As Ghana celebrates its 50th anniversary of Independence, the events have been marked also with remembrance of a small group of men who are seen as the embodiment of the independence struggle at its most crucial period during the Gold Coast.

This group, popularly known as the Big Six, were at the time they won that accolade all members of the United Gold Coast Convention. Indeed, all but one of them, Kwame Nkrumah, were founding members of the UGCC. 50 years since the Independence of Ghana is also 60 years since that freedom ball was fully set in motion, with the coming together of the United Gold Coast Convention.

The UGCC was founded on August 4, 1947. As we noted last week, it is many more years since the first nationalists of the former British Gold Coast began to agitate for greater freedoms, to campaign for self-government and win people over to their cause. Yet the significance of these earlier movements and their causal effect on the later triumphant declaration of independence by Kwame Nkrumah has been forgotten by all but a very few. Half a century since the creation of Ghana, it is time the historical records were set straight - the emitted facts re-entered into our national chronology and national memory, all of our historical heroes given due credence for the roles they played.

The Statesman is today calling for the 60th anniversary of the first political party (or formal movement) that was set with the sole agenda of achieving independence, to be celebrated as the national event that it ought to be.

We are appealing to Government and all to celebrate the formation of the only party created for all for the pursuit of the dream of one nation, one people, one destiny. It is interesting that the colours of the UGCC were Red, Gold and Green, chosen by the Big Six when they were together in the Kumasi Prison.

Since the UGCC is the party from which the country Ghana and all other political parties can be said to have been born either genetically or spiritually, by virtue of it being the original, we believe it is appropriate that the 6oth birthday of the UGCC is celebrated appropriately.

In his speech delivered at the inaugural meeting of the UGCC at Saltpond on August 4, 1947, Dr J B Danquah started by explaining: "We have, from all the corners of this country, come to Saltpond today for a specific purpose: for a decision: We have come to take a decision whether our country and people are any longer to tolerate a system of government under which, as our Chairman so nicely put it, those who are in control of government are not under the control of those who are governed.”

Dr Danquah continued, in seconding the motion by Awoonor Williams for the adoption of the constitution of the UGCC, “We must have, here and now, if we are to be well governed, a new kind of freedom, a Gold Coast freedom, a Gold Cost liberty.”

Indeed, the UGCC leadership were the ones who instrumentalised the peaceful procession by ex-servicemen to present petition to Governor Sir Gerald Creasy on their distressing condition and post-war neglect. This was the 28 February, 1948 event which ended up with fatal shots fired by Police Superintendent Imray into the crowds after grenades were thrown into the procession. In the words of Dr Danquah the government had “collapsed physically and even morally.”

Indeed, 1948 was the year that this country's independence became an irreversible done deal.

In fact it has been recorded that at the “Castle Road, Police Commissioner Ballantyne after being “utterly unable [to] disperse [the] infuriated crowd, after some of them had been shot dead by [the] Police appealed to another officer of the Convention [UGCC] to disperse crowd.”

In the words of a contemporary observer, “The land was dark and enveloped in a general gloom. But, Dr Danquah saw a light in the gloom He saw that the hour of the country"s liberation had struck” and, with the approval of the Working Committee of the UGCC, immediately dispatched a cablegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, demanding the setting up of a Constituent Assembly of Chiefs and people to draw up a constitution for an independent, sovereign Gold Coast.

Part of the cablegram read: “Unless Colonial Government is changed and a new Government of the people and their Chiefs installed at the centre immediately, the conduct of masses now completely out of control with strikes threatened in Police quarters, and rank and file Police indifferent to orders of Officers, will continue and result in worse violent and irresponsible acts by uncontrolled people.”

The UGCC cable of February 28 went on to say: “Working Committee United Gold Coast Convention declare they are prepared and ready to take over interim Government. We ask in name of oppressed, inarticulate, misruled and misgoverned people  and their Chiefs that Special Commissioner be sent out immediately to hand over Government to interim Government of Chief and People and to witness immediate calling of Constituent Assembly.”

Just three days after the notorious shooting of unarmed -ex-servicemen at the Christiansborg Crossroads, the UGCC, through Dr Danquah addressed the people of Gold Coast. After, the address called “The Hour of Liberation has Struck”, Dr Danquah and five of his colleagues, Nkrumah, Paa Willie, Akufo-Addo, Obestebi-Lamptey and Ako Adjei, were arrested and taken to custody in the Northern Territories on charges of planning to overthrow the Government and establish Communism in the Gold Coast.

Indeed, Nkrumah said he only wanted to establish the Convention People’s Party as a vanguard within the UGCC. An arbitration at Paa Grant’s house with Gwira, a Sekondi barrister and Rev Ntedu Kyirbuwa of the Methodist Church, agreed to the request, even though the CPP was wrongly established against the constitution and by-laws of the UGCC. The members of the Working Committee, which included all of the Big Six, rejected the arbitrators’ recommendations and resigned en bloc.

As Dr Danquah recorded  on July 3, 1949, “By their decision, George Alfred Grant was enjoined by the arbitrators to affiliate the Convention People’s Party to the United Gold Coast Convention, with George Grant as Chairman of its Working Committee and another person as Chairman of the Convention People’s Party. There is an Akan proverb: 'The Stool is not a tree branch to be sat on by two.’”