were highly commonplace and favoured Britain. Indeed, British press coverage of Africa during the ‘wind of change’ proved remarkable for the extent to which it succeeded both in distancing Britain from unsavoury developments and in presenting the country as the champion of savoury ones. Perhaps no better illustration of this came than in 1959, when two cases of colonial brutality at Hola in Kenya, and in Nyasaland, hit the headlines simultaneously.

CHAPTER 3

Colonial Violence in Kenya and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1959: Frameworks of Representation and Patterns of Practice of the Press

‘Perhaps the most important single date in the story of Britain’s withdrawal from Africa’ is how the historian Philip Murphy describes 3 March 1959.1 It was on that day that eleven Mau Mau detainees were beaten to death by their guards at a remote ‘rehabilitation’ camp called Hola in Kenya and a State of Emergency was declared in the British protectorate of Nyasaland. The year 1959 was the tail end of Kenya’s own Emergency, a state of rule deployed in colonial territories when governments perceived a significant threat to their authority.2 During emergencies, the people the state identified as a danger were often imprisoned or interned without trial, and restrictions were enforced such as regarding freedom of movement. Emergencies sometimes involved counter-insurgency operations in which  Philip Murphy, Alan Lennox-Boyd: A Biography (London, 1999), p. 203.  Some of the best accounts of the war include: the two-volume work by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (Oxford, 1992); Wunyabari O. Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt (Oxford, 1993); Elkins, Britain’s Gulag; David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London, 2005); Branch, Defeating Mau Mau. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_3

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the state fought groups that posed a risk to the status quo. These campaigns involved not only physical battles against so-called insurgents, but also efforts to influence the ‘hearts and minds’ of the ordinary people who sustained them in these asymmetric wars that were fought in the village and the fields by people who returned home at the end of each day. These psychological manoeuvres were presented at the time as efforts to rid innocents of a brainwash or a false cause. Later, they would be comprehended as evidence of the scale and the authenticity of the opposition which the European colonial empires faced by the middle of the twentieth century. The colonial state in Kenya encountered a lot of opposition because attaining the privilege of a few had cost the majority their freedom. The discrepancies in privilege between Europeans and their allies, and others, evident in all regions of colonial Africa, were particularly stark in the white settler colonies. The settlers in Kenya could be traced to the turn of the twentieth century. Primarily, they farmed. They occupied the richest and the lushest of the lands. On the white farms worked African men and women, tending to the fields and homesteads, while some settlers lived a life of luxury. Kenya’s white settlers gained a reputation for their decadence in contrast to the white settler community of Southern Rhodesia, a colony further South in Central Africa, which had tended to be colonised by white people of a lower socio-economic class.3 Kenya’s settlers tended to be wealthy and well-connected. Land in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, is the stuff of life. It is perhaps regarded as particularly precious in Africa due to the harshness of much of the continent’s physical environment. Africans had successfully conquered this land across the continent since the birth of civilisations.4 These efforts, moreover, tied in to social, cultural and political dimensions of life in addition to economic ones. When settlers took the land in places such as Kenya, they took away livelihoods, forcing labour into different channels, which dislocated social contracts and relations that linked to a person’s humanity. For the Kikuyu, the ethnic group hit the hardest by European rule in the colony, virtue lay in the labour of agrarian civilisation, such that the loss of land had severe social and cultural repercussions.5 In the realm  Kennedy, Islands of White.  John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge, 2007). 5  John Lonsdale, ‘Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and remaking Kenya’, The Journal of African History 31: 3 (1990), p. 417. 3 4

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of politics, too, Africans had gained only a very limited inclusion by the post-war period and in a system not of their choosing. Additionally, racism permeated cross-cultural relations in Kenya during the European colonial era. When in 1952 Kenyans took up arms against the colonial state, their efforts were ruthlessly repressed. The war was brutal.6 Britain supported the defence of the settlers. By 1959, the colonial government had won the fighting war against the Mau Mau, but it remained engaged in a battle for their ‘hearts and minds’ in the colony’s numerous ‘rehabilitation’ camps. The deaths of the eleven detainees at Hola occurred in the context of the government’s efforts to speed up the process of the rehabilitation of the Mau Mau ‘hard core’, reputably the hardest to ‘turn’ and the most feared. As a part of these efforts, in early 1959, John Cowan, Kenya’s senior superintendent of prisons, drew up a plan to induce detainees at camps including Hola to work.7 Work was regarded as a part of rehabilitation. Cowan’s plan envisaged that some force be used against prisoners. In addition, aspects of the plan were defined and transmitted to camp employees in an ambiguous manner. Further south in Nyasaland, the Colonial Governor Sir Robert Armitage justified the State of Emergency there with reference to African ‘agitation’ and violence in the territory, activities which the Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd informed the House of Commons had included a ‘plot’ to murder resident Europeans.8 In the event, no Europeans died. Yet in the space of a week following 3 March, the ‘security forces’ had killed forty-­ eight Africans.9 The authorities arrested and detained over a thousand more, including Hastings Banda, the leader of the territory’s foremost political party, the Nyasaland African Congress.10 A number of long-standing grievances informed nationalist activity in Nyasaland. These included land hunger, intrusive agricultural ordinances, racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and a lack of political

 Elkins, Britain’s Gulag.  See Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, pp. 208–12, for a detailed explanation of the plan’s genesis. 8  For the immediate context to the Hola deaths and the declaration of the Emergency in Nyasaland, see: Murphy, Lennox-Boyd. 9  Joey Power, Political Culture and Nationalism in Malawi: Building Kwacha (Rochester, US, 2010), p. 207. 10  Ibid. 6 7

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representation.11 Africans also desired the demise of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or Nyasaland’s extrication from it. Six years on from its formation (1953), despite repeated promises of political, social and economic reform and development, most Africans drew few tangible benefits from the alliance and, worse still, regarded the structure as an instrument of oppression through which the powerful white community of Southern Rhodesia (in de facto control of the Federation) imposed its will on the areas which surrounded it. A great deal of uncertainty surrounded the future of the Federation. Many Africans understood the outlook as bleak. Britain had scheduled a review of the Federation for 1960. The review was to consider several options, including the possibility of the entity’s eventual independence, for which the Federal Premier, Roy Welensky, had called. The process of fighting the Federation had begun before its creation and continued throughout the 1950s. Nevertheless, African nationalist activity in Nyasaland ballooned immediately prior to the review, leading to, and, in turn, energised by, the return of Banda to the protectorate in the summer of 1958 to head the NAC.12 Banda, a mission-educated son of subsistence farmers, had studied medicine overseas in the US and Britain from the interwar period. He worked in Britain from 1945 and in Ghana from 1953, after immersing himself in Nyasaland’s politics in the late 1940s at the time of the Federation’s creation. In 1958, Banda travelled from Ghana to Nyasaland. Rising nationalist activity, consequently, fuelled European anxieties, which culminated in the declaration of the Emergency. By the beginning of March 1959, the situation in British colonial Africa appeared as if at a tipping point. The British Parliament and press were closely attuned to events. The British government feared not only for the situation in the empire but also for its own survival owing to an upcoming general election. In Britain, the fall-out from the violence was not as great as it might have been. The press played a part in this. British newspapers continued to reinforce self-affirming structures of understanding in Britain on Africa, empire and decolonisation largely independently, it is argued here, of government efforts to influence public understanding of the violence and its repercussions, the latter a focus of the historiography on this topic. As in 11  For a history of African nationalism in Nyasaland, see: McCracken, History of Malawi; or Power, Political Culture. 12  Power, Political Culture, pp. 123–35.

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Ghana, the press continued to play a more independent role. Its frames of understanding and representation and patterns of practice, which had been forged over time from a variety of influences that ranged from nationalism and the left-leaning Africa Bureau to political partisanship, cultural representations of Britain in Africa and societal racism, impacted the coverage the most. At the same time, owing to many of the same historical influences, British newspapers affected British policy towards the Federation, goading the government in the direction of African nationalism. The press also continued to compromise the government’s ability to control the ‘British’ narrative of the imperial endgame in Africa, which affected Britain’s relations with settler communities.

3.1   The Nyasaland Emergency: African Nationalism, Settler Intrigue and the Future of the Federation The day following the declaration of the Emergency in Nyasaland, news of the ‘massacre plot’ Lennox-Boyd had referred to in the Commons dominated the headlines in all of the British papers alongside reports that twenty-six Africans had died in confrontations with the security forces. Some of the coverage differed according to the papers’ political leanings and format. Right-leaning papers of all formats were supportive of Lennox-­ Boyd and his ‘plot’ statement to the Commons as well as of the forceful official response to the perceived African nationalist threat of violence.13 The support appeared alongside numerous news reports from the field, which documented African rioting, violence and sabotage.14 The left-leaning populars showcased a different perspective. The Mirror and the Herald aired views that were unfavourable to the government, by casting doubt on the allegations concerning the African ‘plot’, foregrounding the deaths of the Africans and implicating Lennox-Boyd.15 Both papers reported concerns voiced by the Labour Party in parliament that in his ‘plot’ statement to the Commons, the colonial secretary had 13  Express, 4 March 1959, p. 8; Telegraph, 4 March 1959, p. 8; Mail, 5 March 1959, fp; Telegraph, 7 March 1959, p. 6; Mail, 10 March 1959, fp. 14  Mail, 23 February 1959, p. 5; Telegraph, 24 February 1959, fp; Express, 25 February 1959, fp; Mail, 26 February 1959, p. 2. 15  Herald, 5 March 1959, fp; Herald, 6 March 1959, fp; Herald, 6 March 1959, p.  4; Herald, 10 March 1959, fp; Mirror, 25 March 1959, p. 2.

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deliberately conveyed a false impression to the British people in order to justify the crackdown on nationalist activity.16 Additionally, both papers suspected that Federal intrigue lay behind the declaration of the Emergency.17 The Herald published an editorial on Welensky on the 4th, titled ‘Meet his challenge’, in which the writer accused the Federal Premier of acting ‘to smash the Africans into subjection to his white settler Rhodesian Federation’ and to end ‘the protection of Africans by our Colonial Office’. Lastly, African violence figured prominently in both papers’ news reports from the field, within which the colonial violence tended to appear in the language of ‘law and order’ enforcement.18 Indeed, there were similarities between the coverage on the Left and the Right as well as in papers of different formats. Across the press, journalists tended to focus on the African activist as opposed to the colonial action and violence. Most of the editorials published on both Left and Right in papers of all formats on or around 3 March, informed by the news reports filed from Africa, concentrated overwhelmingly on the causes of the African violence. These pieces discussed African discontent alongside Britain’s colonial policy and the Federation’s prospects.19 ‘Progressive’ views on these matters were not confined to the left-­ leaning papers which had criticised the colonial authorities and had expressed support for Africans. Journalists voiced contrasting opinions on the value of the principle of Federation and on the origins of the African opposition to it.20 Yet a consensus existed on the difficulties the Federation now faced, and which centred on the growing power of African nationalism. Cartoons in the newspapers, which depicted nationalism in Africa as  Herald, 5 March 1959, fp; Herald, 6 March 1959, p. 4; Mirror, 25 March 1959, p. 2.  Mirror, 24 February 1959, p. 8; Mirror, 1 March 1959, p. 2; Mirror, 3 March 1959, p. 10; Herald, 3 March 1959, fp. 18  Herald, 21 February 1959, fp; Mirror, 24 February 1959, bp; Herald, 27 February 1959, p. 7; Herald, 2 March 1959, fp. 19  Mail, 4 March 1959, fp; Telegraph, 4 March 1959, p. 8; Mirror, 5 March 1959, p. 2; Mail, 5 March 1959, fp; Mail, 6 March 1959, p. 8; Telegraph, 7 March 1959, p. 6; Observer, 8 March 1959, p. 16; Mail, 10 March 1959, fp, Mirror, 10 March 1959, p. 2; Telegraph, 14 March 1959, p. 6; Observer, 15 March 1959, p. 16. This had also been the case before the declaration of the Emergency, as African activism in the region gradually intensified. 20  Right-leaning papers were generally ‘pro’ Federation; left-leaning papers ‘anti’. Right-­ leaning popular papers tended to attribute African discontent to incitement, intimidation and even Accra. Left-leaning papers traced the discontent back to 1953 and the formation of the Federation, a view which right-leaning papers also often echoed. Left-leaning popular papers also blamed Welensky. 16 17

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a giant ocean wave, as a gale or as giant, muscular black men standing tall or running furiously, reinforced the sentiment.21 Journalists expressed many ideas for possible policies to address the difficulties present in Central Africa. These ranged from the need to ascertain African opinion on Federation, to the importance of reassuring Africans of British intentions, devising a new constitution for Nyasaland and negotiating with Banda. Most British papers also publicised and supported Labour’s calls for an investigation into the Emergency.

3.2   African Activism, the Africa Bureau and the Observer The coverage reflected several influences, which had consolidated over time. The structure and tone of British politics informed journalists’ support (or not) for Lennox-Boyd as well as their views on the importance of the Federation, an outpost of the empire. The potency of the partisanship owed to the fact that Federation was a party-political issue and British papers were highly political in nature. The right-leaning press’s treatment of Bing during the Shawcross debacle had illustrated the latter with respect to Ghana.22 These leanings tied to British financial and other interests in Africa of which the press was sometimes a party or had shared interests. Right-leaning papers tended to support Establishment interests and industry, including mining and the settler communities which ran these industrial ventures in places such as Central Africa. By the post-war period, left-leaning papers were comparatively supportive of reform owing to their belief that more equable economic structures and social relations were preferable. Some influential businessmen on the Right, too, with interests in Central Africa, were beginning to believe this also to be the case owing to their budding intimations that nationalists might win out the continent over.23 Yet political leanings remained very evident in the press. Whereas in Ghana during 1957, the Left/Right divide on constitutional matters had been largely imperceptible due to the character of British newspapers’ 21  For example: Guardian, 3 March 1959, p. 13; Mail, 6 March 1959, p. 8; Guardian, 6 March 1959, fp. These characterisations infused the broader newspaper coverage of Central and South Africa during the years which form the focus of this book, such as during Macmillan’s 1960 tour of Africa. 22  See Chap. 2. 23  Philip Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford, 1995).

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presence in the region historically and the country’s independence, which satisfied many on the Left, in Central Africa during 1959, the situation differed. In Central Africa, the British government resided in a kind of limbo between empire and independence, and MPs debated the subject frequently. Parliamentary debates permeated journalists’ professional environments in London and provided ready copy for all irrespective of the different papers’ financial standings. This latter period was also one in which British newspapers, including the ‘financially weaker’ Herald and News Chronicle, both left-­leaning, were more inclined to send correspondents overseas to places including Africa. Nonetheless, despite the partisanship, common themes were present in papers of all political hues. These would make the British press a potent force in the political history of Central Africa, and it is therefore imperative to trace their roots. In the right-leaning press and the left-leaning popular press, journalists’ focus on African violence over and above the colonial reflected the prevalence of racial stereotypes, which pervaded British society during the 1950s, in addition to the restrictions the Federal and Nyasaland governments placed on journalists’ freedom of movement and access to non-official sources of information. The prevalence of cartoons in the press, which depicted nationalism as giant, muscular black men, indeed points to the significance of racial imagery. In turn, this can be connected to the ‘age of enlightenment’ and the efforts of Europeans in places including Africa during the nineteenth century to quantify ‘race’ as the manifestation of the physical attributes the architects of the concept thought they saw in people who looked different from one another. In turn, physical attributes were linked to perceived social or cultural ones of which the physical attributes were understood to be the key determinants. They were rarely positive. These connections served as instruments of power and control during an historical moment in which Europeans came to occupy more and more of the world. It was as a result of these processes that African men came to be associated in the European colonial imagination with physical strength, size, threat and violence. Thereafter, the imagery only proliferated during colonial projects that were at once exploitative, justificatory and defensive. In addition, at the beginning of March 1959, official sources of information, which the press utilised, stressed the African threat.24 Alongside this, the restrictions the colonial authorities placed on 24  Journalists’ use of official sources is suggested by the pattern in wording across the articles which appeared in the different papers alongside the references to officials in some.

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journalists’ freedom of movement and access to non-official sources of information inhibited a deeper probing of the colonial violence. Indicative of their frustration were British journalists’ efforts to place pressure on the Federal and Nyasaland governments for improved access to information and for greater freedom of movement, such as at a press conference in Blantyre, Nyasaland, on 6 March.25 Yet political partisanship, racism and restrictions account for aspects of the tone of the reports and the imbalances and omissions, rather than the presence of the African violence within the papers and the fact that it was marshalled in support of a broadly progressive narrative that called for a reconsideration of British colonial policy. In accounting for these latter characteristics, two further factors were important. Firstly, one cannot overstate the importance of African activism. In 1959, activism featured far more prominently in British public appraisals of the process of Britain’s decolonisation in Africa than much imperial historiography, centred on British public responses to the colonial violence, suggests.26 Histories which focus on Britain’s role in Africa centre ‘colonial’ matters and/or Britain in their discussions of decolonisation in Africa. Yet press coverage of events such as those of 3 March 1959 reminds us to cast our gaze further. The activism drew foreign correspondents in. Journalists found it impossible to ignore. Most activists did not appear to be deliberately courting the foreign media at the start of March, but one scholar has argued that the press attention that the events of 3 March invited inspired later concerted efforts to attract publicity in pursuit of political goals which centred on independence.27 Others had begun the exercise. D.K. Chisiza and Lawrence Makata of the NAC, wise to the importance of British and other foreign press comment, sought publicity during these weeks.28 In addition, the scale of the press’s impressions on nationalism by 1959 indicated that the work of nationalists had long captured journalists’ attention. Throughout the ‘wind of change’, African nationalism was the British coverage’s most overwhelming theme. 25  Account of a press conference in Blantyre with Sir Robert Armitage on 6 March 1959 (account undated), fol. 103, MSS. Welensky 239/9, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Hereafter, ‘MSS. Welensky’ shall be used to cite this collection. 26  Such as in: Hyam, Declining Empire; John Darwin, The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate (Oxford, 1991); and Elkins, Britain’s Gulag. 27  Power, Political Culture, p. 142. 28  Note of telephone message from Mr Parker to Welensky, 4 March 1959, fol. 91, MSS Welensky 239/9.

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This may not have been enough for a consensus to emerge on matters concerning the future and on policy had journalists not shared views on what the activism signified. In the case of Nyasaland, however, many British papers appeared to have what might almost be termed a mission. Parliamentary politics had played a part in this because politicians offered interpretations of events which provided fuel or inspiration for reports. The efforts of men such as Chisiza and Makata were also vital. However, the press, too, had played a direct role. As in Ghana, British journalists were not merely observers of the events which they described. Nor did they find themselves only at the mercy of external constraints or influences. Rather, they helped to create the stories they recounted, often consciously forging relationships with the ‘external’ influences which resonated with them the most. Integral to this were the efforts of a small coterie of British journalists linked to the Observer. David Astor, the paper’s editor, and Colin Legum, its colonial correspondent, were both leading figures in the Africa Bureau, an organisation set up in 1952 to advise and to support Africans opposed to colonial rule, by providing a channel of communication between nationalists and the British government, and whose first campaigning issue had been Central Africa.29 During the 1950s, the Bureau’s efforts had impacted parliamentary discussion, which papers then reported. In addition, the Observer had tried directly to influence the views of British journalists. Legum later recalled that in addition to his Africa Bureau activities, Astor aimed specifically to ‘make the media more conscious of Africa’s needs and interests’.30 The editor sponsored lunches for correspondents, African leaders and British politicians throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and involved the editors of right-leaning papers, such as the Sunday Times, in organising this venture.31 By 1959, due to the efforts of newspapermen such as Astor working alongside African leaders and British MPs, African perspectives in Central Africa and beyond were beginning to achieve a broader circulation within British newspaper circles and attracted a deeper engagement.

 Cockett, David Astor, pp. 189–90. Lewis, David Astor, p. 190.  A Memoir: David Astor’s Observer (by Colin Legum), D75.1.2, Colin Legum Papers (BC1329), Special Collections, University of Cape Town Libraries, University of Cape Town (hereafter UCT), p. 26. 31  Ibid. 29 30

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3.3   British Protection of Africans: Frames of Representation of Britain in Central Africa These representations which characterised the immediate British coverage of 3 March tended not to appear as negative for Britain. This was true not only on the Right, in the papers which had supported Lennox-Boyd. Papers on the Left, too, disseminated ‘non-negative’ or self-affirming representations. The political arrangement which existed in Central Africa is relevant to this. Specific demographic and constitutional circumstances prevailed in the Federation, which included the presence of a large white settler community with a high degree of independence from Britain. Southern Rhodesia’s ruling white minority ‘self-governed’, which meant that it was able to control the colony’s domestic affairs. In 1923, when Southern Rhodesia was established as a self-governing colony, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland retained the status of British protectorates. Given that Southern Rhodesia was the strongest economic and political force in the Federation, within which all three territories lay, difficulties experienced in the two British protectorates posited a link to white settler governance. When left-leaning popular papers wrote about these triangular government relations, which involved Federal, colonial and British actors, they not only minimised Britain’s direct association with the brutalities. They ‘raised’ Britain. In calling on the Colonial Office to ‘Meet his Challenge’, the Herald depicted the Federal government as a body whom Britain had to assuage and confront to ‘win freedom’ for the Africans that lived in its empire. The themes of Federal power and British protection had also developed over time. They linked to the efforts of prominent politicians and pressmen, who emphasised them as a part of their efforts to induce the government to act in favour of Africans. Symptomatic of these were the actions of Labour MP John Stonehouse, who travelled to the Federation in February and whom journalists quoted widely.32 Yet people like Stonehouse tapped a deeper sentiment. The notion of ‘protection’, in particular, supported British self-perceptions, such as those which had permeated press coverage of Ghana’s independence celebrations.33 For papers on the Right, it appeared to be a dangerous concept to invoke in Central Africa owing to British political considerations, for which good working relations with  The coverage peaked on 3 March 1959 and 4 March 1959, following Stonehouse’s deportation from the Federation on 3 March 1959. 33  See Chap. 2. 32

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settler communities and a desire to retain control of decisions on intervention were paramount. Yet they shared the outlook. In Ghana, the right-­ leaning press had called upon Britain to exert its influence to protect the people of Ashanti in the face of a perceived cruel and despotic African leader.34 In Central Africa, the concept of British protection resonated more strongly still. The history of British involvement in the region had been characterised by missionary engagement and an  imperialism portrayed as being of the most beneficent kind. This was an area of Africa to which David Livingstone, the Scottish physician, missionary and explorer, had travelled in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, journeys which forever bound Nyasaland to missionary endeavour.35 By way of contrast, the relationship between Britain and Ghana tended to revolve around issues such as trade, which reflected the long history of European trade in the region, including to the Americas. In Ghana, British newspapers had presented self-affirming depictions of Britain at independence and subsequently by allying Britain with perceived forces of good.36 Newspapers’ narratives on Federal power and British protection were similarly of a ‘single’ nature.37 Again, there was truth in the story. Armitage declared the State of Emergency independently. Yet he had been subjected to Federal pressure on the issue, and Federal troops had played an important role in suppressing African dissent.38 It was also true that the Federal authorities exerted regional power. However, the degree of Federal involvement in the declaration of the Emergency was, at this point, unproven. In addition, Armitage had played a vital role. Even if this had not been the case, it is important to recognise that Britain governed Nyasaland. Moreover, to the extent that the Federal authorities spearheaded the crackdown, Britain was deeply implicated in the story of the settlers’ presence in Central Africa, including in Southern Rhodesia. It had granted self-government to the colony in 1923. It had also created the Federation. No such emphases were relayed to British readers. White  Ibid.  Tim Jeal, Livingstone (Revised and Expanded Edition)  (London, 2013); John Stuart, British Missionaries and the End of Empire: East, Central, and Southern Africa, 1939–1964 (Cambridge, 2011). 36  See Chap. 2. 37  Adichie, ‘Danger of a Single Story’. 38  John Darwin, ‘The Central African Emergency, 1959’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21: 3 (1993), pp. 217–34. 34 35

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settlers, for one, would sense the hypocrisy of the papers’ partial narratives, which allied them, but not Britain, to negative events in the latter’s empire. Lastly, it should be noted that the notion of protection, whilst conjuring images of nurture, originated during the age of empire. The word implied a beneficence that could not exist in places where people were denied fundamental freedoms—of association, for example, of movement and of expression.39 Claiming that the critical coverage in the left-leaning press was likely to have had non-negative, even self-affirming, effects reflects assumptions regarding press content’s relation to public thought. For the other readerships examined here, there is archival evidence which documents responses: government files, for example, personal correspondence and public debate. It is harder to determine how the average British person understood the coverage. Insights from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis can help.40 Critical Discourse Analysts suggest that the parts of texts which are implied, background, and assumed bear a close relation to opinion. These characteristics, it is thought, speak to long-standing interests and concerns that have been conveyed to readers over time and are understood (often subconsciously) by writers as imbued. Owing to their subtle nature, too, it is considered that they are less likely to meet with resistance from readers, in some contrast to opinion pieces and editorials, which express thoughts in a direct, often provocative, manner and which invite contention. A further feature concerns the characteristics of the coverage which are common across or between some or all papers. These can be considered more all-encompassing—cultural even?—than the politically motivated or politically informed coverage, which reflects opinions aligned to societal groupings. During 1959, the main feature of the coverage of Central Africa which reflected these insights included journalists’ recognition of the strength of African nationalism. A further theme, which corresponded mostly with the former insight on the power of the implied or assumed, was that of Federal power and British protection. When left-leaning papers’ explicit focus was the colonial brutality, the theme found itself embedded in

 For these restrictions, see McCracken, History of Malawi.  For CDA, see especially: Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse (London, 1995); and John E.  Richardson, Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis (Basingstoke, 2007). 39 40

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broader, deeper-rooted self-affirming representational constructs that centred on Britain’s protective role. Additionally, across the left-leaning press, discussions on nationalism served to detract from the colonial violence because they oriented thoughts towards the future. Left-leaning popular papers’ news reports from the field which discussed African violence and sabotage, and which appeared alongside editorials which emphasised African innocence, further muddied the waters. And while the centrality of activism in the news articles and nationalism in the editorials of all papers presented to British readers a framing of decolonisation in which the future was considered as firmly ‘African’, this sentiment, too, tended not to appear as a negative one for Britain, as we shall see, despite the imperial decline the triumph of Africans would necessitate.41 None of this early coverage appeared to be conditioned by British government intervention. The possible implications of this are twofold. Firstly, it suggests that the British press was a stand-alone factor which mitigated the impact of the early criticisms that concerned the British and colonial governments on and around 3 March. Histories which examine the events of 1959 in depth emphasise the opposite—namely, official British efforts to influence the press. To the extent that the British public outcry lessened following the 3rd, the shift is attributed to this. In these works, the public and parliament are said to have been shocked by the revelations of brutality and misconduct.42 This, it is argued, impacted the government in the lead-up to the general election in October,43 causing it to mount considerable damage limitation exercises.44 The Conservative Party’s re-election in October is then understood as indicative of the government’s success in  See Chaps. 4 and 5.  Darwin, Historical Debate, pp. 20–21; L.J. Butler, Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World (London, 2000), p.  156, 161; Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, pp.  311–53; Hyam, Declining Empire, pp. 263–4; John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009), p. 621; Benjamin Gröb-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 360–6. 43  In addition to the aforementioned works, the election factor is discussed in: Alistair Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986: Volume II of the Official Biography (London, 1989); Charles Williams, Harold Macmillan (London, 2009); D.R. Thorpe, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan (London, 2010); Richard Lamb, The Macmillan Years, 1957–1963: The Emerging Truth (London, 1995); Baker, State of Emergency. 44  The best accounts of these are in Murphy, Lennox-Boyd; Baker, State of Emergency; and Elkins, Britain’s Gulag. 41 42

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these endeavours. More broadly, Caroline Elkins’ work on the brutality of British colonial rule in Kenya indicates that a main reason why British people today know so very little of what was done in their name in the empire owed to official cover-up and secrecy at moments such as this.45 Secondly, regarding African nationalism, the absence of official influences indicates that the British press was itself a proponent of change in Central Africa by 1959. The press would be a powerful proponent. Yet studies of British newspapers and Africa at the end of empire tend to underscore the influence of the government and officials on the press.46 Imperial histories, which focus on British decision-making, explain that the government’s move to ‘decolonise’, including in Central Africa, was influenced by its own increasingly progressive views. The events of 3 March and their legacy are said to have played an important role in prompting the British government to re-­ evaluate its approach to African affairs47—chiefly the pace and the timing of constitutional advance, but also its character, to some degree, as regards officials’ growing appreciation of the nature, extent and significance of African political objectives. British public outcry, both anticipated and real, is identified as a factor behind the government’s decision to set up inquiries into the violence which occurred in both Kenya and Nyasaland,48 and its growing aversion to the use of violence as a means of control in the colonies.49 The historiography makes few explicit connections between public opinion and colonial policy during this year. The government is said to have been concerned about ‘middle opinion’ in general,50 which is thought to have informed Macmillan’s decision to embark on the 1960 ‘wind of change’ tour.51 Yet these trends to a more progressive colonial

45  Elkins, Britain’s Gulag; Caroline Elkins, ‘Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire, and the High Court of Justice’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39: 5 (2011), pp. 731–48. 46  Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds; Shaw, Suez; Lewis and Murphy, ‘“Old Pals”’. 47  Philip E. Hemming, ‘Macmillan and the End of the British Empire in Africa’ in Richard Aldous and Sabine Lee (eds.), Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 97–121, pp.104–5; L.J. Butler, Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World (London, 2000), p. 148; Hyam, Declining Empire, pp. 264–5. 48  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, pp. 207–13. 49  John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke, 1988), pp. 248–9; Butler, Britain and Empire, p. 151. 50  Butler, Britain and Empire, p. 148; Darwin, Empire Project, p. 621. 51  Butler, Britain and Empire, p. 151; Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 257.

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policy are generally thought to have been long underway,52 and given impetus during 1959 as much by the direct effect of the events on British politicians as by mediating forces like public opinion. Members of the government are said to have been shocked by the revelations of brutality and impressed by the scale of African discontent in the Federation.53 We might, at this point, also recall the views of Sandbrook, Howe, Owen and Goldsworthy, who have argued more strongly that British low politics and public opinion bore very little relation to decolonisation, including, Sandbrook claims, during 1959.54 Taken as a whole, it might be assumed, then, that the government would desire a press that supported nationalism in Central Africa and would go along for the ride. It will be argued here and in the following chapter that the government was not, at this point, certain of the direction of its policy, and that it was the press, allied to components of the ‘public’ and parliament, that helped to goad it along the path of decolonisation, and one of a particular kind, moreover, that was more favourable to Africans in Nyasaland than some of the other options. The analysis also calls into question the difference of opinion on these subjects which is said to have existed between the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office.55 The former is understood to have been more progressive on matters concerning nationalism and the latter more reactionary owing to their different responsibilities in the region. This study points to a greater convergence and one weighted on the side of reaction. British newspapers desired to change this. Their efforts formed part of a bigger story of the influence of the British press on the British government during the ‘wind of change’. In Ghana, during 1957, the press impacted policy outcomes indirectly by circulating alternative ‘British’ narratives in Africa, which undermined the government’s ability to monopolise the story of the imperial endgame, impacting Anglo-Ghanaian relations.56 In the case of the Federation, the policy impacts were direct as well as indirect. Given that African nationalism influenced the press coverage so convincingly, nationalism must be 52  See, in particular: Hyam, Declining Empire; and Murphy, Lennox-Boyd. Also, Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, pp. 98–103. 53  Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation, pp. 248–50; Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 263. 54  Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good; Howe, Anticolonialism; Owen, ‘Critics of Empire’; Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues. 55  Lewis and Murphy, ‘Old Pals”. 56  See Chap. 2.

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c­ onsidered as a root cause of the press’s policy influence. Nevertheless, the combination of the press and nationalism proved important in the Central African context, owing to the relationship between the Federation and British opinion in parliament, which controlled the region’s future. In the coming weeks and months, many British papers would adopt a campaigning role in their relations with the British government, goading it in the direction of African nationalism. In addition, they would help to sow the seeds of distrust between the British, Federal and colonial governments by impeding official British efforts to control the British narrative of the imperial endgame in the region in a manner that was conducive to white settler amicability.

3.4   The British Press, Welensky and the Federal Government Part of the problem for the British government was that the coverage of Nyasaland travelled back to Africa, mirroring the case of Ghana.57 Although the aforementioned narratives had some positive implications for British readers’ understanding of Britain’s involvement in decolonisation, they did little for the psyche of the white settler communities of the Federation. British papers were sold in Central Africa. In addition, news of British press coverage of the region travelled to Africa via the settler press. Settler papers, such as the Nyasaland Times and the Rhodesia Herald, reprinted British articles of interest alongside their own commentaries or summarised them for their readers. Settler governments also monitored British press comment. The Federal authorities worried over journalists’ references to African action and to Congress.58 These were themes which the colonial authorities had helped to promote in efforts to justify the declaration of the Emergency. Documenting either theme, however, let alone highlighting or sensationalising them, the authorities soon realised, was to acknowledge African discontent within the region and African agency to a degree that was considered highly undesirable both for security reasons and for the ‘morale’ of the European community.59 Welensky and his supporters

 See Chap. 2.  As in MSS. Welensky 278/5. 59  Ibid. 57 58

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were further antagonised by some papers’ emphasis on the machinations of the Federal government.60 Most of their fears, however, concerned the coverage which discussed the future of the Federation. Despite the British government’s reassurances regarding its intention to safeguard the future of all of the region’s inhabitants, settlers knew that in the next few years the British parliament would exert a decisive influence over their future. Any amendments to the Federal constitution required a UK parliamentary vote,61 and as we shall see in this and the following chapter, many white settlers regarded the relationship of British press content to public opinion as both illustrative and constitutive. British journalists were not only present on the ground, providing first news of events, but they were also understood to be articulating the budding, more radical, ideas of some of those on the Right in British politics to a greater extent than was possible in the Commons, and thus providing a window onto a perceived changing British political landscape. The Federal authorities were also concerned about the possible need for greater political accountability in the post-war environment. If the press was gunning for change, then might British leaders have to take account of this? The press coverage affected the British government’s ability to monopolise the British narrative on Central African affairs in a dynamic comparable to the situation in Ghana during 1957. As in Ghana, the press coverage would influence political and civic cultures in Central Africa, too, by people who sought engagement with it in bids to influence cultural and political outcomes. A testament to the settlers’ anxiety included the moves they took to influence the British press. One involved the actions of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee,62 an organisation formed in 1958 by a group of prominent businessmen with interests in the Federation to ‘promote understanding’ within Britain of events in the region.63 During 1959, the  MSS. Welensky 281/3.  ‘[Future of Hastings Banda]: inward telegram no 175 from Lord Home (Salisbury) to Mr Macmillan’, 21 Feb 1960, PREM 11/3076, in Philip Murphy (ed.), British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B, Volume 9: Central Africa. Part II: Crisis and Dissolution 1959–1965 (London, 2005), pp.  116–8, p.  117. Also, in same collection, ‘[Monckton Commission]: outward telegram from Lord Home to Mr Macmillan (Kaduna)’, 17 Jan 1960, PREM 11/3065, pp. 102–3, p. 103. 62  MSS. Welensky 272/5 and 273/2. 63  The Rhodesian business community was not united on the issue of the desirability of the Federation. As Philip Murphy has explained, the views of individual businessmen/companies 60 61

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Committee maintained contact with British journalists and editors, supplying them with background information on events and querying press content they considered misleading, occasionally producing letters for publication.64 A further approach concerned the tendency of some papers to denigrate Welensky personally. This involved taking legal action against the offending papers on a case-by-case basis. The Federal Premier sued Odhams Press for the Herald editorial of the 4th, ‘Meet his challenge’.65 In Africa, later articles suggest that the Federal and colonial governments introduced censorship and other restrictions to inhibit the production and dissemination of damaging reports from the field—a third strategy. In addition, official files record that the leaders of both governments spent time discussing matters with individual correspondents privately. Yet while the efforts of the settlers were persistent and wide-ranging, they appear to have met with little success, confirming the rather anti-­ settler/anti-Federal character of British press activity on Central Africa by the beginning of 1959. The overtures of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee were not always well-received. The Guardian’s deputy editor often, if politely, gave its members the brush off.66 More generally, both the Federal government and the Committee frequently declared the Committee ineffective.67 The libel action against papers such as the Herald had even less of an impact, judging by the paper’s subsequent editorials on the region. In Africa, press censorship and other restrictions not only failed to prevent the emergence of damaging reports; they appear rather to have aggravated the situation, antagonising foreign correspondents, who responded by venting their emotions on the printed page and in press conferences,68 providing additional fodder for reports, as they had done in Ghana, and would do again in South Africa. Press freedom remained one

reflected their specific interests and changed over time. Philip Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964 (Oxford, 1995). 64  MSS. Welensky 272/5 and 273/2; Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee, D/1135/1-33, Guardian Archive, The University of Manchester Library (hereafter UML). 65  MSS. Welensky 281/3. 66  Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee, D/1135/1-33, Guardian Archive, UML. 67  MSS. Welensky 272/5 and 273/2. 68  Mail, 7 March 1959, p.  7; Express, 7 March 1959, p.  7; Mirror, 7 March 1959, bp. Account of a press conference at Blantyre with Sir Robert Armitage on 6 March 1959 (account undated), fol. 103, MSS. Welensky 239/9.

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of the lenses through which British journalists understood the era of decolonisation. Spending time with individual correspondents was a strategy which, upon first examination, met with greater success. The Times’s editors and reporters, including Oliver Woods, and Rhys Meier, its Central Africa-­ based stringer, were on very good terms with Welensky.69 In general, however, the Federal prime minister shirked overtures from British correspondents as part of a plan to say as little as possible to the press before the 1960 review.70 A number of journalists, particularly from papers gauged to be unsympathetic, had great difficulty in getting a private audience with the leader.71 Thus, it was that Welensky had greater success in influencing those who were more likely to support him.

3.5   The Press, Public Opinion and the Monckton Commission The Federal authorities’ concerns regarding the relation between British policy and press content were warranted. The British government soon set up an inquiry to investigate the circumstances surrounding the declaration of the Nyasaland Emergency and appointed Sir Patrick Devlin, a High Court judge, to head it. In calling the inquiry, the government was influenced by concerns regarding public criticism on the matter.72 In addition, there is evidence to suggest that the decision of the British government, privately, during these weeks, to appoint the Monckton Commission to travel to the Federation to gauge opinion in advance of the Federal constitutional review, was informed by a perceived need to answer British public opinion on Federation. Given that the Commission, which reported its uncomfortable findings in October 1960, was the chief surface factor which sounded the ‘death-knell’ of the Federation, this is not insignificant.73 Most studies of British policy which discuss the setting up of the Commission underscore the importance of the government’s own assessment of the situation on the ground, and its plans to pursue a  MSS. Welensky 686/2, 637/4, 645/4, 279/4, 274/1 and 292/3.  MSS. Welensky 292/3, all but particularly Minute by W.S. Parker to Welensky, 29 July 1959, and Welensky’s handwritten reply (at end). 71  MSS. Welensky 686/2, 637/4, 645/4, 279/4, 274/1 and 292/3. 72  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, pp. 207–13. 73  Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 285. 69 70

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colonial policy more in tune with the times. Ronald Hyam discusses the perceived importance of ‘buying time’ in a crisis situation, but he also suggests that the Commission’s critical findings were ‘no doubt’ what Macmillan had intended.74 For Larry Butler, the decision reflected the aim of ‘(establishing) clear British control over the situation in Central Africa’.75 For Philip Hemming, it was designed ‘to put Africa on the political agenda’.76 Only John Darwin has emphasised that in Central Africa, the British government was less inured to change than some of its most prominent members would later claim.77 When, in March, Lord Home, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, wrote on the topic to Lord Perth, Minister of State at the Colonial Office, he explained that a Commission would ‘take Federation affairs out of party politics here over the period of our General Election and between now and 1960’.78 Home also considered that ‘an impartial and objective inquiry would lead the public to a fair and objective view and do much to restore confidence’, given that ‘ignorance of the purpose of Federation is widespread both here and in Africa’.79 This was not mere acquiescence. The goal was to save the structure, and transforming British opinion in favour of the Federation was considered an integral part of the process. These emphases would recur amongst different government actors in the days and weeks which followed. The government proved unsuccessful on all fronts. Rather, the British press, together with ‘public opinion’ and parliament, helped to set the agenda for British policy towards the Federation, a dynamic which existing works do not accentuate and which meshed both with the settlers’ fears and the Africans’ aspirations.

3.6   The Media and the Mau Mau War The Hola massacre, which occurred on the same day as the declaration of the Emergency in Nyasaland, received far less press treatment. Readers first learned of the incident in tiny press agency reports of between thirty and sixty words, which simply documented the Kenya government’s press  Ibid., pp. 282, 285.  Butler, Britain and Empire, p. 161. 76  Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, p. 104. 77  Darwin, Empire Project, pp. 627–30. 78  ‘[Federal review commission]: draft telegram from Lord Home to Lord Perth (Lusaka)’, 18 March 1959, CO 1015/1533, no 30, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, pp. 35–36. 79  Ibid. 74 75

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statement.80 The press reported that ten Mau Mau detainees had died after drinking water from a water cart and that an inquest would be held. The following week, the Kenya government released a further statement, which read that the deaths ‘may have been due to violence’. This information appeared in four of the papers under discussion.81 No editorial or other comment pieces were published. The Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express and Guardian reported the inquest into the Hola deaths. Yet they did so with varying amounts of detail and none offered comment. The dearth of coverage is partly attributable to the actions of the Kenya government in concealing the true cause of the deaths,82 as well as to the way in which it surreptitiously released the relevant information and took control of the situation by launching an inquest under W.H. Goudie, the Senior Resident Magistrate.83 Yet, in addition to these (and other) contemporary official interventions, we shall see that historically rooted frameworks of representation and patterns of practice of the press were relevant in accounting for the Kenya coverage in this and the following months, echoing the production dynamic in the Federation and Ghana. In the case of Kenya, however, the government had been integral to the development of these historical frames and patterns within a political context (the war) which persisted. Therefore, the coverage more closely aligned with official objectives. British newspapers’ initial emphases have continued implications for the story of British ‘internal decolonisation’ as well as for characterisations of British press/government relations at the end of empire. Regarding the first of these, early press coverage of the brutalities would not have been easily discernible to readers. In addition, the coverage which did appear did not implicate Britain or the Kenya government. Regarding press/government relations, the presence of broader-based, historical influences on the coverage would suggest that the press operated to a large extent by this point in time as an independent mitigant of news of troubles in the colony. Critical news on Kenya did feature in the press during the first four months of 1959. In addition to Hola, this included reports on the intention of the African-elected members of the Kenya Legislative Council to  Guardian, 5 March 1959, fp; Herald, 5 March 1959, p. 5; Express, 5 March 1959, p. 2.  Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Express, 13 March 1959. 82  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, pp. 212–3. 83  Even the Labour Party, usually attuned to these issues, was unaware of the severity of the situation until a fortnight following the deaths, when it received a tip-off. 80 81

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boycott the Queen Mother’s impending visit to the colony.84 The Council led Kenya from 1907, moving incrementally to include African members. Reports were also published on the political and economic challenges which Kenya faced as the Emergency neared its end;85 Lennox-Boyd’s refusal to hold an independent inquiry into conditions in Kenya’s detention camps and prisons;86 and the travails of Captain Law, an ex-army officer, who had been imprisoned in Nairobi the previous year and had made allegations against the colonial government of cruelty to Africans.87 The war had been brutal. Throughout it, the violence which the colonial authorities keenly relayed to the world concerned Mau Mau atrocities against white settlers—stranded, vulnerable and fearful on their isolated farms in the so-called white highlands, a ‘happy’, lush, temperate and fertile area of East Africa—and perceived Mau Mau perversions.88 However, the authorities were responsible for many more brutalities against both body and mind. After the government had won the fighting war, these included the rounding-up, concentration and indoctrination of these Mau Mau men and women,89 with the aim, moreover, of sustaining a colonial order that was deeply opposed, and then ushering the political transition of the colony down a path that jarred with the wishes of many of the inhabitants of the region. The critical copy reflected several dynamics. One concerned the efforts of opposition MPs to foreground colonial issues in parliament. Parliamentary debates were almost always reported in the press, even if sometimes only perfunctorily. Another dynamic concerned the efforts of whistle-blowers to engage the press, and therefore also the British and Kenya governments’ abject failure to satisfy the concerns of these men. A third centred on the endeavours of African politicians to stand their ground in ongoing political negotiations with the British government90 and to identify opportunities for public demonstrations of African resistance to colonial rule. The government was unlikely to have been the politicians’ only intended audience. The advantages of appealing to the British  Telegraph, 20 January 1959, p. 13.  Observer, 25 January 1959, p. 6; Observer, 1 February 1959, p. 8. 86  Observer, 25 January 1959, p. 12. 87  Mail, 2 February 1959, fp; Herald, 2 February 1959, p. 7. 88  See Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds. 89  Elkins, Britain’s Gulag. 90  For a description of these efforts, see: Keith Kyle, The Politics of the Independence of Kenya (Basingstoke, 1999). 84 85

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Parliament and public, including through the press, were not lost on Kenyans and can be compared to the actions of the NLM in Ghana in its relations with right-leaning papers from 1954, and the Malawi Congress Party in staging timely protests in Nyasaland during Macmillan’s African tour in 1960.91 In 1959, the activities of Kenyan political leaders included a planned boycott of a highly publicised royal tour, but in previous months and years public resistance had taken different forms. During 1958, imprisoned African leaders had made attempts to communicate their criticisms and concerns to the British Parliament and public by writing letters to members of the Opposition and encouraging their distribution in the media.92 In addition, African leaders including Tom Mboya, general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labour (from 1953), an elected African member of Kenya’s Legislative Council (from 1957) and the leader of the Nairobi People’s Convention Party (from 1957), who fought for Kenya’s independence and in opposition to the multi-racial solutions which he believed would compromise it, had formed friendships with individual journalists, such as the Observer’s Legum, through whom they channelled prison letters and other such communications to a wider public.93 The Kenya intelligence and security services suspected that the relationship was very close and that Legum had even been involved in the reproduction of prison letters then disseminated.94 In Ghana, opponents of Nkrumah and the CPP approached the right-leaning British press. In the Kenyan colonial context, opponents of the ruling authorities struck up relations with papers on the Left. The Observer’s particular commitment to covering events in Kenya during 1959 should be viewed as a continuation of its investment up to that date. It had resulted in numerous connections, leads and a particular expertise that ran like a thread through its coverage. The Observer’s  See Chaps. 2 and 4, respectively.  One case involved allegations from inmates at Lokitaung prison, published in the Observer in June 1958. See Lewis and Murphy, ‘“Old Pals”’. Also FCO 141/6777. A further case concerned allegations published in The Times on 8 December 1958, which had been passed on to the newspaper by Labour MP John Stonehouse. LIT/Ryland, Charles, TNL Archive. For Africans’ motivations, see in particular: Letters from Kaggia to Stonehouse, 3 September 1958. 93  Fols. 73, 84, 106 in FCO 141/6777* (*file is numbered strangely, beginning from 1 twice—these 3 fols. appear in first set of numbers starting from rear of file). 94  Ibid. 91 92

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dedication to reporting Kenya, and white settler colonies in general, stemmed from its Africa Bureau links as well as from the specific interests of Astor and Legum, both of whom were passionately interested in questions of race, inequality and injustice. Among Astor’s mentors had been Adam von Trott, an anti-Nazi activist killed following an abortive plot to assassinate Hitler, the author George Orwell, and the Reverend Michael Scott, the head of the Africa Bureau and the champion of the Herero and of South West Africa at the United Nations.95 Between 1904 and 1907, the Herero people, who had risen up in resistance against the German colonial presence in South West Africa, had been the victims of a colonial campaign of annihilation. Seventy-five percent of the population were either killed directly by the Germans during these years or died due to the after-effects of their flight into the Kalahari Desert, internment or ill treatment, including forced labour. In 1948, Scott, who was from South Africa, the country which ruled South West Africa following Germany’s defeat in the First World War, implored the UN for justice for the remaining Herero, including the restoration of their land, rights and independence. Legum, a South African exile with Jewish, Lithuanian roots, a former member of the National Executive of the South African Labour Party and former editor of the South African Labour weekly Forward, appeared driven throughout his life by his earliest encounters with poverty in South Africa, inequality and their effects, conditions which he aimed to alleviate through journalistic activity in Britain following D.F. Malan’s victory at the polls in 1948.96 The year 1948 marked the ascension to power of the National Party in South Africa and the beginning of apartheid’s institutionalisation. Yet despite the efforts of Labour MPs, whistle-blowers, African activists and the Observer to bring evidence of wrongdoing to light and to foster critical debate on Kenya, numerous obstacles prevented the press from printing damaging pieces. No papers had British representatives stationed in the colony or any other full-time correspondents whom head offices had selected and appointed. This meant that British papers were heavily reliant for information or stories on travelling politicians, news agencies 95  A Memoir: David Astor’s Observer (by Colin Legum), D75.1.2, Colin Legum Papers, UCT, esp. pp. 4–5. 96  Profile of election candidate Colin Legum, Rand Daily Mail, 9 October 1947, C17.16.1, Colin Legum Papers, UCT; Profile of Colin Legum at age 30, S.A. Jewish Times, 15 July 1949, C17.16.2, Colin Legum Papers; A Memoir: David Astor’s Observer (by Colin Legum), D75.1.2, pp. 6–7, Colin Legum Papers.

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such as Reuters or stringers, and this restricted their coverage in important ways. Left-leaning papers, for instance, sometimes had to fund the travels of opposition MPs to Africa if they wished to provide a platform for their critiques.97 Stringers, on the other hand, tended to be either prominent members of the white settler community who worked full-time elsewhere often in a very different capacity, or professional journalists employed by one of the settler papers, such as the East African Standard or the Kenya Weekly News.98 The stringer system embodied the potential for deficiencies, particularly concerning the different British papers’ ability to include content and perspectives which aligned with their own in certain contexts, and stringers’ dual commitments, which affected their freedom of movement, and possibly also expression.99 In South Africa, as we shall see, voices that were critical of the authorities found expression in the material which stringers produced.100 In Kenya, however, a colonial context in which white society was somewhat more homogenous in its views and interests, particularly in the aftermath of the war, critiques were harder to come by. Compounding the press’s difficulties in Kenya was the legacy and continued efforts of the British and Kenya governments actively to manage the coverage of the war. One cannot overemphasise the extent to which journalists’ engagement with Kenya differed from their engagement with other British territories in Africa at the end of the 1950s, including other white settler colonies, such as Southern Rhodesia. Propaganda and other press restrictions played an important part in the colonial government’s efforts to defeat Mau Mau during the Emergency, which, while easing, was still in force.101 Officially, journalists were not permitted to visit the

97  The Labour MP Barbara Castle persuaded Mirror’s Hugh Cudlipp to send her to Kenya in November 1955 ‘to follow Colonel Young’s trail’. Barbara Castle, Fighting All the Way (London, 1993), p.  267. The Sunday Pictorial subsequently paid for Castle to travel to South Africa to report the treason trial in 1958 (see p.  276). The Labour MP John Stonehouse’s visit to Africa in 1959 had been sponsored by Reynolds News. John Stonehouse, Prohibited Immigrant (London, 1960), p. 5, and press commentary at the time. 98  The Times used the East African Standard. The Manchester Guardian used the Kenya Weekly News. Memorandum from Oliver Woods to Mr McDonald, 30 January 1959 (as well as subsequent memoranda), MEM/Kenya file, TNL Archive. 99  Ibid. 100  See Chap. 5. 101   The most wide-ranging account of these propaganda efforts is: Carruthers, Winning Hearts.

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prisons and detention camps,102 although organised tours sometimes went ahead, and one journalist gained special access.103 A public relations expert appointed by the Kenya government briefed British journalists in London throughout the Emergency, providing speedy, ‘factual’ accounts of events and a continuous flow of good news.104 The British government leaked positive stories to the press.105 It encouraged self-censorship on matters including the publication of prison letters by indicating privately to newspaper editors that their contents were of a dubious nature and from questionable sources.106 Early on in the Emergency, it had also sent lurid information on Mau Mau oathing ceremonies to editors, not for publication, but as part of an effort to generate a culture of trust with the press that was geared towards achieving supportive and undemonstrative coverage of the war.107 The government also discredited whistle-blowers who approached the press, and resisted calls for independent inquiries.108 Instead, it encouraged the colonial authorities to launch internal investigations into the matters these men had raised, which rarely produced convictions, but whose findings provided ready ammunition in parliament. The threat of libel action from British colonial officials also inhibited the production of critical copy. In 1958, the Observer had published a letter from five of the inmates of Lokitaung prison in the far northwest of the colony. The letter had contained allegations of ill-treatment and brutality.109 The camp commandant, Charles Ryland, sued the paper for £2000 in damages (which he won).110 The British government had also censured the paper for publishing the allegations. By 1959, there was a feeling within the government that these moves had discouraged the press’s publication of further letters.111 At the beginning of 1959, the publication by the Times of a very small article on conditions at Ryland’s camp as described 102  Correspondence between Baring and Lennox-Boyd during June 1958, when the Observer requested access, fols. 59, 74 (section nearer front of file), FCO 141/6777*. 103  Fol. 57 (as above), FCO 141/6777*. The journalist was M.D. Odinga, the editor of Uhuru (although Baring later wrote that he was ‘not entitled to be admitted’). 104  Carruthers, Winning Hearts, p. 144. 105  Lewis and Murphy, ‘Old Pals’, pp. 56–57. 106  Ibid., pp. 57–59. 107  Carruthers, Winning Hearts, pp. 158–60. 108  Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, pp. 322–3. 109  For a full account of this and the related fall-out, see: Lewis and Murphy, ‘Old Pals’, pp. 57–59. 110  Minute by D.W. Conroy, 29 October 1958, fol. 143, FCO 141/6777. 111  Letter from Amery to Baring, 5 March 1959, fol. 22, CO 822/1269.

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by inmates in a further letter produced a flurry of internal correspondence at the paper when Ryland lodged a complaint.112 The Observer was discussed. The Times’s solicitors advised that Ryland would almost certainly win any libel action, and the paper settled out of court. The Observer also seems to have been shaken by the Lokitaung affair. When Legum received a letter from prisoners at Mariira Camp in Kenya’s Fort Hall district shortly after, Astor immediately consulted the Colonial Office for advice on publication.113 These factors combined to ensure that damaging issues attracted minimal coverage throughout the war. They also had implications which were relevant in the specific case of Hola. Firstly, government restrictions on access to camps prevented British journalists in a working sense from investigating these sorts of stories. Hanging over journalists’ heads was also the possibility of a stern rebuke from the government for coverage deemed too negative and libel action from colonial officials. Secondly, there was an ideological dimension to government efforts whose effects deserve scrutiny. As British journalists were also members of the public and were therefore subject to a variety of cultural influences, these must be considered in conjunction with the probable effects of literary and other depictions of Kenya, which circulated in Britain, and which David Maughan-Brown and John Lonsdale have examined in detail.114 Owing, it is likely, to the white settler presence, colonial Kenya inspired a lot of literary and other creative British output, in some contrast to other colonial contexts such as Ghana. Carruthers thinks that the government’s propaganda efforts which denigrated Mau Mau had greater success than those which defended colonial officials because, in the case of the former, she argues, the government’s representations went with the grain of popular opinion.115 Yet while the deaths at Hola are associated in the historiography with the issue of colonial violence, and could therefore be considered to have registered deeply, the two dynamics Carruthers discusses may not have been readily distinguishable in journalists’ minds, a factor that worked in the government’s favour when the massacre occurred and which newspaper readers’ interpretations may have echoed. In the small articles on  LIT/Ryland, Charles, TNL Archive.  Letter from Astor to Lennox-Boyd, 4 July 1958, fol. 7, CO 822/1705. 114  David Maughan-Brown, Land, Freedom and Fiction: History and Ideology in Kenya (London, 1985); John Lonsdale, ‘Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya’, The Journal of African History 31: 3 (1990), pp. 393–421. 115  Carruthers, Winning Hearts, pp. 179–81. 112 113

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the massacre as well as in the inquest-related coverage that would follow, readers learned that the men who had died were from the inner core of the hard-core of Mau Mau and had lost their lives, moreover, at the hands of their African warders. Most papers seemed content to follow the inquest and await Goudie’s judgement. Instead, the majority of the stories on Kenya at the time of the massacre and the inquest painted a picture of hope, change and political progress. The Telegraph, Times, Guardian, Herald and Express all covered the Queen Mother’s triumphant visit in February and the apparent ‘flop’ that was the boycott.116 Journalists foregrounded the Queen Mother’s popularity, the multi-racial nature of her reception and Kenya’s peaceful atmosphere, depictions which recalled the press’s portrayal of the Duchess of Kent’s presence at the Ghana independence celebrations. In April, British newspapers reported that political tensions in the colony showed signs of easing owing to an initiative by Michael Blundell, a white farmer, politician and Kenya’s Minister for Agriculture (from 1955), who resigned from his post in order to head a new ‘multi-racial’ political grouping, the New Kenya Group (from 1959). Greeting Blundell’s move were headlines such as ‘Hope in Kenya’, ‘Moderation in Kenya’ and ‘A courageous attempt’.117 Some commentators like Legum cautioned against expecting too much too soon. Yet overall, the press presented a positive picture of political developments. It is likely that this reflected the changing nature of the political scene in Kenya as it emerged from the war as well as the bleakness of its recent past, which made critical comment appear particularly untimely. Yet also relevant were the continued efforts of the British and Kenya governments (as well as Blundell) to promote stories with a positive spin. Three weeks earlier, the Mail had published a five-page ‘Progress Report’ on the colony entitled ‘This Striking Success’.118 It began with a ‘special message’ from Lennox-Boyd and looked as if it had been sponsored by the Colonial Office.

116  For example: Herald, 6 February 1959, p. 7; Telegraph, 6 February 1959, p. 15; Express, 10 February 1959, p. 5; Telegraph, 10 February 1959, p. 9; Express, 14 February 1959, p. 7; Telegraph, 17 February 1959, p. 13. 117  These appeared in the Observer, Telegraph, and Times, respectively. 118  18 March 1959, p. 10.

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3.7   The Findings of the Hola Inquest and Disciplinary Tribunal The publication by the British and Kenya governments of two White Papers on Hola (one in June; one in July) changed the situation somewhat. The story shifted its locus away from Kenya to Westminster, where the Labour Party had the election firmly in its sights, British correspondents were present in greater numbers, and journalists were not subject to the same kinds of constraints as in the colony. With the publication of the two reports, moreover, journalists commented for the very first time on evidence of brutality revealed in documents endorsed by the British government. This affected the government’s ability to put a gloss on their contents. Nevertheless, the press coverage was neither entirely nor consistently critical. The criticisms and their absence fluctuated in prominence throughout the summer, the latter finally prevailing. In accounting for this, official overtures to the press and constraints on press activity were relevant. Yet also important were deeper-rooted influences in addition to other contemporary ones through which the newspapers can be seen independently to have negotiated paths. The final ‘non-negative’ outcome appeared to owe to the press’s understanding, by 1959, of the horrors of the brutal war and the political changes then afoot. Ultimately, this encouraged a forward-looking orientation and mitigated against a pursuance of the difficult issues beyond the period of parliamentary scrutiny. In Mombasa, on 6 May, Goudie summed up his findings at the conclusion of the Hola inquest. The magistrate announced that he had found incontrovertible the evidence that the eleven men had died as a result of shock and bleeding caused by violence. Goudie also spoke of his inability to apportion blame due to what he considered to be the highly unreliable and conflicting nature of the evidence he had heard. Goudie’s announcement did not attract extensive coverage the following day, reflecting the relative lack of press interest to date as well as the fact that the locus of the story was the Kenyan coast. The news reports which did appear reflected the complexity of the evidence Goudie had analysed,119 narratives which can be traced back to the trickery of persons at the camp and which can be viewed, at least in part, as a continuation of the efforts of members of the colonial service to influence the outside world’s reading of events in the 119  For example: Telegraph, 7 May 1959, p. 17; Guardian, 7 May 1959, fp; Herald, 7 May 1959, p. 9.

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colony.120 Added to this were the effects of the British and Kenya governments’ efforts to divert attention away from the past to the future at the time of the release of Goudie’s findings, when they announced a full-scale inquiry into the future of the four remaining detention camps, including Hola, news of which featured in the majority of articles on that day and in at least one paper’s headline.121 Two editorials which appeared on the 7th communicated very clear messages, however, and both were highly critical. The Guardian considered the upcoming inquiry into the future of Kenyan camps insufficient and recommended the colonial government instead seek ‘expert guidance’ on the policy, organisation and staffing of its ‘whole prison service’.122 The Times’s editorial, titled ‘No redeeming feature’, foregrounded the Cowan Plan as a cause of the deaths and laid emphasis on the fact that the Kenya government had backed it.123 It castigated the Kenya authorities for their false press statement in early March, and it called on ‘higher authorities’ to take up where Goudie had left off and ‘name the persons who must bear the blame’. Both papers mentioned mitigating factors raised in passing in the report, such as the status of those who had died (‘degraded and fanatical ruffians’). Yet the overall message the two editorials conveyed was negative from an official perspective, a characteristic that was particularly significant in the case of the Times, a centre-Right publication. Indeed, one of the most notable features of broadsheet coverage during these months was the unanimity of its regret both for the deaths and for aspects of the British and Kenya governments’ handling of events. These qualities both reflected and reinforced the Conservative anxieties on African  and colonial affairs, which are thought to have lain behind the trend to decolonisation.124 These shifts are particularly important to note in relation to Central Africa owing to the region’s constitutional status as well as to the upcoming review. Yet these thoughts also permeated discussion on developments in other parts of Africa, including Kenya. The anxieties expressed in the Times appear to have arisen not only independently, 120  Elkins also views Goudie as complicit in the colonial administration’s attempts at deception, his being an ‘internal’ investigation. Britain’s Gulag, pp. 345–8. 121  Herald. 122  Guardian, 7 May 1959, p. 8. 123  Times, 7 May 1959, p. 13. 124  For example: Murphy, Party Politics; Hyam, Declining Empire; Hemming, ‘Macmillan’; and Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change in Africa, 1957–1960’, Historical Journal, 38: 2 (1995), pp. 455–77.

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but in flagrant disregard, of the explanations provided by both governments, given that Lennox-Boyd and Evelyn Baring, the governor of Kenya, were in touch with the paper throughout these months, continually explaining their thoughts and actions to journalists including Oliver Woods.125 This press resistance is a dynamic which the historiography on Hola has not addressed because the latter has tended to foreground discussions on the government’s damage limitation strategy as documented in Colonial Office files. In this particular case, the critical opinions expressed in the Times also appear to have arisen independently of the Opposition, given, first, that the paper seems to have had far less contact behind the scenes with Labour and the Liberals,126 and, second, that parliament discussed the matter the same day. In fact, the editorial informed the conversation in the Commons. Labour MP Kenneth Robinson mentioned ‘No redeeming feature’ on the 7th as an indication of the shock the deaths had caused in Britain.127 Discussion was short. Proceedings consisted, in essence, of Lennox-Boyd’s answers to Labour’s calls for a statement on the inquest’s findings, followed by several Labour replies. Critical coverage continued, particularly in the left-leaning popular press, boosted by these Labour interventions. The following day (the 8th), the Mirror published an editorial which called on the colonial secretary to ensure that the people involved in the killings be named and prosecuted,128 echoing the substance of Labour’s argument. News reports in the Mirror and the Herald foregrounded Labour MP Barbara Castle’s plea for a standard of justice in Kenya comparable to that practised in Britain,129 and Labour MP Kenneth Robinson’s claim that the deaths might not have occurred had the British government heeded Labour’s earlier calls for a judicial inquiry into all Kenya camps.130 These popular press reports appeared to be the product of the papers’ political leanings more than any other factor. Indeed, the degree to which their content mirrored parliamentary proceedings is striking. On the Left, the press 125  MEM/Kenya file, TNL Archive. Oliver Woods of The Times discussed Kenya with Lennox-Boyd on 23 April, with Evelyn Baring on 9 June, and with Lennox-Boyd again on 6 July. 126  Ibid. 127  HC Deb 7 May 1959, vol. 605, cols 564–5. 128  Mirror, 8 May 1959, p. 2. 129  Mirror, 8 May 1959, p. 10. 130  Herald, 8 May 1959, p. 7.

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f­ ollowed Labour’s lead. Press coverage, at the ‘popular’ level, was notable during the summer for its partisan nature, which, as previously discussed, tended for a variety of reasons not to be as pronounced in 1959 for Kenya as for other African territories. This, combined with the intensification of Conservative anxieties on colonial affairs, as reflected in and reinforced by the content of ‘serious’ papers such as the Times, presented Macmillan with cause for concern.131 Yet the press coverage was by no means solely negative during May. The day following the debate, right-leaning papers, in addition to the Guardian, chose to headline Lennox-Boyd’s reference to the remedial measures the British and Kenya governments were pursuing,132 indicating that elements of their damage limitation strategy were proving effective. The Telegraph published an editorial that was highly supportive of the government. It approved of the remedial measures and reminded its readers both of the ‘evil’ that was Mau Mau and of what it considered to be the ‘extraordinary success’ of the Kenya government’s rehabilitation policy ‘as a whole’.133 Two weeks later, the Kenya government organised a carefully choreographed press tour of Hola for visiting journalists, which received favourable treatment in the Telegraph, the Herald and even the Observer.134 The British government was also aided during these weeks, first, by the absence from the country of Lennox-Boyd, the focus of the Opposition’s ire,135 and, second, by the fact that parliament adjourned for the Easter break for two weeks from 15 May, the day on which Labour tabled a censure motion on Hola.136 The previous day, the Colonial Undersecretary Julian Amery had told the Commons that the attorney-­ general of Kenya had decided that there was insufficient evidence to warrant the framing of criminal charges against individuals. Instead, on 5 June, the government announced the composition of an internal tribunal, headed by D.W. Conroy, to inquire into disciplinary charges against the Camp Commandant M.G. Sullivan and his deputy A.C. Coutts.

131  Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, p.  103; Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change’, p. 457; Darwin, Empire Project, p. 621; Williams, Harold Macmillan, pp. 340–1. 132  Telegraph, 8 May 1959, p.  22; Mail, 8 May 1959, p.  2; Express, 8 May 1959, p.  2; Guardian, 8 May 1959, p. 3. 133  Telegraph, 8 May 1959, p. 12. 134  Telegraph, 30 May 1959, p. 9; Herald, 30 May 1959, p. 7; Observer, 31 May 1959, p. 6. 135  He was in West Africa. 136  Hansard. It reassembled on 2 June.

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From 10 June, however, the coverage peaked again. This followed the publication of Goudie’s findings, together with the list of charges against Sullivan and Coutts. In future weeks, these documents would fuel a critical turn in parliament and the press because they permitted a detailed exploration of issues which no one in authority had previously fully explained. This included the nature of the Cowan Plan. In the short-term, however, following the release of the Report, coverage was not initially too hostile. This suggested that it was the combination of the two White Papers and Labour efforts that resulted in the critical copy. The majority of the news reports which appeared on the 11th were on the negative side, but mostly explanatory. In this way, they mirrored the earlier coverage of the magistrate’s statement in court.137 Murphy notes that Macmillan was relieved by ‘what he regarded as the sensible press reaction’.138 Editorial coverage was split. On the ‘brighter’ side was the Express, which thought that although the inquiry ‘has not led to criminal charges’, ‘the Hola affair has been brought under the full glare of the democratic process’.139 This, the paper thought, bore out Britain’s ‘civilised’ virtues. In this way, the press coverage itself helped to provide a sense of accountability that soothed any nagging doubts about Britain’s integrity, a theme which recalled journalists’ critique of Nkrumah’s Ghana during the Shawcross debacle.140 Other papers were more disapproving. The Guardian and the Times worried over the issues that were still open to question, such as the degree of responsibility of the superintendent of prisons, the Minister of Defence, the Kenya government at large and even the colonial secretary.141 This latter concern formed the focus of parliamentary discussion on 16 June, when ministers debated the Labour censure motion in the Commons. Labour MP, Sir Frank Soskice, a former attorney-general, began proceedings with a speech that lasted for an hour. Soskice concentrated his attack not on lower-level officers, but on ‘the responsibility of the Kenya Administration and the attitude of the Secretary of State himself to what has occurred’.142 He focused on the Cowan Plan’s formulation, its approval and, in particular, the manner in which its contents were relayed (or not)  Herald, 11 June 1959, p. 8; Telegraph, 11 June 1959, p. 18; Mail, 11 June 1959, p. 9.  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, p. 214. 139  Express, 11 June 1959, p. 8. 140  See Chap. 2. 141  Guardian, 11 June 1959, p. 8; Times, 11 June 1959, p. 11. 142  HC Deb 16 June 1959, vol. 607, cols 248–64, col 248. 137 138

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by senior colonial officials to officers at Hola camp. Lennox-Boyd chose to devote the majority of his reply to the ‘background of the Mau Mau problem’, which he explained in some detail.143 The Labour censure motion was defeated by 314 votes to 255, a government majority of 59. Macmillan confided to his diary that the debate had gone off ‘as well as could be expected’, but that it had been ‘an anxious day’.144 Some of the reports of the parliamentary proceedings which appeared over the following two days were positive from the perspective of the government. These included an editorial in the Express, titled ‘A great rescue’,145 and two news reports called ‘The big Hola censure debate fades out quietly—Lennox-Boyd hits back’ and ‘Lennox-Boyd fights back—He puts deaths in perspective’, published in the Mail and the Express, respectively.146 Yet the majority of the coverage was negative. The left-leaning populars backed Labour’s calls both for a full public inquiry and for Lennox-Boyd’s resignation or dismissal in editorials titled ‘Whitewash won’t do’ and ‘Save Britain’s good name’.147 On the Right, the Times retained its critical stance,148 again in direct contravention of the Conservative Party’s efforts and arguments. Significantly, the paper was impressed by the content of Soskice’s speech, which it thought ‘vigorous and penetrating’ and full of truths concerning the drafting and implementation of the Cowan Plan. The Telegraph was markedly more critical following the debate, influenced by the perceived deficiency of the colonial secretary’s rebuttal.149 Although this staunchly right-leaning paper thought that Lennox-Boyd could, ‘on present evidence’, ignore calls to resign, it suggested that ‘heed might be paid to them in Nairobi’. These narratives continued to reflect increased Conservative anxieties. The extent to which they centred on the brutality,150 as opposed to the ministerial and administrative misconduct, is, however, not as clear-cut. This analysis would favour the latter interpretation. No

 Ibid. All of debate, but quote is from col 264.  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, p. 215. 145  Express, 17 June 1959, p. 8. 146  Mail, 17 June 1959, fp; Express, 17 June 1959, p. 2. 147  Herald, 17 June 1959, fp; Mirror, 18 June 1959, p. 2. 148  Times, 17 June 1959, p. 11. 149  Telegraph, 17 June 1959, p. 10. 150  As emphasised in: Darwin, Historical Debate; Hyam, Declining Empire; and Elkins, Britain’s Gulag. 143 144

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sympathy existed for the Mau Mau ‘hard core’ within British newspaper circles. Following the debate, no reports on Hola appeared for a month, when two further events occurred which drew attention back to Kenya. On 23 July the government published the findings of the disciplinary tribunal headed by Conroy. This was then followed by an announcement from the colonial secretary that Sullivan was to retire compulsorily without loss of gratuity and that J.H.  Lewis, Kenya’s commissioner of prisons, due to retire shortly, had requested permission to retire as soon as possible. A further parliamentary debate followed on 27 July. Importantly, the findings of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the declaration of the Emergency in Central Africa (the ‘Devlin Report’) were published on the same day as those of the tribunal, and a parliamentary debate on Nyasaland followed hot on the heels of the debate on Kenya. This did much to distract. On the 24th, most papers headlined the news that the ‘camp chief’ (Sullivan) was to be ‘sacked’.151 Yet the articles were small and tended not to appear on the front pages, which were instead dominated by the first news of Devlin’s findings. Additionally, no editorial comment on Kenya appeared on that day, the exception being a piece in the Guardian, which addressed Hola and Devlin in a combined manner and which stated that calls for the colonial secretary’s resignation would be ‘misplaced’.152 On the 28th, the day following the Hola debate, coverage in the populars continued to reflect papers’ political allegiances. Thus, it appeared critical in the case of the Mirror and the Herald,153 but supportive in the case of the Mail and the Express.154 In addition, untrue to form, no left-­ leaning papers devoted editorial space to Hola that day, nor did any of the right-leaning serious papers, whose stance had been markedly critical until then. The legendary and highly censorious parliamentary interventions of Barbara Castle and the Conservative Party’s own Enoch Powell therefore attracted minimal page space, and may therefore have featured less in British popular understandings of the end of empire in Kenya than some historians have assumed.155 Powell had critiqued the government, d ­ eclaring 151  For example: Mail, 24 July 1959, p.  6; Express, 24 July 1959, p.  2; Mirror, 24 July 1959, pp. 8–9; Guardian, 24 July 1959, fp. 152  Guardian, 24 July 1959, p. 6. 153  Mirror, 28 July 1959, p. 4; Herald, 28 July 1959, fp. 154  Mail, 28 July 1959, fp; Express, 28 July 1959, p. 2. 155  See for example: Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, pp. 351–2.

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that it was not possible to have ‘African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home… We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility’. This dearth of coverage, affected by an ongoing printing dispute, which had caused many papers to reduce their page count,156 appeared also to reflect the content of the White Paper, the success of government tactics in timing its publication to coincide with the publication of the Devlin Report and the government’s efforts to confine parliamentary discussion on Africa to a short, specified period. In the case of the debate, the dearth of coverage may also have reflected the comparatively poor performance of the hitherto trail-blazing Labour Party, whose members had introduced the topic late in the evening and in such a way that it could not be put to a vote.157 Parliament soon adjourned for the summer recess, and coverage of Hola trickled off. Whereas in the case of Central Africa, as we shall see, the press pursued the difficult issues beyond the period of the reports of 1959, in the case of Kenya, this was less true. In accounting for this, the allusions journalists had made throughout their coverage to the horrors of the war and of Mau Mau, as well as to the changes that seemed now to be afoot, indicate that the weight of the press’s broader, contextual—even ‘cultural’?—‘frame’ for Kenya, which revolved around the war, remained perennially relevant.

3.8   The Devlin Report The government published the findings of the Devlin Report on the same day as the second White Paper on Hola (23 July). On the 28th, the report was debated in the Commons. During this week, the conduct of British ministers and colonial officials in Central Africa formed the focus of British press coverage to a greater extent than in previous months. Some of the reportage was highly critical. Overall, however, it appeared as less critical than ministers had feared. At the same time, the press continued to display progressive views on political developments concerning the region. In the case of the ministerial misconduct, these characteristics were informed by the government’s efforts to manipulate the media response to developments. However, journalists also made independent judgements. In addition, across the coverage as a whole, the newspaper articles continued to  Observer, 26 July 1959, fp.  Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, p. 221.

156 157

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reflect a profusion of influences, including the press’s longer-standing frames of understanding and expression on Central African affairs, and which foregrounded nationalism. Among Devlin’s conclusions were that Africans had not planned a wholesale ‘massacre’ of Europeans; the State of Emergency had been justified given that a crisis had existed at the beginning of March and the governor had understood this to be so; the Federal government had played no direct role in this; Congress had discussed murdering Europeans at that time; Banda had not been involved in this; the African leader had not been as astute as he could have been concerning the probable effects of the rousing political speeches he had delivered to the public upon his return to Nyasaland; African opposition to the Federation was widespread; and during the Emergency, some members of the security forces had acted brutally. There was also the ‘police state’ reference on page one,158 with which the report has become synonymous in historiographical accounts of Devlin’s work. Once again, negative comments on ministerial conduct appeared in the left-leaning popular press. The day following the publication of the report, summaries of Devlin’s findings which appeared in the Mirror and the Herald focused on the murder plot ‘that never was’, the ‘police state’ charge, the brutality of the security forces and the relative innocence of Banda.159 The Mirror thought that ‘the report cries aloud that we must get rid of the men in government who have done these dreadful things’.160 The left-leaning serious press painted a more equivocal picture. The Guardian and the Observer presented weighted summaries of Devlin’s findings, including the judge’s assertion that the State of Emergency had been justified.161 The Guardian even chose to pursue this matter in its editorial, arguing that although some aspects of Devlin’s findings were ‘serious blows to the Government’s prestige’, there was ‘little comfort in the report for the friends of the Nyasaland African Congress’.162 Both papers devoted the majority of their editorial space to the bigger picture, the future of the protectorate and of the Federation, further exploring the causes of the current crisis, detailing political and constitutional changes in  Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (London, 1959), CAB 129/98.  Mirror, 24 July 1959, fp, p. 3 & pp. 8–9; Herald, 24 July 1959, fp & p. 4. 160  Mirror, 24 July 1959, fp. 161  Guardian, 24 July 1959, fp; Observer, 26 July 1959, all. 162  Guardian, 24 July 1959, p. 6. 158 159

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the offing and recommending new policy initiatives such as a steady and continuous release of detainees,163 the provision of full democratic constitutions to Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia and the importance of countenancing both of the protectorates’ eventual secession from the union.164 The Observer declared that ‘All policy must flow from a recognition of the strength of the African Congress and of the Africans’ “almost universal” opposition to Federation’. The emphasis both papers placed on wider, future-oriented issues such as these continued to detract attention away from those of Devlin’s criticisms which concerned the British and colonial governments’ handling of the Emergency, including their use of force. To some extent, this focus reflected the efforts of the Opposition to use the present crisis as a means of delving into Central African affairs broadly. Yet it was much more pronounced in the case of the left-leaning press because in parliament the Labour Party was equally concerned with assigning blame to Lennox-Boyd. The factors which affected the Guardian and Observer coverage were indicative of some of the influences that conditioned the broader British press response. The emphasis the Guardian, in particular, placed on the justification of the Emergency must have reflected, at least in part, the nature of the judge’s report, a surprisingly understudied factor that lay behind the relative absence of criticism on certain matters.165 It is significant that Devlin subsequently regretted including the ‘police state’ term.166 The Guardian’s coverage may also have reflected the British government’s damage limitation strategy in the lead-up to the Report’s publication, a factor which previous studies have underscored.167 Government efforts involved obtaining advance copies of the report with which to plan;168 placing pressure on Devlin to delete Appendix I, a summary of the Report’s conclusions, in order to deprive journalists of easy access to criticisms shorn of context;169 assembling a meeting of ministers and other officials at Chequers on the weekend of 18–19 July to compose an official rebuttal of the judge’s most devastating conclusions in the form of a

 Ibid.  Observer, 26 July 1959, p. 12. 165  Most studies have focused on the significance of the framing of the rebuttal. 166  Baker, State of Emergency, p. 156. 167  The best accounts of this are in Baker, State of Emergency and Murphy, Lennox-Boyd. 168  Baker, State of Emergency, pp. 136–7. 169  Ibid., pp. 143–4; Lamb, Macmillan Years, p. 235; Murphy, Lennox-Boyd, p. 217. 163 164

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‘despatch’ from Armitage, which it published alongside the Report;170 and leaking the content of the Report and the despatch to the press before their release, probably in order gradually to remove both from the realm of ‘news’.171 Cabinet ministers also held private meetings with newspaper editors.172 At the same time, however, it may be incorrect to assign too much weight to these official influences. Both papers adopted a comprehensive, independent approach to the two documents. The editor of the Guardian annotated the entire Report before planning and writing his piece, and chose not to annotate much of the despatch.173 The Observer re-printed almost a third of Devlin’s text, which took up ten full newspaper pages.174 Moreover, the emphasis which both papers placed on the future of the protectorate, the political and constitutional changes in the offing and the importance of either releasing the detainees or allowing Nyasaland the eventual right to secede from the union did not appear to have been the product of any government intervention at all. This stood in contrast to Kenya, where official public relations efforts had affected the press’s focus on context and the brighter, promised future. These points did not form a part of the governor’s despatch. It is also unlikely that officials at the Colonial Office mentioned them in confidence to journalists behind the scenes given Lord Perth’s guardedness on the matter of the detainees and the right of secession when pressed on both issues during a private lunch with correspondents and editors in May.175 Instead, these emphases reflected deeper-rooted press sentiments on nationalism in British Central Africa, which were bound to the efforts of African politicians and activists in challenging colonial rule in the region as well as to the efforts of British politicians and pressmen, such as Astor, to promote a greater awareness and consideration of African perspectives within Britain. 170  Baker, State of Emergency, p. 154; Lamb, Macmillan Years, p. 236; Murphy, Lennox-­ Boyd, p. 218. 171  Nyasaland memoirs: 1959, fol. 80, MSS. Afr. s. 2204 2/4, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Hereafter, ‘MSS. Afr. s. 2204’ shall be used to cite the Armitage papers. 172  Note of a meeting with Lennox-Boyd on 23 July 1959, C4/B5/21/1-3, Guardian Archive, UML. 173  Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (annotated), C4/B5/6, Guardian Archive, UML; Related notes, C4/B5/7-9; Nyasaland Despatch by the Governor relating to the Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (annotated), C4/B5/10. None are dated. 174  Observer, 26 July 1959, fp. 175  Minute from Perth to Carstairs, 26 May 1959, fol. 19, CO 1027/185.

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Discussions at the Colonial Office subsequently revealed the balance of power as perceived. When officials mooted the idea of organising a trip to Africa for Astor, whose paper they felt mattered, a sense of cautious optimism pervaded their messages, twinned with a generous dollop of realism.176 ‘I do not for a moment think that a visit to Africa by Mr Astor would radically change his paper’s line’, one official wrote in June (1959), ‘but it would I think lead to some greater accuracy in presentation, and a better editorial sense of what African problems are. It might lead to much more, you never know, but I would not count on this’.177 In addition, Lewis and Murphy explain that during the summer, the Colonial Office explored the idea of an overture to Banda as a consequence of a private intervention from one of its ‘inner circle’ of journalists, Donald McLachlan, the deputy editor of the Telegraph.178 These press ideas ran counter to a number of the government’s publicly professed policies even if they did, as Murphy suggests, mesh with the private sympathies or ideas of some individuals within government, as well as coincide with the future direction of British colonial policy.179 The government wished to pursue a moderate line. At the same time, however, it displayed a consistent awareness of aggravating factors, including the British public and parliamentary context to developments in the Federation. At the Colonial Office, Assistant (later Deputy) Undersecretary of State W.L. Gorell-Barnes, commenting on Welensky’s reluctance to support the Monckton Commission, told Lord Perth in May that he ‘has got to be made to understand that opinion in this country is such that we are going to have quite a job to hold the Federation together and that, without a good deal of help from him in this sort of way we may fail’.180 Right-leaning papers were generally supportive of the British and colonial governments’ handling of immediate events, the exception being the news reports published in the Mail and the Times, which documented the critical aspects as much as (or more than) the positives.181 The summaries 176  Minute from Carstairs to Gorell Barnes, Sir John Martin and Lord Perth, 2 June 1959, fol. 21, CO 1027/185. 177  Ibid. 178  Lewis and Murphy, ‘Old Pals’, p. 66. 179  This is conveyed by all of Murphy’s works, including Alan Lennox-Boyd and Party Politics. 180  ‘[Federal review]: minute by W L Gorell Barnes to Lord Perth’, 29 May 1959, CO 1015/1703, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, p. 47. 181  Mail, 24 July 1959, p. 4; Times, 24 July 1959, p. 5.

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of Devlin’s findings which the Telegraph and the Express included focused on the report’s claims concerning the presence of a crisis at the start of March, the State of Emergency’s justification and the Congress Party’s mooting of violence against Europeans.182 Editorials across all of these papers echoed this latter supportive focus.183 They were, however, far less vocal on matters concerning the future. Many right-leaning papers refused to be drawn on bigger issues concerning the future of the region, likely due to the Federation remaining a party-political issue. At the start of the year, these papers had voiced strong opinions on the changing trajectory of events in Africa. Yet in July, Africa was in the parliamentary spotlight perhaps more consistently than ever before, and in the intervening period an October general election had been announced. Only the Times commented. The editor, extremely nonplussed by the report’s critical analysis of ‘recent events’, suggested that those of its passages which dealt with the growth of African nationalism were ‘reflective and true’.184 The editorials which appeared in the right-leaning press reflected the content of the Governor’s despatch. Yet they also drew on Devlin’s report, the nature of which continued to inform the absence of critical comment on certain issues. Colin Baker has argued that holes and inconsistencies existed in the report, which enabled supporters of both governments to attack the judge’s critical claims as ‘matters of opinion’,185 the title of the Times’s editorial.186 These holes Baker tracks back to the timing pressures faced by Devlin and his team. In turn, these can be traced to the actions of the British government during the summer. The government desired to present and to debate the report before the end of the summer session and relayed this information continually to the Commission.187 On broader issues, including African opposition to the Federation, right-leaning papers such as the Times appeared to be performing a more independent role. Macmillan probably had press responses to ministerial behaviour (as opposed to future policy) in mind when, on the 24th, he studied press comment on the Report and decided to congratulate all

 Express, 24 July 1959, fp; Telegraph, 24 July 1959, fp.  Express, 24 July 1959, p. 4; Telegraph, 24 July 1959, p. 6; Times, 24 July 1959, p. 7; Mail, 24 July 1959, fp. 184  Times, 24 July 1959, p. 7. 185  Baker, State of Emergency, p. 166. 186  Times, 27 July 1959, p. 7. 187  Baker, State of Emergency, pp. 145, 166. 182 183

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those involved in the framing of the rebuttal for the part they had played in a well-conducted exercise.188 A week later, at the time of the Commons debate on the Devlin Report (28 July), most papers retained their existing stance. The left-leaning populars were still gunning for Lennox-Boyd’s resignation.189 They also reiterated calls for the British government to deal with leaders of the Africans’ choosing.190 The left-leaning serious press continued to present weighted appraisals of the Emergency and thus the British and Nyasaland governments’ handling of it, particularly in the Guardian, with its special feature article on ‘The deaths at Nkata Bay’, where the greatest loss of life had occurred, subheaded ‘A tragedy of misunderstanding’.191 This section of the press also continued to put forward numerous suggestions for the region’s future, a subject which it continued to foreground in its editorials.192 The Guardian expressed concerns about the British government’s continued hostility towards Banda, whom Devlin depicted as ‘a frank and honest man’.193 The Observer suggested bringing Banda and his colleagues to Britain for negotiations as free men.194 The right-leaning press still displayed strong support for the British and Nyasaland governments’ actions on and around 3 March. It also continued to concentrate on those of Devlin’s comments which concerned the immediate background to the Emergency, the Express and the Telegraph standing out in this regard.195 Despite this, the content of some papers such as the Times continued to indicate the changing nature of centre-­ Right opinion on matters concerning the future. In an editorial on the day of the debate, the Times conceded that given the dangers of African discontent within the protectorate, ‘it may…be necessary to fix a time-table for (political and constitutional) advance’.196 It also advocated ‘a progressive return of those in detention to normal life’, and while it supported Nyasaland’s inclusion in the Federation, it indicated that ‘it would be  Nyasaland memoirs: 1959, fol. 91, MSS. Afr. s. 2204 2/4.  Herald, 28 July 1959, fp. 190  Mirror, 28 July 1959, p. 2. 191  Guardian, 27 July 1959, pp. 4 & 6. 192  Guardian, 27 July 1959, p.  6; Guardian, 29 July 1959, p.  6; Observer, 2 August 1959, p. 10. 193  Guardian, 29 July 1959, p. 6. 194  Observer, 2 August 1959, p. 10. 195  Express, 28 July 1959, p. 4; Telegraph, 29 July 1959, p. 6. 196  Times, 28 July 1959, p. 9. Parenthesis and its contents added. 188 189

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­ either desirable nor in the long run practical politics that it should be n dragged along…in the state of mind depicted in the Devlin report’. Few fresh influences appear to have affected press coverage of Central Africa at this later stage, in marked contrast to journalists’ evolving responses to Hola. The end of July may have been considered too close to the upcoming election for many right-leaning papers to permit serious consideration of the arguments of the Opposition, and the same could be said of papers on the Left in their attitude to the Conservative Party. Also significant was the character of the report itself, whose content was in many ways defined by the questions one asked of it; as well as cross-paper dissatisfaction with the quality of the Commons’ debate on the 28th, which might otherwise have swayed opinion.197 Back in June, Soskice’s incisive appraisal of the Hola evidence had influenced papers such as the Times. There was no similar quality attack from Labour on Nyasaland in July. Some journalists attributed this to the Party’s fears of saying something they might later regret were they to win the forthcoming general election and assume a position of responsibility for Central Africa. Others thought that MPs were tired following the Hola debate the previous night, which had continued into the early hours. Yet perhaps the most significant factor behind the absence of a strong Labour impact in the Commons seems to be that both parties continued to talk at cross purposes to an extent that was not true of the discussions on Hola. Both sides defiantly explored those aspects of Devlin’s report that concerned them, and the press coverage reflected this.

3.9   Conclusion British newspaper coverage of Kenya and Nyasaland during 1959 continued to play a comparatively self-affirming role regarding representations of Britain in Africa. It is likely that this proved beneficial for the British government. However, these representations reflected more than official damage limitation efforts. Journalists also made independent calls on the evidence with which they were presented. In addition, British newspapers’ frameworks of understanding and expression and patterns of practice on Kenya and Nyasaland, which had accrued over time, conditioned the coverage in significant ways, leading to emphases including African violence and British ‘protection’.  Mail, 30 July 1959, fp; Telegraph, 29 July 1959, p. 6; Observer, 2 August 1959, p. 10.

197

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The presence of self-affirming representations is not, however, to be misconstrued as evidence of British newspapers’ support for British policy. In Central Africa, indeed, many of the same influences thwarted official British objectives, which a return to some of the government documents indicates was more reactionary than many historians suggest. During 1959, the British press began to rankle an uncertain government, helping to set the agenda for British policy towards the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and goading the government in the direction of African nationalism. In echoes of Ghana, the press also continued to undermine the government’s ability to monopolise the ‘British’ narrative of the imperial endgame in the region. The disjuncture between official and many press perspectives on Federation threw white settler communities into a tailspin and confirmed to nationalists the presence of a possible route within their broader strategies along which to propel the British government into divesting Britain of a part of its empire. These efforts, anxieties, opportunities and dynamics intensified less than three months later, when British journalists, accompanying Macmillan on his ‘wind of change’ tour of Africa, landed en masse.

CHAPTER 4

Harold Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ Tour of Africa, 1960: British Policy, Civic Cultures and Political Practices

On 5 January 1960, three months after the election, Macmillan set off for Africa on a month-long tour to four ‘Commonwealth’ countries. Of these, only Ghana and South Africa were members of the Commonwealth. Yet the British government also used the term to refer to the territories that it thought were nearing full Commonwealth status: Nigeria, on the cusp of independence, and, importantly for our story, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The tour began in the markets and the beaches of Ghana. It progressed through the Federation to South Africa, in the southernmost part of the continent, a country gripped by the horrors of apartheid. Apartheid manifested as a series of strictures, which aimed to control and to suppress the African majority in defence of white minority rule, a system and a way of life that the white rulers perceived as threatened in a decolonising world.1 Apartheid had a lot in common with systems of racial rule in other white settler colonies. Yet settler communities in places such as Kenya, Algeria and indeed Central Africa were sometimes subject to the restraining hand of imperial ‘metropoles’ (Britain and France), who were themselves influenced by external pressures, including popular opinion. In contrast, the ruling settlers of South Africa, a country that had been independent since 1934, were able to indulge their fears with an especial impunity. 1

 See Chap. 5 for more detail on South Africa under apartheid.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_4

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Approximately forty correspondents from Britain, Africa and further afield accompanied the prime minister and his entourage on this most epic of tours. A quarter of them represented British newspapers. The journey would go down in history for the words Macmillan spoke in the South African Parliament in Cape Town, his final destination, when he declared to the country’s white leaders in historic buildings nestled under Table Mountain that ‘The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it’.2 In Britain, the day following the speech, journalists emblazoned this sentiment across their papers’ front pages. ‘Toast of Africans—Macmillan’s speech stirs a continent’ (Mail), ‘Britain to Africa: This is our faith’ (News Chronicle) and ‘Plain speech in Cape Town—Mr. Macmillan on human rights—No support for racialism— “Destinies of free men”’ (Times) were some of the headlines that day. A cartoon in the Mirror depicted the head of a giant African person blowing a ‘nest of white supremacy’, which housed white settlers, out of a tree labelled ‘Africa’.3 Historians have deemed the Cape Town speech to have been ‘a tour de force’;4 ‘No one could deny its impact’;5 ‘Macmillan “jolted” European opinion’.6 Ronald Hyam suggests that the ‘wind of change’ was Macmillan’s defining policy statement during decolonisation. However, was the term a policy misnomer? And what of the role of the press? The official government report of the tour stated that three factors had influenced Macmillan’s decision to travel to Africa. These were rounding off the Commonwealth tour Macmillan had undertaken in 1958 to countries outside Africa, informing himself at firsthand of  the problems of Africa in the context of the ‘rising tide of nationalism’ and confronting ‘the specific challenge presented to the United Kingdom Government by the problem of constitutional advance in multi-racial societies in Africa’.7 2  ‘Address by the Right Hon. Harold Macmillan, M.P., to Members of both Houses of the Parliament of the Union of South Africa, Cape Town, 3rd February, 1960’, CAB 129/101, pp. 153–8, p. 155. 3  Mirror, 4 February 1960, p. 3. 4  Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, p. 105. 5  Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 260. 6  Ovendale, ‘Macmillan and the Wind of Change’, p. 476. 7  Introduction to ‘Prime Minister’s African Tour: January–February 1960’, 12 April 1960, CAB 129/101, pp. 3–5, p. 3.

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The term ‘multi-racial societies’ referred to territories where large white settler communities lived alongside indigenous black majorities. They included the Federation and South Africa. The report stated that Macmillan wanted to ‘help focus public opinion at home on this problem and possibly…lift it to a plane above that of narrow party politics’. In the autumn of 1959, Macmillan explained to Cabinet Secretary Norman Brook that Africa seemed to be the biggest problem ‘looming up for us here at home’.8 ‘We just succeeded at the General Election in “getting by” on this’, he wrote, ‘But young people of all Parties are uneasy and uncertain of our moral basis. Something must be done to lift Africa on to a more national plane as a problem to the solution of which we must all contribute, not out of spite—like the Observer and New Statesman—but by some really imaginative effort’. Undertaking a journey to Africa immediately after Christmas would bring this problem ‘into the centre of affairs’.9 The official report of the tour and Macmillan’s correspondence with Brook suggest that the prime minister intended that the tour, like the Commission, would help to promote in Britain compassion, unity and understanding of the difficulties the government faced regarding processes of constitutional change in the white settler colonies so as further to consolidate the Conservative Party’s domestic political position as well as to facilitate its work in Africa. What these communications meant for policy is less clear. Yet despite the reference to constitutional ‘advance’ in the report, there were strong indications throughout the journey that the government remained intent on arriving at a ‘solution’ to the ‘problems’ posed by ‘multi-racial’ societies that was amenable to all parties, black and white alike. The fact that this was a Commonwealth tour, which included the Federation, an entity that was hotly contested by Africans, who feared the independence Commonwealth status would necessitate, is often obscured both in historical accounts of the journey and popular memory by the drama and the supposed partiality of the famous ‘wind of change’ moment in which Macmillan appeared to place Britain unequivocally on the side of African nationalism. In the event, the prime minister was not as successful as he had hoped in pursuing a ‘middle road’. British newspapers continued to impact these developments. Throughout the tour, diversity and difference across Africa were core themes in official speeches and other official pronouncements; 8 9

 Quoted in Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 257.  Ibid.

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so too was the importance of refraining from comment on the ‘internal affairs’ of Commonwealth member states. Interdependence, patience and the promotion of mutual understanding and respect through dialogue and Commonwealth ties were concepts that Macmillan strove to promote.10 Yet many British papers recorded a very different narrative. In Central Africa, their main preoccupation, this continued to turn on the strength of the African nationalist challenge to colonial authority and the madness of the settler intransigence in the face of it. Most papers continued to recommend that Britain support the former in the face of settler power. These representations reflected the continued resonance of established patterns of practice and frameworks of understanding and expression on Central African affairs. Of continued importance to these were African efforts to exploit British newspapers as a means of advancing the nationalist cause. British papers’ narratives and practices regarding South Africa bore many similarities. Yet there were some significant differences, too, as we shall see.11 Press treatment of local events continued to work at odds with British policy by continuing to place pressure on the government, by selectively relaying Macmillan’s words to mass audiences and by presenting its rival claim to authorship of ‘Britain’s view’ in Africa. The second of these dynamics, less evident during 1959, acquired an especial significance during the tour. British newspaper coverage continued to have important consequences, firstly, for the British government, for whom the press content had continued policy implications, and, secondly, for Britain’s deteriorating relations with the governing white settler communities of Central—and now Southern—Africa, who began increasingly to ‘hunker down’. Additionally, newspaper articles tended once again not to diminish Britain’s status—in this case, by reflecting or supporting its government’s wavering stance on matters concerning race, rights and freedom in a changing global political environment. Rather, they tended to elevate Britain’s status by commandeering the ‘British view’ and backing the groups whom journalists perceived to constitute the people of the future. While the coverage was aggravating from a British policy perspective, it proved ‘positive’ for Britain’s self-perceptions in addition to its overseas 10  Macmillan was deeply committed to the Commonwealth. Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, esp. p. 117. 11  Also see Chap. 5.

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relations in a decolonising world. Macmillan’s famous ‘wind of change’ statement, which supported nationalism and which rang out on 3 February to international public acclaim, can be considered more the outcome of the press’s mediation of the events which journalists observed than an official policy declaration.

4.1   Official Press Arrangements for the Tour The government’s press arrangements indicated that it did not perceive itself as being in a dominant position. Its fears were symptomatic of the character of British press/government relations during the late 1950s and early 1960s that existing works on the British press and Africa do not accentuate, yet which an analysis of a cross-spectrum of papers, alongside internal press correspondence and other archival evidence, reveals. In Ghana during 1957, the press had impacted British policy indirectly by communicating to Ghanaian people an alternative British voice on matters concerning the newly independent state, led by the CPP. This worked to undermine Anglo-Ghanaian relations in the context of the nascent Commonwealth.12 Concerning Kenya during 1959, press coverage of the fall-out to the colonial violence at Hola camp, alongside the broader public, including parliamentary, response to the massacre, had contributed to the government’s decision to call a series of inquiries, whose conclusions proved critical of the government.13 Regarding the Federation during 1959, press treatment of the colonial violence that pervaded the State of Emergency in Nyasaland had contributed to the government’s decision to call the Devlin Inquiry, which had produced the damaging ‘police state’ term, as well as to form the Monckton Commission, whose job it would be to travel to Central Africa, in advance of the Federal constitutional review, to determine the opinions of the people of the region. Additionally, as in Ghana, British press coverage of Central African affairs, which contrasted with the intonations of the British government, had undermined the latter’s ability to monopolise the ‘British’ narrative on Africa. This impacted Anglo-settler relations detrimentally owing to the relationship the settlers perceived between the press and the British government. Official acknowledgement of the power of the newspapers also reflected more recent developments. These included not only Macmillan’s decision  See Chap. 2.  See Chap. 3.

12 13

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to take the 1960 tour, a move which owed to government anxieties concerning British public commentary on ‘multi-racial societies’, but also ­further actions regarding the Federation that the press had helped to initiate and which reinforce the need further to re-evaluate British policy towards Central Africa. The government had recently decided to release Banda. This would remain a matter of private rather than public deliberation during the tour. Yet it is important for understanding the uneasy mindset with which the government party departed. The release of Banda is tended to be understood with reference to Iain Macleod, Lennox-Boyd’s successor as colonial secretary from 1959, in pushing for it, in addition to government efforts to ensure the credibility of the Monckton Commission, which was due soon to commence.14 Yet, as we have seen, the release of the detainees, including Banda, formed the subject of public, including press, pressure and debate throughout 1959. It also formed the focus of critical and specific interventions, such as during the British editors’ lunch meeting with Lord Perth, and, as Lewis and Murphy describe, the actions of the Telegraph correspondent Donald McLachlan.15 Further, the official report of the tour bears out the importance of the British metropolitan context to Banda’s release. Responding to a suggestion from the Nyasaland government, part-way through the tour, that Banda be restricted to the UK upon his release, Macmillan replied that ‘if there was any question of Dr. Banda being refused permission to return to Nyasaland there would be severe public criticism, in Parliament and the Press, in the United Kingdom… The cry at present was for Dr. Banda’s release; if he were released but exiled the cry would be for his return to his own country’.16 Later that day, Macmillan would repeat to the government that ‘To release Dr. Banda and then exile him would be indefensible to Parliament and public opinion’.17 The press, public and parliament continued to prompt the government to take steps to placate it, whose outcomes snowballed into real changes for African and colonial societies in Central Africa. Yet most of this was to come. In early 1960, the government remained intent jealously to safeguard some policies in pursuit of the ‘middle road’. 14  Hyam, Declining Empire, pp.  283–4; Hemming, ‘Macmillan’, pp.  106–7; Butler, Britain and Empire, p. 161. 15  Lewis and Murphy, ‘“Old Pals”’. 16  ‘Record of a Meeting held at Government House, Zomba, on Monday, 25th January, 1960, at 5.15 p.m.’, CAB 129/101, pp. 111–3, p. 113. 17  ‘Record of a Meeting held at Government House, Zomba, on Monday, 25th January, 1960, at 11 p.m.’, CAB 129/101, pp. 115–6, p. 116.

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These linked to Macmillan’s preservation of the ‘multi-racial’ ideal which the official report of the tour and his private correspondence with Brook emphasised. From the summer of 1959, for instance, in response to pressure from the press and persistent questioning from the Opposition about the two northern protectorates’18 right to decide whether to remain in the Federal grouping or to leave, the government fudged the issues and showed a great reluctance to commit either way.19 Commenting in August on a remark by the Observer ‘that we would have to announce readiness to allow Nyasaland to secede’, Perth wrote that he had ‘great difficulty about this’.20 The government held to the view that the Federation was of economic benefit to Nyasaland. Its other stated concerns included its fear of triggering either a Federal or a Southern Rhodesian ‘tea party’, a situation in which either entity would declare independence unilaterally,21 or driving the Rhodesians into the arms of South Africa.22 The government faced public pressure on South Africa, too. South Africa presented some of the same issues as the Federation owing to the presence of large white settler communities. Before departing Britain, Macmillan decided that he would speak publicly on apartheid during the tour.23 Apartheid had become a ‘hot topic’ in Britain during the summer of 1959 due to the efforts of the Boycott Movement to increase British public awareness and to stimulate action against the South African government.24 The Boycott Movement was founded by Albert Luthuli, president of the African National Congress, the largest political party in South Africa, in London in mid-1959 at a meeting of South African exiles and their supporters. The Boycott Movement called on the British public to withdraw their support for apartheid by boycotting South African goods. On 15 December, the prime minister met John Maud, the British High Commissioner to South Africa, to discuss possible topics and themes for  Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi).  The longest debate was on 22 July 1959. 20  ‘[Future of Hastings Banda]: minutes by Lord Perth, J C Morgan, W B L Monson and Mr Amery’, 14–18 August 1959, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, pp. 73–77, p. 74. 21  Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 219, 265–6; ‘[Boston Tea Party]: letter from Sir R Armitage to Mr Macleod’, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, pp. 109–10. 22  Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 282. 23  ‘Note for the record’, minutes of the meeting between prime minister and Sir John Maud in ‘further discussion about possible topics and themes for speeches in South Africa’, 15 December 1959, fol. 28, CO 1027/143. 24  Christabel Gurney, ‘“A Great Cause”: The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959–March 1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 26: 1 (2010), pp. 123–44. 18 19

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speeches. Macmillan told him that ‘there was a very strong demand in the United Kingdom that he should at some stage during his visit to the Union indicate that the majority of people in this country did not agree with the Union Government’s policy on apartheid’.25 The prime minister ‘thought that he must really try to find some phrase which indicated a critical approach’.26 From the end of November 1959, parliamentary pressure on apartheid had been acute. The subject was addressed at the greatest length on 7 December 1959 in a debate on ‘Racial intolerance and discrimination’ at home and abroad. The press had also pressured the government on the issue. During 1959, papers such as the Observer, with its numerous connections to South Africa through Legum and other of its staff, had voiced strong views.27 In addition, British papers provided a means by which opponents of apartheid residing in South Africa were able to communicate with international audiences and to hold politicians to account, mirroring the dynamics present in Ghana at independence, Kenya during the war and the Federation. Following Macmillan and Maud’s meeting, a draft of the speech was composed. A week later, an ‘Open Letter’ from Luthuli and three others appeared in the Observer, imploring Macmillan on his visit to the Union ‘not (to) say one single word that could be construed to be in praise of (apartheid)’.28 Macmillan considered the communication significant enough that he sought the views of the Commonwealth Relations and Colonial Offices on whether or not ‘the signatories of the letter would be satisfied with the current draft of the Union speech’.29 Yet at the same time, as in the Federation, the British government also desired to pursue a ‘middle road’. It feared driving South Africa out of the Commonwealth and the Sterling area.30 It also had strategic concerns, such as overflying rights, which permitted the defence of the British High Commission territories of Basutoland and Swaziland, both nestled within South Africa’s borders.31

 ‘Note for the record’, fol. 28, CO 1027/143.  Ibid. 27  See Chaps. 2 and 5 for detail concerning these connections. 28  ‘An Open Letter: South African Plea to Macmillan’, Observer, 20 December 1959. 29  T.J. Bligh (principal private secretary to the prime minister) to D.W.S. Hunt (undersecretary, Commonwealth Relations Office), 29 December 1959, fol. 74, CO 1027/143. 30  Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 319. 31  Ibid., p. 318. 25 26

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What the tour would demonstrate was the magnitude of Macmillan’s efforts to carve out these ‘middle roads’ in Central and South Africa, in addition to the constraints that British newspapers placed upon his ability to do so. They affected the government’s work partly by mediating Macmillan’s words to mass audiences, and partly by continuing to express contrasting opinions on Federation and apartheid, which compromised the authority of the prime minister’s own ‘British’ narrative on Africa. The government acted in advance of the tour to attempt to avert the former of these dangers. Its efforts continued to point to the perceived importance of press content for Britain’s overseas relations and foreign policy. The government’s concerns centred on ensuring that Macmillan’s main speeches were relayed to publics accurately. Officials thought it of ‘great importance’ for texts of the prime minister’s speeches, or all significant passages, to be cabled back to London during the tour.32 Both the CRO and the CO, the latter in correspondence with officials in Nigeria, worried over Macmillan’s tendency to depart from the texts of his speeches. ‘We are anxious that U.K. press and official press services should be given every assistance over Prime Minister’s speeches’, one CO telegram stated:33 ‘Evans’, the prime minister’s public relations adviser, ‘will try to make copies of texts available beforehand for checking against delivery but final text usually differs substantially from speaker’s notes’. ‘For this reason no advance copies of drafts should be prepared for Press use, nor should any statements be issued with embargoes’, the CRO stated in a further message.34 Evidently nervous about the capacity of the different countries and territories to perform these functions unaided, officials thought it best for Evans to take with him ‘a portable battery-operated tape recorder which can be used to supplement your resources where necessary’.35 The CRO also supported the call to bar journalists from a ‘Pan African Party’ in Ghana.36 The High Commission in Accra relayed that the Ghanaian authorities wanted correspondents and photographers to attend the function, but it ‘(feared) embarrassment to Prime Minister when he gets to Rhodesia and the Union if newspaper men (sic) have sent ahead  CRO to Pretoria, Accra and Salisbury, 1 December 1959, fol. 6, CO 1027/144.  CO to Federation of Nigeria, 23 December 1959, fol. 28, CO 1027/144. 34  CRO to Accra, repeated to Salisbury and Pretoria, 5 January 1960, fol. 56, CO 1027/144. 35  CRO to Accra, repeated to Salisbury and Pretoria, 5 January 1960, fol. 55, CO 1027/144. 36  CRO to Accra, 31 December 1959, fol. 43, CO 1027/144. 32 33

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misleading reports based on half-heard conversations between him and some of Pan-Africans’.37 The CRO agreed with the High Commission’s suggestion that the ‘best way of dealing with this is to exclude press and photographers but for Evans and Moxon to give them afterwards whatever account of it the two of them consider expedient’.38 Officials also decided that Macmillan should decline all requests from journalists for advance interviews, but that he ‘should be willing, as he did after his Commonwealth tour, to accept an invitation from the Commonwealth Correspondents’ Association to speak to them at a lunch meeting’,39 to take no part in interviews with individual correspondents during the tour ‘unless strongly advised to do so’40 and to avoid numerous press conferences, which were to be prepared for extensively and conducted ‘preferably late in the visit’ in each of the countries or territories.41 Policy pronouncements were to be delivered in a single speech, and in these speeches Macmillan’s mission was purely to restate the government’s position and to venture no further.42

4.2   The Press Corps More specific, circumstantial issues fuelled the government’s fears. This was the first time a serving British prime minister had visited Africa,43 and papers lapped up the opportunity to send their most celebrated correspondents. On few previous occasions, too, had so many London-based political correspondents and editors converged simultaneously on the same regions of Africa. They took with them both a professional inclination to comment and a tendency to frame events in parliamentary or political perspective. The journalists who accompanied Macmillan were vocal. They were opinionated. And they liked to produce thoughtful, contentious pieces. They were not shy, retiring types, but self-avowedly combative, expressive, engaged—and engaging. Munnion refers to Henry Fairlie, the Mail’s  Accra to CRO, 23 December 1959, fol. 26, CO 1027/144.  Ibid. Agreed with in CRO to Accra, 31 December 1959, fol. 43, CO 1027/144. 39  S.H. Evans to Ben Cockram, 26 November 1959, fol. 1, CO 1027/144. 40  CRO to Pretoria, Accra and Salisbury, 1 December 1959, fol. 6, CO 1027/144. 41  Ibid. It was hoped that there would be a maximum of one press conference in each country. 42  CAB 129/101. 43  Lewis, ‘“White Man”’, p. 70. 37 38

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political correspondent, as ‘then the most celebrated of Fleet Street political columnists’.44 Fairlie eschewed anonymity, and was later prominent enough to put into circulation the term ‘the Establishment’ to describe those, who, while often unelected, controlled the levers of power in British public life.45 Rene MacColl, the Express’s most revered foreign correspondent, was best known for his sensational, uncompromising writing style. Peregrine Worsthorne, special correspondent for the Telegraph, later described his approach to journalism as centring on ‘destabilising (and) de-legitimising all the institutions one after the other’.46 Anne Sharpley, the only woman correspondent on the tour, also appears to have had a strong character. According to Ann Leslie, another of Britain’s first woman foreign correspondents, Sharpley advised her at the start of her career that there were ‘two things that as a female correspondent she’d need to do: “First, sleep with the resident Reuter’s correspondent and then with the chief of police. That way you’ll pick up stories before anyone else”’.47 In addition to being vocal, the group was comparatively progressive politically. On the Right, some of the most prominent and respected, such as Fairlie and MacColl, were self-professed ‘liberal’ or ‘radical’ Tories,48 whose opinions were symptomatic of those which had caused the prime minister so much worry during 1959. Others were committed Africanists who knew the continent well or had connections to it. These included Sydney Jacobson (Mirror), who had been born in the Transvaal in South Africa,49 and Anthony Sampson, the Observer’s representative, who had lived and worked alongside black South Africans for four years in the Johannesburg offices of an African magazine called Drum.50 It seemed that during the ‘wind of change’ era, British papers attracted writers who wished to see a change in the post-war world and that papers employed journalists on the same basis. These included not only the Observer, but

 Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 88.  Anthony Howard, ‘Henry Jones Fairlie’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter OXDNB). 46  ‘I might well have been gay, but there was such pressure to be non-gay’ (Interview with Worsthorne), London Evening Standard, 6 October 2011. 47  ‘Ann Leslie, Queen of the frontline’, Observer, 5 April 2009. 48  Rene MacColl, Dateline and Deadline (London, 1956); Howard, ‘Fairlie’, OXDNB. 49  Terence Lancaster, ‘Sydney Jacobson’, OXDNB. 50  Sampson, Anatomist, pp. 17–43. See Chap. 5 for more detail about Sampson. 44 45

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also papers including the Mail, whose political leaning during this period was markedly more liberal than it is today.51 The government’s understanding of the importance of the press and its worries concerning the political inclinations and vocality of the press party converged in internal discussions on the press’s possible characterisation of the situation in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the second of the government’s main perceived dangers. When, on 15 December, Evans received a telegram from the CRO communicating the Federal authorities’ intention to provide ‘an aircraft free of charge’ for travel within the Federation for ‘local press’ representatives only,52 he responded with some shock and trepidation. ‘I cannot think’, he wrote, ‘that the Federal authorities are so misguided as not to realise that the attitude of Fleet Street to Colonial African affairs in the critical time ahead is going to be quite largely conditioned by the impressions taken back by these U.K. correspondents. Moreover, what these people write will have a considerable influence on Parliament and the public. Some of them will arrive with a strongly critical bias. If the Federal authorities are wise they will do their utmost to remove or weaken any such bias: certainly they would be most unwise to strengthen it at the outset by an unhelpful attitude’.53 Feelers sent out by the Federal authorities regarding the racial composition of the overseas press party set further alarm bells ringing.54 Once more, Evans cautioned against provoking the British press. ‘I am not aware that there will be any black or coloured people in the overseas Press party’, he told the CRO, ‘but again I would emphasise that any discrimination against a bona fide representative of the U.K. Press would result in a tremendous row involving the whole U.K. Press’.55

 See Chap. 5 for relevant information about the Mail.  Alastair Scott (Chief Press Officer to CRO) to Evans, 15 December 1959, supplying extracts from a letter from the Office of the High Commissioner in Salisbury, fol. 18 (i.e. copy of this letter included with Evans’s letter to Scott), CO 1027/144. 53  Evans to Scott, 16 December 1959, fol. 18, CO 1027/144. 54  Scott to Evans, 15 December 1959, fol. 18 (as above) CO 1027/144. 55  Evans to Scott, 16 December 1959, fol. 18, CO 1027/144. 51 52

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4.3   African Nationalism and ‘Multi-Racialism’ in Central and South Africa From the very early stages of the tour, before Macmillan had even reached the settler regions of Central and South Africa, all indications were that Evans’s instincts regarding the journalists’ ‘strongly critical bias’ had been spot-on. The majority of the editorials published the day before the prime minister left Britain and during the tour’s first few days focused on the Federation, settlers and race relations in Central and South Africa. Editors questioned the desirability of the Federation, argued for Banda’s release and worried over apartheid’s dangers and injustices.56 These pieces reflected the continued resonance of established frames of understanding and expression on Central African affairs alongside press practices. In turn, these point both to the newspapers’ relative independence from the government and to the importance of the British press as an institution in informing developments in Africa. Judging by the timing and the nature of these articles, their appearance reflected the efforts of opposition parties, including Labour and the Liberals, as well as the Bow Group, to raise these topics in parliament. The Bow Group was a Conservative research organisation composed primarily of young Conservatives and which expressed some progressive views on events in Africa. Parliamentary goings-on continued to be reported in the press. Yet the press also remained more than a repository of parliamentary perspectives. As we have seen, the arguments of Labour and the Liberals on the aforementioned topics meshed with many papers’ longer-term concerns, and therefore mirrored editorial perspectives.57 This longer-term press interest in support of nationalism had also been informed by African activism and the efforts of Astor and the Africa Bureau to influence press perspectives on developments in the settler colonies. In the case of South Africa, to these influences must be added the Boycott Movement, which had done a lot to raise British public awareness of the situation in South Africa during 1959, yet whose efforts had also intertwined with those of British MPs and the press/Observer in important ways, as British parliamentary debates and Luthuli’s open letter signified. 56  Observer, 3 January 1960, p. 14; Herald, 4 January 1960, fp; News Chronicle, 4 January 1960, p.  4; Telegraph, 4 January 1960, p.  10; Mirror, 5 January 1960, p.  2; Herald, 5 January 1960, fp; News Chronicle, 5 January 1960, p. 4; Guardian, 5 January 1960, p. 6; Times, 6 January 1960, p. 11. 57  See Chap. 3.

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Upon setting foot in West Africa, British journalists were in the hunt for a good story.58 Many of them were under editorial pressure to do so because of the way the newspapers worked. Their ‘hunt’ echoed the search for sensation that had been a feature of the ‘popular’ coverage ‘from the field’ of the events of early March 1959. At that time, it had merged with other influences, including societal racism, press restrictions and nationalism, to generate stories which emphasised African violence. Journalists had to dig deep at first. British press treatment of the tour was initially rather positive from a government perspective, with the exception of accounts of the poor turn-out for Macmillan’s reception at the airport in Accra, characterised as ‘adequate, but hardly overwhelming’ by Stanley Bonnett of the Daily Mail.59 The day following Macmillan’s arrival, the press covered the cheerful welcome the ‘mammies’ gave the prime minister and his wife, Lady Dorothy, in the capital’s market.60 The ‘mammies’ were the market’s female traders. Photos of Macmillan perched on ‘a mammy chair’ held aloft by a group of African men running into the surf in the city’s harbour were splashed across the front pages of the populars.61 The mood the press conveyed to British readerships was fun and light-hearted. This reflected the tour’s careful staging as well as the British government’s distribution of official photos of which the ‘mammy chair’ image was one.62 However, officials were not able to monopolise the narrative for very long. Right-leaning papers soon began to latch on to the kind of stories that recalled their earlier portrayal of Ghana in the period immediately following independence, such as those which focused on Nkrumah’s apparent disregard for Britain.63 On 9 January, MacColl informed Express readers that the Ghanaian prime minister had recently ‘(flayed) Britain’ at a CPP rally in Accra.64 The Telegraph and the Express reported the failure of approximately twenty guests (including Nkrumah’s wife) to turn up for a state banquet held in Macmillan’s honour.65 The prime minister’s initial  Peregrine Worsthorne, Tricks of Memory: An Autobiography (London, 1993), pp. 191–2.  Mail, 7 January 1960, fp. 60  Express, 8 January 1960, p.  2; Mail, 8 January 1960, p.  5; Mirror, 8 January 1960, pp. 9–11; Times, 8 January 1960, p. 10; Herald, 8 January 1960, fp. 61  Mail, 8 January 1960, p. 5; Mirror, 8 January 1960, pp. 9–10; Express, 8 January 1960, fp. Also: Telegraph, 8 January 1960, fp. 62  Photo 2 in CO 1069/1 (Photos of the tour with press statements on reverse). 63  See Chap. 2. 64  Express, 9 January 1960, p. 2. 65  Telegraph, 11 January 1960, p. 20 (article begins fp); Express, 11 January 1960, p. 2. 58 59

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welcome in colonial Nigeria received a far more favourable press than had the airport reception in Ghana.66 Nigeria was nearing independence. According to British journalists, all the Nigerian leader did was to criticise Nkrumah and to denounce apartheid.67 Yet Nigerian citizens, possibly anticipating this, had decided to take matters into their own hands, and British journalists reported their protests, such as at the University of Ibadan, where students staged a demonstration during Macmillan’s visit to the campus, shouting slogans and waving placards emblazoned with the words ‘Hail McNato’ and ‘Lord Malvern is an ass. Tell him so’.68 Lord Malvern had been one of the architects of the Federation and had served as prime minister of Southern Rhodesia and the Federation in previous years. The Times’s correspondent considered the encounter amusing.69 Yet the majority of journalists wrote it up as an unnerving or portentous spectacle. MacColl thought that the protest ‘(could) not be written off as just a light-hearted “rag”’.70 Bonnett told Mail readers that Macmillan had ‘tried to laugh his way out’, but ‘ended up grim-faced and angry’.71 The presence of these compromising narratives reflected first and foremost the efforts of Africans to exploit the British presence on the ground as a means of communicating to wider audiences. In Ghana’s case, they may also simply have reflected a lowering of regard within Ghana for Britain and the release of constraints on Ghanaians’ ability to express this attitude. Nevertheless, Nkrumah did use the tour to initiate public attacks on British policy. The News Chronicle noted that the week of Macmillan’s visit marked ‘the tenth anniversary of his call for “positive action” against British rule’.72 The welcome at the airport and the non-attendance of guests at the banquet can be interpreted in this context. In addition, by 1960, opposition groups were much less free to express their opinions as compared to 1957, which meant that the sentiments about Britain which Ghana projected during the tour appeared as more homogenous than may have been the case. Nkrumah had by then passed the Preventive Detention Act (1958), which enabled the government to detain people for up to five 66  Times, 12 January 1960, p. 12; News Chronicle, 12 January 1960, fp; Mail, 12 January 1960, p. 9; Express, 9 January 1960, p. 2. 67  Evening Standard, 13 January 1960, p. 9; Mail, 14 January 1960, p. 9. 68  Anthony Sampson, Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity (London, 1967), p. 184. 69  Times, 15 January 1960, p. 10. 70  Express, 15 January 1960, p. 2. 71  Mail, 15 January 1960, p. 11. 72  News Chronicle, 9 January 1960, p. 2.

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years without trial. In Nigeria, the protests linked to the territory’s colonial status and neo-colonial influences. These concerned regional issues, such as fears surrounding the French atomic tests being conducted close­by in the Sahara. Yet they also possessed a Pan-African dimension, to which the placard referring to Lord Malvern, Welensky’s predecessor, attested. One member of the youth wing of the Malawi Congress Party later described how grateful he and his colleagues had been to these Nigerians who had protested on their behalf, and recounted how their efforts had inspired protests in Nyasaland.73 British newspapers’ longer-­ term interest in Central African affairs and their support for nationalism in the region ensured a captive audience for the students’ demonstrations. In addition, the accompanying editorials began to conflict with many of the concepts that Macmillan strove publicly to promote. As Macmillan’s Accra speech illustrated, these were that Africa was a diverse continent of races and places in which the differences had to be respected and catered for, particularly in countries which lacked the relative racial ‘homogeneity’ of West Africa.74 In contrast, British papers supported the calls of the demonstrators at the University of Ibadan in emphasising that Africa was one, and that its future resided firmly with the African majority irrespective of the settlers’ outposts. Many journalists who covered the tour, including those working for right-leaning papers, wrote that they considered the white presence in Africa a dull anachronism. Worsthorne thought that Accra’s ‘quiet, restrained and undemonstrative welcome’ befitted a country now looking to the future unfettered by the old colonial ties.75 It was Macmillan and Dorothy, he wrote, who ‘introduced a touch of the past in such striking contrast to the gleaming modernity of their African hosts’. In Nigeria, still stuck in a colonial time-warp, ‘everything was so Old-World’, Barber quipped, ‘that Lady Dorothy looked more than ever like a visiting Girl Guide commissioner in mufti’.76 If Africans were soon to triumph continent-wide, as many British journalists believed they would, the view that it was inadvisable for Macmillan 73  Mkandawire, interviewed in ‘Africa at 50: Wind of Change’ (episode 5), BBC Radio 4, first broadcast 16 November 2010, PLN036/104A2572, British Library Sound Archive (hereafter BLSA). 74  ‘Text of Speech Delivered by Mr. Macmillan at the State Banquet in Accra on Saturday, 9th January, 1960’, CAB 129/101, pp. 24–27. 75  Telegraph, 7 January 1960, p. 20 (begins fp). 76  News Chronicle, 12 January 1960, fp.

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to comment on the internal affairs of Commonwealth member states, such as apartheid South Africa, therefore found no echo in British papers. Instead, journalists were keen to point out that adopting a critical stance was the only way that Britain might hope to retain the loyalty of the Africans, and thus its global power. Left-leaning papers led the charge. ‘Britain can confidently face the challenge of modern Africa so long as she is willing to give Africans a square deal’, explained the Mirror.77 Legum pursued the same point in relation to Kenya and the Federation. In his view, Britain’s ‘future influence’ depended on its ‘re-discovering’ some ‘moral strength’.78 This meant supporting the demands of the African majority. Pursuing two different policies in Africa—one which protected minority (white) rights, and one which aimed to bring about majority rule—was thought to be asking for trouble. These perspectives echoed the coverage of 1959, with its emphasis on the strength of the African nationalist challenge to colonial authority and white settler intransigence in the face of it. However, in discussing the obsolescence of empire and Britain’s future influence, journalists introduced new elements into the existing narratives. The tour raised questions regarding Britain’s status and influence, and presented journalists, who normally resided in London, with an opportunity to view African and colonial affairs through a fresh, magnified lens. The depiction of obsolescence has a direct bearing on matters concerning the British cultural context to the end of empire in Africa. British newspaper coverage of Ghana at the time of independence and of Central Africa and Kenya during 1959 had tended to uphold a ‘positive’, rather ‘self-affirming’, view of Britain’s role in Africa during those months as well as historically. Yet, the concept of obsolescence, while it ‘rejected’ the past, was also not necessarily a negative one. It was sentimental. It conveyed the impression that the era of empire had come and gone and that the colonial project had been fleeting, ephemeral perhaps, but had once possessed a certain majesty, encapsulated in imagery including of Ghana’s faded bunting. Now was a new era, many journalists suggested, and they were keen for Britain to champion it. In this way, British newspapers continued to help British readers to negotiate the era of imperial decline in optimistic ways. Importantly, however, newspapers’ hopes were conditional on the government following its suggestions.  Mirror, 5 January 1960, p. 2.  Observer, 3 January 1960, p. 14.

77 78

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Again, these depictions were of a ‘single’ nature and circumscribed the past. The omissions had implications not only for British self-perceptions but also for communities in Africa and for Anglo-African relations. The Empire was not simply ‘obsolete’ for it had been and remained vigorously opposed. The notion of obsolescence communicated only a partial understanding of the actions of the people who protested on the tour in Ghana and Nigeria, who were not simply rejecting something which previously they had accepted as beneficial. It was true that ‘nationalism’ (in its new state-centric sense) was relatively new, consolidating in the post-war era. But the sentiments, including grievances, which informed it, had a much longer history, as we have seen. Significantly, British newspapers tended not to communicate this regarding any of the Anglophone colonial contexts—for a variety of reasons, which likely linked to the press’s lack of a sustained presence in Africa in the past; a probable previous government monopoly on stories from/of Africa; an historical monopoly of British Establishment interests in Anglophone Africa; the nature of the press’s frames of interpretation on empire and Africa, which linked to all of the aforementioned; and the complex nature and evolution of nationalism/s in colonial contexts. The British press, authoring this ‘first draft of history’, tended to interpret the ‘rise’ of nationalism as the first rumblings of discontent and communicated this understanding to its readers through concepts including of obsolescence. This reinforced the view that the past had been acceptable, even valuable, and contributed to a cultural environment in which it was hard for people in Britain and Africa to understand one another. The other new theme—of Britain’s ‘future influence’—bears, too, on matters concerning Britain’s ‘internal decolonisation’. Its presence in the press begins to reveal that journalists’ objections with the settler societies cannot be understood only in moral terms. The events of 1959 and this, the tour, posed different questions. Journalists responded by framing their perspectives in different ways. If their objections were ‘moral’, they were also self-interested, a sentiment which Africa’s white settlers certainly sensed. The perspectives on Britain’s future influence reflected the continued significance of African activism to British journalists’ understandings of the end of empire, and to the extent that the latter influenced the British government, also of this mediated activism to British policy. The British press viewed Africans as important people to please and not to alienate,

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not simply because this was understood as morally correct but also because Africans were perceived as possessing great latent power. If Africa today is regarded in the ‘Western imagination’ as ‘the hopeless continent’, then this coverage indicates that this has not always been so. ‘The hopeless continent’ was the front-page title to an edition of the Economist magazine in 2000 that discussed the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), but it seemed at the time to epitomise a broader set of Western perspectives on post-colonial Africa. While the associated article chose to contrast Africa’s ‘hopeless’ experiences during the new millennia with the ‘hopeful’ era of the formation of Sierra Leone, when ‘freed’ slaves from the Americas travelled to the region in order to found a new society, it might be more accurate to locate the period of observed promise in the mid-twentieth century, when the people of the continent freed themselves from the grip of colonial rule. During the ‘wind of change’ in Africa, British newspapers wanted to get on side with these perceived people of the future. If these representations were positive, however, they also carried a great weight. They contributed to raising expectations against which commentators would judge subsequent developments. In the press, this framing of African power and promise proved particularly damaging when it appeared alongside positive or neutral characterisations of the period of colonial rule and a failure to consider colonial legacies. Later events, including post-colonial conflicts such as in Sierra Leone, fuelled a negative narratological turn. The latter recalled and reinforced older, established cultural narratives on Africa, which proliferated in places including Britain, and which stretched back to the era of the Atlantic slave trade, when European characterisations of Africa and Africans, previously largely neutral, altered dramatically as a form of justification for it. But, for a moment, during the years of the ‘wind of change’, everything seemed possible. The modernity of Macmillan’s Ghanaian hosts gleamed.

4.4   Official PR Efforts: An Exercise in Damage Limitation? Macmillan and his PR adviser were irritated by the journalists even at this early stage. Not all of the annoyance bore an obvious relation to newspapers’ comments on British policy. Yet at all times it belied the myth of a cosy relationship on Africa and of government control. According to

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Evans, Macmillan vented his irritation before each and every press conference, irrespective of the line-up.79 Outings also sparked apprehension. Evans displayed particular concern at the press’s portrayal of the Tema/ Volta trip, where a huge hydroelectric dam was soon to be constructed. The government had hoped that the excursion would showcase Ghana’s development as well as the scale of Britain’s economic investment in the country. It had been hot. Macmillan had had to make three unscheduled stops.80 ‘The U.K. correspondents fussed about his pallor and told each other that he had “Accra tummy”’, Evans recorded in his diary: ‘I did my best to remind them that without exception this kind of thing was said at various points during all tours, but a number of them ran with it all the same’.81 In Ghana, Evans appeared to be engaged in a relatively futile exercise in damage limitation, which only invited ridicule from journalists.82 The prime minister’s personal contact with the press representatives was by all accounts more fruitful and engaged with weightier issues, including Britain’s Africa policy. Macmillan and Lady Dorothy treated British journalists to drinks regularly during the tour from the end of the Ghana section.83 Worsthorne thought that most journalists were ‘overawed’ by the proximity to a prime minister that these off-the-record chats provided and felt ‘touched’ Macmillan wanted to share his ‘private musings’ with them.84 These conversations may therefore have carried weight with journalists. Significantly, too, Macmillan’s private musings sometimes differed from his public statements. This was particularly so in relation to South Africa. In public, Macmillan underscored the importance of refraining from commenting on the ‘internal policies’ of Commonwealth members. In private, he told British journalists that he disagreed with apartheid and that he had decided to speak out on the issue. This happened early on. Throughout the tour, and in answer to the issues raised by the ‘Open Letter’ published in the Observer in December, Sampson received repeated reassurances

79  Harold Evans, Downing Street Diary: The Macmillan Years 1957–1963 (London, 1981), pp. 87–106. 80  Ibid., pp. 90–91. 81  Ibid., p. 91. 82  News Chronicle, 9 January 1960, p. 2. 83  Worsthorne, Tricks, p. 189. 84  Ibid., p. 191.

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about Macmillan’s intention to speak about apartheid.85 At a New Year’s Eve party in Downing Street, the prime minister told the journalist that ‘he completely agreed with the letter’.86 ‘I did not believe that he would dare criticise Henrik Verwoerd while he was his guest’, Sampson recalled, ‘but his private secretary, Tim Bligh, kept assuring me through the tour that the speech would include paragraphs which would clearly dissociate Britain from apartheid. “They’re still in”, he promised me as we travelled down the continent, “they’re still in”’.87 Henrik Verwoerd was the prime minister of South Africa, the leader of the (Afrikaner) National Party and one of apartheid’s architects. Reassurances such as these were not for Sampson’s ears alone. On the 11th, the journalists explained that at a press conference in Accra Macmillan had hinted that he intended to speak to Verwoerd privately about apartheid.88 A week later, the press reported much more categorically that it was now ‘almost certain’ that Macmillan would speak out ‘and very firmly’ on ‘racial topics’ during his visit to South Africa, not only in private ‘but in public too’.89 These later reports give no indication of how journalists had unearthed the information, which suggests that it had been revealed privately to the press. Macmillan’s actions continued to suggest that he perceived a relation between British newspapers and decolonisation. He appeared to be trying to encourage patience in the face of a difficult situation in which he hoped to show that his heart was in the right place. His success should not be overemphasised. Press criticism of British policy towards South Africa only intensified in the days and weeks that followed. Journalists were sceptical of Macmillan’s intentions, and government policy remained reactive. The relationship between the government and the press was fraught at times, and not only concerning the conflicting opinions on what it was best for Britain to do in Africa. As the plans for the tour indicated, the government’s concern extended to press treatment of the places they visited, and in the preceding three years few African countries had been as berated as Ghana. The 1960 tour was the first time Nkrumah had spoken to British newspapermen in twelve months, testament to the depth of the  Sampson, Anatomist, p. 93.  Ibid. 87  Ibid. ‘The speech’ refers to the Cape Town speech. 88  Mail, p. 5; Express, p. 2. 89  Express, p. 2. 85 86

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enduring gulf between them.90 In an article on 12 January, the Times (of London) summed up the ‘protest at British reports’ of the tour thus far, which had appeared in an editorial in the Ghana Times.91 The Ghana Times was said to have ‘roundly (condemned) certain foreign correspondents for their reporting of Mr. Macmillan’s visit to Ghana’ by ‘refusing to see anything good in any anti-imperialist or the country he represents’, it quoted. British journalists’ references to the faded appearance of the flags and bunting lining the streets were cited as a principal point of contention. These Ghanaian narratives recalled older fears, which point to the continuities in the patterns of responses to the coverage as well as of the reporting. As before, these responses must be understood as being about more than British press perspectives or motivations. They continued to reveal as much (if not more) about readers’ anxieties and concerns during the ‘wind of change’. The role of British newspaper coverage must continue to be understood in terms of its passive utility in addition to its active function. In 1957, British press treatment of Ghana had provided one means by which the governing CPP aimed to consolidate its domestic political popularity and a new nationalism.92 It retained an internal, domestic significance, including a passive utility, at the time of the tour (1960). Certainly, much of the coverage of Macmillan’s visit to Ghana was ‘negative’. Yet the Ghana Times chose not to run with those ‘negative’ aspects which concerned the obsolescence of empire, or indeed with the wider sweep of British press opinion on Central and Southern African affairs, which supported African nationalism. Journalists’ references to the faded flags were intended to demonstrate this very point: the changing nature of the modern world.93 Judging from the tone of the Ghana Times’ report, these omissions reflected the legacy of the CPP’s past relations with the British press, as well as a certain amount of hurt and resentment towards the Westerners’ self-proclaimed ‘right’ (as the paper saw it) to comment on the domestic affairs of newly independent states. The omissions may also have continued to reflect practical considerations, such as the CPP’s efforts to consolidate its domestic political popularity by vilifying or scapegoating outsiders.

 Mail, 8 January 1960, p. 5.  Times, 12 January 1960, p. 9. 92  See Chap. 2. 93  As in the Telegraph, 6 January 1960, p. 16. 90 91

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As in 1957, the British government’s efforts to counter certain of the British press’s emphases on Ghana fell on deaf ears. The day before the publication of the Ghana Times’ editorial, Macmillan distanced himself from the reports. At a press conference on the 10th, when asked by a Ghanaian journalist whether he had had a cool welcome, the prime minister replied that ‘the truth was the exact opposite, and he could not understand how such reports were written’.94 The character of the subsequent Ghana Times editorial suggested that the relationship between the British press and Ghana continued to have its own dynamic independent of the British government.

4.5   The Press and the ‘Lagos Statement’ Events inside the Federation were soon to reinforce just how disruptive the same dynamic could be in territories still governed from Westminster. The Federal government’s response to British press treatment of the events of 3 March 1959 and their fall-out, when it made efforts to influence British media treatment of Central Africa in its favour through mediums including the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee, provides some insight into the impact of the coverage on the region’s white communities.95 Broadly, the settlers had feared the newspapers’ emphases on African activism, Federal machinations and the unviability of the Federation. News of these emphases had travelled back to the region owing both to the circulation of British papers there and to the efforts of regional white settler newspapers to select and reprint or to summarise the juiciest pieces. The Federal government had also monitored British newspaper comment. These actions had reflected the settlers’ understanding that British news content bore a relation to political developments in British Central Africa. Yet by the time of the tour in January 1960, the situation was even more combustible due to a changed local context, which amplified these processes. It is possible, moreover, due to the nature of the evidence available, more closely to tease out the nature of the relationship between the British press coverage, public opinion and the settlers’ fears that formed so prominent a feature of the press’s role in Central Africa during decolonisation and which presented paths of opportunity for African activists.

 Guardian, 11 January 1960, fp.  See Chap. 3.

94 95

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Macmillan later recalled that upon setting foot in Salisbury, the capital of Southern Rhodesia, his first stop in the region, he ‘could not help being struck by the sense of uncertainty, whether among Europeans or Africans’.96 In the case of the former, the official report of the tour attributed the unease to ‘the year 1960, which was to see the visit of the Monckton Commission and the opening of the Constitutional Review Conference’.97 Yet ‘more specific fears’, it thought, ‘had been aroused by reports of what the Prime Minister was alleged to have said at a press conference in Lagos (Nigeria) on 13th January, and of a television interview given by Lord Shawcross’ because ‘both seemed to imply that the United Kingdom Government were prepared to see the break-up of the Federation if African opinion in the two northern protectorates so demanded’. Lord Shawcross was a member of the upcoming Monckton Commission. The official report noted what appeared to be ‘a general lack of confidence in the intentions of the United Kingdom Government towards the Federation’.98 Hitherto, ministers in Salisbury ‘had assumed that Britain favoured its continuation’,99 yet ‘recent developments had caused them to wonder whether there had been some change in United Kingdom policy on this’. The significance Federal officials attached to the Shawcross and Lagos comments reflected the fact that they had occurred recently and had not been discussed with the British government. However, it also continued to demonstrate the extent to which anxieties in Africa could be stimulated by the British press and publicity. British newspapers and television programmes fuelled a desire for hard information that British officials were either unable or unwilling to provide. In doing so, they stimulated tensions. The British government displayed considerable concern at this, particularly in relation to the Lagos statement. On 15 January, the CRO sent Macmillan a telegram in which it informed him of the British press depictions.100 ‘Guardian 14th January under headline “Nyasaland will be free to decide”, the telegram read, ‘reports you as having told Press Conference in Lagos on 13th January that “There was no question of forcing Nyasaland  Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (London, 1972), p. 131.  ‘Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: Commentary’, 12 April 1960, CAB 129/101, pp. 60–61, p. 60. 98  Ibid. 99  ‘Record of a Meeting of Ministers held at Salisbury on 19th January, 1960, at 8.45 a.m.’, 12 April 1960, CAB 129/101, pp. 67–69, p. 67. 100  Commonwealth Secretary to PM, 15 January 1960, PREM 11/3065. 96 97

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to remain in a fully independent Central African Federation…” Other papers have also taken your remarks as implying that Nyasaland will be able to choose whether or not to stay in Federation’. ‘This puts a meaning on your words’, it continued, ‘which goes further than what has been said before…eventual choice that we have contemplated until now would be between dependence and independence for Federation as a whole and not a choice for component territories whether or not to stay in Federation’.101 The telegram ended with a suggestion that ‘it might be well to have a form of words ready for use’ as ‘you will certainly be question (sic) about this as soon as you reach Salisbury’. The government’s fears concerning press representation of Macmillan’s words, which it had done so much to try to avert during the tour’s planning stage, were reaching a climax. The coverage compromised the government’s pursuance of a ‘middle road’. As in Ghana, it undermined the government’s ability to control the British narrative of the imperial endgame. The relationship between the press content, the broader metropolitan political context to the end of empire in Africa and the future of the Federation to which Evans had alluded in December, which had surfaced immediately prior to the tour and which had been so very evident a feature of the events of 1959, was also budding with first fruits. While the CRO drafted its telegram to Macmillan, members of the Opposition composed a message of their own in response to the press reports arriving in London. In a telegram received in Salisbury on the 18th (and published in the Guardian), Labour MPs James Callaghan and Hilary Marquand told Macmillan that they ‘(welcomed)’ his reported statement in Lagos ‘that when the time comes the expressed opinion of people of Nyassaland (sic) and Northern Rhodesia will decide whether Federation is beneficial to them’.102 Press reports of Macmillan’s remarks had supplied the necessary ammunition for Callaghan and Marquand to re-engage the government on the question of the northern territories’ ‘right to decide’. The publication by the Guardian of the telegram then secured an audience for the politicians’ words and held the prime minister publicly to account. Macmillan’s initial response to the MPs’ telegram smacked of frustration and displayed a hint of irritation hitherto reserved for members of the British press corps. ‘This will, I suppose require an answer’, he wrote: ‘They will just put their telegrams in the Press. Both Sir NB and Mr Evans 101 102

 Emphasis added.  Callaghan and Marquand to Macmillan, received 18 January 1960, PREM 11/3066.

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should be consulted. Draft reply should be prepared’.103 Some care went into the response. Yet Macmillan’s reaction conveyed a sense that this was what was to be expected from the Labour Party. The government devoted more energy towards quelling concerns in Africa. Macmillan’s reply to the two MPs trailed by some three or four days his discussions with Federal ministers on the topic as well as his main policy speech in Salisbury, in which he strove to clear up the confusion  caused, as he saw it, by the British press misreporting his words. In his speech in Salisbury, Macmillan rounded on the press, explaining that his words had been ‘misunderstood or misrepresented’.104 ‘I should like to take the opportunity to repeat the words which I actually used’, he elaborated, ‘and having some little experience I now go about at these conferences with a tape recording machine and I quote from the record as played back by the machine’. He did so. He also firmly reiterated his support for Federation. Sacrificing amicable relations with the press, in this instance, was a price Macmillan felt it necessary to pay. British correspondents were incensed. Evans characterised the following day as ‘critical’.105 Journalists ‘resented’ the prime minister’s reference to being misinterpreted, Evans recorded, ‘and to the necessity to travel with a tape recorder’: ‘They accused him of quoting himself out of context and three or four of them waylaid me as we left the hall, “insisting” that the whole of the transcript should be made available to them. But the P.M. agreed to have another off the record talk with them at Government House and did it beautifully’. Macmillan had stepped in once again to alleviate tensions, and by all accounts British journalists were warming to him immensely. Evans recorded that Rene MacColl ‘now likes Mac in a big way’. The feeling was not mutual. Press treatment of the Central African section of the tour was almost entirely negative from the British government’s perspective, as Lewis describes in her study of the Northern Rhodesian visit.106 Journalists scrupulously documented persistent African nationalist protests; the discovery of four sticks of gelignite in the Savoy Hotel, where Macmillan was to dine; and Lady Dorothy’s fall up the steps 103   Macmillan, handwritten note, together with the Callaghan/Marquand telegram, undated, PREM 11/3066. 104  ‘Main Policy Speech’, Salisbury, 19th January 1960, CAB 129/101, pp. 120–5, p. 124. 105  Evans, Downing Street Diary, p. 98. 106  Lewis, ‘White Man’.

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of their aircraft, Britannia, which had caused her leg to bleed.107 Meanwhile, press commentary continued to push the twin themes of African nationalism and white settler intransigence in the face of Macmillan’s more dulcet tones.108 The press consistently irritated him. The strain was showing. According to Evans, in one of his speeches in Salisbury, Macmillan once ‘again interpolated a complaining piece about the problems of doing international business with every word weighed by the Press and every expression on his face recorded’.109 The prime minister planned to get some respite in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, with a trip to the Victoria Falls, where he hoped to keep the press at arm’s length.110

4.6   The British Press, Public Opinion and Policy: Settler Experiences Yet however much the British government feared the miscommunication of Macmillan’s words, the thrust of his remarks was not the settlers’ main concern. This mirrored white understanding of British reporting of the events of 1959, and provides further insight into the relationship between the press, public opinion and the settler communities in Central Africa. The settlers were not interested in British press coverage for what it ‘revealed’ of British policy. Federal ministers felt it important that Macmillan publicly refute the allegations which had appeared in the press, for they were causing some embarrassment.111 Yet they generally conceded very early on that at Lagos the prime minister had gone no further than previous statements. Instead, when worries were articulated, they tended to lie, firstly, with the attitudinal dimension to British press treatment of Lagos, or the light the unanimity in press reports shed on the nature of opinion in Britain. Secondly, concerns lay with the British government’s response to these reports—or the lack of one initially—and what this indicated about its relationship to the British press and public. Both worries pointed to the perceived power of the papers.  Ibid.  ‘Main Policy Speech’, Salisbury, 19th January 1960, CAB 129/101. 109  Evans, Downing Street Diary, p. 98. 110  Ibid., p. 100. He was not entirely successful. 111  ‘Record (made by Federation officials) of a Meeting between Mr. Macmillan and Members of the Federal Cabinet on 19th January, 1960, at 9.50 a.m.’, CAB 129/101, pp. 69–71, p. 70. 107 108

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Four days elapsed between the Lagos press conference and Macmillan’s public refutation of the claims that had appeared in the press—ample time for speculation. The day before the speech, in a letter to A.D. Evans, the Federal Secretary for Home Affairs, Welensky set out his initial views. ‘I know there’s a great deal of concern in the country at the moment about things generally’, he wrote: ‘Macmillan’s statement in Nigeria hasn’t helped. I have seen what our High Commissioner says is the text of what he said, and there is really nothing that one can complain too much about. The sinister side of all this is the fact that no attempt was made to get the correct version—if the version I have been given is the correct one—across either in the United Kingdom or here, and I don’t like that. I know people talk a lot. It’s one of the failings of the human race, but I must say I’m a bit disturbed by the ease with which people talk about getting out, not only out of the two Northern Territories, but out of Southern Rhodesia, because things appear to be getting a little bit difficult. It makes me sour’.112 The Federal domestic context to the Lagos statement is important in understanding Welensky’s concerns. British press reports of the statement linked to debates within the white community on the recent perceived shift in British public opinion towards a more liberal consensus; on the role of British journalists in reflecting or, indeed, constituting this; and on the apparent susceptibility of the governing Conservative Party to one or both of these pressures by the beginning of 1960. White settlers were aware of the British public context to the events of 1959, including the appointment of the Monckton Commission, and although the British government continually spoke out in support of the Federation, it also kept the Federal and colonial governments informed of the relevance of British metropolitan developments (amongst other factors) to future policy.113 As we have seen, Macmillan informed the Nyasaland government of the relation between public opinion and the terms of Banda’s prospective release. During the tour, in meetings with the Federal and Southern Rhodesian governments, the prime minister also continued to discuss the goals of the Monckton Commission in relation to British opinion. On 19 January, for example, Macmillan informed the Federal Cabinet that ‘The Monckton Commission would help to bring it home to public opinion 112  Welensky to A.D.  Evans (Secretary for Home Affairs), 18 January 1960, fol. 30, MSS. Welensky 198/6. 113  As in CAB 129/101.

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that the concept of Federation not only offered material advantage but was also right and fair’.114 Shockingly, he referred to—limited—political advancement for Nyasaland in the context of the government’s efforts to win this desired support at home.115 Elsewhere, British officials discussed the ‘problem’ of the settlers in a manner which reflected the same sentiment.116 Historians indicate that Macmillan feared white settlers more than Africans during the years of the ‘wind of change’, and that this was due to the settlers’ resistance to the government’s plans to pursue programmes of political advancement or to ‘move on’ from the empire.117 However, the material uncovered here suggests that the factor which informed the government’s fears of the settlers rather concerned the perceived relation between the actions of the settlers and waning British public support for Federation, an entity the government was keen to preserve. Evans had alluded to this preoccupation before the tour in his fearful communications on the Federal authorities’ thoughts on air travel within the Federation and on the potential for discrimination against ‘black or coloured’ journalists from the press party. In January 1960, Lord Home, echoing Evans’s earlier comments, summed up this perspective in a telegram to Macmillan in which he told him that ‘Welensky cannot bring himself to admit that the fate of Federation lies with the United Kingdom Parliament but it is a fact which he must be made to understand’.118 ‘He believes that our Government can bulldoze the next instalment of Federal constitution through Parliament’, Home explained, ‘and when I have told him of the difficult atmosphere and doubts of the younger Conservatives he has quite plainly thought them excuses for lack of political decision and guts. He must be made to 114  ‘Record (made by Federation officials) of a Meeting between Mr. Macmillan and Members of the Federal Cabinet on 19th January, 1960, at 9.50 a.m.’, CAB 129/101, pp. 69–71, p. 70. 115  Ibid. Other official communications indicate that changes were to be modest and that only the prospect of advance was to be offered before the Federal review in order to placate African opinion. ‘[Nyasaland constitution]: outward telegram no 110 from Mr Macleod to Sir R Armitage (repeated to Sir E Hone)’, 15 Feb 1960, PREM 11/3075, pp.  112–4, p. 112; and ‘[Future of Hastings Banda]: Cabinet conclusions’, 18 Feb 1960, CAB 128/34, CC 10(60)3, pp. 114–6, pp. 114–5; both in Murphy (ed.), British Documents. 116  ‘[Monckton Commission]: outward telegram from Lord Home to Mr Macmillan (Kaduna)’, 17 Jan 1960, PREM 11/3065, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, pp. 102–3. 117  For example: Hyam, Declining Empire, p. 282. 118  ‘[Monckton Commission]: outward telegram from Lord Home to Mr Macmillan (Kaduna)’, 17 Jan 1960, PREM 11/3065, in Murphy (ed.), British Documents, pp. 102–3.

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realise that the more he takes up attitudes which seem unreasonable…, the more he puts himself out on a limb here and our public becomes more and more doubtful as to whether their Government is backing the wrong horse. I am very uneasy about our Parliamentary position following the 1960 Review as largely because of their inept public relations Southern Rhodesia and the Federation are becoming more and more classed with South Africa in the public mind’. The settler press was an engine for the accumulation and local dissemination of disturbing material on these sensitive issues. At the start of the year, newspapers such as the Rhodesia Herald, the Bulawayo Chronicle and the Nyasaland Times regularly printed summaries of British press coverage of Central African affairs, together with information concerning individual articles’ prominence on the page.119 Particularly worrying pieces were sometimes borrowed from British newspapers and reprinted in full, often drawing heated responses from readers.120 Debates and trends in British politics were also summarised. ‘Britons need only a vote to control colonial destiny’, the headline to a reader’s letter in the Rhodesia Herald read on 7 January.121 ‘Federation must “sell” its case in Britain’, worried another.122 ‘If the British Press were prepared to print all points of view, the position would be vastly different’, the reader thought: ‘The attitude that the European is an ogre and the African a downtrodden slave is so far from the truth that every aspect of our problem is now so distorted in the minds of the British public that we enter 1960 with nothing in our favour at all… I suggest that our efforts in 1960…be directed to putting over the case for Federation to the man on the street in Britain’. White settler understanding of British press, public and parliamentary opinion could be as acute a source of contention and concern as British policy. This had significant implications, not only for the British government, but also for the settler 119  Rhodesia Herald: 1 January 1960, p. 11; 4 January 1960, p. 11; 5 January 1960, p. 2; 9 January 1960, fp; 15 January 1960, p. 24; 22 January 1960, p. 4. Bulawayo Chronicle: 1 January 1960, p. 7; 5 January 1960, p. 4; 6 January 1960, p. 8 and p. 10; 7 January 1960, p. 9; 9 January 1960, p. 5; 18 January 1960, p. 7; 21 January 1960, p. 5. 120  One such article was Henry Fairlie’s ‘Can Macmillan bring enlightenment?’, published in the Daily Mail in mid-January, reproduced in Rhodesian newspapers, and referred to by one Rhodesian woman as the most ‘obnoxious’ and ‘untrue’ article she had ever read in her life. See Rhodesia Herald, 13 January 1960, fp & Chronicle, 13 January 1960, fp. For the woman’s letter, see: Rhodesia Herald, 20 January 1960, p. 11. 121  Rhodesia Herald, 7 January 1960, p. 5. 122  Rhodesia Herald, 16 January 1960, p. 5.

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communities, whose political and civic cultures the British press and public came to permeate. Studies of white settler cultures in the Federation have tended to focus on British policy as the driving force behind the break-up of the notion of ‘Greater Britain’.123 ‘Greater Britain’ had, since the nineteenth century, connected the United Kingdom and its settler colonies across the world in a shared political community. Yet the presence of these sorts of debates within white society regarding ‘the man on the street’ and its dismissal of existing policy as its core concern suggest that there was a low political, including press, dimension to the growing estrangement that deserves scrutiny. The abrasive commentary of the left-leaning popular press, in particular, but over time, expanding to include that of papers on the Right, on the perceived outmoded, if not alien, characteristics of settler society and the estimated likelihood of total and imminent decolonisation prompted the settlers to question their relation to Britain and fed fears as to the future direction of British colonial policy. These sentiments found expression in more aggressive foreign and domestic policies and political and civic cultures firmly oriented against Britain, as reflected in politicians’ public and private deliberations and in sections of the print media. British news coverage also focused the settlers’ frustration externally. It provided a means by which people of European origin resistant to change were able to avoid more discomfiting issues such as African agency, discontent and domestic reform. British press coverage figured in settlers’ lived experiences of decolonisation in a manner which recalled those of the CPP and the NLM in Ghana, whose members also monitored, discussed and tried to influence it. Journalists’ writings, particularly from the field, shed light on how ordinary people and publics in Africa experienced decolonisation, and thus aspects of the lived experience of the process which counterbalance elite views. Yet if press content provides a window onto decolonisation whose vista differs from that provided by official documents, journalists were actors as well as observers in the drama they described. ‘The British press’ itself figured in political and social groups’ understanding of their lived realities, and often their predicament, at the end of empire. The terms ‘British press’ and ‘British public opinion’ infused African and white settler cultures at moments of flux, uncertainty and stress. This is a dynamic 123   Lowry, ‘“Shame Upon ‘Little England’”; Schwarz, White Man’s World; Ward, ‘Whirlwind’.

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that studies which assess the impact of the British press and public at the end of empire miss by confining their analyses to investigations of the influence of the coverage on policy within Britain’s own domestic political environment. Determining the impact of British press coverage on decolonisation in Africa also requires an examination of its influence ‘externally’ in Africa. The press coverage held this significance owing to the ways in which readers perceived it. Settler communities in Central Africa, alongside their presses, mediated British press and public opinion at the end of the empire in a manner which recalled the CPP’s use of material from the right-­ leaning press during 1957. As in Ghana, there appears to have been little discrepancy between the content of the British newspapers and the meanings which the settlers ascribed to it. Yet it would be wrong to deny the occurrence of distortion, exaggeration and particularly selection of press coverage, conscious or otherwise, by these readerships. Again, this observation is important because identifying the role of press content at the end of empire requires an awareness of its passive utility in addition to its active function. Because Africans and white settlers mediated British press comment by selecting specific articles for reprint and discussion or by summarising them for their readers, the impact of the newspaper articles in Africa reveals as much about the nature of the difficulties and the aspirations of these groups as it does the character of debate in Britain. The fears expressed in the settler press were echoed at the Federal government level. At the time of the tour, the Deputy High Commissioner in London, P.F. Barrett, set out in some detail in a report circulated amongst members of the Federal Cabinet, what he perceived to be the changing nature of opinion within Britain on African affairs, which he felt had been so prominent a feature of 1959.124 Barrett explained that in contrast to 1958, a widespread adverse attitude in the United Kingdom was now one of the Federation’s major problems. He accepted that ‘some in the Federation might say that the views I am repeating are those of a minority and that the majority of the people in Britain know nothing and care less about our affairs’, but warned that he ‘(did) not think that that argument has much validity even if it were true’. Barrett believed that British newspapers were playing a part in this. By ‘plugging’ the inevitability of the triumph of African nationalism, he 124  ‘Annual review by the Deputy High Commissioner in London’, 4 February 1960, circulated amongst members of the Federal Cabinet, fols. 2–7, MSS. Welensky 153/5.

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wrote, the press was ‘doing much to mould public opinion’, thus ‘preparing the ground for the United Kingdom to take an easy way out of the situation by accepting this allegedly foregone conclusion and disbanding the Federation, or at least changing its nature’. The Conservative Party is ‘no longer a party professing privilege and committed to supporting oligarchy’, he warned, but ‘a Party of the People’, ‘far more than ever before conscious of the necessity to take considerable notice of the general feelings of the average Briton’. British press treatment of Central African affairs was believed to have played a part in simplifying, restricting and monopolising representation and debate on Federation. In this way, the press was felt to be contributing to a one-sided narrative that was hampering the British government’s freedom of manoeuvre on the future of its Central African colonies. Macmillan’s ‘Lagos statement’ and its fall-out fed into and fuelled these existing fears. Barrett believed that the solution was ‘(to remove) as far as possible the Federation from interference by the United Kingdom’.

4.7   The ‘Blantyre Riot’: Protest, Publicity and the Malawi Youth League (MYL) When Macmillan reached Nyasaland at the end of his journey around the Federation, these dynamics concerning white settler fears, British press/ government relations and the intimacy between journalism and nationalism reached a climax. They coalesced around an incident which occurred during the prime minister’s visit to Ryall’s Hotel in Blantyre for a luncheon held in his honour. The incident resulted in an inquiry presided over by a High Court judge for which British journalists were later required to return to Africa to testify.125 Prior to Macmillan’s arrival at the hotel on 26 January, outside a group of 50–80 members of the Malawi Youth League had gathered to launch a political protest centring on the Federation and on independence.126 The birthplace of the Malawi Youth League was Limbe, a town abutting 125  A fuller account of British news coverage of this event can be found in: Rosalind Coffey ‘“Does the Daily Paper Rule Britannia”: British Press Coverage of a Malawi Youth League Demonstration in Blantyre, Nyasaland, in January 1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies 41: 6 (2015), pp. 1255–77. 126  For the figures, see F. Southworth, The Southworth Commission Report 1960 (Zomba, Nyasaland, 1960), p. 81.

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Blantyre.127 The MYL was a part of the Malawi Congress Party, a successor to the NAC, many of whose leaders the authorities had detained the previous year. By the time of the demonstration, MYL members were approximately 400-strong.128 In addition to the protestors, journalists were present in large numbers outside the hotel, as well as members of Nyasaland’s white settler community and Africans who were not members of the MYL.129 The crowd consisted of 800–1000 people.130 African and European police officers stood guard. The articles which appeared in British newspapers the following day were explosive. The press reports centred on the police response to the demonstration, which journalists characterised as brutal. ‘Police blunder starts battle’, ‘Blunder at Blantyre—British police provoke riots on Macmillan visit’ and ‘Vicious… violent—then came the rain’ were the headlines of the reports that appeared in the Mirror, Mail and Herald, respectively.131 Notably, the writers invoked the word ‘British’ frequently in their reports, such as in reference to the ‘British’ (colonial) police officers whom they implicated in the brutalities. While this could be considered as worrying from a British perspective, the reports were not framed in a self-deprecating manner. Indeed, viewed in context, the word seems rather to have operated as a rhetorical strategy with which the journalists aimed to engage deep-seated sentiments of an opposite nature—concerning Britain’s good name, liberal character and ‘protector’ role in Central Africa—in order that they might try to influence events in the Africans’ favour. The news reports promoted parliamentary discussion in London. Jo Grimond, the leader of the Liberal Party, called for an impartial inquiry.132 Newspapers soon made similar calls. On the 28th, the Mirror published a report which called on Macmillan to end the ‘police state’ in the protectorate, an allusion to Devlin’s report of 1959.133 The Herald demanded

 McCracken, History of Malawi, p. 370.  Ibid. 129  ‘Photos of Blantyre riots, January 1960’, CO1069/110; Southworth Commission Report; all news reports. 130  Southworth Commission Report, p. 81. 131  Mirror, bp; Mail, fp and continued p.  9; Herald, p.  7, with photo introducing the report, fp. 132  HC Deb 27 January 1960, vol. 616, col 170. 133  Mirror, 28 January 1960, p. 2. 127 128

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that the guilty men be ‘named’.134 The Mail decided to contact the Governor Armitage by telephone to demand that an inquiry be held.135 Settlers were incensed when news reached them of British journalists’ characterisations of the demonstration. ‘(W)ild’ was the word the Rhodesia Herald chose to describe the reaction of Blantyre’s white community two days after the press reports emerged: ‘(i)n every hotel, shop and pub in the town the British Press is being condemned’.136 Many settlers felt that there had been no violence, and that other of the police’s actions which the journalists had criticised had stemmed from the need to reign in a threatening crowd. The white community acted swiftly to gather material, both photographic and cine, which they understood as evidence of British press distortion of the incident. Some of this was publicised; other of it used at the subsequent inquiry. One of the photos showed Rene MacColl observing the melee whilst apparently nursing a gin and tonic.137 The settlers’ primary fear was that the news reports would further endanger the Federation. ‘We will not stand idly by while the future of our country is prejudiced by sensational falsehoods’ were the words which two MPs from the region, John Stratton (Limbe) and Frank Collins (Blantyre), used in a letter the two men sent to the Minister of External Affairs, which called upon the minister to act.138 Their letter was also sent to Welensky and printed in the Nyasaland Times. British press coverage of Central African affairs continued to inform white settler political and civic cultures, representing a ‘reference point’ against which settlers defined themselves and their position in the world, and understood (or not) the significance of African protestations within the borders of the settler colonies. Settler responses to the news reports concentrated on two angles of attack: firstly, British newspapers’ perceived exaggeration of the situation; and secondly, the demonstrators’ efforts to ‘play up’ an unconcerning situation in the presence of outsiders. A couple of British newspapers’ coverage was muted for the same (latter) reason. The powerful combination that was activism in Central Africa and British journalism was indeed central to the event. There is evidence to suggest that the Malawi Youth League activists exploited the journalists’  Herald, 28 January 1960, fp.  Mail, 28 January 1960, fp, continued p. 4. 136  Rhodesia Herald, 29 January 1960, p. 2. 137  CO 1069/110. 138  Stratton and Collins to Welensky, 3 February 1960, MSS. Welensky 642/4. 134 135

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presence as a means of advancing the nationalist cause in a manner which recalled the efforts of the activists in Nigeria.139 Thandika Mkandawire, one of the activists, explained that ‘they wanted the gentlemen of the press to “tell the world” about them’.140 Some of the protestors may even have played to the camera. One journalist later described how ‘(e)very time a (camera) bulb went off, there more shouts and demonstrations’.141 But if British journalists had noticed this, many of them were keen to run with the story all the same. It is likely that this owed to their existing position on nationalism, settlers, the Federation and constitutional change in Central Africa. The ‘sensational’ nature of the story may also have attracted the popular papers, whose practices the MYL may have considered it strategic to tap. It should be noted at the outset that some of the newspaper coverage contained racist imagery. Some descriptions of the activism incorporated racist tropes in which Africans appeared as animal-like. One journalist described the crowd to have set up ‘a prolonged growling cry’.142 Another referred to the protestors as a ‘frenzied, dancing, yelling mob’.143 If, then, the press’s interest in African nationalism in early 1960 was informed by an understanding of its weighty significance, moral considerations and self-interest, it was also influenced by what can only be termed a racist fascination amongst some journalists with the efforts of Africans to claim parity as well as a racist association between Africans and violence of a most ‘primitive’ kind. Indeed, African nationalism featured so prominently in press reports of the ‘wind of change’ era precisely because its appeal was broad-based. It chimed with so many of the worst and best traits of journalists, politicians and readers on both Left and Right. The presence of this racist imagery has a great many implications. One concerns historiographical debates on the kinds of sentiments that informed support in Britain for decolonisation. At a ‘popular’ level, these consisted of not only progressive views, but also very reactionary ones. The racist imagery tied to the view that independence or freedoms were necessary. This recalled the way some British newspapers had discussed the African violence of March 1959 when images of muscular black men  Mkandawire, interviewed in ‘Africa at 50: Wind of Change’.  Southworth Commission Report, p. 87. 141  Ibid., p. 86. 142  Evening Standard, 26 January 1960, p. 13. 143  Times, 27 January 1960, p. 10. 139 140

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depicting nationalism had appeared in some cartoons.144 A further implication concerns the impact on Africans and on Anglo-African relations, which were damaged as a result of repeated moments such as this. This was so not only because the images were highly offensive. It was also because they transmitted particular characterisations of Africa and Africans to British readers, which likely contributed to the prolongation of a situation susceptible to a continued dehumanisation of ‘others’ that augured ill for the understandings of equality necessary for meaningful interaction. The racist imagery might again be understood as self-affirming for British readers in the sense that it ‘lowered’ others with whom Britain dealt. Yet ironically, then, it also points, in many ways, to the centrality of fear and vulnerability to British identity. In the event, the racist imagery did not appear to detract from the main thrust of the reports, which highlighted police brutality, but on another occasion, it might well have done, as had been the case, arguably, during March 1959. Nevertheless, the press reports of the demonstrators still had invisible relational impacts which should not be neglected. An inquiry was called. Significantly, the British government’s decision to act was not informed by fears regarding the severity of the situation the papers described. Ian Macleod assured Robert Armitage, the governor of Nyasaland, that he did not believe the press reports.145 Rather, the government’s decision to call the inquiry was influenced by its desire to satisfy British public and parliamentary pressure concerning the situation.146 Given that African nationalism had spurred the news reports, the activism must again be considered as a root cause of the government’s behaviour. Nevertheless, British newspapers’ mediation of the activism was vital, too, because the government’s primary concern was to satiate British public pressure concerning events. Recalling earlier, similar incidents, settlers sensed all of this and feared for what it signified. The setting up of the inquiry, which began just weeks after Macmillan’s tour, would entail organisation that reflected the continued significance of two dynamics. One of these concerned the character of British press/ government relations. The other concerned white settler understandings of these relations. Regarding the latter and fearing the worst, settlers made  See Chap. 3.  Macleod to Armitage, 28 January 1960, CO 1015/2239; Macleod to Armitage, 1 February 1960, CO 1015/2239. 146  Ibid. 144 145

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great efforts to influence the outcome of the inquiry in their favour, by selecting Frederick Southworth,147 a man with colonial government experience, as the presiding judge. They also supplied the commission with photos and other evidence that contradicted the press reports, and, while it is harder to pinpoint, cultivated an atmosphere of intimidation, which affected the nature of the evidence submitted by the Africans who came before the commission. The white community took these steps not only because British journalists infuriated them, but also because they understood that the commission’s ruling would have implications for the political trajectory of the region. It is significant that the settlers fixated on the journalists as opposed to the Africans who had held the demonstration from which the coverage flowed, believing (or perhaps hoping) that the journalism was their primary obstacle and that white men ‘remained’ the agents of change. In respect of the other dynamic—British press/government relations—the settlers’ fears were largely warranted. White settlers pushed the Colonial Office for the journalists’ attendance at the inquiry and received it. Yet this did not occur without a concerted effort from the CO in their communications with the relevant editors and a resurgence of worry within the department concerning the perceived consequences of British journalists’ annoyance for the government’s own and Central Africa’s political prospects.148 Communications between editors and officials at the CO indicated that the press were in the driving seat. The inquiry concluded sensationally with references to Greek myth and legend. In sum, Southworth ruled against the journalists (and the activists) and in favour of the settlers’ version of events. ‘As far as can be ascertained’, Southworth wrote approaching the end of his report, ‘the amount of skin lost by both police and demonstrators as a result of injuries received on this occasion would hardly cover an area of one square inch, probably no more than the area of a penny postage stamp… Contemplating the measure of the injuries sustained by the demonstrators, one cannot avoid the reflection that when the face of Helen launched a thousand ships, and brought Agamemnon and the great Achilles to the shores of Phrygia, it hardly achieved as much as Miss Phombeya’s toe when it brought the paladins of Fleet Street in the aerial argosies of our day across two continents to appear before your Commissioner in the remote highlands of

 Armitage to Macleod, 2 February 1960, fol. 44, CO 1015/2239.  CO 1015/2239; CO 1015/2240.

147 148

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middle Africa’.149 Emmah Phombeya had been one of the activists, whose hurt toe Southworth had examined in court. Southworth censured British journalists for fabricating a story of police brutality against Africans. Yet while the judgement was surely indicative of the intimacy of the relationship between activists and newspapers by the start of 1960 that signalled the propensity for a journalistic conspiracy of sorts, it surely denied the significance of the factors which had brought about the relationship. These included the strength of African opposition to colonial rule in the region, which linked to repeated moments such as these. Upon receiving the inquiry’s report, the British government decided not to draw attention to it. Again, this was not because it disagreed with the settlers’ story, but rather because it feared aggravating British journalists, a consideration which points to the newspapers’ continued perceived political significance.150

4.8   Press Activism on Apartheid Upon British journalists’ arrival in South Africa, the final stop on the tour, newspapers’ focus on British policy towards the South African government resurged. Their concerns persisted despite Macmillan’s reassurances regarding his personal thoughts about apartheid and the upcoming Cape Town speech. Journalists’ main worry was that Macmillan’s itinerary signalled to Africans that Britain condoned, or worse still endorsed, the racial policies of the South African government. The press continued to emphasise the importance of these perceived people of the future. The press duly documented the prime minister’s trip to a gold mine, a township and a ‘Bantu university’, as well as an elaborate ceremony in which Macmillan was invested as a Paramount Chief.151 Hometowns, segregated educational institutions and mining all worked to sustain apartheid, a system which most correspondents found sad, archaic and dangerously out of kilter with modern African realities. These thoughts recalled discussions including on Ghana’s faded bunting and, in Central Africa, the Federation’s future prospects. Sampson summed up the  Southworth Commission Report, p. 113.  CO 1015/2240. 151  Evening Standard, 28 January 1960, p. 10; Mirror, 29 January 1960, p. 9; Express, 29 January 1960, p. 2; Evening Standard, 30 January 1960, p. 6; Mirror, 30 January 1960, p. 5; Mail, 30 January 1960, p. 9; Express, 30 January 1960, p. 2; News Chronicle, 30 January 1960, p. 2. 149 150

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a­ pprehensive tenor of these articles when he wrote that Macmillan had been ‘paraded’ around apartheid institutions ‘like a living certificate of acceptability, a walking guarantee’: ‘The more Mr. Macmillan sees of the subsidised chiefs of black South Africa, and the more he talks about the splendour of the gold mines, the more Africans are anxiously speculating as to whether he will in fact be able to see the real African leaders’.152 British journalists knew that Macmillan had received requests for meetings from the ANC and other (predominantly white) liberal political parties, because these groups had contacted the press. The journalists wrote that their absence from the itinerary had left both an informational and a moral void. African protests, a prominent feature of the tour from as far back as Nigeria, had stalled. Prior to Macmillan’s arrival, the ANC had sent out an appeal to its women followers to take to the streets,153 but the Union government had prevented them from doing so. Some correspondents took it upon themselves to atone for Macmillan’s failings by recording these obstructions,154 by meeting with Africans and by documenting some of the realities of life for Africans living under apartheid.155 Yet these efforts were not regarded as substitutes for the actions of a prime minister, and pressure from the journalists persisted. Macmillan and his advisers worried about this, but not for the same reason as the journalists. The government focused on its domestic political fortunes. It took additional actions in response to the pressure from the press, first before the speech, and then in the text of the speech itself, continually adding modifications.156 This continued to demonstrate both the perceived importance of the journalists’ views on South Africa and the reactive nature of British colonial policy regarding the press and the settler colonies. Yet as in the Federation, the government placed limits on the lengths to which it was willing to go to satisfy the newspapers, creating a shortfall, within whose confines the role of the British press in and after Cape Town, the focus of this chapter’s final section, should be understood.

 Observer, 31 January 1960, p. 10.  Copy of circular issued by the ANC (signed Alfred B Nzo and D Nokwe, for Secretary General), PREM 11/3071. 154  Herald, 28 January 1960, p. 7; News Chronicle, 1 February 1960, p. 2; Mail, 2 February 1960, p. 6. 155  In Johannesburg, Sampson visited the shebeens and beer halls, and Jacobson travelled to a township. Observer, 31 January 1960, p. 10; Mirror, 3 February 1960, p. 6, respectively. 156  Baker, ‘Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” Tour’, p. 182. 152 153

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During the tour, with an eye to this British opinion, the British government made efforts to negotiate with the Union government a less restrictive tour itinerary, with room to meet non-parliamentary political parties such as the Liberal Party, and even the ANC. British press treatment of the South Africa section of the tour was not a causal factor in this. Yet due to the timing of some of the government’s overtures, it would be unwise to neglect the role played by the wider coverage of the tour. J.B. Johnston (in London) raised the subject on 23 January while Macmillan was in the Federation.157 The Union government had not consented to Macmillan’s meeting any opposition groups, including parliamentary parties, and Johnston was apprehensive at the possible political repercussions in Britain. ‘Though this is not strictly for us to judge’, he wrote, ‘it seems to me that the Prime Minister could hardly return to the United Kingdom having to admit if questioned that he had not seen any Opposition leaders of any kind in the Union. Certainly if he had to make any such admission, it would have to be accompanied by an indication that this was at the strong request of the Union Government’. United Party and Progressive Party meetings were subsequently scheduled in. Yet no meetings were arranged with non-parliamentary political parties. In South Africa, Macmillan discussed the matter with Eric Louw, South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, initially face-to-face (and fruitlessly), and then in written form. At this time, the tour party’s preoccupation with the British context to the South African segment of the journey expanded to include the role of the British and other journalists. ‘Dr. Verwoerd has kindly arranged for me to meet leaders of the Parliamentary Opposition parties, which I very much appreciate’, Macmillan told Louw in his letter, ‘But it is generally known (and was mentioned in questions—which I evaded—at my Press Conference in Pretoria yesterday) that the Liberal Party and the A.N.C. have both said they would like to meet me… I feel therefore it would be quite impossible for me to say that I was for my part unwilling to see them—though of course I would not see them without Dr. Verwoerd’s agreement… My difficulty is that if he should feel it impossible to agree… I fear I should eventually have to indicate when questioned in Parliament or by the Press that this was the reason’.158 In knowing and making known the fact that Macmillan had received requests for meetings from the Liberal Party and the ANC, the press played a part in 157 158

 Notes for High Commissioner from J.B. Johnston, 23 January 1960, PREM 11/3071.  Macmillan to Louw, 28 January 1960, PREM 11/3071.

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fuelling the British government’s fear of being held to account at home for shortcomings in its dealings with the National Party and its rivals locally. This recalled earlier similar events, such as concerning Luthuli’s ‘Open Letter’, and in the Federation, the Callaghan and Marquand telegram on the ‘Lagos statement’. British public, including press, comments on the South Africa visit caused the government to adopt a more combative stance in its dealings with Verwoerd than it had thought either necessary or desirable before embarking on the journey to Africa. It could be objected that the British government’s decision to confront the Union government on the itinerary also reflected an earnest desire to meet the groups in question, the consequence, perhaps, of a fresh ambition to engage with African nationalist, and other groups opposed to apartheid. This seems unlikely. Even in his most active efforts, Macmillan’s priority appears to have rested more with the problems inherent in his having to ‘say that I was for my part unwilling to see them’ than with the lack of contact per se.159 There is also no evidence that the government actively sought out meetings with non-parliamentary political parties. On this occasion, the government’s more progressive foray into South Africa’s internal politics did not therefore appear to reflect a commitment to change it. Its efforts were instead the result of British public and parliamentary considerations, and were intended to be cosmetic rather than profound. The prime minister’s response to the rebuffs he received from the Union government suggested much the same. His letter to Louw drew no positive response, nor did a private talk he had with Verwoerd. Macmillan seemed unperturbed. The official report of the tour recorded that ‘On reflection Mr. Macmillan decided that this matter was less important than the content of the Cape Town speech… He thought it more important, from the point of view of public opinion at home, that he should be uncompromising about this (race relations in the Union) in his speech than that he should persist in seeing representatives of the African National Congress against the wishes of the Union Government’.160 In addition to negotiating with the South African government, further actions adopted to address British political concerns included the British  My italics.  ‘Note on Suggested Meetings with Representatives of African National Congress and other Parties not Represented in Union Parliament’, CAB 129/101, pp.  150–2, p.  152. Parenthesis and its contents added. My italics. 159 160

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government’s behind-the-scenes communications with the press. Throughout the tour, officials made unceasing efforts to reassure British journalists of the racial inclinations of the British government. Part of their strategy involved discreetly letting it be known that the prime minister was displeased with the programme the Union government had organised for him. It also involved Macmillan’s continuing to voice privately to the press both his disapproval of apartheid and his intention to address the subject in his upcoming speech. Macmillan dampened a certain amount of personal criticism this way. Yet journalists’ demands did not abate. Indeed, they may even have intensified, for the prime minister’s words whet the press’s appetite for a defining moment. At a garden party on 2 February, three days before the end of the tour and the day before the speech, Macmillan finally met some representatives of South African liberal opinion, including Margaret Ballinger, the president of the Liberal Party, and Patrick Duncan, one of the party’s most prominent members. Yet Ballinger and Duncan were white, and few British correspondents seemed moved by what they regarded as a tardy gesture. Worsthorne described the informal encounter as a ‘display’ ‘designed to act as a consolation prize for the failure to see the representatives of African opinion’.161 A lot therefore rested on the speech. It assumed a greater significance in the British government’s calculations as a result of the failure either to negotiate an expanded tour itinerary or to convince Verwoerd to accept the blame for a limited one. At the same time, it figured more prominently in the minds of British journalists, also because of the nature of the itinerary in addition to the government’s private pledges that the speech would, as Evans let slip to Worsthorne, ‘make history’.162

4.9   Commandeering the ‘British View’: The Press and the Cape Town Speech Of these two factors—Macmillan’s resolve to speak out decisively against apartheid, and British journalists’ anticipation of a momentous statement—the former proved the least prominent feature of the events which followed. The prime minister’s address is usually associated with his acceptance of the strength of African nationalism, his desire to move with the  Telegraph, 3 February 1960, p. 20.  Ibid.

161 162

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times and his definitive stand on apartheid. Certainly, Macmillan spoke of ‘the strength of…African national consciousness’, ‘the wind of change…blowing through this continent’ and the need for ‘our national policies (to) take account of it’.163 He also commented on race. Macmillan informed his audience that Britain ‘(rejected) the idea of any inherent superiority of one race over another’. ‘As a fellow member of the Commonwealth’, he famously declared, ‘it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won’t mind my saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men’.164 Further examination of the speech, however, confirms that Macmillan’s position was more ambivalent than these quotations imply. Saul Dubow suggests that the speech was far more conciliatory to white South African interests than is usually assumed.165 Although Macmillan commented on apartheid, he did so indirectly, Dubow points out, using the words ‘internal’ or ‘national’ policies, and never ‘apartheid’, an omission which Dubow thinks ‘softened the key message’.166 Moreover, little in the speech suggested that Macmillan was concerned actively to support black South Africans in their fight against the system. Macmillan referred to nationalism in Africa as ‘national consciousness’, a choice which Joanna Lewis argues was ‘likely an act of diminution’.167 His acknowledgement of the strength of African nationalism, Dubow observes, did not extend to African nationalism in South Africa other than by implication.168 Macmillan also spoke out strongly against the international boycott of South African goods, which he told his listeners he ‘(deprecated)’ and ‘(deplored)’, but for which African leaders had called.169 The context to the most critical of Macmillan’s statements further reduced their salience, for they appeared within a frame which placed  ‘Main Policy Speech’, CAB 129/101, all three quotations p. 155.  Ibid., pp. 156–7. 165  Saul Dubow, ‘Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 “Wind of Change” Speech’, The Historical Journal, 54: 4 (December 2011), pp. 1087–114, p. 1087 & pp. 1098–100. 166  Ibid., p. 1099. 167  Joanna Lewis, ‘“White Man in a Wood Pile”: Race and the Limits of Macmillan’s Great “Wind of Change” in Africa’ in L.J. Butler and Sarah Stockwell (eds.), The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 70–95, p. 77. 168  Dubow, ‘Macmillan, Verwoerd’, p. 1099. 169  ‘Main Policy Speech’, CAB 129/101, p. 158. 163 164

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primacy on putting differences ‘on one subject’ into broader historical perspective. Macmillan’s comments on race and the Union government’s ‘policies’ were followed by a lengthy eulogy on friendship, the inviolability of spheres of interest and the importance of cooperation and coexistence despite differences on ‘principle’. ‘(Differences) on one subject, important though it is’, Macmillan concluded, ‘need not and should not impair our capacity to co-operate with one another in furthering the many practical interests which we share in common… The independent nations of the Commonwealth do not always agree on every subject… I hope—indeed, I am confident—that in another 50 years we shall look back on the differences that exist between us now as matters of historical interest, for as time passes and one generation yields to another, human problems change and fade’.170 From a policy perspective, Macmillan’s comments reflected the government’s desire to tread a ‘middle road’ regarding constitutional ‘advance’ in ‘multi-racial societies’. Yet his identification of apartheid as a matter of ‘historical interest’ trivialised the experiences of Africans affected by the system. In their reports of the speech, British journalists tended not to highlight Macmillan’s ambiguity. In fact, many went out of their way to argue that the speech signified the ‘end to a long period of official evasions’ and the ‘end of ambiguity’.171 Most journalists described the address as signifying Macmillan’s clear, principled denunciation of apartheid, in articles with headlines such as ‘Toast of Africans—Macmillan’s speech stirs a continent’;172 ‘Plain speech in Cape Town—Mr. Macmillan on human rights—No support for racialism—“Destinies of free men”’;173 and ‘Britain to Africa: This is our faith’.174 Even Sampson, commenting in the Observer on the Sunday, hailed the speech ‘astonishing’ and a ‘milestone’.175 British press mediation of the speech had contributed to lifting a rather paltry attack on apartheid to a ‘higher plane’, more in keeping with the initial historiographical assessment of the speech prior to the re-evaluations undertaken by Lewis and Dubow.

 Ibid.  News Chronicle, 4 February 1960, p. 4; Observer, 7 February 1960, p. 5, respectively. Italics added. 172  Mail, 4 February 1960, fp. 173  Times, 4 February 1960, p. 10. 174  News Chronicle, 4 February 1960, fp. 175  Observer, 7 February 1960, p. 16. 170 171

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It is likely that Macmillan’s PR efforts had played a role in this. Yet the journalists involved were by no means averse to criticising the British government, and judging by the nature of their reports throughout the tour, they were well aware of Macmillan’s way with words. Cartoons which appeared at the time represented the latter in the form of Macmillan the juggler, throwing balls around perpetually, labelled with terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘co-partnership’, ‘Federation’, ‘this meaning’, ‘that meaning’;176 or Macmillan the magician/physician, spraying a hazy potion of terms the way of the people of Africa.177 At every stage, given a choice, the journalists favoured a sceptical stance over an approving one. Some, like Sampson, also cared personally and passionately about Africa and the cause for which black South Africans fought. Rather, the primary cause of the journalists’ unanimity in praise for the address appears to be that they evaluated it on the basis of the calls which they had made beforehand for Macmillan to make public the fact that Britain did not endorse South Africa’s racial policies. This Macmillan had very largely done by rejecting ‘the idea of any inherent superiority of one race over another’, and by stating that supporting South Africa would entail Britain sacrificing its ‘deep convictions about the political destinies of free men to which in our own territories we are trying to give effect’.178 Journalists’ desire for Macmillan to state Britain’s racial or moral stance appeared greater or more pressing than their yearning for a substantive change either in Anglo-South African relations or in South Africa’s internal affairs. Thus, the limits of the press’s vision for South Africa were also, ironically, a factor behind its lauding of Macmillan’s denunciation of apartheid. ‘Speaking out’ could be a matter of degree, and did not imply either action or support for the alternatives. The priority was for Britain to receive a ‘facelift’ in Africa. In Central Africa, given Britain’s direct formal responsibility for events in the region, substantive change was perceived as necessary, too, for improved relations with Africans. But in South Africa, the absence of direct British responsibility pointed more to possible rhetorical solutions. British journalists wrote that the speech was for African ears. The reality was that Africans were rather nonplussed.179 Later, thoughts turned more conclusively to effecting meaningful change on the  Herald, 28 January 1960, p. 4.  Herald, 21 January 1960, p. 4. 178  ‘Main Policy Speech’, CAB 129/101, p. 157. 179  Lewis, ‘“White Man”’, pp. 77–78. 176 177

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ground, in papers other than the Herald and the Guardian, the only papers to have been critical of the speech from the outset.180 Yet in the meantime, the British press had played an important role in producing for mass consumption a decisive, clear, impactful and self-affirming version of a much more equivocal official British stance. This troubled Macmillan and his advisers. David Hunt, undersecretary at the CRO, one of the authors of the speech, later insisted that he could not understand why the reference to the ‘wind of change’ had received such prominent treatment.181 ‘As nobody had paid any attention to the phrase in Accra I thought I might as well use it again and had put it in with only a minor variation’, he recalled: ‘But I had certainly never imagined that it would be seized on as the key phrase of the speech, nor intended it to be that…the phrase in its context is morally entirely neutral. All Macmillan did was to remind his hearers that certain changes were taking place in Africa. It is for this reason that I have always been surprised at the vigour of the reaction in the newspapers’. Hunt surmised that ‘it may have something to do with that fact that the phrase went very conveniently into a headline’. Macmillan also later referred to it as ‘unfortunate, although perhaps inevitable, that the British Press singled out certain phrases like “wind of change” as headlines or accentuated certain passages which were likely to cause the most hostile comment in South Africa, without giving some of the balancing phrases and tributes to the history of Dutch and British alike in building up such a great structure of economic strength by individual effort and devotion’.182 By highlighting particular words and phrases, and thereby producing a distilled and partial version of a fuller and more measured speech, the British press contributed to frustrating the British government’s attempts to adopt a more ‘middle of the road’ public policy towards apartheid South Africa. As in Ghana and the Federation, British journalists continued to affect the government’s ability to control the narrative of the imperial endgame. The following month, in a television broadcast, Macmillan explained to viewers that although he had recently spoken of ‘the wind of change that was blowing through Africa…that’s

 Guardian, 4 February 1960, p. 8; Herald, 4 February 1960, fp.  David Hunt, On the Spot: An Ambassador Remembers (London, 1975), p. 116. 182  Macmillan, Pointing the Way, pp. 159–60. 180 181

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not the same thing as a howling tempest which will blow away the whole of the new developing civilisation. We must, at all costs, avoid that’.183 The British newspaper coverage had an impact inside South Africa which the speech did not, mirroring the patterns of press reporting and its effects in Central Africa. Dubow explains that Macmillan’s words initially ruffled few feathers within National Party circles. Hunt recalled that during the speech he had witnessed ‘no reaction’ from the audience at the paragraph dealing with the ‘wind of change’.184 Although he thought that Macmillan’s address had ‘rattled’ Verwoerd, he disagreed with some journalists that the South African Premier’s reply had been ‘poor’.185 Sampson recorded that the House had first ‘applauded’ the speech; that Verwoerd had then ‘politely agreed to differ’; and that in the lobby afterwards the MPs had been ‘enthusiastic about the oratory’: ‘they seemed flattered to hear South Africa involved in this great historical survey’.186 Worsthorne, too, witnessed no divisive fall-out. He characterised the general feeling in the lobby afterwards as anti-climactic:187 ‘The long-awaited thunderbolt had come and gone and nobody felt much the worse for it’.188 ‘That Britain disapproved of apartheid came as no surprise. What had caused anxiety was the fear that Britain might be preparing to do something about it’, he added astutely: ‘The Nationalist response in short was one of relief’.189 In stark contrast to descriptions of National Party reactions to the speech in its immediate aftermath were accounts of the response during the following few days and weeks. Many believed that British press reports had contributed to this eventual ‘coming home’. However, this was not because of what they ‘explained’ or ‘revealed’ of the text of the speech, as some journalists at the time alluded to, perhaps rather derogatively. South African settlers knew that Macmillan had been critical, but they had also heard his reassurances.190 Rather, as in the Federation, the significance of the newspaper articles lay more with what they signified of general public opinion for which the articles continued to be perceived as a repository.  Ward, ‘Whirlwind’, p. 54.  Hunt, On the Spot, p. 116. 185  Ibid., p. 117. 186  Sampson, Macmillan, p. 188. 187  Worsthorne, Tricks, p. 195. 188  Telegraph, 4 February 1960, fp. 189  ‘Nationalist’ here refers to National Party. 190  Dubow, ‘Macmillan, Verwoerd’. 183 184

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Macmillan recalled that ‘it was not until the news came of the reception of the speech in Britain and throughout the world that criticism combined with a good deal of self-pity and resentment began to develop’.191 Commentary in sections of the South African press confirms this view. An editorial in the Cape Times on the 5th, titled ‘Isolated’, characterised ‘the reactions to Mr. Macmillan’s speech’ as ‘almost as significant as the speech itself’: ‘Throughout the Western world the speech has been taken as stating the Western way of life in the African context’.192 The Rand Daily Mail agreed. ‘Apart from the immediate impact of Mr. Macmillan’s speech…’, the editor reflected, ‘the speech has also had a delayed effect which may be even more profound’. ‘The general approval that has greeted Mr. Macmillan’s speech overseas’, he continued, ‘indicates that if the West has to choose between the good will of South Africa and that of the other African countries or the smaller powers of the Far East, it will be ready, however gradually, to turn its back on this country and its unpopular policies’.193 British press comment, in conjunction with other international responses, resonated to a degree that Macmillan’s speech had not. This was because, in their unanimity and in their words of praise for the British prime minister, journalists demonstrated South Africa’s isolation in ways Macmillan’s speech could merely describe. The press continued to hamper the British government’s efforts to maintain equable relations with the South African government. It did this by signing Britain up to a more radical stance than Macmillan had intended, and which became the focus of international acclaim, as well as by fuelling fears within white South African society of foreign attitudes and intentions. The dynamic was similar to the one that was evident in British Central Africa, but South Africa’s independent status meant that the settler response differed. The South African government was better able to disengage with the world beyond South Africa’s borders. Dubow has linked the speech to the Union government’s subsequent efforts to strengthen the system of apartheid as well as to Verwoerd’s success in rallying support for a republic.194 Yet if newspaper coverage had played a role in amplifying the speech’s import in South Africa, it is  Macmillan, Pointing the Way, p. 159.  Cape Times, 5 February 1960, p. 12. 193  Rand Daily Mail, 8 February 1960, p. 8. 194  Dubow, ‘Macmillan, Verwoerd’. 191 192

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important to consider that it was not the address itself, but the British and other international responses to it, which informed these developments. The latter included the Sharpeville massacre, the focus of the following chapter; the establishment of a republic; and South Africa’s decision not to renew its application for Commonwealth membership. These events marked a more isolationist turn with implications for Africans’ safety. Therefore, although the British press appeared to support Africans in South Africa and had also rescued Britain from the shame of failing to declare a convincing moral stance on matters of race and freedom, in the long run it may inadvertently have contributed to worsening the situation.195

4.10   Conclusion Following the 1959 general election, British newspaper coverage of Africa and ‘public opinion’ continued to influence British policy towards Africa. The press and ‘public’ informed the government’s decision to embark on the tour as well as to ‘speak out’ on apartheid at the journey’s end. Newspaper coverage of the tour only confirmed the prime minister in this decision, compelling Macmillan continually to modify his Cape Town speech in order to answer press/public criticisms regarding the absence of Africans on his itinerary in the Union. The prime minister’s preoccupation was to satisfy British public opinion on the importance of stating Britain’s opposition to apartheid. Nevertheless, Macmillan did not wish to alienate his white South African allies. The criticisms were present, but they were moderated by an emphasis on friendship and alliance over the longue durée. The British government was also keen to pursue a ‘middle road’ in the Federation. The press and ‘public’ influenced its decision to release Banda and informed discussions surrounding the terms of the release. Yet as the prime minister’s public communications on the Federation attest, Macmillan still hoped to arrive at a solution to the ‘challenges’ of constitutional change in this ‘multi-racial society’ that was inclusive of the white communities as well as the black ones. The British press continually frustrated the government’s ability to pursue these ‘middle roads’. In mediating Macmillan’s words to mass audiences, and in voicing strong, contrasting and simpler messages on the  See also Chap. 5, for a deeper analysis of this latter argument.

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desirability of the Federation, apartheid and multi-racial solutions in Africa, British journalists contributed further to damaging Britain’s relations with the white settler communities whose ancestors had pioneered the former’s empire. British press treatment of the tour informed white settler political and civic cultures in the Federation and South Africa, informing the settlers’ decisions further to retreat into their ‘islands of white’. The press’s meditation of Macmillan’s words, and its strong, contrasting and simpler opinions on the desirability of the Federation, apartheid and multi-racial solutions in Africa, while damaging from the perspective of Anglo-settler relations, were affirming for British readerships given the broader praise they elicited in a decolonising world. These impacts can be accounted for in two main ways. The first concerns ‘outsider’ perceptions of the press content. ‘Outsider’ groupings, including the British government and the settler communities, tended to regard the press coverage as a repository of British opinion. For these groupings, British public opinion on Africa influenced the decolonisation process by virtue of how they perceived it. There appears to have been little discrepancy between the press content and the outsiders’ understandings of it. Nevertheless, it is not always necessary to determine what the press or public thought in order to arrive at conclusions regarding public opinion’s historical salience. The second consideration concerns the nature of the coverage itself. A fusion of influences from both Britain and Africa continued to shape the articles. These included established frames of understanding and representation on the different regions, journalists’ own views, which meshed with these, and press practices, some of which were similarly context-­dependent, but others were not, centring on a straightforward appetite for sensation, for example, or a good ‘story’. As in 1959, the British government appeared once again not to be in control of the British newspapers despite the seeming ‘PR triumph’ that was the ‘wind of change’ spectacle. Central to British coverage of Africa during the tour continued to lie the relationship between the press and nationalists. Perhaps no better illustration of the significance of African action, and the ubiquity of Africans in British journalists’ minds, came than during the weeks following the Sharpeville massacre, an event which is usually framed in terms of white colonial action and violence, and which forms the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER 5

The Sharpeville Massacre, 1960: African Activism and the Press

On Monday, 21 March 1960, in Sharpeville, Vereeniging, a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the South African police shot dead 69 people and wounded 180 others who had congregated outside the police station demanding arrest for contravention of the pass laws.1 In the country’s west, in the township of Langa just outside the city of Cape Town, on that day, too, a further three protestors were killed by the police, and fifty wounded in day-long clashes between the South African security forces and African residents.2 Those who had assembled in both locations were responding to a public announcement sent out four days earlier by Robert Sobukwe, the president of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), for a nationwide day of action against the pass system.3 The PAC’s immediate aim was to achieve the abolition of the pass laws and a minimum wage of £35 a month.4 Sobukwe’s longer-term vision was of a campaign of ‘positive action’ in the form of protests and strikes, which the pass protests were designed to herald. The aim was African majority rule. The goal was 1963.5 Yet South Africa would have to wait another thirty years before this was achieved, with the accession of Nelson Mandela,  Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Harlow, 1983), p. 210.  James Barber, South Africa in the Twentieth Century: A Political History – In Search of a Nation State (Oxford, 1999), p. 165. 3  Tom Lodge, Sharpeville: An Apartheid Massacre and its Consequences (Oxford, 2011), p. 71. 4  Ibid., pp. 61–62. 5  Ibid. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_5

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the country’s first democratically elected leader and head of a different political party, the ANC, to the presidency in 1994. The pass laws, which formed the focus of the demonstrations, were a fundamental component of the system of apartheid, which, by 1960, permeated all social, political and economic relations in the country. The ruling National Party, supported mostly by Afrikaners (predominantly Dutch settlers), had formally instituted apartheid in 1948, following its accession to power in the general election that year. However, racial policies predated it such that apartheid can be viewed, in many ways, as an intensification of the unequable and discriminatory situation which existed in the region from the nineteenth century, including during the years of British rule. The history of white settlement in the country can be traced to the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in the late-seventeenth century and the Boers’ founding of the Cape Colony. This, the British seized at the turn of the nineteenth century, following which the Boers left the region on what came to be known as the ‘Great Trek’ to found the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, which the Boers proclaimed a republic in the late 1850s. At the same time, Shaka Zulu, the King of the Zulus from 1816 to 1828, founded and expanded the Zulu empire in the east of what is now South Africa. The Zulus fought the ‘Voortrekkers’ as they advanced from the Cape, the two sides eventually agreeing on their own spheres of interest. In 1867, diamonds were discovered in the Transvaal, and in 1877, the British annexed it. In 1879, the Zulus, too, were defeated by the British in Natal. The 1880–1881 period marked the first Anglo-Boer War, when the Boers rebelled against British incursions, following which the Boers restored the Transvaal as a republic. In the mid-1880s, gold was discovered in the same region, sparking further British belligerency and the second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). The war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging and resulted in self-governing status for the Transvaal and Orange Free State. In 1910, the Union of South Africa was formed, comprising the former British colonies of the Cape and Natal and the Boer republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. In 1934, the Union became independent from Britain. It remained connected to Britain through the Commonwealth. It also retained a large English-speaking white settler population. Nevertheless, from that point, Britain exerted less influence, and over the next decade the country’s domestic politics increasingly went the way of the Afrikaners. In the late 1940s, the Afrikaners, experiencing increased insecurity in a

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‘decolonising’ world, opted to strengthen the system of the oppression of African people in order that they might safeguard their own perceived needs.6 Apartheid involved political, social, cultural and economic aspects. It operated on a small scale (‘petty apartheid’) as well as a large (‘grand’) one. At its core, it sought to exploit the labour power of Africans as a racial majority whilst minimising the presence of Africans as ‘people’. Recognising Africans as people would have entailed the provision of rights and liberties. These, the South African government feared would pose a threat to white settler political and economic dominance.7 The pass laws, which formed the focus of the demonstration at Sharpeville, were central to the state’s goal because passes regulated a person’s movements within the country. They permitted work in a central ‘white’ area of a major city by day, for example, but required the return of the pass holder to areas outside of the central ones upon completion of the work at the end of the day or week. These areas included townships which the authorities had forcibly created through ‘relocations’. Relocations involved moving Africans from their homes in the more central areas of cities into fully segregated areas further away. Passes had a long history in South Africa and can be traced as far back as c. 1800. Yet they proliferated following the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952, which expanded the limits placed on Africans to reside permanently in urban areas. Relocations also had a long history, which began in the early twentieth century. Yet again the process of evictions and resettlement intensified during the apartheid era. By the early 1960s, passes recorded information about one’s racial and ethnic identity, a photo and other personal details. Apartheid was organised in such a way that the shade of one’s skin determined the grade of rights that one possessed. Police officers used these passes to enforce the apartheid laws with severe penalties for people who were unable to produce their pass upon request. It was illegal for an African not to carry his pass. From 1956, this law also applied to women. The demonstrators at Sharpeville and Langa, who demanded arrest for contravention of the pass laws, wished to illustrate the unworkability of 6  For a history of the Afrikaners, see: Hermann Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People (London, 2003). 7  Two very useful articles on this subject are: Paul Maylam, ‘The Rise and Decline of Urban Apartheid in South Africa’, African Affairs 89: 354 (1990), pp. 57–84; Terence Moll, ‘Did the Apartheid Economy Fail?’, Journal of Southern African Studies 17: 2 (1991), pp. 271–91.

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apartheid, strike fear into the hearts of their rulers and help to spur apartheid’s collapse. If all Africans flouted the pass laws, it was thought that the police stations would overflow, people would have to be permitted to live without a pass and one of the pillars of apartheid would crumble. Yet protesting, as the people who assembled at Sharpeville knew and soon experienced as a brutal reality, was not without considerable risk. Apartheid was an institutional system reinforced by almost unbelievable military and police firepower. Ever-present, the brutality tended to intensify at moments when the rules and regulations, backed up by the threat of force, proved insufficient to influence behaviour. The PAC organised the demonstrations that day. Yet its goals were shared by the other foremost political party in South Africa led by and constituted primarily by Africans: the ANC. The ANC was founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress. It was renamed the African National Congress in 1923. Initially, the party fought for voting rights, but from the 1940s, it spearheaded the struggle against apartheid. The PAC was formed in April 1959 by members of the ANC who broke away from the party owing to differing political visions centring on subjects concerning Pan-Africanism and multiracialism. In 1955, the ANC adopted the Freedom Charter in place of the party’s Programme of Action (1949), with consequences for the place of multiracialism, non-racialism and black Africanist affirmations in the party’s political project. Pan-­ Africanists believed that the multiracial methods and visions the Freedom Charter embodied would compromise the struggle for majority rule. The pass law protests of March 1960 represented one of the PAC’s first independent campaigning efforts. The press were spellbound. British papers reported the initial protests and the massacres of the 3rd in addition to the events of the days which followed. The latter are not normally traced in the historiography on press treatment of Sharpeville, yet included continued activism and high political deliberations involving the British government and the UN. The coverage continued to embody British newspapers’ existing frameworks of understanding and expression on South Africa and their patterns of practice, which entwined with African activism to a greater extent than during the state-controlled tour. In the days which followed Sharpeville, British newspapers, predominantly but not uniquely on the Left, helped to channel the activism to foreign publics. The British press continued to provide a means by which Africans challenged colonial rule in ways which allowed them to circumvent the strictures of governance of their

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countries. Liberal whites were also involved in the South African context—indeed, to a determining extent at times, championing the activists in pursuit of a ‘multiracial’ future. Some of the most prolific of the liberals were journalists who wrote for South African English-language newspapers and/or who worked for British papers as stringers. The combination of newspapers and activism played a significant role in promoting awareness of the horrors of apartheid. Yet, as we have seen, the British press possessed a limited vision for South Africa, content as papers of all leanings and formats were with Macmillan’s rather paltry attack on apartheid in Cape Town at the culmination of his 1960 tour. The interest then had been in providing Britain with a facelift in Africa. This contrasted with the press’s vision for Central Africa, where British responsibility was paramount and intervention easier to achieve. Following Sharpeville, British newspapers were divided on what Britain should do. The lack of consensus on policy benefited the British government, which remained concerned for the Commonwealth and to defend the principle of non-interference in the domestic policies of other states. Nevertheless, the coverage continued to damage some of its interests. Journalists’ writings on apartheid belied the myth of Commonwealth solidarity on a popular level, antagonising the National government’s supporters and mirroring events in Ghana and the Federation. Indeed, British newspaper articles continued to inform white settler cultures. As in Central Africa, press narratives shaped settler understandings of ‘self’ and ‘community’ and provided a focal point of concern. In worrying about British newspapers, supporters of the authorities were able to avoid more discomfiting issues concerning African agency and discontent. The ‘British press’ and their ‘stringers’, who criticised apartheid and relayed the work of the activists to foreign publics, figured in these cultures as scapegoats for broader ills and were sometimes vehemently despised. In contrast to Central Africa, however, where the settlers were hamstrung by British political oversight and nervous because of it, the South African government was able to act irrespective of the intonations of its opponents. The combination of pressure and autonomy resulted in the government supporters’ retrenchment into their ‘islands of white’, a further shutting out of the world, a curtailment of press and other freedoms, and increased brutality. Infuriatingly for the settlers, many of whose ancestors Britain had placed in Africa, the coverage continued to have self-affirming

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implications for British readers. Most papers held British ideals up against the white racialism of the apartheid state, supported the African activism and failed to confront the question of British culpability in the South African context.

5.1   African Activism at Sharpeville and Fears of ‘Race War’ The massacre at Sharpeville featured prominently in all British papers the day following the shootings. The central theme was death and violence; the tone, reproving. Photos were given a lot of page space and would have induced horror and sympathy for the people who had died. One picture appeared in all of the papers, showing bodies lying on the road and on a grass verge outside the police station.8 Clothes and belongings were strewn across the ground, and the earth appeared to be discoloured by the blood of those who had died. Some journalists included additional damning material on the colonial brutality, in their expression recalling the campaigning tone of Blantyre. Next to the photos of the bodies, the Herald, Mirror and Mail positioned a quote from Colonel Pienaar, the area police commander, to the effect that Africans ‘must learn the hard way’.9 All of the papers detailed the astounding weaponry of the apartheid state: rifles, light machine guns, armoured cars, Sabre jets and Sten guns.10 The pass laws were mentioned in all of the reports.11 An African was quoted as stating that the shootings had been unprovoked.12 Articles in left-leaning popular papers were impassioned and sympathetic. The Herald article referred to ‘pools of blood’, the sun ‘(beating) down on the unpaved roads’ and ‘a dog (howling) over the body of its master’.13 The

 For example: front-page of the Mirror, 22 March 1960.  Mail, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p.  9); Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp; Herald, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7). 10  For example: Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp. 11  Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp; Herald, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p.  7); Mail, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p.  9); News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p.  2); Telegraph, 22 March 1960, fp. 12  Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp; Herald, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p.  7); News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2). 13  Herald, 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp). 8 9

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Mirror told its readers that ‘the air (had been) filled with the cries of the injured and the wails of women who found their menfolk dead’.14 Yet, at the same time, the coverage was not one-sided. In echoes of the other examples of colonial brutality examined here, the Sharpeville articles laid as much emphasis on African violence as on police brutality, describing those who had died as participants in a ‘riot’.15 Most reports referred to the crowd as a ‘mob’, whose numbers had been around 12,000–20,000.16 Readers were told that the police had searched the bodies of the dead for ‘concealed weapons’,17 that the demonstrators had thrown stones at the police18 and that most were members of an ‘extremist’ or ‘militant’ group, the words the journalists used to describe the PAC.19 These depictions were not confined to right-leaning papers. The Herald article referred to African ‘riots’, of ‘the crowds (stoning) the police and (refusing) to disperse’, of telephone wires being ‘cut’ and of the ‘mob’ ‘(stoning) the station’.20 Readers learned that journalists had also been attacked. These assaults had occurred in Cape Town, not Sharpeville, but the reports were sometimes fused in such a way as to blur the distinction, as in the News Chronicle, whose article on Langa appeared under the large ‘Sharpeville’ headline, reinforcing the image of African violence at Sharpeville. The paper explained that two people from the Cape Times had ‘narrowly escaped death at the hands of the mob’, and that their driver had been ‘strangled by African rioters, his body mutilated, then soaked in petrol and set alight’.21 The word ‘battlefield’ featured prominently in many of the news reports and in some of the headlines that day, implying a fight; in other words, of violence on both sides. Editorials reinforced the view that the prime responsibility for the deaths lay at the door of the state. Yet on neither Left nor Right did editors debate who attacked whom in this instance. Rather, they chose to  Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp.  Herald, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9). 16  Herald, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail, 22 March 1960, fp and p. 9; News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2); Telegraph, 22 March 1960, fp. 17  Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp; Herald, p. 7 (begins fp). 18  Mirror, 22 March 1960, bp; Herald, 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp); Mail, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2) 19  Herald, 22 March 1960, p. 7 (begins fp); Mail, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 9); News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2); Telegraph, 22 March 1960, fp. 20  Herald, fp and p. 7. 21  News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, fp (continued p. 2). 14 15

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present social relations inside South Africa as inherently volatile. Fears of future, incipient violence from Africans facing a morally reprehensible system, informed journalists’ representations in papers of all political leanings. These linked to the demonstration and recalled British newspapers’ burgeoning consensus on the Federation and processes of decolonisation in Central Africa. On the Left, in an editorial titled ‘The Awful Warning’, the Mirror told its readers that the deaths ‘lie grimly at the door of the people who wilfully deny the wind of change’.22 ‘Unless the South African Government sweeps away its abominable race laws’, the paper warned, ‘horrors like this will happen again. Yesterday’s tragedy could be the beginning of the revolt in South Africa’.23 The News Chronicle’s editorial ‘Carnage’ warned its readers that Sharpeville ‘shows how close South Africa is to explosion… It can only be a matter of time before there are more bloody outbreaks’.24 The more conservative Times used the same powerful imagery, arguing that ‘an explosive state of affairs will continue and may well get worse unless the implications of the pass law system are squarely faced’.25 The Telegraph reminded its readers that ‘Such a wind of change as Mr. Macmillan found blowing through Africa is not the same thing… as “a howling tempest to blow away the whole of the new developing civilisation.” But, as today’s news from the Rand too aptly illustrates, the ever-present danger is that the one may turn into the other’.26 These themes reflected several familiar influences. The language of ‘mob’ violence and ‘riot’ can be attributed to factors including racism, classism and an interest in sensation, as well as to the sources which the press relied upon in this largely unforeseen event, which took a matter of minutes. The police held a press conference on the day of the massacre in which they described what they considered to have occurred in language which journalists reproduced. At the same time, and in echoes of previous events, the emphasis on mobs and rioting, though surely derogative in tone, reflected the fact that African activism was present in reality.27 The coverage’s incorporation of scenes of horror captured photographically, interpretations of the incident which were sympathetic to Africans, and content which linked their activism to arguments which favoured reform  Mirror, 22 March 1960, p. 2.  Ibid. 24  News Chronicle, 22 March 1960, p. 8. 25  Times, 22 March 1960, p. 13. 26  Telegraph, 22 March 1960, p. 12. 27  See Lodge, Sharpeville, for a detailed account of how events unfolded on the 21st. 22 23

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can be attributed to British newspapers’ established practices and frames of discussion for the white settler colonies which linked to Britain. In South Africa, these latter characteristics were also influenced by South African liberals and the South African English-language press. South African liberals and English-language papers would become more important in the days which followed, once the initial, reactive coverage that depended on immediate sources subsided. The press soon grounded itself and recovered its ‘voice’. South African English-language papers, avowedly ‘liberal’ and possessing close links to African leaders, were, owing to a long, interconnected history that stretched back to the era of British rule, intimately bound to British newspaper organisations. During the period of decolonisation, the British press provided a means by which people of all colours inside South Africa attempted to foment apartheid’s destruction. Opponents of the regime forged closer relations with British left-leaning papers than right-leaning ones. However, right-leaning papers were also involved, as we shall see. This reflected the growing British press consensus on Central and South African affairs, which had characterised its coverage of the events of 1959 as well as the 1960 tour. The presence of the photos of the bodies on the ground was a product of these established ties. The photos had been taken by Ian Berry, a photographer at Drum, who had been putting together a special feature on the PAC at the time of the shootings.28 Drum was one of only two publications with correspondents ‘on the spot’ that day.29 The other had been the Rand Daily Mail, a liberal, anti-government daily, whose presence also owed to its correspondents’ links to African nationalists.30 Benjamin Pogrund, who worked for the paper, had been with Sobukwe himself earlier on in the day at a different location.31 In turn, these papers linked to British ones. Tom Hopkinson, Drum’s British-born editor, recalled that within a few hours of the shootings he had received five cables from overseas papers for photos, and that the

28  The photographs can be found in Ambrose Reeves, Shooting at Sharpeville: The Agony of South Africa (London, 1960). 29  Berry was accompanied by Humphrey Tyler, a Drum journalist. See: Humphrey Tyler, Life in the Time of Sharpeville  – and Wayward Seeds of the New South Africa (Cape Town, 1995). 30  Benjamin Pogrund, War of Words: Memoir of a South African Journalist (London, 2000), p. 83. Pogrund had been there for the Rand Daily Mail. 31  Ibid., pp. 82–83.

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Daily Mirror had also rung him up at home late that night.32 Hopkinson was well known in London, and contacts persisted. During the 1940s, he had been the editor of London’s Picture Post.33 He had also worked as features editor of the News Chronicle and had reviewed novels for the Observer.34 The Observer remained heavily invested in its South Africa coverage and continued to try to influence the outlook of the other British papers. South Africa fell within the scope of the paper’s efforts regarding Kenya and the Federation, which bound discussions on nationalism to those which emphasised the importance of constitutional change in the Anglophone white settler colonies. The paper’s status bound to the South African English-language factor closely, further illustrating the importance of these deep-seated connections, which linked people with similar mindsets across continents. Astor recruited South Africans, like Legum, who had gone into exile in order to fight apartheid, and was inspired and influenced by them.35 Outside of his work for the newspaper, Legum wrote prolifically on Africa during this and in a later period, on topics including the histories of the countries of the continent, Pan-Africanism, nationalism and the post-colonial environment. The Observer’s relationship with African nationalists, including in South Africa, and its wealth of expertise on African affairs, to which men such as Legum contributed, resulted in the paper being dubbed the ‘capital’ of Africa during the years of decolonisation and independence.36 As a whole, the British coverage of Sharpeville continues to point to the probable centrality of African nationalism to British readers’ understanding of the period of decolonisation, and thereby also of their country’s involvement in Africa at the end of empire. Newspapers’ emphases on African activism at Sharpeville continued to communicate the view that the European empires were caught up in a changing of the times in which Africans were rising with unstoppable power such that European acquiescence was required. This was powerful imagery for Africans. Yet, as we have seen, it was not necessarily diminutive of the Europeans for whom the press coverage continued to have self-affirming overtones. Terms such  Tom Hopkinson, In the Fiery Continent (London, 1962), p. 263.  Correspondence with Peter Younghusband, May 2013. 34  Hopkinson, Fiery, p. 9. 35  See Chap. 3 for more information about Legum. 36  Lewis, David Astor, p. 186. 32 33

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as ‘imperial decline’, ‘the end of empire’ and even ‘decolonisation’ were not present in newspaper reports of this period. Rather, the same concepts were discussed in the idiom of nationalism and violence. Empires were considered as victims or possible champions of circumstance. The ones which accepted the new reality were doing the right thing and simply moving with the times. Again, due to the relative dearth of history in British press coverage of Africa, the reasons which lay behind the activism tended not to be communicated in any detail. Instead, nationalism appeared as a natural feature of what was often alluded to as a changing world, changing times or ‘not the nineteenth century anymore’. In cartoons, the use of imagery from the natural world, including water, waves and wind, to portray nationalism further reinforced the sentiment. Presenting nationalism as an organic or amorphous ‘thing’ would not, it is likely, have prompted critical introspection on the dark side of empire. Growing centres of expertise on Africa, including the Observer, were evidently only ever able to influence so much. To the extent that the British coverage of Africa appeared critical of Europeans, again, this tended to focus on white settlers (in this example, the apartheid state), who were understood both to be resisting the march of history and to live distinctly from the British. Yet, in echoes of all the previous self-affirming characterisations, this one also rests on a ‘single story’. It neglects the fact that the violence and the injustices of British colonialism informed African nationalism in South Africa, as elsewhere in Africa. Moreover, to the extent that the settlers were responsible, as in Central Africa many of them were there because of the British. These representations continue to link to debates on the impact of decolonisation in Britain, which, this book suggests, was of a measurable extent, but not substantially negative. The way the newspapers framed African nationalist challenges to colonial authority may have helped British readers unconsciously to negotiate Britain’s relative decline. These representations have implications for the historiography on Sharpeville, too. British coverage of the massacre, while commensurate with the coverage of the other events discussed in this book, calls into question the received wisdom on foreign media treatment of Sharpeville. British newspapers’ blurring of responsibility for the deaths and their emphasis on African activism and violence conflict with existing emphases

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on African victimhood and colonial brutality.37 It is only by situating the British coverage of Sharpeville within the broader sweep of British press coverage of decolonisation that it is possible fully to  appreciate the former’s relation to a grander narrative which foregrounded the power of the activists.

5.2   British Public Disunity and Government Inertia on South Africa In contrast to Ghana and the Federation, British newspapers rather aided the British government, notwithstanding their criticism of apartheid and their calls for officials to get in step with the ‘wind of change’. The government desired to keep South Africa inside the Commonwealth. It also wished to avoid setting a precedent on intervening in a country’s internal affairs for reasons which concerned operations in Britain’s own colonies. British press coverage of Sharpeville did not require a deviation from this path. The emphasis on African as well as colonial violence on 21 March, which blurred the issue of responsibility for the deaths, alongside the papers’ calls for reform, which journalists decoupled from the role of the British, did not augur ill for the British government. Additionally, none of the editorials the day following the shootings commented on what they thought Britain or the British government should do. The Telegraph was the only paper to remark on British action. Yet it chose to concentrate on what it thought had been unhelpful to date: the British boycott of South African goods.38 The boycott was one of the first actions which the Anti-­ Apartheid Movement, spearheaded by Luthuli, called upon foreign countries to undertake in support of African demands for equality. On neither Left nor Right did the press place the British government under editorial pressure to do anything specific the day following the shootings. This 37  In addition to the aforementioned works, for discussion of media treatment of the massacre, see: Smith, ‘Apartheid, Sharpeville and “Impartiality”’; James Sanders, South Africa and the International Media: 1972–1979: A Struggle for Representation (London, 2000); Ronald Hyam and Peter Henshaw, The Lion and the Springbok: Britain and South Africa Since the Boer War (Cambridge, 2003); Thörn, Anti-Apartheid; Rob Skinner, The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States, c. 1919–64 (Basingstoke, 2010). There is also a large section on media treatment of Sharpeville in Lodge, Sharpeville, pp. 228–38. 38  Telegraph, 22 March 1960, p. 12.

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c­ ontrasted with the case of Nyasaland when left-leaning popular papers had called for immediate action in the aftermath of the police brutality in March 1959 and following the events in Blantyre during Macmillan’s Africa tour, in which they were joined by papers including the Mail. ‘Serious’ papers of all political leanings had urged a reconsideration of British policy towards the region. In contrast, the dearth of recommendations in the case of South Africa allowed the government greater freedom to operate as it saw fit. The Labour Party subjected the government to pressure in parliament. Yet in doing so, perhaps tellingly, it did not draw on news reports directly as it had for the Federation. The day following the shootings, a group of Labour back-benchers tabled a motion challenging the government to denounce the actions of the South African authorities.39 Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party, appealed to the government to sponsor or to contribute to a fund to help the dependents of those who had died. When faced with government obduracy on the motion, Labour called on the government, at the very least,  to express ‘regret’ at what had happened. The government proved immovable on all fronts. Conservative MP Cuthbert Alport, speaking on its behalf, was evasive on the issue of regret. Alport stated that ‘civil commotion at any time and in any part of the world is always to be regretted’.40 On the subject of money for dependents, he suggested that people who took part in riots were in ‘a different position’ from those injured or killed while at work, an allusion to the fund set up to support the dependents of the people who had died in the Coalbrook mining disaster earlier that year. On 21 January, 435 people had died at Clydesdale Colliery in the Orange Free State when the mine collapsed.41 First and foremost, the government’s doggedness reflected the fact that in the case of South Africa, officials were concerned with issues other than British opinion. Certainly, Macmillan had responded to public pressure on apartheid during the Commonwealth tour. Yet he had done so rather insubstantially. Following the Sharpeville massacre, the prime minister’s approach appears to have been to weather the storm, whilst avoiding making statements with direct policy implications and concentrating on the issues he deemed the most important: principally, ‘how to deal with the  Herald, 23 March 1960, fp.  HC Deb 22 March 1960, vol. 620, col 240. 41  Pogrund, War of Words, p. 79. 39 40

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matter in the United Nations without leading to a break up of the Commonwealth into two opposing groups’.42 Nevertheless, the absence of editorial pressure on policy may also have helped to soothe his mind. The press spoke out the following day. Some editorials mirrored the sentiments of Labour MPs, in the manner of the reporting of Kenya and Nyasaland, when parliamentary debates had acted as a spur to some of the news articles. Yet on the whole, opinions within as well as between the different sections of the press diverged, pointing to a lesser interdependence in the case of South Africa and communicating a picture of disunity. The News Chronicle wanted the British government to express sympathy for the victims of the massacre or ‘(endanger) the gains made for British influence in Africa by Mr Macmillan’s tour’.43 The Herald thought the solution might lie with the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, who were due to meet and who the paper hoped would ‘ram into Verwoerd’s head the need to change policies that wreck every principle on which the Commonwealth can exist’.44 The paper also wanted the British government to speak up,45 and it called for a national demonstration in the form of two minutes’ silence throughout the country in mourning for the men and the women ‘butchered by Verwoerd’s police’ or ‘a silent demonstration in the streets when this man sets foot in Britain’. In contrast, the Telegraph thought that Sharpeville ‘makes all the more welcome Dr. Verwoerd’s announcement that… he intends to be present at the forthcoming Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London’.46 The paper was critical of the boycotters,47 of the demonstrations outside South Africa House and of the ‘shrill interpolations of Mr. Gaitskell’, which it thought ‘would be more likely to confirm Dr. Verwoerd in his natural obstinacy’ than bring about the desired change.48 On the 23rd, the press reported that between 700 and 1000 students had taken part in a demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square in which they had chanted ‘Murder, murder’.49 The Times thought that ‘smugness, thick as the fat on a turtle’, enveloped ‘the most irresponsible critics’ of the South  Macmillan, Pointing, p. 167.  News Chronicle, 23 March 1960, p. 6. 44  Herald, 23 March 1960, fp. 45  Herald, 24 March 1960, fp. 46  Telegraph, 22 March 1960, p. 12. 47  Ibid. 48  Telegraph, 24 March 1960, p. 12. 49  For example: Mirror, 23 March 1960, p. 5. 42 43

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African government,50 and defended those MPs who had refused to ‘judge in advance of the evidence’. British papers were thus by no means united on a preferred course of action. The divergences appeared to owe to the absence of direct British responsibility for events in South Africa, which affected papers’ ambitions. It also permitted political and other interests to proliferate to an extent that was not possible by 1960 regarding British Central Africa, where the powerful wind of change also blew but rather across lands of British ‘protection’. Three days after the shootings, the government issued a watered down amendment to Labour’s motion, which read that ‘This House, while recognising that it has no responsibility or jurisdiction over the independent countries of the Commonwealth, at the same time wishes to record its deep sympathy with all the people of South Africa at the recent tragic events which have taken place at Vereeniging and Langa’.51 The original motion had ‘deplored the shootings’ and had expressed sympathy only for the families of the dead and injured. The Sharpeville massacre is usually understood as inspiring a sea change in foreign, including British, opinion on apartheid.52 Press coverage is considered as having lain at the heart of this because it is thought to have fuelled a wave of indignation. Roger Fieldhouse, for example, argues that Sharpeville and the attendant worldwide publicity turned apartheid ‘from an almost unknown foreign term into a reviled household word’ and that this ‘fundamentally changed the situation in Britain’.53 The British government is said to have been inspired to act, with one historian claiming that it ‘voted for’ a UN General Assembly resolution condemning the Sharpeville shootings.54 These characterisations should be questioned. The coverage of the shootings communicated ambiguity in addition to indignation. The indignation that was present owed less to the massacre than to many papers’ longer-running frames of understanding and expression on developments in the white settler societies in Anglophone Africa, which foregrounded  Times, 23 March 1960, p. 13.  For example: Telegraph, 25 March 1960, fp. ‘Vereeniging’ here refers to Sharpeville. Sharpeville is a township near the city of Vereeniging. 52  For Sharpeville and the growth of the anti-apartheid movement, see: Roger Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain – A Study in Pressure Group Politics (London, 2005); Gurney, ‘A Great Cause’. 53  Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid, p. 20. 54  Hyam, Declining Empire, pp. 318–9. 50 51

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nationalism and for which the massacre provided further support. Nor did the government act in any substantive way in response to the news reports or for any other reason, at the UN or elsewhere, as we shall see. Reconsidering the press coverage invites a reassessment of the wider historical narrative on an important event which occurred in Africa during the period of decolonisation because the articles’ ambiguity gives pause for thought about the context within which officials operated. This echoes the case of the Federation, where British newspapers’ support for African nationalism and their pressure on policy during 1959 begged questions about the government’s intentions.

5.3   Liberals, English-Language Papers, the British Press and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in the Cape At first, it was difficult for the British press to stamp its mark on the Sharpeville coverage. There were no foreign journalists at the scene, either witnessing the shootings or in the immediate aftermath. Many papers used reports filed by South African stringers. Yet none of the stringers whose articles on Sharpeville appeared in the British press had been present at the scene until after the shootings. Some British papers, such as the Mirror, used news agency reports from which to construct their accounts. As we have seen, all reports, whether from the news agencies or from stringers, drew heavily on the account of the South African police, who had held a press conference later that day. As fresh information came in, and as journalists began to explore the issues, the picture adjusted. The press began to devote more space to police blame and brutality, and to the just grievances of the Africans who had been shot.  This occurred predominantly on the Left, but  right-­ leaning papers were also involved. All papers used the evidence gathered by Ambrose Reeves, the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, who had entered Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto following the massacre to take down and to collate survivors’ testimonies. On the 25th, the Mirror and the Mail published interviews with Reeves,55 and on the 26th, the News Chronicle devoted a full front-page to an article written by Reeves himself, cabled from Johannesburg.56 In it, the clergyman described the  Mirror, 25 March 1960, p. 4; Mail, 25 March 1960, p. 13.  News Chronicle, 26 March 1960, fp.

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injuries the victims had suffered as ‘normally only seen after a battle… bone powdered by heavy calibre slugs, limbs so mutilated by bullets tearing through that amputation is necessary, a great number of wounds inflicted from behind’. The police shot 705 bullets at the crowd on 21 March.57 More than 70% of the people who were killed or injured had been shot from the back.58 The following day, the Observer published exclusive material gathered by Drum. It was one of the only eye-witness accounts of the massacre written by a journalist Humphrey Tyler, in which Tyler not only contested the authorities’ claim that the African crowd had been armed and violent, but also described the behaviour of the police in damning terms.59 One officer Tyler saw standing on top of a Saracen, a six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier used by the authorities to enforce apartheid, appeared to the journalist to have fired his Sten gun into the crowd, ‘swinging it around in a wide arc from his hip as though he were panning a movie camera’. Several papers also explored African perspectives on the wider issues. The News Chronicle and the Observer both ran articles on the passes, the Observer drawing on its Africa Bureau links.60 The Herald published a sympathetic interview with Philip Kgosana, the young Cape regional secretary of the PAC, sent from its Cape Town stringer Myrna Blumberg.61 In it, Kgosana explained that he ‘would rather die than live in South Africa as it is today’. The appearance of the pieces from Reeves, Tyler and Kgosana embodied the principal processes which informed the British coverage of South Africa following the massacre. These processes mirrored British newspapers’ patterns of practice in other regions of Africa during decolonisation. Yet they also played out in ways that were specific to South Africa. The articles from Reeves, Tyler and Kgosana illustrated the triangular relationship between groups in Africa, British papers and public opinion at the end of empire. Reeves saw British papers, which were sold in South Africa, as a means of communicating to people inside the country that which would otherwise have remained undisclosed, given the restrictions the South  Pogrund, War of Words, p. 83.  Ibid. 59  Observer, 27 March 1960, p. 4. 60  News Chronicle, 23 March 1960, p. 5; Observer, 27 March 1960, p. 16. The Observer’s article was written by Mary Benson, a South African who was on the Executive of the Africa Bureau. 61  Herald, 26 March 1960, p. 4. 57 58

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African authorities had imposed on the local press for printing certain information, which did not apply to material sent abroad.62 A second motivation concerned foreign opinion. Getting the word out was considered important. The goal was less explicit than in Central Africa, however, where the situation looked most comparable. The aim was to influence ‘opinion’ on apartheid by building awareness, including inside South Africa, of the brutality unleashed upon a censured people. The ultimate objective was to affect policy, but how and when (and whose policy) was less plain than in British Central Africa. Certainly, it concerned both the National government and foreign powers. In addition, in South Africa, white liberals influenced events. Sometimes, liberals (such as Reeves) acted in isolation and directly to leverage British newspapers in pursuit of change. At other times, they mediated the work of Africans, such as in the case of Blumberg and Kgosana. White liberals’ actions were relevant in the Cape, in particular, where Kgosana and Blumberg lived, owing to the character of African and settler politics in the region. This is significant for our story because Cape Town soon became the locus of the ‘positive action’ which Sobukwe had urged and thus also of the newspapers’ attention. The character of settler politics in the Cape reflected the history of the British presence in South Africa. Following South Africa’s independence in 1934, a large English-speaking white settler population remained in the Western Cape, where Cape Town was located. The South African Liberal Party had been founded in Cape Town and was headquartered there. South African liberal tradition can be traced to the early years of British settlement in the Cape, when upon founding a parliament, the British adopted a non-racial franchise (albeit with educational and economic qualifications). Though by no means devoid of racism, it differed from the Nationalist tradition. The South African English-language press, for which many liberals worked, linked to the history of British colonialism, then, as well as to British newspapers. British press treatment of South Africa, and the Cape in particular, provided a forum where intra-white political struggles played out. This involved journalists who worked for South African English-language papers championing African activists in pursuit of political reform centring on apartheid’s demise. Regarding African politics, the PAC, which spearheaded Sobukwe’s campaign of ‘positive action’ in the Cape during March, had a  Reeves, Shooting, pp. 72–73.

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Pan-­Africanist ideology which cautioned against close collaboration with people of European decent. When PAC activism found expression in ‘white’ papers, it pointed to the probable significance of factors other than the party’s direct and concerted exploitation of ‘European’, including British, journalists. The case of Kgosana appeared as somewhat of an exception to this rule, but possibly one that proved it. Kgosana’s relationship with Blumberg, and their location within the ecosystem of Cape politics, are instructive. In his diary, Kgosana recorded that he had visited Blumberg’s house at Sea Point, an affluent suburb in Cape Town, on the evening of 24 March for an interview which lasted about an hour.63 The interview formed the basis of Blumberg’s article which appeared in the Herald on 26 March. According to Randolph Vigne, a prominent member of the Liberal Party, Blumberg was a friend of the organisation.64 Kgosana worked as a seller for Contact, a Liberal fortnightly publication, edited by Patrick Duncan.65 Journalists such as Blumberg, who had had material published in Contact,66 benefited from these close associations. Duncan was supportive of the PAC for reasons which included a fear of communism, with which the ANC was connected. Networks like these were widespread. They would inform British press treatment of South Africa in the days and weeks that followed. They permitted in-depth coverage of African activism, although not always to the approval of the PAC. Kgosana’s links with journalists, and the way in which he was subsequently ‘feted’ by the media, later earned the young leader the contempt of many of his fellow Pan-Africanists,67 who were part of an organisation which, though pragmatic in its use of the press, was also profoundly distrustful of it. According to J.D. Nyaose, a founding member of the PAC, the organisation once devised a slogan to say: ‘No press

63  Philip Ata Kgosana, Lest We Forget: An Autobiography (Braamfontein, South Africa, 1988), p. 27. 64  Randolph Vigne, Liberals Against Apartheid: A History of the Liberal Party of South Africa, 1953–68 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 120. 65  For Duncan’s role, and particularly his relationship with Kgosana, see: C.  J. Driver, Patrick Duncan: South African and Pan-African (Oxford, 2000). 66  Myrna Blumberg, White Madam (London, 1962), p. 106. 67  Interview with T.T. Letlaka, Z.B. Molete, A.B. Ngcobo and Peter Raboroko, Dar-esSalaam, 9 September 1968, A2422/4, Section A: Interviews, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents. 1945–1972 (A2422), Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand (hereafter Wits).

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has built us, and no press will destroy us’.68 While the NLM in Ghana and the MYL in Nyasaland had sought out journalists, it is less certain that in the case of South Africa, then, the initiative lay with the PAC as an organisation.

5.4   The ‘March of Change’ Through Reeves, Tyler, Kgosana and Blumberg, then, African grievances and police brutality at Sharpeville gained exposure in British papers in the week following the massacre. These subjects are more in keeping with historiographical emphases on foreign media treatment of Sharpeville as well as on British press coverage of decolonisation in Africa, which underscore themes including the ‘demoralisation of empire’. Yet these characterisations remain incomplete because the coverage in papers of all leanings and formats continued simultaneously to foreground African action, power and violence. What is sometimes lost in studies of media treatment of Sharpeville, if decontextualised, is the fact that the massacre marked the beginning of a planned campaign of civil disobedience, as opposed to its culmination and defeat, and newspaper articles reflected this. At the same time, journalists’ interest in the activism can be considered as symptomatic of the press’s longer-standing practices and concerns regarding nationalism and decolonisation in southern Africa. For the most part, the focus of the coverage was Cape Town. Foreign coverage was patchy at first because visiting journalists had flocked to Johannesburg, where Sharpeville was located, as the ‘imagined storm centre’.69 Snap decisions informed the reportage and recalled other similar instances such as the press’s overreliance on police reports the day following the Sharpeville massacre. Upon arrival, these visiting journalists sought to tap their connections with English speakers and familiar South African publications, which spoke to the enduring significance of the entwined history of the British and South African English-language presses. Hopkinson recalled that Sharpeville brought ‘the press of half the world pouring in on Johannesburg—and pouring into Drum offices as well’.70

68  Interview with J.D.  Nyaose, Nairobi, 4 December 1969, A2422/19, Section A: Interviews, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits. 69  Vigne, Liberals, p. 119. 70  Hopkinson, Fiery, p. 268.

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It was further west, however, that events were taking off. Fortunately, stringers serviced Cape Town well. The Cape Times’s Stanley Uys,71 stringing for the News Chronicle, appeared to be on the inside track of events. On the 23rd, an article by Uys described the mounting tension on the second day of the anti-pass demonstrations.72 Uys explained that in Cape Town there had been ‘shooting, stonings, arrests—and mass absenteeism’: ‘Pan-Africanists are telling Africans in the townships, and even in the white suburbs, not to go to work anymore’. Readers were told that employers in Cape Town estimated that between 60 and 80 per cent of their African staffs were absent. The Telegraph’s Colin Reid, the only British correspondent resident in South Africa,73 reported further police shootings, African plans for sustained demonstrations and ‘large-scale absenteeism’ in Cape Town, which ‘delayed shipping and industry’.74 Three days later, Uys reported that 2000 Africans led by Kgosana had ‘massed silently’ outside a police station in Cape Town and had ‘won a victory against the Pass Laws’.75 In response to pressure from the African delegation and Patrick Duncan, who had arrived on the scene, Colonel Terblanche, deputy police commissioner for the Western Cape, had suspended the pass laws temporarily.76 The government subsequently extended the decision nationwide.77 All papers reported the temporary suspension of the pass laws alongside the authorities’ mounting concern.78 By the 28th, some journalists were so struck by the protestors’ challenge that they questioned if Verwoerd could maintain his position. Stephen Barber’s piece for the News Chronicle explained that South Africa was ‘on the edge of anarchy’.79 ‘If Dr. Henrik Verwoerd can last in office much longer’, he wrote, ‘then this is an even stranger place than it has been made out to be… The Government of what cannot be described as anything but a slave State has frankly had to confess that it cannot impose its own laws’. The Telegraph also chose to  The Cape Times was also an English-language paper.  News Chronicle, 23 March 1960, fp. 73  ‘Staff correspondents of United Kingdom newspapers and the B.B.C in Commonwealth countries’, 26 May 1960, fol. 11, DO 194/29. 74  Telegraph, 23 March 1960, fp (continued bp). 75  News Chronicle, 26 March 1960, p. 2. 76  Lodge, Sharpeville, pp. 140–3. 77  Ibid., p. 143. 78  Observer, 27 March 1960, fp (continued p.  6); Mail, 28 March 1960, fp and p.  9; Herald, 28 March 1960, fp and p. 7; News Chronicle, 28 March 1960, fp and p. 4; Telegraph, 28 March 1960, fp and p. 12; Mirror, 28 March 1960, p. 4. 79  News Chronicle, 28 March 1960, fp. 71 72

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foreground the government’s decision on the pass laws. The paper thought that they ‘(constituted) the very framework of apartheid’ and were in Nationalist thinking at moments of crisis more necessary than ever.80 ‘If the Union Government fails to resume the enforcement of these laws’, the editorial read, ‘it will not be too much to say that the tide has turned in the country’s history’. Several factors were thought to have played a part in this incipient turning of the tide. They included world pressure, National Party tactics and changes in Afrikaner opinion. Yet journalists also wrote it up as a story of African achievement. ‘It is because the African labour force has at last become aware of its passive strength’, the Telegraph wrote.81 The Mail emphasised the importance of ‘the capacity for organised protest suddenly shown by the black Africans’.82 Then came the first nationwide demonstration of the power of the activists: the ANC’s national ‘Day of Mourning’ (28 March), the first event since Sharpeville to attract a comparable degree of publicity. Luthuli had asked his supporters to stay away from work and to burn their passes in memory of those who had died the previous week. Hopkinson claims that the idea had come from Nat Nakasa, a Drum journalist.83 The supportive relationship between journalists and nationalists was perennially significant across all of Anglophone Africa’s settler colonies. It was aided in the case of the ‘Day of Mourning’, an ANC initiative, owing to the party’s attitude towards external collaborations. While certainly embodying caution, it was nevertheless also informed by the desire to achieve an equable, yet multiracial future society.84 Nat Nakasa, a black South African journalist, working for a paper headed by a white liberal with ties to the British press, commented in pursuit of political objectives which envisioned reform. Hopkinson writes that he passed Nakasa’s idea on to Luthuli through two other journalists, Cecil Eprile and Dennis Kiley.85 Again, the South African English-language press enabled the foreign press to cover the story. Hopkinson drove out with Berry that day and ‘three or four visiting journalists and cameramen on a tour of the townships’.86  Telegraph, 28 March 1960, p. 12.  Ibid. 82  Mail, 28 March 1960, fp. 83  Hopkinson, Fiery, pp. 263–4. 84  For the ANC’s attitude to the ‘white press’ (recall Ghana), see: Albert Luthuli, Let My People Go: An Autobiography (London, 1962). 85  Hopkinson, Fiery, pp. 263–4. 86  Ibid., p. 265. 80 81

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Norman Phillips, a Canadian journalist, remembered going into Orlando, a township near Johannesburg, with Harold Sacks, crime reporter for the Rand Daily Mail.87 Articles pushed African anger and violence as themes. Readers were told that the day had been filled with arson and murder. Activists had reportedly burned churches and schools nationwide. Strikers had stoned those who had chosen to ignore the strike call. And an African policeman had been stabbed to death by a mob.88 Europeans had also been threatened. Peter Younghusband, Drum’s Cape Town editor, stringing for the Mail, sent a report from Langa that day, from the funeral of three Africans the police had shot dead the previous Monday (the 21st). The journalist had attended alongside members of the PAC and the Liberal Party, who had tasked him with operating a loudspeaker,89 which the Liberal Party planned to use to call for peaceful and orderly behaviour.90 Younghusband wrote that he ‘wished (he) was not there’.91 The PAC/Liberal connection, it seems, continued only to stretch so far. ‘At the graveside a relative of one of the dead men raised red-rimmed eyes’, Younghusband explained, ‘and seeing me, a white face among the mass of black faces on the other side of the grave, snarled through clenched teeth the one word: “Go.”’ The leaders of the Pan-Africanists standing beside him advised him to ‘leave immediately’.92 In other areas, action shots of Africans burning their passes seemed to capture a mood of enthusiasm.93 Hopkinson saw that at least one of these photos had been staged by an overseas cameraman encouraging specific poses.94 The upsurge in activity climaxed two days later, when photos of a huge crowd of 30,000 Africans marching from Langa and Nyanga to Cape

87  Norman Phillips, The Tragedy of Apartheid: A Journalist’s Experiences in the South African Riots (London, 1961), p. 32. 88  Mirror, 29 March 1960, p. 3; Telegraph, 29 March 1960, fp; News Chronicle, 29 March 1960, fp; Herald, 29 March 1960, fp (continued p. 7); Mail, 29 March 1960, fp. 89  Vigne, Liberals, p. 121. 90  ‘Diary kept by an African member of the Liberal Party, Cape Town, March/April 1960 (Mr. August)’, piece 389, Section B: Documents, Gail M.  Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits. 91  Mail, 29 March 1960, fp. 92  Mail, 29 March 1960, p. 11. 93  Mirror, 29 March 1960, p. 3. 94  Hopkinson, Fiery, p. 266.

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Town city centre were plastered across newspapers’ front pages.95 The crowd marched to demand the release of African political leaders whom the authorities had detained as the programme of ‘positive action’ intensified. Journalists remained intertwined with the activism which formed the focus of their reports. Kgosana was pictured leading the march. He had missed the beginning and had had to be given a lift by an American journalist, who had gone to interview him, to get to the front of the procession.96 Journalists flanked the march.97 According to Younghusband, the procession pushed before it a ‘fleet’ of cars and vans containing newspapermen, cameramen and newsreel photographers.98 At its head beside Kgosana, amongst others, were Younghusband and Ken Mackenzie, Blumberg’s husband, who wrote a piece for the Spectator.99 During this period, a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail recalled that ‘the Cape Town liberals’ were ‘putting Kgosana in touch with the white establishment press, and later with foreign journalists, so that he could explain the nature of the campaign’.100 ‘I could hardly meet all the newsmen who wanted to see me’, Kgosana later recalled.101 On the day of the march, ‘press people and other spectators watched from roof-tops’,102 as Kgosana victoriously negotiated with the Western Cape’s Deputy Police Commissioner Colonel Terblanche and the Commissioner of Police General Rademeyer for a meeting with the Minister of Justice. Most of the articles British papers published the day following the march emphasised the power of non-violence. Yet bubbling under the surface of some of the narratives remained a preoccupation with perceived latent violence, communicated to readers through descriptions of the African crowd as ‘seething’, for instance—‘a great black snake’.103 Editors remained committed to the view that in light of such a circumstance, 95  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp; Express, 31 March 1960, fp; Mirror, 31 March 1960, fp; News Chronicle, 31 March 1960, fp; Telegraph, 31 March 1960, fp; Herald, 1 April 1960, fp. 96  See: Vigne, Liberals, p. 125; Kgosana, Lest we Forget, p. 33; and Lodge, Sharpeville, p. 150. 97  Kgosana, Lest we Forget, p. 33. 98  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp. 99  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp; Blumberg, White Madam, p. 27. Blumberg said she arrived later than her husband: see White Madam, p. 27 and p. 32. 100  Benjamin Pogrund, How Can Man Die Better: Sobukwe and Apartheid (London, 1990), p. 145. 101  Kgosana, Lest we Forget, p. 32. 102  Ibid., p. 34. 103  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp. The Mirror referred to a ‘tide of anger’. The Express headline was ‘Terror on the march’. Both fp articles on the 31st.

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political reform was imperative. The headlines of the editorials which appeared on the 31st included ‘At breaking point’ (Mail), ‘A change must come’ (Herald), ‘The shadows’ (News Chronicle) and ‘Life and reason at stake’ (Telegraph).104 At the same time, the authors were apprehensive about the future. The government had already announced its plans to ban the ANC and PAC, and the day of the march marked the beginning of a State of Emergency. This potentially explosive mix of African strength and white intransigence was not lost on editors and recalled Sharpeville. ‘At breaking point’ told Mail readers that ‘The clouds lower over South Africa. One feels an ominous tension as before a storm. What has been seen in other countries is now happening there. The mass arrests, the state of emergency, the menacing demonstrations. All this, the world rightly believes, is due to the blind stupidity of the National Government in persisting with apartheid in the face of reason and reality. The onlooker, who sees most of the game, helplessly watches the approach of almost inevitable tragedy’.105 The Herald’s ‘A change must come’ explained that ‘The South African Government is asking for a revolution… There are ten million black South Africans. There are three million whites. The 10 million cannot be held in subjection to unjust laws, ever savagely tightening. Shooting, banning, flogging, jailing only challenge hatred. To remove injustice, to abandon apartheid, to aim at government by consent is the only hope in South Africa. Even yet it is not too late. But Dr. Verwoerd’s Government arrests liberals, trade union leaders, moderates, black and white—some of the very people whose influence is important to avoid nation-wide violence’.106 In composing these pieces, it seems that the journalists intended to challenge apartheid. At the same time, however, the events which followed Sharpeville suggest that the coverage may simultaneously have performed a contradictory role. During the government crackdown, the British coverage may have worsened the situation because it gave the authorities additional cause for concern to which they responded with further restrictions. In echoes of settler responses to the Cape Town speech, the authorities’ relationship with the British press operated independently of British policy. Over these weeks, British newspapers would contribute to a growing estrangement between Britain and the ruling  These were on pages 8, fp, 4 and 12, respectively.  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp. 106  Herald, 31 March 1960, fp. 104 105

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National Party, informed by the former’s relationship with liberal and/or ‘British’ influences within the country. British press coverage of South Africa would increasingly sever on a ‘popular’ level the cross-cultural connections the British government were keen to conserve at a high political one. In Britain, the campaigning coverage met government obduracy. Yet it also embodied a limited vision for South Africa, which endorsed the restraint.

5.5   The Press, the British Government and the UN Meanwhile, the UN Security Council convened to discuss the situation. The British government remained determined to avoid acting decisively. Some MPs had pressured the government to adopt a firm stance. On the 28th, James Callaghan, Labour’s chief spokesman on colonial affairs, had asked the Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to instruct the UK delegate to the UN to support proposals for bringing the South African situation within its jurisdiction.107 Two days later, Lloyd informed the House that the UK representative had instructions not to oppose discussion of the item, but that the government still adhered to the view that, ‘in accordance with Article 2(7) of the Charter, nothing in the Charter authorised the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State’.108 Labour greeted the announcement as a positive step, but began to push for a progressive approach to a possible UN resolution.109 The editorials which appeared on the 31st indicated that the press remained divided on how Britain should act. The Herald laid emphasis on the importance of ‘world opinion’ or ‘world pressure’ in supporting all ‘reasonable’ people inside South Africa ‘to bring a change’, but it did not mention the UN.110 The Mail welcomed Lloyd’s announcement, but also thought that the ‘rule about non-interference in internal affairs is necessary and wise’ or ‘the world would be in constant turmoil’.111 The paper seemed to settle on the view that the Commonwealth leaders might have the greatest impact by exerting pressure on Verwoerd privately. The News  HC Deb 28 March 1960, vol. 620, cols 954–5.  HC Deb 30 March 1960, vol. 620, col 1329. 109  Ibid., cols 1329–30. 110  Herald, 31 March 1960, fp. 111  Mail, 31 March 1960, fp. 107 108

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Chronicle approved of the British government’s decision not to oppose discussion of the item, but said little more.112 The Telegraph favoured calm.113 It thought that ‘blanket indignation levelled at the whites’ or ‘unmitigated encouragement of the blacks’ would only ‘exacerbate passions already at boiling point’ and could prove ‘incendiary’. It doubted whether the Security Council meeting could serve any ‘constructive’ purpose, but argued that ‘on balance’, Britain was ‘probably correct’ not to oppose such a meeting, ‘since to have done so would not only have been ineffective, but would also have been taken as condonation of apartheid’. These uncertainties may have reflected wider British opinion. On 7 April, the News Chronicle published the results of a Gallup Poll it had conducted ‘a few days after the shootings’.114 The historiography on Sharpeville usually only cites part of the poll’s findings, such as the Chronicle’s claim that Sharpeville had dramatically increased British public awareness of events in South Africa (to 99%) and that British opinion had swung against apartheid (to 80%).115 Yet the findings also stated that ‘there are gradations of opinion about what the British attitude should be’. 52% of respondents favoured adopting a strong and outspoken stand. Yet 48% did not know what to do or favoured inaction of various kinds on apartheid or South African affairs. The Labour Party also seemed less willing to take a strong lead on the subject as compared to Central Africa. At the UN, Britain abstained from voting on a resolution deploring the loss of life in the shooting of African demonstrators and calling on the South African government to abandon its racial policies in the interests of international peace. The vote was 9 to 0 for the resolution. France also abstained. Some of the headlines that day suggested that the press approved of the resolution and disapproved of Britain’s abstention. These included the News Chronicle’s ‘Britain silent as U.N. raps Africa’, and possibly the Mirror’s ‘“Stop it!” Demand by UN’.116 Yet papers refrained from editorial comment on the issue. Parliamentary criticism was greater, yet still rather insubstantial. The government remained resolute. In the Commons on 6 April, John Profumo, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, summed up the government’s reasoning with the words, ‘we thought that  News Chronicle, 31 March 1960, p. 4.  Telegraph, 31 March 1960, p. 12. 114  News Chronicle, 7 April 1960, fp. 115  For example: Lodge, Sharpeville, p. 237. 116  On pages fp and p. 3, respectively. 112 113

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the resolution went beyond the scope of the Security Council’, and ‘we did not think it was the most effective way of alleviating the situation’.117 In the period following the initial request for a meeting from the African and Asian members (the 24th), the British government’s behaviour at or in relation to the UN had been influenced by several considerations. To the extent that the government had taken ‘action’ against the National government, its overriding concern had been to avoid damaging relations with newly independent states in Africa and Asia, although its appreciation of British public opposition to apartheid had also played a role.118 Examples of ‘action’ included its decision not to oppose the UN’s discussion of the matter, and then abstaining on voting on the resolution as opposed to vetoing it. On the inhibiting side, the government’s priority had been its concern that Britain might itself need to rely on Article 2(7) in the future in its own African colonies. Article 2(7) laid out the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of states. Yet the equivocal character of British editorial comment may also have informed the inaction. The Commons debate on the 6th indicated that it may well have affected developments, for although one Labour MP argued that the failure to vote on apartheid was ‘totally unrepresentative of British and Commonwealth public opinion’,119 another, on the government’s benches, felt able to contend that ‘general public opinion feels that the greatest contribution which this House can make towards a happy solution of these tragic and perplexing events is to exercise restraint and leave Her Majesty’s Government to use their own judgement as they think best at this delicate time’.120 Judging from the press coverage, this seems a fair assessment.

5.6   Police Brutality in the Cape The following week, police brutality became the focus of British newspapers’ attention, preoccupying those on the Right as well as the Left. Yet this was not because more details on Sharpeville emerged. It stemmed from the behaviour of the police in Cape Town as they began to enforce new laws introduced under the State of Emergency. The process of  HC Deb 06 April 1960, vol. 621, col 376.  DO 35/10730-1; PREM 11/3163; PREM 11/3109. 119  Stephen Swingler. HC Deb 06 April 1960, vol. 621, col 376. 120  Sir G. Nicholson. Ibid., cols 377–8. 117 118

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enforcement had begun at the time of the march, but the violence did not peak until a week later: 4–6 April. Operations prior to this included the first waves of the arrests of ‘moderates’, including Luthuli, Kgosana and some white liberals,121 prompting others, such as Reeves, to flee the country;122 and efforts by the police to force strikers back to work.123 Indications that in Cape Town the police violence had begun to spiral out of control included news that the authorities had thrown cordons around Langa and Nyanga124 and that a police officer had shot a ‘sick baby’ in the head.125 On 5 April, press reports concentrated on what was happening in Cape Town city centre.126 James O’Driscoll was there for the Telegraph. O’Driscoll wrote that the police had gone into ‘some of the main streets of Cape Town’ and had ‘attacked Africans, who were walking peacefully, with riding whips and rubber truncheons’, ‘in full view of bustling shoppers’.127 At the same time, the authorities began to curtail journalists’ freedoms. Yet, as the state moved in, the press engaged in a last flurry of effort to cover the violence. Many journalists managed to report scenes of police brutality further out—even in cordoned-off Langa and Nyanga. They included Younghusband and Blumberg, who used their network of contacts until the telephone wires were cut,128 and Barber, who had, according to his article, come across the violence ‘almost by accident’ on his way to the city centre from the airport.129 Barber sent a particularly emotive report. Yet it was not unrepresentative of the other accounts. The journalist wrote that in the two townships the police had launched ‘kragdadigheid’—‘a beastly word that means precisely what the Nazis meant by “beastliness”’. In the British Parliament, Labour continued to pressure the government. The day the articles on the police violence appeared, Gaitskell urged 121  For example: Herald, 31 March 1960, fp (continued p.  8); Telegraph, 31 March 1960, fp. 122  For example: Observer, 3 April 1960, bp. 123  For example: Mail, 31 March 1960, fp. 124  For example: Telegraph, 1 April 1960, fp. 125  For example: Herald, 2 April 1960, fp. 126  Mirror, 5 April 1960, p. 3; Mail, 5 April 1960, fp; News Chronicle, 5 April 1960, fp; Telegraph, 5 April 1960, fp. 127  Telegraph, 5 April 1960, fp. 128  Mail, 5 April 1960, fp; Herald, 5 April 1960, p. 9. Blumberg, White Madam, p. 33. 129  News Chronicle, 5 April 1960, fp.

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Macmillan to agree that ‘the overwhelming majority of the British people received with a shock of horror the news of the police action at Cape Town yesterday’ and to give to the South African government ‘early expression of his regret about what happened’.130 Macmillan replied faster than he had on the 22nd, stating that ‘what has happened in this tragic situation is a very great source of deep regret to me’.131 The press hailed this as the prime minister’s most outspoken comment yet,132 but his words could hardly have concerned the South African government any more than Britain’s behaviour at the UN, for it was on a par. Macmillan spoke only of ‘regret’ and, in personalising the comment with the words ‘to me’, kept it informal. At the same time, Macmillan urged caution in the name of Commonwealth unity.133 The following day, Younghusband wrote a striking feature for the Mail titled ‘The day of the whips’.134 Under the ‘whips’ headline was an Illingworth cartoon depicting terrified, screaming, running or cowering Africans being chased by policemen with truncheons and long whips. In the cartoon, the Africans looked very much like victims; the police, stern and brutal. ‘Horrified women’, Younghusband wrote, ‘terrified screaming children watch their husbands and fathers being dragged out of the mean dwellings and flogged with whips and beaten with long riot batons, running between the shanties, chased by the police lashing at them mercilessly. Those who resist are shot down’. For O’Driscoll and Younghusband, Langa and Nyanga represented turning points, and it was not until then that the British press depicted the South African police as truly brutal. This probably reflected the fact that few journalists had witnessed Sharpeville. Yet it also reflected the nature of the new violence, which journalists considered as something far beyond the realm of acceptability. ‘Scenes of people rioting, being shot, beaten with batons and generally dragged about’ is ‘bad enough’, Younghusband thinks, but ‘there was something about the use of whips that took away a man’s dignity, treating him as any decent person would not even treat a dog, that placed an instant barrier between me and the government of my country at that time’.135 It was the premeditated nature of the violence in  HC Deb 05 April 1960, vol. 621, cols 191–2.  Ibid., col 192. 132  For example: News Chronicle, 6 April 1960, p. 5. 133  HC Deb 05 April 1960, vol. 621, cols 192–3. 134  Mail, 6 April 1960, p. 10. 135  Correspondence with Younghusband, May 2013. 130 131

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Cape Town which the News Chronicle chose to highlight: ‘The apologists for the South African Government have argued that the slaughter at Sharpeville was the result of a mob threatening a police station. This may be part of the story and panic among the outnumbered, if heavily armed, police can possibly be urged in mitigation. No such plea can be offered for the punitive raids made on African townships near Capetown’.136 The Times and the Telegraph, up to then comparatively restrained in their criticisms, became far more outspoken as a consequence of these raids. In an editorial on 6 April, titled ‘Terrorism in Cape Town’, the Telegraph explained that ‘this indiscriminate police brutality, conducted openly in the main streets of the South African capital, and extolled by Ministers in Parliament, marks a clear decision by Dr. Verwoerd to institute a bloody reign of terror… the price Dr. Verwoerd will have to pay is final, irrevocable and explicit adoption of the rule of force and force alone, which means in effect declaration of civil war’.137 Latent African violence continued to permeate this imagery, informing the view that political reform would be wise. Previously, the Telegraph had urged caution and had emphasised the importance of keeping South Africa inside the Commonwealth. It now thought that apartheid ‘looks like becoming an emetic which may make it difficult for the Commonwealth to prevent South Africa from being spewed out’.138 Two days later, the paper urged consideration of a sports boycott.139 In its editorial of the 6th, ‘The Coming Harvest’, the Times felt so strongly that it thought it had no option but to quote poetry in order to capture ‘the moral of the nightmare sixteen days that have passed since the revolution began in South Africa’.140 After citing part of a poem by Roy Campbell on ‘the Zulu girl suckling her child’, it asked how Verwoerd ‘and his faithful backwoodsmen’ could ‘be so mad as to think that they can cow a proud, fighting race into subjection’. ‘Will nothing teach them that the world has left the nineteenth century behind?’, it lamented: ‘Dingaan’s Impis were mowed down by the muskets of Pretorius at Blood River and that crowning victory is kept as an annual holiday in the Union… The events of the last fortnight have made it certain that a Dingaan’s day of reckoning is round the corner.  News Chronicle, 6 April 1960, p. 6.  Telegraph, 6 April 1960, p. 12. 138  Ibid. 139  Telegraph, 8 April 1960, p. 12. 140  Times, 6 April 1960, p. 13. 136 137

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If it is to be peaceful—as it could be—there must be a speedy change’. The Battle of Blood River was fought on 16 December 1838 between 470 Voortrekkers, led by Andries Pretorius, and 15,000–20,000 Zulus. Dingaan was their king. Approximately 3000 Zulus died.141 Against this backdrop, reports of goings-on in Britain provided a welcome contrast. On 8 April, under the watchful gaze of Hastings Banda, the recently released leader of the Malawi Congress Party, sitting up in the public gallery,142 the Commons unanimously agreed to a resolution proposed by Labour’s John Stonehouse, ‘deploring the present racialist policies’ of the South African government, and ‘(urging) Her Majesty’s Government to take the opportunity at the forthcoming Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference to bring home to the South African Government the strong feelings of British people on this question’.143 It also ‘(restated)’ the ‘firm belief’ of the House ‘that peace and tranquillity in South Africa can only be secured in the long run on the basis of freedom and equality and a full respect for the inherent dignity and humanity of all men’.144 These were admirable sentiments, and for the government, they certainly represented a departure from previous statements. Yet the UN, its most worrying fixture, had come and gone. At the same time, it continued to urge restraint. Additionally, the resolve of the other parliamentary parties can be questioned. Possibly with an eye to the complexity of the situation, yet still keen to accrue political points, Stonehouse had framed the motion ‘in such a way that it would unite the House rather than divide it’.145 A large number of MPs left before the debate had finished (which was 4 pm). The Telegraph reporter noted that of the total of 630 MPs, ‘only about 40 were in their places when the motion was put’.146 ‘Although it was sponsored by a Labour member’, the correspondent added, ‘the final attendance of Conservatives was bigger than that on the Opposition side’.

 ‘Impi’ means regiment.  News Chronicle, 9 April 1960, p. 7. 143  For the text of the resolution see end of the debate in: HC Deb 08 April 1960, vol. 621, col 843. 144  Ibid. 145  Ibid., col 781. 146  Telegraph, 9 April 1960, fp. 141 142

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5.7   The Enemy in Our Midst: The South African Government, the South African English-Language Press and British Newspapers If the articles on the police raids failed to impact British policy, the same cannot be said of their influence on the government of South Africa, whose response from the end of March was relentless. Its reaction recalls those of the CPP government in Ghana and of white settlers in Central Africa to British press coverage during the ‘wind of change’. It serves further to support the view that histories which downplay or dismiss the significance of British press and/or ‘public opinion’ to decolonisation should consider its resonance also in the places in Africa to which news of it travelled and whose inhabitants helped to formulate it. The authorities’ crackdown on press freedom indicated that they understood negative publicity as a threat. According to the Express, the authorities tried to ban press photographers from the funeral of the Sharpeville victims.147 The Herald reported that the police had threatened correspondents when they had tried to take pictures and report on the arrival of African prisoners at Johannesburg Central Jail.148 In Cape Town, the police barred journalists from entering Langa and Nyanga.149 And under the State of Emergency, the government introduced new powers to censor the press.150 For South African newspapers, these moves worsened an existing predicament. The freedom of South African English-language papers, in particular, to publish what they wanted had been curtailed for some time due to an atmosphere of intimidation, and legislation including the Suppression of Communism Act (1950), under which journalists like Duncan had been detained.151 The authorities defined the term ‘communism’ broadly and used the Act to suppress almost all forms of opposition. These moves linked to the history of intra-white politics in South Africa that divided along the lines of politics, language and culture and had, by 1960, evolved in such a way that South African English-language papers appeared to the ruling National Party as synonymous with British ones. Benjamin Pogrund,  Express, 31 March 1960, p. 9.  Herald, 31 March 1960, p. 8 (article begins on fp). 149  Mail, 6 April 1960, p. 10. 150  For example: News Chronicle, 31 March 1960, fp. 151  Pogrund, War of Words, p. 42. 147 148

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who worked for the Rand Daily Mail, recalled that ‘Over the years the English-language press was a particular target for the Nationalists’ on the grounds that it was ‘unpatriotic, disloyal, given to telling outright lies, and controlled by foreign-owned gold mining companies. The fact that so much of the ownership resided in Britain for so long, that the presence and influence of British-born editors and journalists was so strong for even longer, and that so much of the news revolved around London, fuelled their cause’.152 After the Nationalist victory at the polls in 1948, the inroads into press freedom began. ‘New laws and extensions of old laws’, Pogrund writes, meant that even by the time of Sharpeville ‘at least twelve statutes were in place that in one way or another denied or inhibited press freedoms’.153 The commission of inquiry into the press, set up in January 1951, and which ran for over a decade, Pogrund thought cast a particularly dark shadow.154 Foreign journalists were also affected during this earlier period. Pogrund notes that the commission started compiling dossiers on both local and overseas correspondents from the beginning of the 1950s.155 Yet until the declaration of the State of Emergency in 1960, the South African government had not censored reports filed from South Africa for overseas papers. Indeed, one of the attractions for South African journalists of stringing for British and other foreign publications was that doing so enabled them to circumvent the usual restrictions which affected their day-to-day work for South African ones. Because British papers were sold in South Africa, moreover, stringing for them or writing in to them represented a means for South Africans to communicate with other South Africans that which would otherwise have remained undisclosed. This had been part of Reeves’s thinking when he had released details of the testimony of the Sharpeville survivors to foreign journalists in the week following the massacre. Anthony Sampson, in Johannesburg for the Observer, commented on how quickly foreign newspapers sold out.156 With the State of Emergency some of this changed. On 1 April, journalists reported Eric Louw’s warning that it was now possible to infringe the emergency laws in dispatches to overseas papers.157 It became an  Ibid., p. 89.  Ibid., p. 92. 154  Ibid., pp. 89–91. 155  Ibid., p. 90. 156  Observer, 17 April 1960, p. 8. 157  For example: Mirror, 1 April 1960, fp; Mail, 1 April, fp. 152 153

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offence to disclose the identity of a person arrested or detained, without the written permission of the Minister of Justice, and there were no exceptions for journalists. The government also forbade anyone to write anything critical or subversive on penalty of imprisonment. Initially, many journalists were not willing to comply with these new regulations, as illustrated by their coverage of the police brutality in Langa and Nyanga. Yet this resistance prompted a further onslaught, which proved more effective. At the end of that week (8 April), Phillips recalled that Louw ‘was stung into attacking foreign correspondents for sending “wildly exaggerated and in many cases completely untrue reports to their newspapers and agencies”’.158 Blumberg remembered that ‘Official outbursts against foreign correspondents culminated in Parliament with Dr. Verwoerd announcing that there seemed to be “a source of information in Cape Town; this we are determined to deal with”’.159 Because of the nature of the relationship between the overseas, including the British, press and South African English-language papers, stringers were not immune to attack. Indeed, they were often singled out as the source of the trouble. When articles in British papers criticised the South African authorities, it seemed to signal to the authorities the presence of an enemy within. Younghusband recalls ‘a parliamentary debate when a few of us sitting in the press gallery were pointed to by… Louw who said: “There they sit, Mr Speaker, so-called South Africans who would sell the good name of their country for 30 pieces of silver!”’.160 In their work for English-language papers, Afrikaner journalists, such as Younghusband and Uys, often bore the brunt of such outbursts. The reports of Sharpeville, Langa and Nyanga which appeared in British and other overseas papers, some of which were written by South Africans, provided a pretext for the expression of more latent thoughts and fears that cut to the very heart of white South African society. As in the Federation, British newspaper reports fuelled pre-existing fears, informed settler narratives of ‘self’ and ‘community’ and provided a means by which the ruling white minority avoided trickier issues, including concerning African nationalism. In parliament, on 30 March, the country’s Minister of Transport claimed that ‘British newspapers’ (meaning South African English-language newspapers) were ‘still fighting the Anglo-Boer War’:  Phillips, Tragedy, p. 187.  Blumberg, White Madam, p. 35. 160  Correspondence with Younghusband, May 2013. 158 159

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‘they have never forgotten that these despicable Boers succeeded, 46 years after the Treaty of Vereeniging, in taking over the reigns (sic) of government in South Africa’.161 The reports of South African English-language papers, English-speaking journalists and foreign—particularly British— papers fed into debates within white society on the causes of the present trouble. The government understood the latter as including ‘agitation’ and the cultivation of grievances amongst Africans by white opponents of the regime.162 The British coverage also contributed to a growing estrangement between Britain and the South African government. If the reports had not proved detrimental to British policy-makers’ efforts to safeguard Britain’s perceived interests and did not affect minority rule in any substantive way, they certainly endangered other elements of British policy, such as regarding pecking away at Commonwealth solidarity on a ‘popular’ level. British newspapers appeared to have a different, more idealised conception of what the Commonwealth should be and picked at the frayed ties persistently, recalling events in Ghana.

5.8   The State of Emergency Two days after Louw’s attack in parliament on foreign press reporting of Langa and Nyanga (the 9th) came the first arrest of a foreign correspondent under the State of Emergency. At seven in the morning, ‘two obvious plain-clothes policemen’ knocked on the door of Phillips’s bedroom in Durban’s Edward Hotel, and after ‘(probing) his files and belongings’ (some of which they took), they drove him to Durban jail.163 Phillips thought that there were three possible explanations for his arrest. It was either ‘A warning to all foreign correspondents and a threat to their sources of information’; ‘A vindictive action revealing the jittery state of the white-supremacy Government and the dominant position of its national police chief, General Rademeyer’; or ‘Because of the investigation I had commenced into the sinister secret society—the 161  ‘Assembly Debates, 30 March 1960’, piece 384, Section B: Documents, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits. Reference is on p.  4428 of the original book, which Gerhart has photocopied. 162  See ‘Assembly Debates’ for the whole period discussed here: Section B: Documents, Gail M. Gerhart Interviews and documents (A2422), Wits. 163  Phillips, Tragedy, pp. 187–9.

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Afrikaner-Broederbond’ (‘Brotherhood’).164 Phillips thought that ‘The timing and content of my last report on Nyanga was also relevant’.165 He had filed a report on Nyanga from Durban, which had been retained by Post Office staff.166 Phillips had been to Nyanga, but he had not been present at the event he reported. He was accused of fabricating the story. He defended his actions by pointing out that no correspondents had been allowed into the township that day.167 The South African government may have overemphasised the degree to which foreign journalists, certainly knowingly, misrepresented events in South Africa. Indeed, a likely reason why the authorities so feared the stringer, whose accounts were in many ways so similar, was that he or she did know South Africa and could not be so easily repudiated. Foreign journalists were often a soft target. Echoing the cases of the Federation and of Ghana, the government also seemed most sensitive to the most critical or sensational stories.168 The dearth of consensus amongst British newspapers on British policy did not attract the attention of the authorities. Nevertheless, as the Phillip’s case indicates, the South African government was not entirely erroneous in its accusations, and nor did it accuse without reason. In the case of Britain, the South African government feared press bias and thought it saw evidence of double standards, such as in British press reporting of Britain in Africa and in the relative ‘under reporting’ of the deaths of white policemen at Cato Manor in Durban at the start of the year.169 The conflict in Cato Manor had concerned the city’s forced removal policies and a crackdown on illegal beer-brewing, some Africans’ only means of income. The exception was the Express, which South African officials understood as alone in presenting the government’s perspective to British readers and in invoking the argument that no country was without sin. For the remainder, it is true that British journalists rarely, if ever, portrayed events in the British Empire in as negative  Ibid., p. 186.  Ibid. 166  Ibid., p. 187. 167  His report on Nyanga was subsequently published in the Telegraph, but as the first page had been confiscated, this version also had to be ‘reconstructed…from memory to the best of his ability’. Telegraph, 16 April 1960, fp. When in Africa, he had apparently phoned the Star’s Cape Town correspondent for information with which to write his article. 168  As, for instance, in BTS 35/4/1 (‘Summaries of press comments on South African affairs by the Ambassador, London’), National Archives of South Africa (hereafter NASA). 169  As in BTS 35/4/1; and BTS 35/6 vol. 8, NASA. 164 165

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a light as events in South Africa. Additionally, British journalists often exhibited a stunning lack of awareness of the forces that British imperialism had set in motion in South Africa—namely, that they had settled part of it and that it remained a British dominion. At the time of Langa and Nyanga, B.P.J. Erasmus, Information Officer at South Africa House in London, thought that ‘the tabloids and left-­ wingers’ were ‘mercilessly (exploiting) every single event, incident or word’ in a ‘grim internecine circulation war’, that correspondents mixed comment with fact, that journalists ridiculed government spokesmen, such as the Minister of Justice, and that Africans such as Kgosana were eulogised.170 He thought the ‘worst report’ had been Stephen Barber’s on ‘kragdadigheid’, but he was most concerned by the response of the Times and the Telegraph, ‘up to then two considerable voices of reason in the wilderness of blanket vituperation’. Erasmus decided to measure the Times’s editorial of 6 April, which he put at twenty-five inches, commenting that ‘it must have been one of the longest the paper had ever written on any one subject’. On the day of Phillips’s arrest, the South African government paper, Die Burger, published an article which the Observer thought summed up the strong feeling of government supporters towards foreign correspondents following Langa and Nyanga.171 According to the Observer, Die Burger had stated that: ‘if there is one thing every right-minded South African with red blood in his veins would have liked to do this week it was to take the group of visiting British journalists by their neck and throw them out of the country after giving them a sound thrashing with the rhino-hide sjamboks they discovered in such large numbers in Cape Town’. Later that day, David Pratt, a South African trout farmer originally from Britain, shot Verwoerd twice in the head at an agricultural show just outside Johannesburg. The fact that Pratt was British some Afrikaners viewed as evidence of treachery on the part of the South African English-speaking community, a characterisation which both mirrored and fed into their views of stringers. The British press unanimously condemned Pratt’s actions. Pratt was generally regarded as being mentally unwell. Yet coming so soon after Langa and Nyanga, some Afrikaners perceived a connection between foreign press and local English-language press reporting of the police raids and the assassination attempt, which fuelled tensions between  ‘British Press Comment: April 2–8, 1960’, BTS 35/4/1 vol. 8, NASA.  Observer, 10 April 1960, fp.

170 171

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the Afrikaans- and English-speaking communities. Phillips recalled that Louw ‘tried to prove that the misguided man who had shot at the Prime Minister had been inspired by reading “sensational newspaper reports”’.172 Tom Hopkinson’s wife was assaulted by ‘a heavily built woman’ at a garden party of Afrikaner friends when news of the assassination attempt came over the radio.173 Blumberg recalled that ‘five toughs’ had beaten up ‘a liberal journalist’ from the Cape Times after ‘a bar discussion on apartheid’ that day.174 The Rand Daily Mail and the Star received bomb threats.175 On the 11th, the arrests hit the British press directly when two men from the C.I.D. came to Blumberg’s home in Cape Town to escort her to Caledon Square police station, and from there to Roeland Street Jail.176 Blumberg received no explanation for her arrest. However, the reasons she and her husband later cited in speculation are significant for what they communicate about stringers and British newspapers following Sharpeville. Mackenzie thought that his wife had been arrested as ‘part of the Government campaign to intimidate the Press, particularly foreign correspondents, who had been able, without the local emergency restrictions on which the South African Press choked, to disclose unwelcome facts freely’. He also believed that ‘the authorities were annoyed because they thought (Blumberg) went out of (her) way to introduce travelling correspondents to articulate African and Coloured leaders they tried to keep silent and hidden’.177 Blumberg highlighted the possible significance of her being ‘South African born’, which meant that ‘they could hold on to me as long as they liked without other Governments being able to force them to release or deport me’;178 the role of ‘vengefulness in choosing me as a representative of the hated Labour Press’;179 and the authorities’ desire for information about ‘African strike leaders’.180 Several of the stringers who reported from Cape Town indeed possessed strong links with Africans, in addition to the Liberal Party and  Phillips, Tragedy, p. 128.  Hopkinson, Fiery, p. 284. 174  Blumberg, White Madam, p. 17. 175  Express, 11 April 1960, fp. 176  Blumberg, White Madam, pp. 37–48. 177  Ibid., p. 140. 178  Ibid. 179  Ibid., pp. 140–1. 180  Ibid., p. 141. 172 173

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others involved in the fight against apartheid. As we have seen, these connections informed British press coverage. Yet the influence cut both ways. British newspapers were far more receptive in March 1960 than they had ever been to publishing the views of African leaders, and doing so made for interesting news. Even in the early fifties, when Anthony Sampson returned from South Africa, he was ‘astonished to find that (he) was marketable’ in Fleet Street, and that the right-leaning Mail was particularly keen to snap him up.181 Sampson had travelled to South Africa in 1951 on the invitation of Jim Bailey, a South African friend he had met whilst studying at Oxford University, to help to transform the fortunes of Drum. Sampson spent four years in the country. In Drum’s offices, the journalist worked alongside black South Africans, who inspired him, and in his spare time immersed himself in the vibrant Johannesburg townships, gradually distancing himself from the staid white South African society with which he had at first expected to identify.182 When Sampson returned to Britain, he was approached by a nephew of Lord Northcliffe of the Mail, but the journalist held out for a job at Astor’s Observer with which he had first come into contact via Drum.183 Sampson would work for the Observer for the next four decades, writing prolifically on Africa and returning there frequently. In the mid-1990s, Mandela commissioned Sampson to write his authorised autobiography.184 Sampson had first met Mandela in a print shop in the early 1950s, but confessed that he found the encounter hard to recall.185 Journalists’ relations with African nationalists proved distinctly advantageous. When Younghusband began freelancing for the Daily Mail, he too attributed the fact that his stories ‘were getting good display in Britain’ to his ‘connections with Drum magazine and the contacts made with the assistance of Howard (Lawrence) and other black colleagues on our staff’.186 Younghusband thought that his scoops at the time of Sharpeville led the Mail to believe he had ‘a certain magic of great value and that they 181  Sampson, Anatomist, p. 43. For Sampson’s account of his life-changing experiences at Drum, see: Anthony Sampson, Drum: An African Adventure  – and Afterwards (London, 1956). 182  Sampson, Anatomist, pp. 17–42. 183  Ibid., pp. 40–43. 184  Ibid., p. 248. 185  Ibid., p. 35. 186  Peter Younghusband, Every Meal a Banquet, Every Night a Honeymoon: Unforgettable African Experiences (Jeppestown, 2003), p. 136. Parenthesis and its contents added.

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had better buy it—and they offered me the job I held on their staff for the next 13 years’.187 Younghusband’s initial motivations for becoming a journalist were linked to ‘a pursuit of adventure and excitement’, and he regarded London’s Fleet Street as a sort of ‘Mecca’.188 Yet these connections with nationalists invited harassment, too. Two days after Blumberg’s arrest, Younghusband also became the subject of police attention. On the 14th, he told Mail readers that in his absence, four members of the security branch had ‘searched (his) office’ at Drum, ‘opened cables and personal correspondence’ and had informed his colleagues that they intended to find him.189 Younghusband wrote that he gave himself up at police headquarters later that day, ‘expecting the worst’. He was released after a ten-minute interrogation, but the spectre of further action lingered. Younghusband was told to ‘stick around’. The arrests, threats, raids and restrictions caused profound anxiety not only for South African journalists, who bore the brunt of the new emergency laws, but also for British journalists. On 20 April, a deputation from the National Union of Journalists visited South Africa House to deliver a copy of a resolution registering their ‘horror’ at events in South Africa and their ‘abhorrence of racial policies’.190 The resolution expressed concern at the South African authorities’ interference with the press in the form of threats, the detention of journalists and the suppression of publications. It asked the South African government to enable journalists freely to report events in the Union. A separate resolution protested the imprisonment of Blumberg and Phillips. The situation looked desperate. Indeed, the State of Emergency was having such an impact that very soon most British papers conceded that the National Party had won the ‘first round’. Passes had been reinstated, hundreds of people had been arrested and detained and police intimidation was rife. ‘This isn’t the gale yet’, a headline to one of Sampson’s articles told Observer readers: ‘For the time being the Africans have been crushed’.191 Sampson chose to quote an African teacher, ‘gazing sadly into his brandy glass’ to illustrate the point: ‘“This isn’t it”, the man mourned: “They seemed to think that it was round the corner. The guys have been busy talking about the wind of  Correspondence with Younghusband, May 2013.  Ibid. 189  Mail, 14 April 1960, p. 13. 190  Herald, 21 April 1960, p. 5. 191  Observer, 24 April 1960, p. 7. 187 188

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change, how it was going to be a gale or a hurricane of change. It never seemed to occur to them that it might be only a breeze”’.192 The effects of these developments on British press reporting of South Africa were numerous. It became a harder country to cover. Foreign journalists hoping to enter it were vetted more stringently. Many were refused visas. Those who decided on ‘a full-frontal approach to Jan Smuts airport without visas were unceremoniously “bounced”’, Christopher Munnion recalled,193 and ‘Those who slipped through the net were followed day and night by agents of the new Bureau of State Security—BOSS… Phones were tapped, cables were intercepted and mail was tampered with and opened. The upshot… was that most stories emanating from the correspondents who had managed to get into South Africa concentrated on the efforts and heroics in dodging BOSS rather than the critical social and political issues facing the country’.194 Even by the end of the second week of April, there were signs that the Emergency had indeed begun to affect the British coverage in this way, for it focused intensely on the arrests of Phillips and Blumberg over and above the issue of African action and apartheid. South African journalists operated under the same conditions, but daily, and they had families in the country to protect and support. Younghusband recalls that ‘although absolute press censorship never arrived’ during the apartheid era, ‘certain newspapers or issues were banned at times and eventually with more than 90 restrictive laws to contend with editors faced an almost daily risk of fines or prison’.195 Some were influenced or intimidated by government pressure. Some ploughed on regardless. Others, who felt particularly threatened, or whose mission was to topple apartheid, went into exile to work freely if they felt this impossible to achieve from inside South Africa. Importantly, too, there appeared to be less to cover. British press reporting of events in the white settler colonies had long ridden on the back of African action, usually as it clashed with the machinery of the state. Under the Emergency, prominent African leaders had been detained indefinitely. The protests subsided.

 Ibid. Also see: Sampson, Anatomist, p. 98.  Munnion, Banana Sunday, pp. 441–2. 194  Ibid., p. 442. 195  Correspondence with Younghusband, May 2013. 192 193

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5.9   Conclusion British newspaper coverage of South Africa continued to provide a means by which groups in Africa sought to spur political reform. The relationship between African activists, white liberals, South African English-language newspapers and the British press lay at the heart of these efforts and can be traced historically, along the lines of intra-white politics as well as of African nationalism. African activists and white liberals exploited British newspapers as a means of ‘getting the word out’ as well as of circumventing the strictures on freedom of speech and of information in their country. Sympathetic foreign correspondents joined them. They were only partly successful. Regarding British policy, this owed to officials’ prioritisation of other concerns. Yet the fractured nature of the British press commentary on policy should also be acknowledged. British newspapers displayed little consensus on what Britain should do in response to events, a feature of the coverage which linked to South Africa’s independent status. In contrast to Central Africa, the press coverage did not materially affect British decision-making. Regarding South African policy, one reason why the activists, liberals and correspondents failed to spur reform can be attributed to the material strength of the National government, which perceived in foreign, including British, press/activist relations a threat to its authority and which acted vehemently to suppress it. The government’s ability to do so evidently also reflected the country’s independent status, which confounded the liberals, activists and other opponents of apartheid in their ability to prompt foreign governments, including the British one, to act against it. At the same time, the coverage was not without impact. It gave a platform to the activists whose actions provided its foundation. It exposed some of the horrors of apartheid and communicated to mass audiences arguments in favour of political reform. Additionally, and in continuity with the other examples in this book, the articles populated the lived experiences of people on the ground in Africa. The coverage informed white settler narratives of ‘self’ and ‘community’, and provided a means by which some settlers avoided more discomforting issues, including African dissent. Regarding foreign relations, the coverage further prised open the rift between Britain and South Africa, working incrementally to sever crosscultural links on a ‘popular’ level, thereby jeopardising Commonwealth ties at a high political one.

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Significantly, the coverage may have contributed to hardening the South African politics it sought to soften. The National government understood the dangers posed by the combination of activism and publicity in decolonisation processes and acted to suppress both in order to defend its interests. This being said, British newspapers and their affiliates and allies had little choice, and inaction would have served no one. At the very least, they had sounded out a possible future strategy for opponents of the white minority regime. Part of what aggravated this minority was the hypocritical, self-­affirming nature of much of the British coverage. Implicit in the press’s condemnation of the National government was a belief in the sense of the British example. Yet this thinking entailed disregarding stories of similar examples of racial oppression in British Africa and dodging British responsibility for the situation in South Africa itself. British minds were likely soothed, too, by the way the press framed the changes that were taking place in Africa. ‘Organic’ representations of African nationalism, while certainly not unique to the Sharpeville example, were further perpetuated by the coverage that coalesced around it. They served to reinforce the view that the European colonial empires were not as much declining as caught up in a changing of the times to which, most journalists thought, leaders were beholden positively to respond. Indeed, African activism remained the coverage’s most prominent theme. That this was so for Sharpeville, whose popular associations today are entirely different, should be regarded as significant. This is important not only for reasons concerning the British cultural context to the end of empire. The reassessments of the process on the ground the press coverage prompts us to consider seem only to underscore the reports’ veracity. If South Africa had possessed a similar political status to other colonial territories in Africa, South African activists may have succeeded here too in launching a full-blown liberation struggle during the early 1960s.

CHAPTER 6

The Congo Crisis, 1960–1961: Emergent Mini-Frames in a Post-colonial Environment

On 30 June 1960, two months following the Sharpeville massacre, the Congo, a vast country in Central Africa, became independent from Belgium with Patrice Lumumba as its first prime minister. Lumumba headed a party called the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC). British newspapers had covered some of the events of the previous year. These had included the ‘Leopoldville riots’ of January 1959, when the Belgian colonial authorities  there killed approximately fifty people in efforts to repel a protest which activists from Alliance des Bakongo (ABAKO), another of the country’s foremost political parties, mounted following Belgian efforts to restrict a political gathering. Yet compared to Anglophone Africa, British newspapers did not produce a great deal of in-­ depth coverage of the Congo during 1959. In contrast, from 30 June 1960, the coverage ballooned. The Congo had had a traumatic history owing to persistently pernicious European interventions, which can be traced to the era of the Atlantic slave trade. From the mid- to late-sixteenth century, the Congo River Basin had been one of the main areas in Africa from which people were taken and forced into the trade, which channelled slaves to the Americas. The trauma of this process became embedded in African belief systems, where the greedy, predatory traders came to be associated in people’s minds with invisible forces of the most malevolent kind. The seventeenth century witnessed the rise in the region of the Lemba healing cult,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_6

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which aimed at solving the conflict between social order and accumulation through the trade.1 During the nineteenth century, Europeans encroached further on the land and its people. In 1879, Henry Morton Stanley, the British American journalist and explorer, led an expedition into the region’s supposed ‘dark’ heart. Stanley’s actions paved the way for later Belgian colonial interventions, were often brutal, and further popularised negative images of Africa for European publics.2 Perceptions had already shifted from largely neutral ones owing to the slave trade, for which Europeans produced negative depictions of Africans as a form of justification. In the late-nineteenth century, during the period of the so-called Scramble for Africa, in which the European great powers divided Africa among themselves from a ­conference room in Berlin (1884–1885), the Belgian King, Leopold II, ­having sponsored Stanley’s 1879 expedition, obtained this central region of Africa for himself. Leopold ruled the Congo as his private fiefdom.3 For just over twenty years, Leopold worked alongside European private ­companies to which he granted concessions, to exploit the region’s natural and human resources in order to make money and to increase the king’s prestige. Rubber proved a particular obsession.4 European concessionary companies, not having the manpower to tap all the trees for rubber themselves, and the Africans of the area not willing to do it, conspired with Belgium’s colonial army (the Force Publique) to force Africans to do so through excessive brutality which functioned as a terror tactic. One of the strategies used to force compliance was to cut people’s hands off (or compel others to do so) as a form of punishment for failing to fulfil quotas. During Leopold’s rule, approximately ten million people died. Their deaths owed to violence, the nature of the work that people were undertaking, famine and disease. This was the era of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), which explored issues concerning the corruptibility of the white man in Africa, but which has been forever understood in the West as emphasising the apparently inhospitable nature of the central forested region of the continent and the supposed brutality 1  John M.  Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Oxford, 1992). 2  Henry Morton Stanley, The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (1885). See also: Through the Dark Continent (1878). 3  For an in-depth history of these years, see: Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (New York, 1999). 4  In addition, ivory and minerals.

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of the people who lived there.5 Chinua Achebe, the renowned Nigerian novelist, discusses the devastating impact of these representations in his essay ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”’.6 News of the horrors of Leopold’s Congo travelled back to Europe in this and other forms. Journalists and missionaries stood at the forefront of efforts to bring the brutalities to light.7 The Congo Reform Movement pioneered the charge, placing pressure on governments to induce Belgium to act.8 In 1908, the Belgian government took over control of the Congo. Belgium governed the Congo for the next fifty years. It framed its approach as ‘paternalism’ but, in reality, its governance  was characterised by an extreme indifference to the colony’s inhabitants, whom Belgium kept in a perpetual state of underdevelopment. All colonial rule in Africa might be characterised as discriminatory and neglectful. However, Belgium set a new low.9 At the time of independence, the country had no Congolese medical doctors, lawyers or judges trained to European standards, and no Congolese administrators were capable of overseeing the administrative system left by the Belgians as none had previously occupied a high rank.10 In a colony which contained multiple ethnic groups, the Belgians had also created an injurious situation which, until the last moment, militated against political expression taking colony-wide or ‘national’ form. To discourage dissent, the Belgians created ‘tight corners’ for activists, who were only ever able to meet in ethnic or alumni associations.11 Belgium also decided to speed up the decolonisation process at the last minute in the hope that a national party, whose goal it might be to achieve unity over division and thus endanger its interests, would not have time to consolidate.

 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (London, 1899).  Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (London, 2010). Penguin edition. First given as a lecture in the US in 1975, and first published 1977. 7  See Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. 8  See also: Dean Pavlakis, British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1896–1913 (Abingdon, 2016). 9  See especially: Ch. Didier Gondola, The History of Congo (Westport, US, 2002); Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (London, 2006); Alan P. Merriam, Congo: Background of Conflict (Evanston, US, 1961); and Colin Legum, Congo Disaster (Harmondsworth, 1961); Rene Lemarchand, Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (London, 1964); Herbert Weiss, ‘The Congo’s Independence Struggle Viewed Fifty Years Later’, African Studies Review 55: 1 (2012), pp. 109–15. 10  Gondola, History of Congo, p. 116. 11  Ibid., pp. 102–6. 5 6

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One exception to the ruling neglect was the realm of natural resource extraction. Union Minière du Haut Katanga was a huge Belgian mining company, which controlled the region’s copper mines, and which made millions from the land there throughout the twentieth century. Katanga, in the southeast of the colony, bordered the rich mining area of (British) Northern Rhodesia. Tanganyika Concessions, a British firm, had a 14.5% shareholding in Union Minière.12 The British also invested in Katanga through firms such as Unilever, and benefited financially from the passage of minerals on the British-owned Benguela Railway from Elisabethville, the Katangan capital, to the Angolan coast.13 Following independence, tragedy hit the Congo within a matter of days. The Army mutinied. Violence began and intensified. Within weeks, Katanga declared its independence from the central government. The UN mounted a peacekeeping mission. Within seven months, Lumumba had been assassinated. This period came to be known as ‘the Congo Crisis’ (1960–1961), a situation which can be understood as persisting to this day, albeit shaped by numerous subsequent evolutions and intersections with politics and conflicts in neighbouring countries.14 Today, it is well-understood that the Congo was not in a good position at independence. Yet it continued to experience foreign intervention in its internal affairs which proved decisive to its ailing fortunes, entwining with the ambitions of Lumumba’s Congolese political competitors, which included Moïse Tshombe (Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga or ‘CONAKAT’), Joseph Kasavubu (ABAKO) and Joseph-­ Désiré Mobutu. The historian Ludo de Witte, an authority on the Congo Crisis, goes a step further in describing the situation in Katanga following independence as one in which the Belgians were ‘pulling all the strings’, with political power only nominally held by Africans.15 Belgian troops facilitated Katanga’s secession. Belgium also retained a broader governing authority owing to the historical linkages between political power in the Congo and private enterprise, which continued operating, and whose levers of power had not been transferred to the independent government 12  Alan James, ‘Britain, the Cold War and the Congo Crisis, 1960–1963’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 28: 3 (2000), pp. 152–68, p. 154. 13  Ibid. 14  Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford, 2009); Jason K. Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York, 2011). 15  Ludo de Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (London, 2011), p. xxi.

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when it achieved political power in the election.16 Belgium desired to protect these and perceived Lumumba as threatening them. In a seminal work titled The Assassination of Lumumba, de Witte has shown that following these moves, the Belgians were also responsible for killing Lumumba on 17 January 1961.17 They were not the only foreign actors involved in the crisis. The Americans, the British and even the UN had also seriously mooted strategies for Lumumba’s removal either physically or politically. Alan James has detailed the wider British role in supporting foreign intervention for reasons which concerned Britain’s financial interests, concern for stability in a region which bordered the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and fears of Soviet involvement in the new state in the context of the Cold War.18 British newspapers, whose role in the Congo connected more to the international press as a body, facilitated these developments—denting the efficacy of the post-colonial state, and recalling Ghana. Their coverage of the crisis focused on African violence and division, white victimhood and survival and Lumumba’s perceived cruelty and irrationality. They neglected the country’s colonial history as well as the neo-colonial foreign intervention. British newspapers continued to provide a means by which political opponents of governments in Africa attempted to foment their destruction. These included Tshombe’s CONAKAT, which attempted to engage foreign newspapers to bring about a change. Yet in the Congo dissenting African voices were neither the only nor the most significant influences on the reporting. Nor, indeed, were the efforts of foreign propagandists, as might have been expected. Additionally, dissenting voices appeared not to be marshalled in support of an established interpretation of Congolese affairs. Fewer pre-existing frames of representation or regional patterns of practice of the press were present for British newspapers to draw upon in the Congo as compared to the other regions of Africa of British influence, which form a focus of this book. Journalists rather constructed frames in the moment. Of especial importance to their formulation were editorial pressures, racism, an absence of historical information or knowledge, and difficulties concerning communications and technology. These influences were important elsewhere in Africa during the ‘wind of change’. Yet in the 16  John Kent, ‘The Neo-Colonialism of Decolonisation: Katangan Secession and the Bringing of the Cold War to the Congo’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45: 1 (2017), pp. 93–130, pp. 95–96. 17  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba. 18  Alan James, Britain and the Congo Crisis, 1960–63 (Basingstoke, 1996); James, ‘Britain, the Cold War’.

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Congo, in the absence of the concerted efforts of a group of people to harness them behind a line of argument over time, they were given free reign, resulting in an almost uniquely press-generated narrative of depravity and chaos. As in Ghana, the coverage’s damaging impact on the post-colonial state linked to British newspapers’ defence of colonial-era ‘Establishment’ interests following independence. The negative coverage which emerged from the aforementioned influences obscured the role of foreign actors in the crisis. It contributed to an international sociopolitical environment in which the West was able to act with impunity and Lumumba won few, and even lost some, allies. From a British cultural perspective, the coverage gave birth to an image of the post-colonial state in the Congo in which African political and other (particularly ethnic) differences and bad leadership were communicated as the root cause of the difficulties. These emphases, alongside newspapers’ positive depictions of the foreigners involved in the crisis, were self-­ affirming for Europeans. In contrast to Ghana, yet in echoes of South Africa, the coverage proved largely beneficial for the British government. It posed a risk to its relations with the Congolese government. Yet given that Britain’s objectives in the region conflicted with those of Lumumba, British press reporting proved broadly helpful.

6.1   The Independence Celebrations: A Case of Black and White? Colonial Legacies and Neo-colonial Interventions African division and violence, white victimhood and saviourism and Lumumba’s perceived irrationality characterised the coverage surrounding the independence celebrations. A further theme, conspicuous in its absence, concerned its neglect of the colonial and foreign dimension to the unfolding crisis. The lead-up to the elections of May to June, and then their implementation, were portrayed as very violent.19 The results were understood as inconclusive.20 No one leader had won a majority of the vote, although 19  Guardian, 6 May 1960, p.  13; Guardian, 14 May 1960, p.  7; Mail, 14 May 1960, p. 11; Express, 14 May 1960, p. 2; Guardian, 24 May 1960, p. 9. 20  Mail, 26 May 1960, p. 15; Mail, 4 June 1960, p. 5; Mail, 9 June 1960, p. 11; Guardian, 9 June 1960, p. 9.

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Lumumba and his party, the MNC, had won by far the most seats. Readers were told that Lumumba’s political opponents had challenged the result and that their supporters had clashed with those of the MNC in the streets.21 The subsequent political settlement, which involved the creation of a coalition of nationalist parties, with one of Lumumba’s chief opponents, Joseph Kasavubu (ABAKO), appointed as president, was regarded as bringing much-needed relief; the result, so correspondents indicated, of Belgian diplomatic interventions in favour of unity.22 Yet tensions were understood to remain, marring the lead-up to the big day and hanging over the festivities like a storm cloud.23 Moïse Tshombe, the head of CONAKAT, the party which controlled the Katangan provincial legislature following independence, was reported as threatening secession.24 Resident Europeans were said to have been threatened in the streets.25 At the very end of June came the coverage of the independence celebrations. One event which garnered press attention was the snatching of the Belgian King Baudouin’s sword as he rode through Leopoldville.26 Another was Lumumba’s speech to gathered dignitaries on Independence Day.27 In his speech, Lumumba detailed the brutal history of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo.28 Part of his inspiration came from King Baudouin’s speech, which preceded Lumumba’s, and which served as an infuriatingly positive potted history of the period of Belgian rule.29 Upon hearing it, Lumumba is said to have added parts to his original script, which had been handed out to correspondents before the ceremony.30 Lumumba reminded his listeners that the struggle for independence has been ‘filled with tears, fire and blood’, but that the Congolese people had finally triumphed over the ‘humiliating bondage forced upon us’, such that ‘henceforth all that is  Ibid.  Mail, 20 June 1960, p. 5. 23  Observer, 26 June 1960, p. 6; Mail, 28 June 1960, p. 9; Express, 28 June 1960, p. 2; Express, 29 June 1960, p. 2; Guardian, 29 June 1960, p. 9. 24  Mail, 14 June 1960, p. 9; Express, 14 June 1960, p. 2; Guardian, 15 June 1960, fp. 25  Mirror, 5 May 1960, p. 3; Mail, 5 May 1960, p. 13; Express, 30 May 1960, p. 2. 26  Times, 30 June 1960, p. 12; Guardian, 30 June 1960, fp; Express, 30 June 1960, p. 2. 27  Herald, 1 July 1960, fp; Times, 1 July 1960, p. 12; Guardian, 1 July 1960, fp; Express, 1 July 1960, p. 2. 28  A copy of this speech (‘Speech at proclamation of independence’) can be found in Jean Van Lierde (ed.), Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba, 1958–1961 (Boston, U.S., 1972), pp. 220–4. 29  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 2. 30  Ibid., p. 2. 21 22

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finished with’. British newspapers reported both the snatching of the sword and Lumumba’s speech as needless affronts to the departing Belgians: the first rather amusing; the second much more serious. Journalists displayed little affinity with Lumumba. While they quoted his speech extensively, their commentary centred on his words’ perceived untimeliness as well as Lumumba’s very madness in delivering them. In this, journalists’ representations chimed with the private Belgian response, according to historians, which appeared to mark the new leader out as a hot-head, who probably hated all white people and who could not be relied upon to safeguard foreign interests in the independence period.31 While others in a similar position to Lumumba may have kowtowed to the departing power, perceiving it as in their ultimate best interests, it was not in Lumumba’s personality to do so. Nor would it have aligned with his political ideology. The new prime minister was part of a group of Pan-­ Africanists, which also included Nkrumah and the South African Pan-­ Africanist Congress (PAC), who were willing to speak out stridently on matters of historical injustice and who saw the future of Africa as being ‘for Africans’. The press representations had several consequences. Firstly, they communicated to British readers a ‘single story’ of events, which did little to promote intercultural understanding, echoing the cases of Ghana, Kenya, the Federation and South Africa. At the same time, the narrative appeared as self-affirming for Europeans. In British Central (and South) Africa, the press had criticised resident Europeans (white settlers). In the Congo, a country which had never experienced British rule, empathy commonly took ‘racial’ form. This is not to say that the coverage was entirely inaccurate. Rather, that the picture it communicated was partial. Violence had occurred in the streets. No one leader had won a majority of the votes. A coalition had been created through negotiations in which the Belgians had played a role. Tshombe had talked of secession. Europeans had been threatened. The king’s sword had been snatched in a rather surprising development. And Lumumba’s speech surely had been offensive. It had taken a brave— some would say, mad—man to deliver it. Yet regarding division and violence between Africans at the time of the government’s creation, the political situation was far from hopeless. Press reports indicated that European intervention was the prime cohesive force  Ibid., pp. 3–4.

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in the face of irreconcilable differences between Congolese politicians. Yet African leaders stood at the forefront of these efforts to overcome the differences in mutually acceptable ways. Indeed, as Didier Gondola has shown, it was not until two months later, when the state had fractured under the weight of a series of secessions and interventions involving external actors, that the working relationship between Kasavubu and Lumumba finally ended.32 At the same time, the press failed to pick up on the ways in which Belgium fomented division through other political manoeuvres at independence. Fearing what the largely unanticipated nationalist victory might mean, Belgium decided unilaterally to modify the Congo’s provisional constitution, the Basic Law, which de Witte argues paved the way for Katanga’s secession.33 In emphasising Belgium’s ‘healing’ powers in the face of African divisions, the press inverted reality for British readerships. Regarding the snatching of the sword, threats against Europeans and Lumumba’s speech, it is imperative to explore the probable motivation behind these acts. They cannot be compared to the causticity of Belgian colonial rule. Yet in emphasising ‘offence’, British newspapers placed primacy on immediate events. In doing so, they failed to equip British readers with the information necessary to empathise with the Congolese. Secondly, also in echoes of previous cases, the coverage jeopardised the authority of the ruling party. It travelled back to Africa and caused Lumumba concern. Indicative of the perceived importance of international opinion on the Congo was Lumumba’s decision to issue a ‘compensatory’ speech in the afternoon on Independence Day.34 Later, Lumumba also decided publicly to clarify certain of his views on white people, which he believed had been distorted by both the Belgians and the media.35 The new prime minister predicted that unfavourable international news coverage augured ill for his country. Indeed it did. British newspapers’ homing in on division and violence between Africans, their presentation of Belgian interventions as wise, fortuitous and useful, their depictions of resident Europeans as victims and their obscuration of Belgium’s negative actions (both historically and at independence) contributed to a ‘passive’ climate  Gondola, History of Congo, see especially p. 123.  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, pp. 5–6. 34  Speech delivered at luncheon, 30 June 1960, in Van Lierde (ed.), Lumumba Speaks, pp. 225–6. 35  Press conference in New York, 25 July 1960, in ibid., pp. 285–307. 32 33

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of opinion in which the difficulties the Congo experienced in the days that followed were permitted to be regarded as little more than the inevitable consequence of political incompetence and ‘tribalism’—and external intervention the prime cohesive force.

6.2   Emergent Mini-Frames and the Image of Chaos Several influences informed this early coverage. The press’s focus on African violence and division, white victimhood and saviourism, and its neglect of external influences reflected British newspapers’ taste for sensation as well as their predilection for current, observable dynamics, in addition to racism. In addition, while British articles did not concentrate on British financial interests or the Cold War, arguments concerning both issues likely permeated journalists’ cultural and political environments, giving newspapers little cause to deviate from the representations which proximate influences produced. Belgian efforts to communicate an account of events that favoured them were also important. In the early days of the crisis, many of the reports drew on official source material and/or information acquired by the news agencies or the papers’ own Brussels’ correspondents,36 mirroring the dynamic present in South Africa in the immediate aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre. Racism seemed particularly relevant in the case of the speech. Two hundred journalists travelled to attend the independence celebrations and to report firsthand, meaning that they were not dependent on secondhand information.37 As we have seen, racism was not absent even in the British coverage of Africa which called for political reform in the settler colonies. Conservative views, including fears of incipient violence and a clash of the ‘races’, informed journalists’ protestations about the dangers of a persistent colonialism. British news reports tended to disregard the substance of Lumumba’s comments on colonial rule. This appeared as the symptom of a dismissive attitude that embodied racist sentiments. The press’s representations of the people present at the ceremony reflected racial 36  On the Left, the Guardian used Reuters and British United Press, or published reports from ‘a’ correspondent. The Mirror sent some reports from Brussels. The left-leaning popular press, overall, published anonymous accounts, which suggests that these pieces were not the work of their own correspondents. Most reports, including those from the news agencies and from Belgium, documented ‘official’ announcements, primarily from governments and/ or politicians. 37  Guardian, 2 July 1960, p. 5.

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stereotypes prevalent in Europe: the African leader’s ‘madness’ or ‘irrationality’, for example, and the ‘innocence’ of his European listeners, whose ‘strength’ and ‘authority’ journalists simultaneously reinforced by underscoring Lumumba’s perceived ‘rudeness’. At the same time, the press’s comparative neglect of the colonial history of the Congo signified some unawareness. This is perhaps particularly pertinent when considering left-leaning papers, which were by no means averse to calling out colonial brutality and oppression when they saw them. As we have seen across Africa during the ‘wind of change’, the press discussed the history of the continent scantily, offering its readers very little background information on current events. As we saw in Ghana, British newspapers also found it hard to compose the ‘first draft’ of the history of post-colonial Africa. They had at their disposal none of the concepts that we have today for interpreting the events which occurred during this era: that of the ‘colonial legacy’, for example, and of ‘neocolonialism’ and ‘the post-colonial state’—any of which would have prompted journalists to acknowledge the challenges that Lumumba confronted. The deficiencies went largely unmourned. Indeed, some journalists would later describe the Congo crisis as best captured by anecdotes, which conveyed a ‘mood’, comments which reflected the view that the situation defied objective analysis.38 The notion that it was sufficient to capture a ‘mood’ as opposed to precise detail was also seemingly a racist one. In contrast to the other regions of British influence discussed in this book, these representations appeared not to be organised by any long-­ standing interpretive ‘frame’. In Ghana, the predominant press narrative focused on Nkrumah’s increasing ‘dictatorialism’. In Kenya, it concentrated on the horrors of the Mau Mau War. In Central and Southern Africa, it emphasised the power of African nationalism. In the Congo, more of the coverage was generated ‘in the moment’. This linked to the comparative dearth, historically, of British press patterns of interaction, representation and understanding on the country. The lack of an established British press presence helps to account for this. Most British papers did not have their own correspondent stationed in the Congo. Those which did had only recently acquired one, and 38  As described in: Henry Tanner, ‘Congo: Reporter’s Nightmare’, Nieman Reports; Winter 1999/2000; 53/54, 4/1; Proquest Business Collection, pp. 187–9. Also see: Ulf Himmelstrand, ‘The Problem of Cultural Translation in the Reporting of African Social Realities’ in Olav Stokke (ed.), Reporting Africa (Uppsala, Sweden, 1971), pp. 117–33.

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newspapers did not necessarily select employees on the basis of their regional expertise. David Holden, a journalist at the Times, noted that Arslan Humbaraci, the Times’s Leopoldville stringer, had at the time of his appointment (June 1960) ‘been in Africa for only a few months, but… he is very experienced, especially in the Middle East… and Far East’.39 By the end of August, he had disappeared.40 Yet what was just as significant were three further factors. One concerned the comparative absence of ties on the ground. The lack of a sustained British press presence was evident elsewhere in Africa at the beginning of processes of decolonisation. But in Anglophone Africa British newspapers forged connections on the ground, which compensated for this. These relationships bore entwined histories, in which the work of each actor promoted the interests of both. The NLM in Ghana, the NAC and MYL in Nyasaland, and the ANC, PAC and white liberals in South Africa all forged relations with British newspapers. The second factor, which intersected with the first, concerned the apparent absence of a dominant ‘narrative-shaper’ on the Congo. There was no equivalent to the coalition of activists, politicians and pressmen which emerged in Britain in the 1950s to fight the Federation, and whose alliance helped to shape the evolution of the story of British Central Africa in Britain. The third factor concerned recent British cultural output on the Congo, which represented a comparative void. One of the only works which British journalists would have had to hand was Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which had been published in 1899, and the writings of Henry Morton Stanley. This contrasted with the situation in Kenya, for example, which had featured prominently in British popular culture from the turn of the century as the focus of numerous books and even films. While it is likely that the images in Conrad and Stanley’s texts permeated journalists’ cultural environments, the news articles produced during the Congo crisis did not directly allude to the authors’ writings. This is noteworthy given the currency of terms such as ‘dark’ even today. Rather, in the weeks which followed, an image of ‘chaos’ predominated in British newspapers, a characterisation that flowed from an absence of 39  Memorandum from Mr. Holden to Mr. Woods and Mr. Buist, n.d., but attached to (and prior to) Memorandum from J.  S. Buist to Mr. Pope, 15 June 1960: ‘Correspondent in Leopoldville, Congo’, TT/FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Humbaraci, Arslan, TNL Archive. 40  Letter from Holden to Buist, 21 August 1960 (Hotel Stanley, Leopoldville), TT/ FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Holden, David, TNL Archive.

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established ‘frames’ which, while not always helpful or accurate in the other regions of British influence discussed here, did bring a degree of ‘coherence’ to popular understandings of proceedings. ‘Chaos’ appeared not to be a representation which any actor pushed. Rather, the image of chaos emerged in a vacuum of frames. It should have been explained primarily by neo-colonialism—persistent efforts by the departing colonial power (and other foreign actors) to continue to exert an influence in post-­ colonial times. The composite contributors to the image of chaos influenced British press treatment of other places in Africa. Yet there they were marshalled in support of certain conclusions. These included a penchant for sensation, racism, a preference for current over historical events, a dearth of historical knowledge, practical constraints on journalists’ activities, an overreliance on official sources (at times) and some case-specific factors, which included communications and infrastructural issues. Foreign groups which might have shaped this early coverage into a more coherent or purposeful narrative could have considered there was more to gain from not trying to do so. Lumumba tried to counteract its emphases. Yet press ‘frames’ tended to form incrementally over time. At the moments when established narratives were overturned, moreover, the actors involved in this tended simultaneously to reinforce other established ones, such as Britain’s ‘protective’ role in Central Africa that swung round to the idea that settler societies were perhaps a menace. Lumumba’s protestations regarding colonial rule and misrepresentation were unable to shape British newspapers’ narratives because they did not occur over a long-­enough period and jarred with some essential of the press’s beliefs regarding colonialism and their own professionalism. Instead, in a fast-flowing situation like the Congo crisis, with hundreds of foreign journalists soon sent to the scene, superficial influences, which found expression in thousands of newspaper articles, soon produced ‘mini-frames’ of their own, within which subsequent events were apt to be interpreted.

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6.3   The Army Mutiny, Lumumba and the Popular Press Two days following Independence Day, the Congolese army mutinied against its white officers, whose Belgian head, General Emile Janssens, was unwilling to countenance Africanisation of the command structure in the independence era.41 The press continued to convey a partial picture of events by religiously documenting not the cause but the course of the mutiny, including the soldiers’ use of violence against their white officers, the rape of officers’ wives and other white women, including nuns, and the subsequent outflux of white refugees into Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring country of French Congo, Uganda, Angola and Northern Rhodesia.42 In these stories, the soldiers were referred to as ‘rebels’ or ‘mutineers’, a term which seemed appropriate initially, but which stuck, with significant consequences. In the days which followed, the national army, when in battle with either secessionist elements within the Congo or Belgian troops, as ‘rebels’ tended in the articles not to appear as part of the legal machinery of government.43 Some journalists regard the reports of the rape of white women, and of nuns in particular, as the defining moment of the crisis, an event so significant that the Congo was never able to redefine itself internationally.44 The story was not manufactured. The rape count had been high (at approximately 300 people),45 with all of the white women in some army camps affected. Some of those who downplayed the scale of the violence as ‘somewhat exaggerated’ appeared to be motivated by inaccurate understandings of gender-based violence.46 The Times’s stringer wrote privately that he thought that the women had brought some of it on themselves

 Gondola, History of Congo, p. 118.  For example: Express, 7 July 1960, p. 2; Mail, 7 July 1960, p. 5; Express, 8 July 1960, fp; Herald, 8 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 8 July 1960, p. 24; Mail, 8 July 1960, fp; Times, 8 July 1960, p. 12; Guardian, 8 July 1960, fp; Express, 9 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 9 July 1960, p. 3; Guardian, 9 July 1960, fp; Herald, 11 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 11 July 1960, fp. 43   Ioan Davies, ‘The Congo and the Press’, New Left Review 11/1960, vol. 6, pp. 50–53, p. 51. 44  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 102. 45  Confidential memorandum detailing the private opinions of Arslan Humbaraci, The Times’ stringer based in Leopoldville, 3 August 1960, MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive. 46  Confidential memorandum, 3 August 1960, MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive. 41 42

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with their ‘loose morals’ and ‘provocative attire’.47 The story warranted coverage. Yet in echoes of its partial coverage of Lumumba’s speech, it must also be emphasised that the press provided no contextual detail for the soldiers’ violence, regarding Belgian resistance to Africanisation of the army’s command structure, nor indeed the history of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo. The former of these omissions concerned neo-colonialism, a situation in which former colonial powers continued to exercise an undesired influence in post-colonial times. The latter related more to colonial legacies. Mark Leopold, writing on a different context (Idi Amin’s Uganda), has illustrated the powerful ways in which the violence which occurs in a place perpetuates and translates through time;48 and few countries in Africa had experienced as much colonial-era violence as the Congo. Relatedly, the Congolese army was the European officered Force Publique’s successor—the notorious gendarmerie and military force created in 1885 by Leopold to enforce the king’s authority, often brutally. In addition, Lumumba argued that foreign coverage of the rapes tended unfairly to extrapolate the actions of a minority to all Congolese. Concurrently, the British press failed to pay proper attention to news of a Belgian attempt on Lumumba’s life.49 Lumumba continued to strive to counteract the ‘single story’ that appeared in places including the British press. At a press conference in New York at the end of July, Lumumba would argue that Belgium was waging a campaign of disinformation against his government, which had at its core the assertion that Lumumba, and in fact all Congolese, disliked Europeans.50 The prime minister would not deny that attacks against white people had occurred following independence, but he would ask his listeners not to privilege stories of violence, including rape, over others, and would reassure them both that the Congo was not ‘anti-European’ and that the mutinous soldiers had had more on their minds, including gripes against Congolese politicians and economic grievances. Yet, as we shall see, his protestations fell on deaf ears.  Ibid.  Mark Leopold, Inside West Nile: Violence, History and Representation on an African Frontier (Oxford, 2005). 49  This was mentioned briefly in: Herald, 9 July 1960, fp. 50  Press conference in New  York, 25 July 1960, in Van Lierde (ed.), Lumumba Speaks, pp. 285–307. 47 48

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The reports of the mutiny and its aftermath contributed to an international sociopolitical environment that was conducive to a continued Belgian presence. They also had more immediate negative impacts. The articles informed Lumumba’s decision to leave the country for the US.  Lumumba had had some success, when touring the country with Kasavubu following the mutiny, in restoring a sense of calm to the areas which he visited.51 This would change in his absence. Some journalists later criticised Lumumba for ‘wandering’ around the world, suggesting that they continued to possess little cognisance of the international dimension to the crisis.52 Lumumba was right about Belgium’s attempts to influence foreign press coverage of the Congo during these weeks. However, in the case of British newspapers, internal press-related and experiential influences were more important. The Belgian government was certainly keen to foster news reports of violence against white people by issuing press releases to this effect, whilst justifying a Belgian military intervention in the country entirely in support, so they explained, of the survivors,53 yet also embodying financial and political motives. However, the government’s most comprehensive efforts began at the end of July, after all of the reports on the mutiny had appeared, with a big press conference detailing the atrocities inflicted upon its countrymen and women. The press conference was followed by the publication of a large booklet containing the same information, which the Belgian government sent out internationally, including to the Foreign Office.54 In the period immediately following the mutiny, most British articles drew on the accounts of refugees, whose stories journalists were able physically to access.55 Most journalists were stationed in the cities that the refugees fled to. These included Brazzaville as well as Ndola in Northern Rhodesia, and Leopoldville. This is borne out by the datelines of the 51  Report to the Chamber on the situation in the Republic, 15 July 1960, in Van Lierde (ed.), Lumumba Speaks, pp. 237–71, followed by other addresses and radio broadcasts made to Congolese citizens and soldiers throughout the country during the middle of July. 52  Mail, 9 August 1960, p. 7. 53  These are referred to in the aforementioned reports. 54  ‘Congo July 1960 Evidence’ (30-page booklet), including ‘Statement by Mr. Merchiers, Belgian Minister of Justice, at the Press Conference held on 28.7.1960’, FO 371/146645/1015/360. 55  Lines of communication with the army camps had been cut at the time of the mutiny. As documented in: Herald, 7 July 1960, p. 7.

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articles they wrote and is confirmed by archival evidence. During June and July, the Times’s Humbaraci was based in Leopoldville, but he had been provided with a house for his family in safer Brazzaville, across the Congo River.56 Holden stayed at the Hotel Stanley in Leopoldville.57 Hotels appeared to be a site of camaraderie and a certain amount of ‘living it up’,58 which is a further reason why journalists may not have wanted to venture far. Yet there were also numerous transport, communications and infrastructural difficulties and danger, which would take precedence. The stories of the white refugees were easy fodder for journalists in search of a ‘good’ story. British popular papers of all political hues possessed a taste for sensation59—and critically, for our story, popular press coverage soon began to swamp that of the other British papers, crowding out alternative narratives through its very proliferation. Language barriers in the largely French-speaking country were also relevant. The importance of these factors is encapsulated in the title of Ed Behr’s memoir, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?, words which Behr attributes to a BBC man roaming around Leopoldville airport in the aftermath of the mutiny sourcing potential interviewees.60 The apparently ‘simple’ nature of the story also seems relevant. Many journalists approached refugees’ accounts at the level of individuals or ‘human interest’, which required of writers and readers very little knowledge of Congolese political affairs. British newspapers maintained their present- and forward-looking orientation. Over these weeks, the Times’s foreign editor continually sent instructions to Humbaraci to focus on ‘what is happening’ over ‘background’ and ‘(speculation)’ because of the paper’s limited size as well as the costs of cabling long analyses.61 Also of importance were journalists’ own negative experiences as white people in the Congo, which many documented and which may have confirmed for them the sense that aggression against Europeans was a story that had to be told. On 9 July, John Starr wrote an article for the Mail, titled ‘I am searched in street at gunpoint’.62 Starr  TT/FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Humbaraci, Arslan, TNL Archive.  TT/FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Holden, David, TNL Archive. 58  Munnion, Banana Sunday. This subject lies behind the title to Peter Younghusband’s book Every Meal a Banquet. 59  Munnion, Banana Sunday, pp. 99–119. 60  Ed Behr, “Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?” A Foreign Correspondent’s Life Behind the Lines (London, 1986), p. 136. 61  TT/FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Humbaraci, Arslan, TNL Archive. 62  Mail, 9 July 1960, p. 7. 56 57

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wrote that he had been ‘frisked’ by ‘mutineers’ whom he suspected were searching ‘any white’. In the days that followed, Belgian rescue efforts were reported in a deluge of popular press articles, and received sympathetic treatment.63 In contrast, the papers devoted little space to the violence of Belgian soldiers against Congolese, as in Matadi on 11 July, when Belgian troops wreaked havoc in the city, killing approximately thirty Africans, including civilians.64 Neither did they expend much energy analysing Lumumba’s communications concerning Belgian intervention. Judging from the editorials on these subjects, journalists’ writings continued to embody not only racism, a dearth of historical/contextual understanding, a penchant for ‘new’ news65 and difficulties centring on constraints such as access66 but also the legacy of journalists’ interpretations of previous incidents. Journalists’ sympathetic treatment of Belgian rescue efforts in addition to their neglect of the Belgian violence against Africans stemmed from their viewing Belgian violence against the backdrop of the violence of the ‘mutineers’, which was understood to have preceded, if not necessitated, it.67 Emergent mini-frames were important in the Congo owing to the absence of an established ‘bigger picture’ or ‘message’ in illustration of which day-to-­ day events could be marshalled. This may not have been a cause for concern had they been accurate. Yet, as we have seen, the violence of the mutineers was informed by the violence of Belgian colonial rule and by ‘neocolonialist’ influences such that Belgian rescue efforts represented less a response to the violence of Africans and in protection of white lives (though they were partly that) than a continuation of the external intervention which had helped to spur the initial African violence. Additionally, in Katanga, Belgian military intervention occurred in the absence of any serious incident. Following the mutiny, moves towards Africanisation of the army’s command structure in some regions of the country resulted in a hard core of Belgian officers regrouping in Katanga.68 They built up a

63  Mail, 11 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 11 July 1960, fp; Herald, 11 July 1960, fp; Express, 11 July 1960, fp. 64  The Mail revealed this only in subsequent weeks. 65  On the day the violence occurred in Matadi (11th), Tshombe announced Katanga’s secession. 66  Following the violence in Matadi, the Belgians restricted access to the area. 67  Mirror editorial, 12 July 1960, p. 2; Mail editorial, 12 July 1960, fp. 68  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 7.

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presence there, supported by Tshombe, who was politically opposed to Lumumba and who feared nationalist (Congolese) troops.69

6.4   The Secession of Katanga On 11 July, Tshombe, possessing the Belgian soldiers’ protection and Belgium’s broader support, proclaimed Katanga’s secession from the Republic. The popular press portrayed the substance of Tshombe’s declaration as an established fact. Journalists described Katanga to have seceded, or even to be independent.70 While some referred to Tshombe more neutrally as the new Congo ‘strong-man’, others quickly dubbed him ‘Premier’ and some even ‘Prime Minister’. This lent power and credence to one of Lumumba’s chief political opponents, whose challenges became ‘realities’ due to how they were understood by others, including the media, which propagated them. According to an article in the Herald two days later (the 14th), Tshombe had himself been alarmed at the media response to his words, claiming that he had been ‘misunderstood’ and that what he wanted was more power for his region in a federated Congo.71 These calls echoed those of other opposition groups in post-colonial Africa—the NLM in Ghana, for instance, which had pressed the British government before independence for regional constitutional safeguards. Tshombe’s words reflected the sheer diversity of the peoples which fell within the borders carved in Africa during the late-nineteenth century as well as the social, political and economic processes that had characterised the eras of colonialism and decolonisation and which had created some new cleavages. Additionally, the popular press tended to portray the secession of Katanga, certainly initially, as an internal Congolese affair dominated by Tshombe, despite the heavy Belgian presence in the region noted by most correspondents. It is likely that a fusion of influences continued to inform these representations: an interest in ‘new’ news or ‘what is happening’, for example, a dearth of historical or contextual understanding, racism and practical constraints centring on access.72 Additionally, editorial content suggests  Ibid.  Initial front-page reports of the secession appeared on 12 July: Herald, fp; Express, fp; Mirror, p. 12; Mail, fp. Also: Times, p. 12. 71  Herald, 14 July 1960, p. 4. 72  Described well in: Henry Tanner, ‘Congo: Reporter’s Nightmare’, Nieman Reports; Winter 1999/2000; 53/54, 4/1; Proquest Business Collection, pp. 187–9. 69 70

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that the papers’ depiction of Katanga’s secession as an internal Congolese affair stemmed from their earlier framing of the crisis. The Belgian troop presence seemed reasonable following the violence against Belgian civilians. The secession, moreover, appeared as logically contiguous with the earlier election result, the difficult negotiations which followed and the street violence which accompanied them. It also appeared consistent with earlier Belgian efforts to ‘unite’ that which would otherwise supposedly have fractured. In an opposite vein, the day following Katanga’s secession, the Congolese government requested UN intervention to safeguard the country from ‘external aggression’.73

6.5   The Siege of Leopoldville Airport Meanwhile, back in the Republic, British popular papers churned out further reports from white refugees of the brutalities meted out by the army ‘rebels’, and the story of a sensational clash between ‘Belgian paratroopers’ and ‘mutinous Congolese troops’ inside Leopoldville airport (N’Djili), which both were fighting for and which most gave front-page treatment.74 N’Djili was easily accessible, most correspondents being based in the city. The story further illustrates the pressures, competitive and otherwise, on British journalists to produce action-packed sensational reports as opposed to political or background analyses, introduced, if possible, with the line ‘I was there as…’. The event entered British journalistic folklore for this reason. George Gale was in the airport for the Express at the time of the clash, when he heard the phone ring, so the story goes.75 A Belgian airport official answered it and handed the phone to Gale. It was Sandy Gall of Reuters. Gales’s report contained a prominent reference to the Reuters’s man phoning him to find out what was happening, a move which caused Gall considerable grief.76 The papers’ representations also continue to illustrate their partiality for victims with white skins and the importance of their earlier framing of the crisis, which included the use of specific terminology to refer to the different combatants as well as the prevalence, from independence, of  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 8.  Mail, 14 July 1960, fp; Express, 14 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 15 July 1960, fp & bp. 75  Express, 14 July 1960, fp. 76  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 105. 73 74

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stories of white victimhood and survival. Some of the white civilians in the airport had been the victims of the sexual and other violence of the mutiny and journalists were interested in following their cases. The story’s focus might also have reflected the influence of editors. Despite extended descriptions in the reports of Belgian violence throughout the airport drama, the sense the articles conveyed, reinforced by now iconic shots of nuns cowering on the floor and white women on stretchers, all waiting for flights to Belgium, was of Europeans under siege.77 In addition, the papers continued not to question the Belgian troop presence. Rather, they presented it as a logical consequence of the earlier violence against Belgian civilians, a representation which normalised the presence of neo-­colonialist influences in the Congo. Reported developments in the British Empire provided a welcome contrast and may have bolstered British readers’ pride. The same day, the Mail gave prominence to Hastings Banda’s politically astute remarks that ‘the Congo terror’ would not occur in an independent Nyasaland because ‘the British have treated us too fairly for that’.78 Interestingly, Banda’s comment, which the paper chose to promote, alluded to the devastating history of Belgian colonial rule in the Congo, which the popular press was so apt simultaneously to disregard in its portrayal of the crisis. The following week, the airport drama continued with the Belgians firmly in control, with a visit by Lumumba and Kasavubu, who were passing through on their way to Stanleyville. The story illustrates the extent to which popular papers continued to overlook the heavy Belgian presence in the Congo, as well as their continued indifference to Belgian attacks, verbal or otherwise, on Lumumba and their affinity for European victims. A report Lumumba made on 15 July to the Chamber of Deputies, which included a discussion of this incident, clearly illustrates that the Belgians retained control of vast areas of the Congo, even outside Katanga, which was their focus.79 The two men had just attempted to fly to Elisabethville, the capital of Katanga, but a group of Belgian military personnel had refused them permission to land. They had then been refused permission to fly to Stanleyville, where they had hoped to return, being flown on to 77  For example: Mirror, 15 July 1960, fp & bp; Express, 15 July 1960, fp; Mail, 15 July 1960, fp & p. 7. 78  Mail, 15 July 1960, p. 7. 79  ‘Report to the Chamber on the situation in the Republic’, 15 July 1960, in Van Lierde (ed.), Lumumba Speaks.

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Leopoldville against their wishes. There, they sought to charter a plane back to Stanleyville, which they eventually secured, hoping to fly from Ndolo airfield (in Leopoldville) but being asked to return to N’Djili. It was here that the incident occurred, which Lumumba regarded as a ‘ridiculous’ Belgian ‘trap’.80 When they returned, ‘The Belgian troops stared at us in a very peculiar way’, he explained: ‘Then all the Europeans at the airport surrounded us and called us “apes”, “murderers”, “hoodlums”, “thieves,” and so on… some of them spat in my face and pulled my beard, and one of them jostled me and took my glasses. We endured other humiliations, as the Belgian soldiers stood by and watched in amusement’.81 ‘There were foreign journalists present’, Lumumba added: ‘Instead of telling the world about this, they have come back to ask us for statements, for press conferences! What are we to do?’ Lumumba was wrong in one regard and right in another. British newspapers had certainly reported the attack on Lumumba, but had chosen to foreground the Belgian cries at the time of the assault of ‘How would you like it if someone raped your wife?’ and Lumumba’s response, all smiles and impassivity so they wrote, which journalists regarded as an affront to the victims.82 Lumumba’s account signifies that this owed to Belgium’s successful manipulation of the media presence at the airport, but the partiality of the popular press for white victims and the continued resonance of its earlier framing of the crisis were also important. In addition, the absence from the left-leaning popular press of a more sympathetic narrative, in the Mirror’s case, seems to have reflected Donald Wise’s recent move from the Express, in addition to the absence of a desire on the part of the paper’s management to restrain him in the production of prolific yet rather ill-informed, sensational pieces. Munnion thinks that Wise had a healthy disregard for Mirror readers, whose lips, he told his colleagues, ‘move… as they read’.83 While the press began to devote more space during this slightly later period to reports of Belgian wrongdoings, these stories never became dominant. The one big exception was a series of pieces which Arthur Cook wrote for the Mail on the incidents which had occurred in Matadi on 11 July. Cook had travelled to the port to gather the stories of Congolese  Ibid., p. 251.  Ibid. 82  Mirror, 15 July 1960, bp; Express, 15 July 1960, fp; Mail, 15 July 1960, fp; Herald, 15 July 1960, fp. 83  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 118. 80 81

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survivors, which told of brutal Belgian reprisals in the wake of the mutiny, in which thirty Africans had died.84 Cook’s first report sparked a UN investigation.85 The Times’s special correspondent in Leopoldville, James Bishop, also wrote an article referring to Belgian ‘reprisals’,86 a move which caused the Belgian government to complain to both the paper and the Foreign Office.87 Overall, however, critical articles on Belgian operations and the testimony of Congolese civilians were conspicuously absent from British newspapers.

6.6   British Newspapers and UN Operations Against the backdrop of secession and continued violence, most British papers of all leanings and formats viewed the prospect of UN intervention favourably.88 Again, this was not because journalists regarded the Belgian military presence as unwarranted or undesirable. The press displayed little sympathy with Lumumba’s assertion that UN troops were needed to help end Belgian aggression against the Congo. Most editors remarked that any sensible country, faced with African attacks on its civilians, would have responded in the same fashion. Yet there was certainly a fear of ‘race war’ at this historical moment, as evidenced by press treatment of Sharpeville, which informed their opinion that intervention by a neutral, international body represented the best way forward. The press gave considerable editorial support to the UN operation. Significantly, however, this support coexisted with reports from the field which reinforced, whilst simultaneously highlighting, what turned out to be a very pernicious sort of neutrality. UN troops would not, it soon became evident, jeopardise the success of secessionist movements in places including Katanga. Two kinds of reports performed this role. The first were those which emphasised the British role, such as those which documented the tremendous effectiveness, so correspondents claimed, of General Alexander’s leadership in the first few days (before a Swedish  Mail, 20 July 1960, p. 9; Mail, 21 July 1960, p. 9.  Mail, 22 July 1960, p. 11; Mail, 23 July 1960, p. 7. 86  Times, 20 July 1960, p. 12. 87  Memorandum from Oliver Woods to the editor, 21 July 1960, MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive. FO 371/146753/1671/2 & 1671/3. 88  Mail, 9 July 1960, fp; Guardian, 11 July 1960, p. 6; Mail, 12 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 12 July 1960, p. 2; Times, 15 July 1960, p. 13; Guardian, 17 July 1960, p. 8; Mirror, 21 July 1960, p. 2. 84 85

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General, General von Horn, took over).89 General Alexander was the British commander of the Ghanaian forces sent to the Congo as part of the UN operation. The manner in which certain papers, such as the Express, a publication much despised in African nationalist circles, homed in on the British role, vaunting the exploits of Alexander, caused some to remark that it was virtually ‘kill(ing)’ the UN’s efficacy because it bred distrust as to the ‘real’ nature of the operation.90 Yet at the same time, in Britain, these self-affirming reports promoted the view that what the UN was doing was admirable and should continue. The second category of reports was that which sensationalised or valorised Tshombe’s defiance of the organisation in his refusing initially to permit UN troops (and even UN officials) access to Katanga.91 This informed a climate of opinion in which the secession came to be regarded as a closed book. It can be linked to the press’s penchant for conflict or sensation as well as to its prior framing of events. Yet by this stage journalists appear also to have begun to be affected by Tshombe’s public relations efforts,92 which recalled those of opponents of Nkrumah in Ghana and which may have included ready access to Tshombe’s residence. For some, the links were close, and Katanga’s defiance of the UN was mediated by the British press in a very personal sense. At one point, Peter Younghusband told Mail readers that he had contacted Tshombe late at night to deliver the first news that the UN had decided to postpone its entry date.93 ‘He was asleep’, the reporter explained: ‘I sent in a message, and he replied with a polite note thanking me and saying he was going back to sleep. Soon his bedroom light went out again’.

89  Express, 16 July 1960, fp; Mail, 16 July 1960, fp; Mirror, 16 July 1960, p. 3; Guardian, 16 July 1960, fp; Guardian, 17 July 1960, p. 4; Express, 18 July 1960, p. 2; Mail, 18 July 1960, p. 9; Mirror, 18 July 1960, fp. 90  Confidential memorandum detailing the private opinions of Humbaraci, 3 August 1960, MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive. 91  Herald, 26 July 1960, p. 4; Mail, 4 August 1960, fp; Mail, 6 August 1960, fp; Express, 8 August 1960, fp and also article on p. 2. 92  As noted also in Munnion, Banana Sunday, pp. 105–6. 93  Mail, 6 August 1960, fp.

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6.7   Violence in South Kasai Some journalists later spoke of Katanga as an oasis of calm in an otherwise turbulent region, there being no real sense that the secession had itself sparked violence.94 When first reports of ‘tribal’ conflict in South Kasai emerged, popular papers, whose coverage continued to crowd out ‘serious’ reporting, presented the violence as the eruption of an ‘ancient enmity’ between two groups, the Lulua and Baluba, which was said to have ‘reignited’ following the Belgian exodus.95 Yet the violence was firmly rooted to Katanga’s secession. Tshombe’s declaration had devastated the ability of the central government to assert its authority and to deter further secessionist movements in other provinces,96 including Kasai, where, following a declaration of independence by Albert Kalonji, the minority Baluba (of which Kalonji was one) clashed with the majority Lulua, who supported Congolese integrity as articulated by Lumumba’s MNC.97 Kalonji had formed a federalist faction of the MNC before the country’s independence, but had failed to win significant support at the 1960 election. In northern Katanga, where the Baluba were also in a minority, the group held fast to the idea of Congolese integrity to save their skins, yet in doing so found themselves the object of attacks by Tshombe’s army as it marched north to consolidate CONAKAT’s hold over the province.98 This border region became the site of much violence over the weeks and months that followed, attracting considerable, yet fluctuating, press interest. The area was certainly difficult to cover. The Herald’s Anthony Carthew had been the first newspaperman since independence to reach Luluabourg, the capital of Kasai, yet to do so he wrote that he had had to fly 500  miles from Leopoldville, ‘hitch-hike airlifts for 1000  miles’ and ‘travel hundreds of miles by car’, with only two oranges for sustenance.99 He had then had to fly ‘500 miles’ to find a cable office to send his story. Carthew’s account may have been embellished as part of the journalistic tradition of producing stories ‘hard-won under fire’.100 Yet it did not appear to be unrepresentative of the experiences of foreign  Express, 6 August 1960, fp.  Herald, 1 August 1960, fp. 96  Gondola, History of Congo, p. 123. 97  Legum, Congo Disaster, p. 123. 98  Ibid., p. 124. Tshombe’s party. 99  Herald, 1 August 1960, fp. 100  The phrase is taken from Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 104. 94 95

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correspondents, to which internal letters and memoranda at the Times attest.101 Transport and communications difficulties affected the ability of most journalists to stray too far from Leopoldville. The TELEX machine was a source of apprehension, and safety was also a concern. The British ambassador to the Congo, Ian Scott, thought that this fuelled the production of ‘highly coloured accounts’ because journalists had to rely on their own imaginations for copy.102 Yet the obverse was also true, as Carthew’s lively report from the scene demonstrated. His portrayal of the violence in Kasai as the eruption of an ancient enmity might be attributed to editorial pressures on correspondents for sensational stories. It also embodied racist assumptions about African tribes and their apparent propensity to fight for reasons supposedly inherent in their DNA. In addition, Carthew’s portrayal reflected the fact that the journalist did not interrogate events deeply. His report, like the others from the region which followed, continued to ply British readers with the view that at the heart of the Congo’s crisis lay deeply rooted Congolese political and other divisions over and above the more contemporaneous developments that de Witte amongst others has explored. These included the actions of Tshombe and Kalonji, but also their Belgian and other Western supporters. When Kalonji proclaimed South Kasai’s independence, his state was dubbed the République de la Forminière after the subsidiary company of the Société Générale, which controlled the diamond extraction there.103 In relaying these representations, British newspapers continued to promote the view that the secession of the two regions was inevitable or just or both. The absence of a more nuanced or interrogative press narrative benefited the Belgians over Lumumba, who continued to find little international support for his protestations, both on the nature of the Belgian presence and on the role of the UN, an organisation whose mandate the Congolese prime minister soon criticised on the basis that its ostensible impartiality, its inability to involve itself in ‘internal disputes’, had very partial consequences in that it consolidated the territorial division of the country. The UN’s approach vacillated at the start of its operation, but very soon, it functioned in precisely this manner. UN  TT/FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Holden, David, TNL Archive.  ‘Observations on the press and the sources from which correspondents obtain their information’, Ian Scott, Leopoldville, to the Earl of Home, 8 November 1960, FO 371/146753/1671/8. 103  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 12. 101 102

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troops were denied access to Katanga for some time, which meant that they acted only in the areas of government control. This consolidated Belgian control in the rich mining province because it prevented Congolese troops from travelling there. These press narratives continued to exist alongside an awareness of the Belgian presence in places such as Katanga, and even, at this slightly later date, of its true significance. Some journalists came to understand the secession of the region as having involved the Belgians.104 Yet when the Belgian presence or role was discussed, either editorially or within the news reports, it tended to be portrayed sympathetically either as a continuation of the initial Belgian response to the mutiny and the attacks on Belgian civilians or as a logical state of affairs given the region’s vast material resources in which Belgium had a financial stake or as an irrelevancy in the sense that it was viewed as a symptom of Congolese political division as opposed to one of its very causes. Notably, however, the press’s sense of affinity with Belgium’s plight never quite extended to stormy depictions of events in Britain’s own empire. On 5 August, even the Mirror, commenting on the successful conclusion of the constitutional discussions on Nyasaland, was quick to draw the distinction.105 Hitherto, the paper had criticised the government’s slow handling of the crisis in Central Africa. It now chose to emphasise the preparatory aspect. ‘What a contrast to the chaos in the Congo, where the Belgians did nothing to prepare Africans for independence until it was too late’, the paper declared, ‘What a contrast to the smack-the-Africans-down policy of the South African Government. Mr. Macleod and the Nyasaland leaders show themselves men of vision’.

6.8   Lumumba Under Fire: Siege and Assassination The following week, the press began to report cases of violence against Lumumba, who had by now returned from the US.106 This appeared alongside reports of continued violence in Leopoldville, involving clashes 104  Herald, 26 July 1960, p. 4; Mail editorial, 26 July 1960, fp. Also: Confidential memorandum by James Bishop, received 27 July 1960; and Memorandum from David Holden, correspondent in Leopoldville, to the editor, 9 November 1960, both in MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive. 105  Mirror, 5 August 1960, p. 2. 106  Guardian, 11 August 1960, fp; Mirror, 11 August 1960, fp; Mail, 11 August 1960, fp; Herald, 11 August 1960, fp; Express, 11 August 1960, fp; Times, 11 August 1960, p. 8.

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between MNC supporters and members of ABAKO. The coverage continued to communicate the view that Congolese political and other divisions were the sole cause of the crisis, and by its very prevalence obscured the Belgian or Western role in the conflict. It reinforced the view that Lumumba was deeply unpopular with the Congolese people. Journalists’ depictions of the prime minister’s face-to-face interactions with these men on the street may have left an even stronger impression on readers than their earlier reports of happenings at the high political level. In one sense, the reports reflected the train of events on the ground. Yet, thinking in terms of the Congo as a whole, they also stemmed from the constraints on British and other foreign correspondents’ freedom of movement, which meant that journalists were often confined to the capital, a city in which support for Lumumba had never been strong, being an ABAKO stronghold.107 The dominance of reports from Leopoldville meant that the press conveyed an unrepresentative picture of the prime minister’s popularity in the country at large. Congolese troops and MNC supporters were also beginning to confront British and other foreign journalists,108 an acknowledgment, perhaps, that this was the case, yet also, counterproductively, fuelling a vicious circle of distrust that informed subsequent reports of events in which these men were protagonists. Against this backdrop of continued dissent and violence, the press received news of the eventual entry of the UN to Katanga with a sigh of relief, again lending editorial support to the UN operation. Articles from the field, however, continued to paint a more equivocal picture in which the UN appeared as the object of derision or ridicule. The popular press portrayed the entry of the UN to Katanga not as a victory for the organisation but rather a concession on the part of Tshombe.109 When the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld landed on the tarmac at Elisabethville airport, with Tshombe there to greet him, journalists such as Younghusband noticed a certain frostiness between the two men, which became the focus of their reports.110 The first category of articles (on Tshombe’s concessions) recorded for British audiences accurate details concerning the balance of power, which pointed to a conspiracy of sorts. When UN troops finally took over from the Belgian ones in Elisabethville  Gondola, History of Congo, pp. 103–4.  Mail, 11 August 1960, fp. 109  Express, 10 August 1960, fp; Herald, 10 August 1960, fp; Mirror, 10 August 1960, fp. 110  Mail, 13 August 1960, p. 7. 107 108

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(Katanga), they possessed no real mandate other than to maintain the status quo.111 At the same time (and ironically), the second category of articles (on the character of the relationship between the two men) appears to have contributed to a background context or ‘mini frame’, which undercut the validity of Lumumba’s subsequent accusations on the subject of collusion between certain UN officials, Tshombe and the Belgians. This contributed to a picture that obscured Western intrigue and only turned the Congo in on itself once more. The subsequent raids, at the behest of Lumumba, by Congolese troops of UN offices in the hope of finding Belgian ‘spies’ were treated by popular papers with extreme scepticism bordering on ridicule.112 Sections of the Western media’s portrayal of Lumumba as ‘irrational’ or ‘mad’ from this period on, together with journalists’ calls for his removal, must therefore be understood not purely as part of a US-imposed narrative inspired by Cold War politics, as Kevin C.  Dunn has suggested.113 It must also be interpreted in the context of a specifically press-generated narrative which centred on tensions between the prime minister’s opponents—in this case, Tshombe and the Belgians, on the one hand, and the UN, on the other. It was press-generated because British and other foreign journalists were able to witness events on the ground, including the nature of interactions between men, at much closer quarters than any other international observers, and those interactions formed their sources.114 Journalists’ experiences at Lumumba’s press conferences only added to the picture of confusion, some having to wait hours longer than they had been promised for the leader to arrive.115 Others had been arrested by Lumumba’s men.116 Fuelling the story of Congolese dissent and division, which lent tacit support to the idea of external intervention whilst obscuring the full extent of that intervention in practice, were further reports of events in South Kasai, as more journalists, possibly inspired by Carthew’s example, made strenuous efforts to reach the region, chartering flights to the ‘trouble  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, p. 13.  Mirror, 17 September 1960, p. 20; Herald, 9 September 1960, fp. 113  Kevin C.  Dunn, Imagining the Congo: The International Relations of Identity (Basingstoke, 2003). 114  As at Elisabethville airport, for example. 115   ‘Observations on the press’, Scott to Earl of Home, 8 November 1960, FO 371/146753/1671/8. 116  The Mail’s Arthur Cook, for example. Mail, 17 August 1960, p. 7. Also the Express’s George Gale. Express, 3 September 1960, fp & 8 September 1960, p. 2. 111 112

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spots’.117 Correspondents continued to document the violence between Lulua and Baluba and to tie the conflict to ancient tribal enmities. Added to this were fresh reports of the violence of the Congolese national army, which had entered the region in order to try to bring about the end of the secession.118 Brutality and chaos were the dominant tropes the prolific popular press coverage used to describe what was happening in the area, at once a reflection of what journalists were seeing yet also continuing to display ignorance of the root causes, and thus the full significance, of the conflict. Correspondents were still under pressure to get out of the area quickly in order to file their stories, which prevented them from engaging deeply in events. They also appear to have been spooked by the death in Bakwanga, the capital of South Kasai, of a foreign (US) journalist, who, wearing ‘a khaki outfit which had a paramilitary look about it’, had apparently been mistaken for a Belgian soldier and shot.119 The press’s initial framing of events in the Congo as a fractious struggle prior to, at, and then immediately following independence may also have informed this narrative of chaos and tribal enmity, as might editorial pressures on correspondents to report ‘what is happening’ over background analyses and also the very ‘foreignness’ of the place. As we have seen, some journalists later argued that the situation in the Congo defied objective analysis, lending itself to anecdotal accounts which conveyed a ‘mood’ as opposed to historical or political evaluations based on familiar, Western, models or frames of reference.120 The character of the violence just over the border in northern Katanga received far less attention. That which did appear tended to be very unfavourable to Lumumba’s national army in that its entry to the region, after its entry to South Kasai, was presented as an ‘invasion’ rather than as an operation by the state to restore the republic’s territorial integrity,

 Munnion, Banana Sunday, pp. 108–11.  Mirror, 1 September 1960, p. 20; Herald, 3 September 1960, fp; Express, 2 September 1960, fp. 119  Munnion, Banana Sunday, p. 111. 120  Tanner, ‘Reporter’s Nightmare’. Ed Behr’s chapter on the Congo crisis in “Anyone Here Been Raped?” is also striking for its lack of chronological description, forming instead a collection of anecdotes, each with a ‘message’. Also: Himmelstrand, ‘The problem of cultural translation’. 117 118

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following the failure of UN operations in this regard.121 Additionally, the violence of Tshombe’s army against the Baluba in the north tended not to be reported. This appeared to owe something to Tshombe and the Belgians’ hold over the region, which made the free movement of outsiders, such as press reporters, difficult.122 British journalists had to rely on official press releases for information if they were not as intrepid as men such as Younghusband, who wrote that he braved the crocodile-infested waters of the river that separated the two regions to gain access to the territory.123 The over-reliance on official statements, in addition to the testimony of a continued deluge of white refugees, seems to have led to the replication both of specific terminology such as ‘invasion’ and of descriptions of the nature of the violence, in which Tshombe’s troops were supposedly primarily fighting an incursion and ‘drug-crazed tribesmen’ as opposed to (additionally) cementing a secession and repressing a minority.124 Back in Leopoldville, riots and violence against Lumumba’s person continued to attract considerable press interest.125 Journalists continued to be handled ‘roughly’ by Congolese troops, reinforcing a sense of solidarity with the opposition. And then in the midst of this came the news that Kasavubu had sacked the prime minister and had appointed a new one (Ileo) in his place.126 The popular press reported Kasavubu’s announcement in much the same way as it had previously documented Tshombe’s statement that Katanga had seceded from the Republic. It reported his claims as established facts, rather than as insubstantial or illegal challenges to the elected leader of the country. Although journalists also reported Lumumba’s subsequent refutation of Kasavubu’s assertion, together with Lumumba’s announcement that he had decided to dismiss Kasavubu from office, press treatment of these events did continue to undercut Lumumba’s authority, making it more difficult for him to govern, if only because they 121  Express, 18 August 1960, p. 2; Mail, 26 August 1960, p. 9; Express, 29 August 1960, fp; Herald, 30 August 1960, p. 2; Herald, 10 September 1960, p. 2; Express, 10 September 1960, p. 2. 122  As noted by Anthony Carthew in Herald, 9 August 1960, p. 4. 123  Mail, 5 September 1960, fp. 124  Quote is from Herald, 15 September 1960, p. 2. 125  Mirror, 26 August 1960, p.  20; Express, 26 August 1960, fp; Herald, 26 August 1960, fp. 126  Mirror, 6 September 1960, fp; Mail, 6 September 1960, fp; Herald, 6 September 1960, fp; Express, 6 September 1960, fp.

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made the Congolese leadership seem faltering or vacillating, even ridiculous, in the eyes of the world. That there was more to Lumumba’s crisis than Kasavubu’s actions is suggested by the prime minister’s decision to try to restrict journalists’ access to radio stations and cable offices because it suggests that he regarded the mediation and dissemination of stories by the international press as an integral part of their formulation.127 Again, correspondents failed to report the role of external actors in Kasavubu’s actions, so that the crisis in the Congo continued to appear as a purely home-grown affair. By this time, the Belgians, the CIA, the British and UN officials were each actively considering Lumumba’s removal for reasons which concerned foreign financial interests, Cold War politics and, ironically—because neo-colonial forces had helped to foment the exact opposite—stability: otherwise known as ‘law and order’. Kasavubu also sought (and received) UN assistance at the time of his announcement that resulted in the curtailment of non-UN aircraft and communications that might otherwise have allowed Lumumba to mobilise his supporters, resist the secessionist movements and defend himself physically.128 Over the following few days, the stories which appeared in the popular press displayed further continuity with earlier press narratives. Congolese troops were reported to have beaten up a group of US and Canadian airmen working with the UN, whom they accused of being ‘spies’, a claim that journalists regarded with deep suspicion, choosing instead to present the story as one of white victimhood and survival.129 The UN was reported to have tightened its grip on the capital as well as the Congo more widely, where it had seized as many airports and radio stations as it could.130 The valiant British role, this time in the guise of a twenty-one-year-old lieutenant, who defied Lumumba (and thus ostensibly headed off a crisis?) by denying the Congolese prime minister access to Leopoldville radio station, was again vaunted in papers such as the Express.131 A parliamentary victory for Lumumba, in which politicians expressed their support for the Congolese leader, attracted some, but little, page space, and where it was published, the news tended at once to be overshadowed by more negative stories, such as the prime minister’s adoption of ‘dictator powers’ (his  This is noted in the Herald article, 6 September 1960, fp.  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba, pp. 20–21. 129  Mirror, 30 August 1960, p. 20. 130  Herald, 7 September 1960, fp. 131  Express, 12 September 1960, fp. Also: Mirror, 12 September 1960, bp; Mail, 12 September 1960, fp; Herald, 12 September 1960, fp. 127 128

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declaration of a State of Emergency),132 which recalled the press’s portrayal of independent Ghana during 1957, and Lumumba’s unreasonable (in the press’s opinion) call on the UN to depart tout de suite. Then came one of the most important stories in light of the subsequent political trajectory of the country: the announcement from the (new) head of the army, Joseph-Désiré  Mobutu, that he had decided to sack both Lumumba and Kasavubu and govern the Congo himself.133 Five years later (1965) Mobutu would come to rule Zaire (previously Congo) in an authoritarian fashion as president. He would do so for over thirty years (to 1997), receiving support from Western countries including the US.  In 1960, as a man in a position of authority, and sympathetic to Western overtures, he was supported by both Belgium and the US as a potential solution to the Congo ‘problem’. His announcement on the sackings followed hot on the heels of an embarrassing story the popular press gave front-page treatment, involving the apparent ‘arrest’ of Lumumba by the army, his ‘release’ and his subsequent efforts to ‘seize’ Leopoldville radio station, where he was reported as wishing to deny that he had been arrested earlier on.134 The manner in which journalists reported Mobutu’s announcement reflected their earlier coverage of Tshombe’s announcement regarding Katanga’s secession, and Kasavubu’s statement concerning the dismissal of Lumumba, in that it tended to portray the substance of his claims as credible. Again, this bolstered Lumumba’s opponents, for although the press also reported Lumumba’s subsequent denial of all of the aforementioned, the very fact that these competing narratives continually emanated from the Congo painted its leadership as vacillating and incompetent. Arguably, Mobutu and his backers were aware of this and played on press proclivities for their own ends.135 Journalists followed Lumumba throughout Leopoldville during these weeks, often waiting for him outside his residence and then tailing him when he left.136 This may have been irritating for the prime minister and  Herald, 14 September 1960, fp; Express, 14 September 1960, fp.  Mail, 15 September 1960, fp; Herald, 15 September 1960, fp; Express, 15 September 1960, fp. Mobutu became President in 1965. 134  Mirror, 13 September 1960, fp; Mail, 13 September 1960, fp; Herald, 13 September 1960, fp. 135  On the 17th of September a ‘news flash received in Reuter’s Brussels office from Leopoldville’ reported that Lumumba was ‘in flight…his whereabouts…unknown’. Mirror, 17 September 1960, p. 20. This news also appeared in other papers. 136  As noted, for example, in Behr, “Anyone Here Been Raped”, p. 142. 132 133

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likely accounted for some of the ‘irrationality’ correspondents thought they saw in him. Given the press attendance, reports of Congolese ‘mobs’ protesting in the area near his house were therefore plentiful, as were those which documented the presence of Congolese troops, by now opposed to the prime minister, standing around ominously, waiting to arrest him, journalists thought, eyeballing the UN troops that formed a protective cordon.137 Again, the profusion of these articles may have owed to the fact that transport and communications difficulties across the Congo confined much of the press to Leopoldville. Yet by this time, there was also a sense amongst some correspondents that events had achieved such momentum that even if they could or should leave, it would now be unwise for them to do so because they anticipated the imminent death of the prime minister, a story they were loath to miss.138 Importantly there was no press outcry—just an acceptance that his death would soon come to pass (and that he had been lucky to live so long). The Herald’s Dennis Eisenberg soon dubbed him ‘four-lives Lumumba’.139 These representations had implications for the ways in which British readers understood Lumumba’s later disappearance and then his eventual assassination at the hands of the Belgians and their Congolese counterparts. Press portrayals of Congolese opposition to Lumumba’s rule, as exemplified by reports of the heavy ‘mob’ and troop presence outside the prime minister’s residence, provided an interpretive context or mini frame in which the agents of Lumumba’s doom appeared obviously to be his own countrymen. While both Tshombe and Mobutu were a party to the decision to take him out, the Belgian role was decisive.140 At a later date, and again, British newspapers would not perform the independent or interrogative analysis they perhaps could or should have done, reflecting their continued partiality. Although Tshombe did not inform journalists of Lumumba’s death until three weeks after it had occurred,141 sections of the press were aware of it, and also of its true nature, including the involvement of Belgian officers. Yet they displayed a strong disinclination to make anything of it. When an internal memorandum on the subject of 137  Mirror, 7 September 1960, fp; Mirror, 16 September 1960, bp; Mail, 19 September 1960, p. 8. 138  Holden (in Leopoldville) to John Buist, foreign news editor, 26 August 1960, TT/ FN/1/JSB/1/Correspondence with Holden, David, TNL Archive. 139  Herald, 16 September 1960, fp. 140  De Witte, Assassination of Lumumba. 141  Gondola, History of Congo, p. 127.

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Lumumba’s death and the role of the Belgians was circulated at the Times, the author wrote that his only objective was to make the information known within the office: ‘He was shot kneeling over a shallow grave by a Belgian captain whose name is in the hands of the UN’, the journalist explained, casually adding that ‘It will probably come out when a commission of inquiry is sent’.142

6.9   Conclusion British newspaper coverage of the Congo during 1960 contributed to denting the efficacy of the post-colonial state. In the popular press, in particular, but not uniquely, journalists emphasised African violence and division, white victimhood and saviourism and Lumumba’s apparent irrationality, madness or ineptitude. At the same time, they neglected to examine the colonial roots of the crisis and Belgian (and other) ‘neo-­ colonial’ interventions following independence. These depictions contributed to an international sociopolitical environment in which Western countries were able to operate in the Congo with impunity in efforts to safeguard their own interests. It is likely that the newspapers’ influence did not stop there. Not only did they continue to cover events in the Congo, including the series of wars which began in 1960 and which continue to this day, but it is likely that the imagery, language and interpretations which papers produced in this early period continued to bear on subsequent reports. In the comparative absence of established ‘frames’ for interpreting events in the Congo in 1960, journalists appeared automatically and subconsciously to generate their own ‘emergent mini-frames’ for attributing meaning to proceedings. These mini-frames were comparatively personal and/or experiential in nature and linked to the press practices which affected British newspapers’ coverage of all regions of Africa during the ‘wind of change’ but which were, elsewhere, often marshalled in support of a particular line of argument. They included racism, for example, practical constraints on journalists’ activity, a focus on the present as opposed to the past, a taste for sensation and an interest in African violence. In the Congo, the comparative absence of ‘big’ frames not only allowed these superficial influences to proliferate, but it also created a representational vacuum 142  Copy of letter from a correspondent (in Brazzaville) to Mr. McDonald, 15 February 1961, marked ‘confidential’, MEM/Zaire file 1958–1961, TNL Archive.

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within which an image of chaos appeared as the only logical fit. Given the importance of established frames of representation and expression for the British newspaper coverage of the ‘wind of change’ in the other regions of Africa (of Anglophone influence) examined in this book, it is likely that over time, these mini-frames contributed to the emergence of ‘big’ frames for the Congo, which permeated subsequent reports. Despite the limitations in the coverage, or perhaps because of them, press treatment of this region of Africa remained self-affirming for British readers. Most significantly, perhaps, the press’s emphasis on internal African division and violence as the primary cause of the crisis, and its obscuration of both the colonial and the neo-colonial dimension to events, created a representational situation in which Western responsibility was not at issue and Western intervention appeared as a sort of tonic. While much of the latter was Belgian, the press communicated an affinity with Belgium throughout the crisis. In addition to this, popular papers vaunted the actions of Britons and made flattering parallels with events in British Central Africa as the crisis intensified—not as a means of denigrating Belgium, it seems, but of asserting British colonial identity, as perceived. Relatedly, nowhere did British readers learn of British firms including Tanganyika Concessions nor of official British discussions on Lumumba’s removal. The coverage had damaging implications for Anglo-Congolese government relations. At the same time, it gave a ‘leg up’ to Lumumba’s political opponents, some of whom appeared to attempt to massage foreign media narratives as a means of advancing their cause. Because the relationship between Lumumba’s Congolese political opponents and his Belgian and other foreign ones was so very close, however, it is difficult to determine the precise nature of the relationship between British newspapers and leaders such as Tshombe. At points, British officials seemed concerned by the ill-informed, sensational reports which British journalists produced. However, it seems that the coverage did much to promote wider British interests in the light of Britain’s hidden priorities, which centred on geo-­ strategy, ‘stability’, Katanga, mineral resources and Cold War politik.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

7.1   The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, 1957–1960 British newspapers and news of British newspaper content travelled to Africa. There, the coverage was bound to fights against colonial rule as well as post-colonial governments. It provided a means by which groups in Africa, who wished to see political change there, attempted to foment the destruction of regimes. The coverage also informed wider political and civic practices in Africa, possessing a passive utility whereby groups in tight corners harnessed and deployed it to nurture cultures of belonging, of exclusion and of blame. In Britain, the press coverage influenced the government. It affected British policy towards the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, goading the government in the direction of African nationalism. It influenced British public policy on apartheid. The coverage also informed policy outcomes indirectly by presenting alternative ‘British’ views in Africa, which competed with the government’s own on matters concerning post-colonial Africa and on settler societies, undermining Commonwealth solidarity on a popular level and fostering intercultural distancing and alienation. Despite this, the coverage performed a self-­ affirming function for British readerships. It tended to cast Britain’s involvement in Africa in a positive light, and the new era of decolonisation as an organic development whose wave it was auspicious to ride but for which the question of decline was not relevant. All three of these spheres—Africa, official British and British public— were connected by the coverage. Indeed, British press treatment of Africa spun a transnational web of influence over the decolonisation process. The © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6_7

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dynamics it encompassed are essential to grasp if we are fully to understand the cultural and political history of the end of empire in Africa. British policy towards Central Africa was informed by a ‘British public opinion’ that was influenced in no uncertain terms by groups in Africa. The government’s policy goals were sometimes scuppered by the British press’s provision of an alternative British narrative in Africa, which was regarded as bearing a political significance in post-war Britain, and was often consciously provocative. The ‘British press’ and ‘British public opinion’ informed the lived experiences of the end of empire of African and white settler groupings, which sought engagement with them in bids to challenge colonial rule, to prop it up and to destabilise the governments of newly independent states. While different sections of the press performed different roles at different times and in different places, British newspapers displayed a burgeoning consensus on many matters, including the rise of nationalism. At other times, in countries such as Ghana and the Congo, right-leaning papers and popular ones, respectively, clouded out alternative voices due to the comparative  abundance  of their reports. In addition, readerships  often perceived British newspapers as a monolith and acted on that assumption in cultural as well as political realms.

7.2   ‘The Hopeless Continent’?: British Newspapers, African Activism and Decolonisation The overriding themes of British newspaper coverage of Africa during the wind of change were those of African activism, nationalism and violence. The themes’ presence owed to the efforts of activists in challenging colonial and post-colonial governments, which involved attempts at harnessing British papers to their causes. Activism also tapped the penchant of the popular press for sensation, the racial assumptions of some journalists and wider British society and—in the case of the settler colonies—had been flagged as a matter of extreme and urgent interest by prominent members of the press (Observer), who also affected the liberal prism through which many newspapers came to understand and to portray nationalism in the settler regions of central and southern Africa. The dominance of the theme of activism warrants recognition for two reasons. Firstly, it has probable implications for how British readers understood processes of decolonisation in Africa. Due to a prevalence of reports on the settler colonies, the overall picture  of Africa the press

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communicated to British readers was one of a continent resurgent, bound up in a turning of the tide that was of the sort that only occurs every century or so. The way the press communicated this sentiment in Africa’s central and southern regions bears on the work of historians of internal decolonisation. The image of activism did not appear as suggestive of imperial decline, but rather as symptomatic of an organic trend, which it was considered auspicious, even noble, to ride—and for which, journalists generally felt, Britain was saddling up. In the post-colonial era in Ghana, the themes of activism and violence helped to inform ‘British’ images of the post-colonial government, which made the latter seem extremely unpopular. Again, the manner in which the sentiment was communicated mattered. Post-colonial tensions in Ghana were not understood as indicative of the errors of the colonial era nor of the conscious efforts of Africans to achieve change. Rather, they were portrayed as having emerged in the vacuum left by Britain’s exit. It is important to note that both portrayals—in the centre and south, and in the west; colonial and post-colonial— exhibited little evidence of critical self-reflection, a dynamic conspicuous in its absence, which links to the relative absence of ‘History’ in press coverage of the then contemporary events. Secondly, the dominance of the theme of activism gives cause to reassess aspects of the historical record in which African activism does not appear as the key historical dynamic. This is especially relevant to developments in Central and Southern Africa. Coverage of these regions during the period of the wind of change indicates not only that African activism was a vital cause of the changes which occurred in the region—one that has been somewhat obscured in the historiography on Sharpeville, for example, which emphasises African victimhood; and on colonial violence and political change in the Federation, which emphasises settler violence and British proactivity on matters concerning political devolution—but also that it helped to condition other influences, including ‘British public opinion’, which had political impacts that also spurred on decolonisation processes. In May 2000, at the time of the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Economist dubbed Africa ‘the hopeless continent’, citing its ‘many dreadful wars’, ‘AIDS’ and ‘refugees’. ‘Hopeless Africa’, the title of the main article is an image which has tended to perpetuate in the West in the post-colonial period. It is notable that the story of activism, which dominated British press accounts of the wind of change, flies in the face of the image of a hopeless continent. Certainly, the parts of newspapers’  narratives which

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concerned ministerial incompetence in post-colonial Ghana and the Congo bear similarities. In addition, the wider coverage of the wind of change exhibited continuities with representations of Africa that echoed the paternalism of the early colonial era, including justifications for empire, and which emphasised the need for European intervention and assistance. Yet the overriding image of Africans in Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s—as exhibited in the British press—had either returned to or was one of a powerful group of people with the capacity to overturn a continental order. This raises questions about when and why the image of a ‘hopeless continent’ emerged or returned in the presses of Western countries such as Britain—because Africa had not always been portrayed to be so. This study would indicate that it re-emerged in the early post-colonial era as a result of the paucity of journalists’ understandings of the challenges post-­ colonial states faced, a dynamic linked to the absence of history in most press accounts; the absence of a broad-based educational campaign in Britain on post-colonial Africa; and relatedly, journalists’ difficulty in seeing concepts like ‘post-colonial’ by virtue of their being in the moment. That negative, essentialising representations of Africa emerged in this vacuum of understanding also points to the perpetual significance of race and racism. The efforts of groups in Africa that were politically opposed to incumbent  governments following independence to convey a particular (negative) image of post-colonial governments to the foreign media may also have had an impact.

7.3   Press Portrayals of Britain in Africa British readers of British newspaper coverage of the wind of change era in Africa were presented with narratives that affirmed Britain’s involvement on the continent. This had immediate benefits for readers’ self-­perceptions. Yet the absence of an historical critique of Britain’s role in Africa, including concerning dislocation, racism, violence and opposition, augured ill for intercultural relations both at the time and subsequently. The coverage failed to equip British readers with the humility and introspection necessary in order to take the problems which African people and white settlers faced seriously. These omissions were significant because papers were a key—if not the—daily cultural resource for Britons on Africa. Decolonisation was a turning point in Anglo-African relations, when significant amounts of page space were devoted to commentators’ taking stock of the

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relationship. The relative absence of an historical critique in these pieces is not only noteworthy but also represents a lost opportunity. The absence cannot be accounted for solely on the basis of the different papers’ political leanings. It might be assumed, for instance, that right-­ leaning papers, possessing a greater number of Establishment ties, would be more reluctant than papers with fewer of these to probe historical structures of dominance critically. However, the absence of the historical critique featured in all papers, including on the Left. It can be linked to the absence of history in press accounts, which owed to factors including newspapers’ appetite for ‘what is happening’ and future-oriented opinion pieces. Also important, however, are the historical narratives which were present in the press. The theme of British ‘protection’ of Africans was important in Central Africa, for example, and of British tutelage in Ghana. These representations were produced by people in positions of power historically in the empire—and even groups who wished to challenge that empire (the Malawi Youth League, for example, in Nyasaland) drew on the core assumptions present in those earlier tropes as a means of garnering British support for their objectives. To the extent that these efforts resulted in change for this reason (and there is good reason to think that they did), this indicates that the narratives really did mean something to British people. Outsiders’ efforts to exploit the perceptions in pursuit of change, moreover, served further to reinforce the self-perceptions. The self-affirming, uncritical characteristics of the British coverage of Africa during the wind of change damaged intercultural relations—particularly at the moments when they allied to negative depictions of others. In Ghana, right-leaning coverage of the Nkrumah government and white saviours in the form of men such as Shawcross contributed to a growing alienation of the Ghana government from Britain and the Commonwealth. In the settler regions of Central and Southern Africa, press treatment of the white communities and the rise of nationalism, alongside newspapers’ dearth of comment on Britain’s historical involvement in the region, settlers viewed as self-interested meddling and clear and infuriating hypocrisy, a sentiment which informed a desire to retrench into their ‘islands of white’ and away from the Commonwealth, helping to disintegrate what was once known as a ‘Greater British’ sphere. Whether these changes were for good or ill is a moot point and one which is beyond the scope of this book. It is perhaps enough to note that Anglo-settler ties deteriorated during the period in which the press commentary on Britain, Africa and

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settlers was at its height. The coverage contributed to the creation of crevasses in understanding, at both a popular and a high political level, which proved hard to bridge.

7.4   Frameworks of Representation and Patterns of Practice of the Press British newspaper coverage of Africa during the wind of change was informed by historical dynamics as well as contemporaneous ones. Historical dynamics included press relations on the ground and sentiments, narratives or representations which had a long pedigree. The coverage was also influenced by practical in addition to ideological factors. Practical factors included access to stories, cost, communications, the importance of writing things which ‘sell’, the nature of papers’ ties on the ground, and personal competition or grievance. Of course, none of these influences were separate from one another. Rather, each informed and sustained the others—except at the moments when people like Astor decided to break the mould to try to condition the coverage, and did so for a prolonged period of time. These observations are important for a number of reasons. Firstly, they indicate that care needs to be taken when viewing newspapers as repositories of public opinion. Press coverage reflected not only journalists’ thinking, for example, but also the practical issues which papers faced as businesses. Sometimes practical constraints influenced ideologies. Sometimes ideologies translated into particular practices. At other times, there seemed to be more of a divergence, especially at crisis moments like Sharpeville, when papers grasped only what was at hand. As a whole, this book suggests that the practical and ideological influences on the coverage were likely mutually constitutive. Papers’ practices were intimately tied to their ideologies, the practices in turn creating new ways of thinking in addition to reinforcing older ones—and in the process, of course inevitably, too, serving as a reflection of all of these strands of thought. Secondly, the observation that many of the press practices and representations were historically rooted points to the scale of the task for anyone who wished to alter the direction of the coverage in a lasting and  meaningful way. African nationalists, British MPs, David Astor and the Africa Bureau had success regarding Central (and South) Africa. Yet this took a near decade-long campaign of communications, and still their

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efforts drew on historical assumptions and sentiments, such as regarding British ‘protection’ of Africans, to make the case for changes in the colonial situation which those very same sentiments had helped to bring about. Thirdly, in contexts where historical patterns of representation and interaction of the press exist, we should pause in our consideration of the role played by governments and other interested actors in attempting to influence the press during crises. At the moments when they tried it, they appeared not to be able to inspire more than a temporary sea change in opinion. That is not to say that sustained external influence, including from governments, did not have an impact—as this book has shown in respect of Astor and the case of Kenya and the Mau Mau War. Fourthly, the observations regarding the historical roots of the coverage have possible implications for our understanding of British newspaper coverage of Africa today. We should pause to consider which frames exist for news coverage of particular regions of Africa, when they originated, and what their significance might be. Lastly, thinking through these historical roots should cause us to admit the centrality to the history of British newspapers of whatever range of influences proliferated at the time of their initial coverage of a place— whether that owed to the presence of a specific individual or an editorial imperative or a practical constraint on coverage that resulted in a journalist missing a story. These proximal influences were important during the Congo Crisis because it occurred in a region of Africa with which British newspapers had less familiarity, and therefore fewer established patterns of practice and expression, as compared to the other regions of British influence examined here. More broadly, the fact that British press coverage of Africa began during the age of empire is significant for it is likely that this lent it an initial imperial hue whose impacts persist.

7.5   How ‘British’ Was British Press Coverage and the British ‘Image’ of Africa? In works which discuss the role of British newspaper coverage in African decolonisation, there is an assumption that the coverage reflected ‘British’ ideas and influences. This is especially so in studies which use press content as a means of determining British public opinion on matters concerning decolonisation. That the coverage reflected not only a range of influences (beyond the ideological) but also ones from beyond Britain is important

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to acknowledge in respect of the works within this field whose methodology understands texts as reflective of public attitudes. The observation is not as significant for the works in this field which view the connection between coverage and opinion as constitutive or mutually constitutive— although it is interesting to recognise the role played by external actors in the coverage’s creation. This book supports the view that press content and public attitudes were mutually constitutive for the reason that the coverage was composed of influences from outside of Britain in addition to non-ideological ones, but that ‘British’ influences, including ideas, were also important. Most significantly perhaps, the coverage was influenced by individuals and groups in Africa. These included opponents of incumbent governments as well as stringers who grew up and lived there and/or English-­ language presses operating in Africa, whose expertise, copy and connections British papers tapped. In Ghana, the NLM exploited its connections with the right-leaning British press as a means of destabilising the newly independent state, led by Nkrumah. In the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Malawi Youth League took advantage of the British press presence in Central Africa during Macmillan’s Africa tour in efforts to garner British public support for its cause. The assumption that British press coverage reflected ‘British’ ideas and influences is also evident in political histories of decolonisation. It should be noted that in these works a conflation is also often drawn between public opinion and news coverage. That the coverage reflected not only a range of influences (beyond ideas) but also ones that emanated from beyond Britain is important to acknowledge in respect of these works, too, because it is vital in separating the root and proximal causes of the influences which informed policy-making. It is significant for political historians of decolonisation in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, for example, to recognise that the British government was influenced by a ‘British public opinion’ that was, in turn, informed by African activism, nationalists and their public relations efforts. To the extent that British newspapers influenced British policy towards the Federation, this activism must be considered as a root cause. This is not to say that British influences were insignificant in informing the coverage. British editors, journalists and the broader British cultural context within which these writers operated impacted the nature of the alliances they struck in Africa and how they presented the actions of people on the ground there. Rather, it is to qualify this thought with the

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recognition that the world outside of Britain needs to be considered as bleeding into the British public sphere and possessing the capacity to change the ideas which circulated within it.

7.6   A Transnational British Public Sphere? If British press coverage of decolonisation in Africa was informed by people and influences from Africa, it was also of direct relevance to them. British newspapers had African and settler readerships as well as British ones. Their articles spoke to concerns present in African and settler societies as well as British ones. The debates which featured in the coverage constituted a cross-cultural, transnational conversation, albeit one understood as residing firmly in the British public sphere. Decolonisation was a moment of conversation, interaction and exchange such that national public spheres seeped into one another in important ways. Additionally, readerships in Africa brought added meaning to the British press narratives, whose full significance cannot be understood in isolation from them. British news reports were not simply projected out into Britain and the world, having impacts proportional to their contents. They were sucked in and snaffled up as well by actors in other public spheres, the interpretations given to them and the uses to which they were put informing understandings of the public sphere with which they were associated, and in that way, shaping it. This observation is relevant to discussions of the significance of news content anywhere and at all times as it has flowed globally. Yet the intimacy of the dynamic in the case of the British coverage of African decolonisation seems particularly noteworthy. People in Africa really cared what British papers wrote, and by virtue of the long interconnected histories of Britain and Africa, fraught with pain, upheaval, emotion and opportunity, their words hit nerves with particular frequency.

7.7   The Press and Public Opinion The relationship between British press content and British public attitudes should be considered as mutually constitutive. Newspapers presented certain narratives on Africa, which their readers likely internalised. Similarly, the attitudes of British (and other) journalists affected certain of the press’s patterns of interaction and representation, which informed the newspaper content.

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That press coverage embodied attitudes is clear. What is harder to discern is which of those attitudes reflected wider public opinion. The field of Critical Discourse Analysis is helpful in identifying these characteristics which cut across the more politically motivated coverage that showed differentiation across the press. This study concurs with discourse analysts who have argued for a consideration not only of the prominent and the running or recurring themes, but also of underlying assumptions and absences as representing good gauges of public thought.  These recur across and between papers, display longevity and, owing to their assumed nature, are likely to have been imbued. A separate observation is that in this story British public opinion possessed an historical importance related to how it was perceived and acted upon by readerships, including the British government as well as groups in Africa (African activists and white settlers). This dynamic should be considered as distinct from discussions on press content and/or public attitudes. Sometimes, a disjuncture appears evident between external perceptions of press content and the content itself—but ultimately it was the perceptions that mattered in spurring on the historical processes associated with these readerships, such as in the cases of the Federation and South Africa. Analysing the role of press content during decolonisation also sheds light on the significance of wider ‘British public opinion’. Readerships frequently perceived public opinion as aligning with newspaper coverage, but there were also other players who featured in their imaginations. The British Parliament  and  Opposition, for example, figured prominently in British government officials’ understanding of the thinking which circulated in Britain on Africa. Exploring these actors’ understandings of press content and its perceived elision with public opinion provides insight into the role of Parliament and the Opposition in decolonisation, too, then, at the moments at which readers used these terms at once or interchangeably. Again, this is particularly relevant in the cases of the Federation and South Africa.

7.8   The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland  formed the British press’s chief preoccupation during the wind of change. This reflected the efforts of African nationalists in conjunction with the Africa Bureau, critics of

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empire/the Left and the Observer to raise awareness within Britain, including newspaper circles, of the scale of the discontent in the region and the importance of constitutional change. Effectively, the press championed decolonisation in Central Africa, the region receiving a substantial amount of press attention. This influenced the British government’s policy towards Central Africa, with every inch of the coverage prompting moves which made it harder and harder to resist the pull of change. Government anxiety over the press coverage of the events of 1959 informed its decision to call the Devlin and Monckton Commissions, which both recommended the devolution of political power to Africans. Press coverage also informed the government’s decision to release Banda, the first leader of independent Malawi, and affected the terms of his release, which did not place limitations on Banda’s freedom of movement. Government responses to British press coverage of other events which occurred in Central Africa during this period, such as the ‘Lagos statement’ and the ‘Blantyre riot’, shed further light on the nervy, reactive nature of official relations with the press regarding this region, and should be considered as symptomatic of the characteristics of the relationship, which spurred on the above bigger changes.

7.9   British Newspapers, Civic Cultures and Political Practices Across Africa during decolonisation, British newspapers informed the political practices and civic cultures of the people who lived there. British newspapers provided a means by which opponents of empire and of post-­ colonial governments in Africa attempted to foment the destruction  of regimes. In the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, African activists appealed to the British press as a means of influencing British public opinion on decolonisation, a strategy they hoped would impact government policy due to the links they perceived between the government and the ‘people’ or public in post-war Britain. In Ghana, the NLM exploited its links with right-leaning British papers as a means of destabilising Nkrumah’s ruling CPP. In South Africa, activists—in conjunction with liberal white journalists working for the South African English-language press—sought to influence British newspaper content as a means of challenging white minority rule in the dominion. In the Congo, Tshombe tapped foreign newspapers’ potential for political ends.

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In the white settler communities of the Federation and South Africa, British newspaper content informed cultures of thought, belonging and blame. It informed white settler narratives of ‘self’ and ‘community’—settlers regarding the British press as the embodiment of much that their societies wished to avoid. Perceiving British newspapers as a main source of their woes, moreover, the ‘British press’ and ‘British public opinion’ provided a means by which settler societies were able to avoid more discomfiting issues, including African opposition and the necessity of reform. In Ghana, the ‘British press’ played a similar role, functioning as a reference point or an enemy against whose actions the culture of the ruling party could consolidate. In these places, British newspapers were integral to the lived experiences of the end of empire of influential African and white settler groupings, providing a prism through which they consolidated their understanding not only of Britain, but also of their own communities’ place in the world.

7.10   The Press and the Post-colonial State The fact that the British press supported political reform in areas such as the Federation and South Africa did not translate into support for the post-colonial states which replaced the colonial ones. Indeed, one of the main roles which the press played during the wind of change era centred on its denting of the efficacy of the post-colonial state. In Ghana, the right-leaning press had not sung out for independence—so a degree of continuity can be considered to exist between its later criticism and its earlier coverage, which accounts, in part, for the former. Nevertheless, other features of British newspapers’ Ghana coverage indicated that they would have a hard time of it, more generally, accurately reporting events in post-colonial Africa. These features came to fruition again during the Congo crisis, when the popular press depicted the newly independent state as ridden with internal chaos and division, at once papering over the colonial past and the neo-colonial interventions which fomented them. At the heart of these difficulties lay some journalists’ inability fully to admit, comprehend and/or to convey to their readers the nature and significance of empire and decolonisation. That this was unsurprising does not make it insignificant. Many journalists interpreted events through the lens of their own preoccupations, anxieties and concerns, often racial, using frames suggested by the people whose words they reported in

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addition to pre-existing regional ones as well as those drawn from perceived similar (but very different) contexts, such as the world wars. Some wrote that fascism, for example, accounted for Nkrumah’s increasingly ‘totalitarian’ actions during 1957. While some British journalists, such as Basil Davidson, were later to pioneer and to popularise understandings of concepts such as that of the ‘colonial legacy’, Davidson was rather a lone voice during these earlier years, and appeared also still to be formulating the idea. In Britain, these influences contributed to the emergence of a negative picture of independent Africa. This mattered for post-colonial states because foreign portrayals had political and economic implications. In a sense, newspapers’ negative portrayal of post-colonial states in Africa represented a denial of the colonial period. The impacts of the negative characterisations were reinforced by journalists’ relative neglect of the history of Africa prior to independence. Practical issues also informed the negative coverage. Right-leaning papers had a stronger presence in Africa historically and tended to have sided not with the mass-supported, ‘nationalist’ and soon-to-be ruling parties, but with opposition groups prior to independence at which point these alliances persisted. Left-leaning papers, which tended to be more sympathetic to the ruling parties, also tended to be popular ones, and thus thrived on sensation. As we have seen, too, opposition parties exploited ties with British papers, particularly on the Right, as a means of destabilising ruling parties in the independence era.

7.11   ‘Africa Is a Country’?: The Highly Regional Character of the Coverage Running themes were present in the press coverage across the different regions covered in this book. These included the focus on African action and violence, for example, and the dearth of interrogation of the history of empire. Yet regional distinctions are also notable. Different sections of the press were dominant in informing the coverage in different regions: the right-leaning press in Ghana, for example, and the Observer in Central Africa. In addition, similar influences on the coverage played out in different ways in the different regions. African activism was taken as a sign of changing times and respected in Central Africa, for example, but in Kenya it was broadly feared, news of it suppressed or glossed.

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This is significant for a variety of reasons one of which concerns a claim which is often made about outsider perceptions of Africa—namely, that the continent is perceived as one unit for whose component parts the same narrative applies. The well-known phrase ‘Africa is a country’ is one which captures well the ignorance of outsiders on Africa. The phrase was born during the independence era. Yet it is nonetheless significant that during the earlier period of decolonisation examined in this book, British newspapers covered Africa extensively and, while certainly displaying unawareness, did still convey to their readerships a strong sense of the continent’s vastness and differentiation. This makes it all the more remarkable that homogenising influences prevailed thereafter, uniting the countries of Africa as one in the minds of outsiders, and may attest to the extent of that very unawareness that was present during the period of decolonisation, but which tended to be obscured somewhat by a surge of other influences that invited specificity, when it came up against a new, unfamiliar post-colonial order that took years for even concerted attempts at understanding it to gain good ground. It is ironic that the uniformity of experience across Africa during the independence era, which to some extent warranted a homogenous interpretation, owed in large part to the different countries’ shared colonial experience of which the papers that homogenised the countries appeared largely unaware.

Bibliography

Primary Sources Archives British Library Newspaper Library, Colindale, London, UK, and its new location in King’s Cross, London (1) British Newspapers The Daily Express The Daily Herald The Daily Mail The Daily Mirror The Daily Sketch The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post The Manchester Guardian/The Guardian The News Chronicle The Observer The Times (2) Other Newspapers The Ashanti Pioneer The Bulawayo Chronicle The Cape Times The Daily Graphic The Ghana Evening News © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6

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Index1

A Africa Bureau, 20, 75, 77–80, 95, 129, 185, 254, 258 African activism, including violence, 76, 79, 175, 176 and the British press, 75, 76, 78, 130, 175, 176, 180, 188, 191, 192, 217, 218, 222, 250 African National Congress (ANC) (South Africa), 22, 123, 156–158, 170, 172, 187, 190, 193, 224 African nationalism, 3, 5, 23, 27, 28, 42, 46, 73–80, 85–87, 118, 119, 129–135, 138, 139, 149, 152, 155, 159, 160, 169–213, 221, 223, 251, 254, 256, 261

and the British press, 1, 2, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 75, 76, 79, 83, 85, 112, 115, 120, 129, 132–134, 143, 148, 152, 155, 172, 176, 178–180, 188–190, 192, 199, 209, 210, 212, 249–252, 256 African violence and the British press, 217, 226, 227, 233, 237–239, 242, 243, 250 Afrikaner, 22, 137, 170, 190, 203, 206, 207 Alhaji Amadu Baba, 49, 53 Alhaji Osman Lardan, 49, 53 Alliance des Bakongo (ABAKO) (Congo), 213, 219, 240 Alport, Cuthbert, 181 Anglo-Boer War, 170, 203

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 R. Coffey, The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89456-6

281

282 

INDEX

Anti-Apartheid Movement, 180 Amery, Julian, 103 Apartheid, 17, 95, 117, 123–125, 131, 133, 137, 155–162, 165, 166, 170–174, 183, 185, 186, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199, 207, 208, 210, 211 and the British press, 9, 21, 124, 129, 133, 155, 156, 162, 166, 167, 173, 178, 182, 193, 194, 211, 249 Appiah, Joe, 44 Armitage, Sir Robert, 73, 82, 110, 151, 153 Army mutiny (Congo), 216, 226, 277 Asante, 26, 29, 35–38, 53 Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, 37, 41, 49 Ashanti Pioneer (Ghana), 56, 61 Ashanti Times (Ghana), 41, 50 Assassination of Lumumba, 217 Astor, David, 80, 95, 98, 110, 111, 129, 178, 208, 254, 255 Attacks on journalists, 175, 201, 207, 242 B Baako, Kofi, 48, 51, 67 Bailey, Jim, 208 Ballinger, Margaret, 159 Banda, Hastings, 73, 74, 77, 108, 111, 113, 122, 129, 144, 166, 200, 233, 259 and the British press, 122, 129 release of, 122, 129, 144, 166, 259 Barber, Frank, 66, 132 Barber, Stephen, 189, 197, 206 Baring, Evelyn, 102 Barrett, P.F., 148, 149 Baudouin, King, 219 Beaverbrook, 38 Behr, Ed, 229

Belgian government and the press, 228, 234 Berry, Ian, 177, 190 Bing, Geoffrey, 53–62, 64, 77 Bipartisan consensus, 7, 11, 103, 105 Bishop, James, 235 ‘Blantyre riot’, 149–155, 174, 181, 259 and the British press, 150 Bligh, Tim, 137 Blumberg, Myrna, 185–188, 192, 197, 203, 207, 209, 210 Blundell, Michael, 99 Bonnett, Stanley, 130, 131 Bow Group/Tory Bow Group, 129 Boycott Movement, 123, 129 British newspapers and African activism, including violence, 75, 76, 78, 130, 175, 176, 180, 188, 191, 192, 217, 218, 222, 250 and African nationalism, 1, 2, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 75, 76, 79, 83, 85, 112, 114, 115, 120, 129, 132–134, 143, 148, 152, 155, 172, 176, 178–180, 188–190, 192, 199, 210, 212, 249–252, 256 and African nationalists, 16, 17, 19, 21, 79, 87, 93, 94, 115, 120, 124, 129, 131, 151, 153, 167, 172, 173, 178, 208, 224, 249, 250, 253, 256, 258, 259 and African opposition parties, 16, 17, 19, 22, 29, 35–39, 44, 53, 68, 217, 224, 236, 249, 250, 252, 256, 259, 261 and African violence, 217, 226, 227, 233, 237–239, 242, 243, 250 and apartheid, 9, 21, 124, 129, 133, 155, 156, 162, 166, 167, 173, 182, 193, 194, 211, 249

 INDEX 

and British policy, 2, 15, 20, 21, 29, 75, 86, 88, 90, 91, 111, 115, 119–122, 125, 129, 133, 137, 141, 156–158, 163, 165, 166, 180, 182, 183, 194–196, 204, 211, 218, 248–250, 256, 259 and British public opinion, 9, 83, 88, 139, 143, 144, 149, 167, 254–257 and British self-perceptions/Britain in Africa, 1, 15, 18, 20, 22, 29, 31, 32, 38, 45, 61, 64, 69, 74, 81, 84, 92, 99, 104, 114, 120, 133, 150, 153, 163, 173–174, 178, 179, 205, 212, 218, 220, 233, 236, 239, 244, 248, 249, 251–254 and the Colonial Office (CO), 8, 91, 111, 154 and colonial violence, 15, 20, 76, 83, 121, 150, 174, 184, 196–198 and the Commonwealth, 2, 15, 30, 32, 56, 62, 173, 182, 194, 199, 204, 211, 249, 253 and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 15, 20, 76, 85, 88, 108, 110, 113, 120, 122, 128, 129, 139, 146, 149, 151, 167, 249, 258 and the Mau Mau War, 8, 9, 12, 91–99, 106, 107 neglect of history, 32, 60, 69, 82, 134, 179, 206, 212, 217, 222, 223, 227, 229–231, 251–253, 261 and political partisanship, 7, 38, 55, 77, 102, 106 and post-colonial states, 2, 16, 17, 22, 29, 39, 45, 46, 65, 68, 217, 218, 221, 223, 247, 260, 261

283

and the South African English-­ language press, 177, 178, 184, 186, 188, 190, 201–204, 211, 256, 259 and white liberals in South Africa, 17, 173, 177, 186, 211, 224 and white settlers, 16–18, 20, 22, 43, 87–90, 120, 121, 132, 134, 139, 143, 146, 147, 151, 153, 164, 167, 173, 179, 211, 222, 253, 260 British government and apartheid South Africa, 123, 124, 136, 156, 158–160, 163, 164, 166, 173, 180, 181, 183, 184, 195, 196, 198, 211 and the Congolese government, 218 and the Federation, 91, 111, 119, 122, 123, 140, 142, 144, 145, 166 and the Ghana government, 62, 66, 139 and the South African government, 158 British press/British government relations, 8, 10, 14–16, 19, 20, 29, 63, 67, 69, 75, 84–87, 90, 92, 97, 99, 105, 107, 110, 111, 119, 121, 122, 125, 128–130, 132, 135–137, 140, 142–144, 149, 153–155, 157–159, 162, 166, 167, 259 British press/parliament relations, 49, 54, 55, 77, 78, 102, 105, 129, 150, 182 British public opinion, 10, 11, 19, 21, 23, 39, 43, 85, 86, 90, 91, 111, 119, 122, 139, 143, 144, 146, 148, 157, 158, 166, 167, 183, 195, 196, 201, 250, 251, 255–260 and the British press, 9, 83, 88, 139, 143, 144, 149, 167, 254–258

284 

INDEX

British public sphere, 23, 39, 55, 257 British self-perceptions/Britain in Africa, 32, 75, 81, 133, 134 and the British press, 1, 15, 18, 20, 22, 29, 31, 32, 38, 45, 61, 64, 74, 81, 84, 92, 99, 104, 114, 120, 133, 150, 153, 163, 173, 174, 178, 179, 205, 212, 218, 220, 233, 236, 239, 244, 248, 249, 251–254 Brook, Norman, 119, 123 Bulawayo Chronicle (S. Rhodesia), 146 Busia, Kofi, 37, 44, 53, 58 C Callaghan, James, 141, 158, 194 Cape Times (South Africa), 165, 175, 189, 207 Cape Town speech, 137, 155, 158–166 and the British press, 121, 156, 161 Carthew, Anthony, 237, 238, 241 Castle, Barbara, 102, 106 Chaos, 218, 222–225, 242, 248, 260 Chisiza, D.K., 79, 80 Collins, Frank, 151 Colonial legacies, 32, 47, 58–60, 135, 217–223, 227, 261 Colonial Office (CO), 8, 9, 42, 76, 81, 86, 91, 98, 99, 102, 110, 111, 124, 125, 154 and the British press, 8, 91, 111, 154 Colonial violence, 5, 14, 15, 20, 69, 71–115, 172, 174, 175, 189, 196, 197, 213, 214, 223, 227, 251 and the British press, 15, 20, 76, 83, 121, 150, 174, 184, 196, 198 Colvin, Ian, 53–63, 65, 66

Commonwealth, 11, 21, 22, 29, 31, 62, 117–120, 124, 133, 136, 160, 161, 166, 170, 173, 180, 182, 198, 199 and the British press, 2, 15, 30, 32, 56, 62, 173, 182, 194, 199, 204, 211, 249, 253 Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), 8, 9, 52, 86, 124, 125, 128, 140 Communications and technology-­ difficulties, 217, 229, 237, 238, 242 Confédération des Associations Tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT) (Congo), 16, 216, 217, 219, 237 Congo Crisis, 17, 22, 213–248, 260 Congolese government, 22, 232 Conrad, Joseph, 214, 215, 224 Conroy, D.W., 103, 106 Contact (South Africa), 187 Convention People’s Party (CPP) (Ghana), 17, 19, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37–44, 49–51, 54, 57, 60, 68, 94, 130, 138, 147, 148, 201, 259 Cook, Arthur, 234, 235 Coutts, A.C., 103, 104 Cowan, John, 73 Cowan Plan, 73, 104, 105 Critical Discourse Analysis, 13, 83, 258 D Daily Express (UK), 7, 36, 38, 44, 48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 59, 64, 104–106, 112, 113, 127, 130, 201, 205, 232, 234, 236, 244

 INDEX 

Daily Graphic (Ghana), 40, 41, 49, 52 Daily Herald (UK), 7, 32, 40, 64, 67, 75, 76, 78, 81, 89, 102, 106, 108, 150, 163, 174, 175, 182, 185, 193, 194, 201, 231, 237, 246 Daily Mail (UK), 7, 36, 44, 61, 64, 105, 106, 111, 126, 128, 130, 131, 146n120, 151, 174, 181, 184, 190, 191, 193, 194, 198, 208, 209, 229, 233, 234, 236 Daily Mirror (UK), 7, 40, 48, 64, 75, 102, 106, 108, 127, 133, 150, 174–176, 178, 184, 195, 234, 239 Daily Sketch (UK), 48 Daily Telegraph/Daily Telegraph and Morning Post (UK), 7, 44, 45, 51, 53, 56, 57, 62, 63, 65, 66, 103, 105, 111–113, 127, 130, 176, 180, 182, 189, 190, 193, 195, 197, 199, 200, 206 Davidson, Basil, 32, 46, 60, 64, 65, 261 Day of Mourning (South Africa), 190 Deportations (Ghana), 49, 52, 53, 57, 58 Devlin Report/Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (report of) (UK), 106–114 Devlin, Sir Patrick, 90, 106, 108–110, 112, 113, 150, 259 Die Burger (South Africa), 206 Dorothy, Lady, 130, 132, 136, 142 Drum (South Africa), 127, 177, 185, 188, 190, 191, 208, 208n181, 209 Duncan, Patrick, 159, 187, 189, 201

285

E East African Standard (Kenya), 96 Economist (UK), 135, 251 Edusei, Krobo, 51, 65–67 Eisenberg, Dennis, 246 Eprile, Cecil, 190 Erasmus, B.P.J., 206 Evans, A.D., 144, 145 Evans, George, 66 Evans, Harold, 125, 126, 128, 129, 136 F Fairlie, Henry, 61, 126, 127 Federal government, 87–90, 108, 139 and the British press, 81, 87–90, 139, 148 Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 4, 15, 43, 71–115, 117, 128, 139, 184, 224, 256, 258–260 and the British press, 15, 20, 76, 85, 88, 108, 110, 113, 120, 122, 128, 129, 139, 146, 149, 151, 167, 249, 258 Force Publique, 214, 227 Frameworks of representation, 23, 33, 39, 45, 51, 53, 69, 71–115, 120, 129, 134, 167, 172, 177, 183, 217, 223, 225, 254–255 emergent mini-frames, 23, 108, 114, 213–248 G Gaitskell, Hugh, 181, 182, 197 Gale, George, 232 Gall, Sandy, 232 Ghana/Accra Evening News (Ghana), 16, 41, 42, 52, 65

286 

INDEX

Ghana government, 40, 41, 45, 49, 53, 57–58, 61–64, 253 and the British press, 49, 55, 57, 58, 65, 121, 139 Ghana Times (Ghana), 138, 139 Gorell-Barnes, W.L., 111 Goudie, W.H., 92, 99–101, 104 Greater Britain, 18, 147, 253 Grimond, Jo, 150 Guardian/Manchester Guardian (UK), 7, 58, 89, 101, 103, 104, 106, 108–110, 113, 141, 163 H Hall, John, 30, 36, 41 Hammarskjöld, Dag, 240 Hola disciplinary tribunal, 100, 103, 106 Hola inquest, 100 Hola massacre, 14, 71, 73, 91, 121 Home, Lord, 91, 145 ‘The hopeless continent,’ 135, 250–252 Hopkinson, Tom, 177, 178, 188, 190, 191, 207 Humbaraci, Arslan, 224, 229 Hunt, David, 163, 164 I Iléo, Joseph, 243 Independence Congo, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 239, 242 Ghana, 15, 19, 20, 25, 30, 31, 34, 35, 41, 81, 99, 260 International Publishing Corporation (IPC), 40

J Jacobson, Sydney, 127 Janssens, General Emile, 226 Johnston, J.B., 157 K Kalonji, Albert, 237, 238 Kasavubu, Joseph, 216, 219, 221, 228, 233, 243–245 Katanga, 17, 216, 230–233, 235–237, 239–243, 248 secession of, 216, 219–221, 231–232, 237, 239, 245 Kenya government, 91 and the British press, 101, 103 Kenya Legislative Council, 92 Kenya Weekly News (Kenya), 96 Kgosana, Philip, 185–189, 192, 197, 206 Kiley, Dennis, 190 King, Cecil, 40 L Labour Party (UK), 20, 75, 100, 107, 109, 141, 142, 181, 194, 195, 197 Lagos statement, 139–144, 149, 158, 259 and the British press, 140 Langa (township), 169, 171, 175, 183, 191, 197, 198, 201, 203, 204, 206 Lawrence, Howard, 208 Left-leaning press (British), 39–41, 43, 52, 78, 81, 83, 84, 94, 106, 109, 133, 172, 175, 177, 180, 184, 196, 253, 261

 INDEX 

popular, 7, 17, 40, 75, 78, 81, 84, 102, 105, 108, 113, 147, 174, 181, 234 serious, 7, 108 Legum, Colin, 7, 80, 94, 95, 98, 99, 124, 133, 178 Lennox-Boyd, Alan, 29, 35, 36, 73, 75, 77, 81, 93, 99, 102, 103, 105, 109, 113 Leopold II, King, 214, 215 Leopoldville airport, 229 siege of, 232–235 Lewis, J.H., 106 Libel, 89, 97 Liberal Party (South Africa), 17, 22, 157, 159, 186, 187, 191, 207 Liberal Party (UK), 150 Lloyd, Selwyn, 194 Louw, Eric, 157, 158, 202–204, 207 Lumumba, Patrice, 17, 22, 213, 216–222, 225–231, 233–235, 237, 238, 248 assassination of, 217, 239–247 and the British press, 217, 218, 223, 225, 227, 233, 234, 241, 245, 247 and the foreign press, 228, 234, 244 Independence Day speech, 219–221 Luthuli, Albert, 123, 124, 129, 158, 180, 190, 197 M MacColl, Rene, 127, 130, 131, 142, 151 Mackenzie, Ken, 192, 207 Macleod, Ian, 122, 153, 239 Macmillan, Harold, 16, 21, 67, 85, 91, 94, 103–105, 112, 117–167, 181, 182, 198 and the British press, 136, 142, 159

287

Cape Town speech, 118, 119, 121, 160, 173, 176 Makata, Lawrence, 79, 80 Malawi Congress Party (MCP) (Nyasaland), 94, 132, 150, 200 Malawi Youth League (MYL) (Nyasaland), 16, 17, 21, 149–155, 188, 224, 253, 256 Malvern, Lord, 131, 132 Mandela, Nelson, 169, 208 ‘March of Change’ (South Africa), 188–194 Marquand, Hilary, 141, 158 Matadi (Congo), 230, 234, 235 Maud, John, 123, 124 Mau Mau War, 3, 8, 9, 12, 14, 50, 71, 73, 91–99, 103, 105–107, 223, 255 and the British press, 91–99, 8, 9, 12, 106 Mboya, Tom, 94 McLachlan, Donald, 111, 122 Meier, Rhys, 90 Mirror Group (re. Ghana), 40–42 Mkandawire, Thandika, 152 Mobutu, Joseph-Désiré, 216, 245, 246 Monckton Commission, 90–91, 111, 121, 122, 140, 144, 259 Morris, James, 58, 65 Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) (Congo), 213, 219, 237, 240 Munnion, Christopher, 33, 50, 53, 67, 126, 210, 234 N Nairobi People’s Convention Party (Kenya), 94 Nakasa, Nat, 190

288 

INDEX

National Liberation Movement (NLM) (Ghana), 16, 17, 19, 28, 29, 35–40, 42–44, 46, 49, 52–54, 58, 68, 69, 94, 147, 188, 224, 231, 256, 259 National Party (South Africa), 95, 137, 158, 164, 170, 190, 194, 201, 209 Neo-colonialism, 132, 216–218, 221–223, 225, 227, 230, 233, 238, 247, 260 Neo-colonial violence, 230, 234, 235 ‘New’ news, 222, 229, 231, 253 News agencies, 95, 184, 222, 232 News Chronicle (UK), 7, 40, 52, 58, 66, 67, 78, 118, 131, 175, 176, 178, 182, 184, 185, 189, 193, 195, 199 Nkrumah, Kwame, 19, 25–69, 94, 104, 130, 131, 220, 223, 236, 256, 259, 261 and the British press, 16, 20, 34, 38, 41, 48, 64, 65, 137, 253 Northcliffe, Lord, 208 Nyanga (township), 191, 197, 198, 201, 203–206 Nyaose, J.D., 187 Nyasaland, 1, 4, 9, 13, 15–17, 20, 43, 69, 71–115, 117, 121–123, 128, 132, 139–141, 144, 145, 149, 150, 153, 181, 182, 188, 224, 233, 239, 249, 253, 256, 258–259 Nyasaland African Congress (NAC) (Nyasaland), 15, 73, 74, 79, 108, 150, 224 Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (report of)/Devlin Report, 106–114 Nyasaland Times (Nyasaland), 16, 87, 146, 151

O Observer (UK), 7, 16, 52, 58, 77–80, 94, 95, 97, 98, 103, 108–110, 113, 119, 123, 124, 127, 129, 136, 161, 178, 179, 185, 202, 206, 208, 209, 250, 259, 261 Odhams Press, 89 O’Driscoll, James, 197, 198 P Padmore, George, 41, 48 Pan-Africanism, 41, 125, 132, 172, 187, 220 Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) (South Africa), 22, 169, 172, 175, 177, 184–188, 191, 193, 220, 224 Parliament (UK), 74, 87, 88, 94, 104, 106, 107, 109, 113, 122, 124, 128, 145, 157, 181, 195, 197, 200, 258 Pass laws (South Africa), 169–172, 174, 185, 189, 190, 209 Patterns of practice of the press, 23, 33, 34, 39, 41, 45, 49, 51, 52, 68, 71–115, 120, 129, 130, 167, 172, 176, 177, 185, 188, 217, 222, 223, 225, 228, 230–232, 238, 242, 247, 254, 255 Perth, Lord, 91, 110, 111, 122, 123 Phillips, Norman, 191, 203–207, 209, 210 Phombeya, Emmah, 154, 155 Pogrund, Benjamin, 177, 201, 202 Political and civic cultures, 2, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 29, 42, 43, 88, 138, 147, 151, 167, 173, 211, 249, 257, 259, 260 Political partisanship, 11, 75, 77–79 and the British press, 7, 38, 55, 77, 102, 106

 INDEX 

Popular press (British), 7, 9, 11, 106, 226–234, 237, 240–245, 247, 250, 260, 261 Post-colonial states, 5, 6, 20, 46, 47, 59, 135, 217, 223, 251, 252, 260–262 and the British press, 2, 16, 17, 22, 29, 39, 45, 46, 65, 68, 217, 218, 221, 223, 247, 260–261 Powell, Enoch, 106 Pratt, David, 206 Prempeh, Agyeman/ Asantehene, 36, 37 Press conferences, 51, 65, 79, 89, 126, 136, 137, 139, 140, 144, 176, 184, 227, 228, 234, 241 Press coverage-passive utility, 23, 29, 43, 138, 148, 249 Press freedom/press restrictions, 22, 49, 51, 52, 79, 89, 96–98, 130, 197, 201–204, 207, 209, 210, 243, 244 Profumo, John, 195 Progressive Party (South Africa), 157 R Race/racism, 75, 78, 95, 120, 124, 128, 130, 132, 145, 158, 160, 176, 186, 215, 222 and the British press, 20, 34, 39, 41, 78, 152, 174, 176, 217, 220, 222, 223, 230–232, 234, 238, 250, 252, 260 Rademeyer, General, 192, 204 Rand Daily Mail (South Africa), 165, 177, 191, 192, 202, 207 Redfern, John, 36, 38, 50–52, 55, 56 Reeves, Ambrose, 184–186, 188, 197, 202

289

Refugees (Congo), 226, 228, 229, 232, 243 Reid, Colin, 189 Rhodesia and Nyasaland Committee, 88, 89, 139 Rhodesia Herald (S. Rhodesia), 16, 87, 146, 151 Right-leaning press (British), 29, 36, 38, 42, 43, 48, 49, 54, 56, 61, 68, 75, 77, 78, 81, 94, 103, 111–113, 130, 132, 175, 177, 180, 184, 196, 250, 253, 256, 259, 261 popular, 7 serious, 7, 106 Robinson, Kenneth, 102 Ryall’s Hotel (Nyasaland), 149 Ryland, Charles, 97, 98 S Sacks, Harold, 191 Sampson, Anthony, 16, 127, 136, 137, 155, 161, 162, 164, 202, 208, 209 Scott, Ian, 238 Scott, Reverend Michael, 95 Search for sensation, 130, 152, 176, 222, 229, 232, 238, 250, 261 Serious press (British), 101 Settler press, 87, 139, 146, 148, 165, 206 Sharpeville massacre, 9, 21, 166, 167, 169–212, 222 Sharpley, Anne, 127 Shawcross, Christopher, 61–63, 65, 66 Shawcross debacle, 60–68, 77, 104

290 

INDEX

‘Single stories’ (Adichie), 31, 32, 46, 82, 179, 220, 227 Sobukwe, Robert, 169, 177, 186 Société Générale, 238 Soskice, Sir Frank, 104, 105, 114 South African English-language press, 22, 173, 177, 190, 201 and African nationalists, 177, 184–188, 190, 191, 207, 208, 211 South African government/National government, 123, 155, 156, 165, 171, 173, 176, 183, 195, 198–200, 202 and the British press, 193, 201, 205, 206, 211 South Kasai, 237–239, 241, 242 secession of, 237, 242 Southworth, Frederick, 154, 155 Spears, Major-General Sir Edward, 41, 49, 50 Starr, John, 229 State of Emergency Congo, 245 Nyasaland, 15, 71, 73, 75, 82, 108, 121 South Africa, 193, 196, 201, 202, 204–210 Stonehouse, John, 81, 200 Stratton, John, 151 Stringers, 22, 34, 90, 96, 173, 184, 185, 189, 203, 205–207, 224, 226, 256 Sullivan, M.G., 103, 104, 106 Suppression of Communism Act (South Africa), 201 T Tanganyika Concessions, 216, 248 Tape recorder, 125, 142

Terblanche, Colonel, 189, 192 Times (UK), 7, 33, 57, 66, 90, 97, 98, 101–105, 111–114, 118, 138, 176, 182, 199, 206, 224, 226, 229, 235, 238, 247 Timothy, Bankole, 49–52 Treaty of Vereeniging (South Africa), 170, 204 Tshombe, Moïse, 17, 216, 217, 219, 220, 231, 236–238, 240, 241, 243, 245, 246, 248, 259 and the press, 236 Tyler, Humphrey, 185, 188 U Union Minière du Haut Katanga, 216 United Nations, 182–184, 194–196, 216, 217, 232, 235–236, 238–241, 243–247 United Party (South Africa), 157 University of Ibadan, 131, 132 Uys, Stanley, 189, 203 V Verwoerd, Henrik, 137, 157–159, 164, 165, 182, 189, 193, 194, 199, 203, 206 Vigne, Randolph, 187 W ‘Web’ of influence of the British press, 2, 13–14, 19, 249 Welensky, Roy, 74, 76, 87–90, 111, 132, 144, 145, 151 and the British press, 89, 90 West African Newspapers, 40 White Press (Ghana), 41–43

 INDEX 

White settler cultures, 17, 18, 147, 151, 167, 173, 203, 211, 260 White settlers, 3, 15, 21, 72, 81, 88, 115, 117, 119, 120, 123, 165, 171, 186, 201, 210, 219, 250, 260 and the British press, 16–18, 20, 22, 43, 87, 120, 121, 132, 134, 139, 143, 146, 147, 151, 153, 164, 167, 173, 178, 179, 211, 218, 222, 253, 260

291

‘Wind of Change’ tour, 16, 17, 21, 117–167, 256 Wise, Donald, 234 Woods, Oliver, 7, 33, 34, 57, 90, 102 Worsthorne, Peregrine, 127, 132, 136, 159, 164 Y Younghusband, Peter, 191, 192, 197, 198, 203, 208–210, 236, 240, 243