When Africa’s Future Came to Manchester
On this day in 1945, delegates arrived at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall to begin the Fifth Pan-African Congress. Their aim: laying the foundations of a new Africa, free at last from colonial rule.
John McNair, General Secretary of the ILP (Independent Labour Party), addresses the Fifth Pan-African Congress. (John Deakin / Picture Post / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
On 15 October 1945, delegates from across the globe descended upon Manchester to convene the Fifth Pan-African Congress. For six days, titans of the anti-colonial struggle including W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, and Amy Ashwood Garvey gathered together in the darkening autumn in Chorlton Town Hall, and set to work discussing the future of Africa.
They did so in a turbulent historical moment. Once-hegemonic empires had been left vulnerable to revolt in the aftermath of the Second World War, and Africans had sensed the opportunity to accelerate their struggle for independence. Building on a history of anti-colonial struggle as old as the empires that oppressed them, they saw their chance, in the words of historian Hakim Adi, to finally establish ‘a blueprint for a new Africa’—one free, at last, of colonial brutality.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress itself was also the culmination of decades of Pan-African organising, best embodied by the presence of W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, around 77 years old at the time, had been in attendance at the very first Pan-African Congress in 1900, and proceeded to be at the heart of subsequent Pan-African congresses in 1919, 1921, 1923, and 1927. These initial meetings, though also anti-colonial in nature, were more restrained in tone than the 1945 congress, which came amid a wave of militancy. It would not be until 1974 that a Sixth Pan-African Congress would be held, this time taking place on the continent in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
For an event as momentous as the Fifth Pan-African Congress, one would think London—with its rapidly growing African and Caribbean communities—would be an obvious choice of location. But Manchester too had a history with those communities that influenced the decision to hold it there. Dr Peter Millard, British Guianan and President of the Pan-African Federation which had been created in Manchester a year prior, established a clinic in Salford in 1924, at the service of the Black community in the region. In 1939, Millard would organise the rent for fellow Pan-Africanist T. Ras Makonnen, and the two would go on to establish several restaurants in the area which ‘catered for students from the colonies, African American troops based there during WWII and local Black people,’ according to Marika Sherwood. As two prominent figures in the area with strong links to George Padmore, when the time came to decide where to host the Congress, Chorlton Hall, a few minutes from Makonnen’s hospitality, seemed a perfect fit.
Previous congresses had been largely comprised of middle-class African-Americans and Africans living in Britain. In contrast, the Manchester Congress was attended by the working-class diaspora as well as Africans living on the continent and involved in trade union activity. The events of the Fifth Pan-African Congress reflected the radical nature of its attendees, represented most strongly in figures like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, who called it a ‘tremendous success’. It ‘advised Africans and those of African descent to organise themselves into political parties, trade unions, co-operative societies and farmers’ organisations,’ he recorded, ‘in support of their struggle for political freedom and economic advancement.’ Just over a decade later, Nkrumah would go on to lead the British Gold Coast to its independence as the Republic of Ghana—the first African country to achieve independence from its colonial masters.
Clear in Nkrumah’s recollections is the fact that the Pan-African thinkers of the 1930s and ’40s were heavily influenced by international Communism. This was particularly true of the Trinidadian George Padmore, who had helped establish the Comintern’s International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) along with figures such as Sierra Leonean I. T. A. Wallace and Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta. All three were prominent figures at the Fifth Pan-African Congress, with Padmore singled out by Du Bois as ‘the organising spirit’ of the event.
‘Down With Imperialism’
The 1945 Congress had been preceded by two other major conferences the same year: the World Trade Union Conference in February, and the All Colonial Peoples’ Conference in July. Amid this flurry of anti-colonial activity, Padmore had acted as a facilitator for African delegates, establishing a growing network of contacts to eventually bring together for the Congress that took place in October.
In fact, it’s thanks to Padmore that the proceedings of the event are known today. He took it upon himself to record the Congress in Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action History of the Pan-African Congress. Modern historians of Pan-Africanism owe much to the work of Marika Sherwood and Hakim Adi in turn, who republished Padmore’s work in their 1995 The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited.
Proceedings were opened with a Challenge to the Colonial Powers, in which delegates declared:
‘We are determined to be free. We want education. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We demand for Black Africa autonomy and independence, so far and no further than it is possible in this “One World” for groups and peoples to rule themselves subject to inevitable world unity and federation.’
This anti-colonial stance stood alongside a vehement anti-capitalism, reflected in a condemnation of ‘the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone,’ as the Challenge continues. And as the event unfurled, delegates stressed the need for Africans across the world to take agency in achieving their freedom from empire and capital. In their Declaration to Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals, the delegates agreed that
‘The object of imperialist powers is to exploit. By granting the right to Colonial peoples to govern themselves that object is defeated. Therefore, the struggle for political power by Colonial and subject peoples is the first step towards, and the necessary prerequisite to, complete social, economic and political emancipation.’
In other words, independence was not something magnanimously granted by an oppressor; it had to be fought for. With the full understanding of the power of the empires amassed against them, the use of force to achieve freedom was understood to be a ‘last resort’—instead the onus lay on workers within their respective imperial cores to rally together with their African comrades in solidarity. To this end, the Congress recognised that ‘while militant, this phase is not chauvinistic, narrow or racial. It is positive and constructive.’ Major emphasis was placed on the common struggle of the metropolitan proletariat and colonised subjects to bring down imperialism and ‘establish the Century of the Common Man.’
While the ultimate aim of the Manchester Congress was the liberation of Africa, then, the concerns of the diaspora living in the metropole were also addressed. The first session of the Congress, chaired by Amy Ashwood Garvey, centred around ‘The Colour Problem in Britain.’ This was precluded by a word of fraternal greetings from Spanish Civil War veteran and General Secretary of the socialist Independent Labour Party John McNair. Other speakers included individuals such as one E. J. Duplan from the Gold Coast (today Ghana) covering the plight of ‘coloured workers’ in the British isles, who were segregated by the colour bar and struggling to find employment.
The afternoon session hosted the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Alderman Jackson, a strong supporter of the Congress. The conditions of ‘coloured people’ in Britain would be further discussed, with Alma La Badie, a delegate from Jamaica, highlighting the issue of child welfare. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Black American troops had left behind an untold number of children born to married women with husbands in service. La Badie recommended establishing a committee to care for those children, which required financial assistance.
The second day of the Congress, chaired by W. E. B. Du Bois, recentred discussion on ‘Imperialism in North and West Africa’, featuring speakers such as Nkrumah and I. T. A. Wallace Johnson. Each delegate spoke to the suffering of Africans under colonial rule from Sierra Leone to South Africa, and according to Padmore, the ‘theme of other speeches was “Down with Imperialism.”’ East Africa would be the focus on the third day, with Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta reporting on the conditions in Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda, Somaliland, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Of primary concern were the paltry wages offered to labourers by the British government, alongside the use of Crown Land Ordinances to confiscate African land. The surveillance of colonial populations was also discussed, as the 1919 Native Registration Ordinance required ‘all natives in Kenya over the age of 16 to have their fingerprint taken… as though we were common criminals.’ This law also required Africans to carry registration certificates to be produced if required by the police and employers, the latter of which used these certificates to write their wages on. As many labourers were illiterate, they often found themselves cheated out of hard-earned pay.
The ‘Ethiopian problem’, as it was known, was a major topic of discussion following the East African reports. T. Ras Makonnen recalled the invasion of Ethiopia by fascist Italy a decade prior, which acted as a catalyst for heightened Pan-African activity at the time. Two decades before Kwame Nkrumah popularised the term ‘neocolonialism’, Makonnen noted that ‘most of you believe that Ethiopia is a free sovereign State, but if that is your belief, you are very much in error.’ As evidence, he noted that a treaty signed between Ethiopia and Britain in 1941, which meant Britain had significant control over the territory. As a result, Makonnen declared,
‘It is no accident that the British are today in certain parts of Ethiopia. The Bank of England lent money to the Bank of Italy, and the only way for them to be paid is by having control of parts of Ethiopia. The fact that a large part of the two million pounds sterling lent to Ethiopia goes to pay the salaries of Europeans who are in Ethiopia makes it difficult for the State to get far with its work of reconstruction.’
This analysis of the limitations of nominal independence had great influence on the resolutions of the Congress, which stressed ‘economic independence’ as a priority.
Legacy
Despite the significance of the Manchester event, it was lightly covered by the British Press. Some of the few surviving photographs of the event were taken by John Deakin of Picture Post, including his famous photograph of a fur-coat wearing Jomo Kenyatta in front of an Ethiopian solidarity poster, encapsulating the solidarity that characterised the Congress.
Nonetheless, the building blocks the Congress laid helped shape and galvanise the wave of decolonisations that then swept across Africa in the wake of Ghana’s victory in 1957. And for all its influence on events in Africa, the 1945 Pan-African Congress remains a major moment in British history, too—a window into the sprawling networks of trade unionists, activists, and anti-colonial agitators that fought together in the twentieth century in common cause.
Outside Chorlton Hall, it’s been commemorated with a plaque. But the British Establishment’s evasive and repressive approach to dealing with its colonial history means the event still lacks the historical standing it warrants. Files on Pan-African giants such as George Padmore remain squirrelled away under lock-and-key in the National Archives, and Colonial Office documents were destroyed en masse under Operation Legacy.
In such circumstances, and as Africa today continues to suffer under the yoke of neo-colonialism, the conclusion to the Challenge to the Colonial Powers serves as a reminder to those who continue to struggle for liberation: to ‘make the world listen to the facts of our condition,’ and ‘fight in every way we can for freedom, democracy and social betterment.’