A speech delivered at the inaugural meeting of the United Gold Coast Convention, at Saltpond, on August 4, 1947, by J B Danquah

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

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.

Seven or eight years ago, we had a Governor by the name of Sir Arnold Hodson. His policy was that it was far better for the people of the Gold Coast to remain under the official majority, under the benign and kind control of an official executive, than to be free, than to have an unofficial majority in the Legislative Council.

That Governor, Sir Arnold Hodson, after saying this, went away to an island in the West Indies, and there he died. After that Governor left, another came, by the name of Sir Alan Burns. He came from the West Indies. He was a different type of person, different from Sir Arnold Hodson. He had one supreme qualification in that respect: He did not agree with Sir Arnold Hodson that we would not be better governed if we had an unofficial majority in the Legislative Council. He believed that a people governed by an official majority were not a free people.

Consequently when we presented our Memorandum for changes in the constitution to the Secretary of State in 1943 he did everything possible to secure the approval of the Secretary of State to our demand for changes.

In our Memorandum we asked that we should have control of legislation as also of policy. We asked that there should be set up for us a Committee of Government, a Committee of Policy, in which the chosen representatives of the people will have charge of the blue prints of policy.

But, here again, this new Governor, Sir Alan Burns, had his own ideas. He did not think that a people who controlled the unofficial majority in the Legislative Council would be much better governed if they were given also the power to shape and to control policy.

His idea was to keep policy in his own hands, in the hands of himself and his Executive Council. But to placate our feelings, he said this: When policy was being adumbrated the Chiefs of the Joint Provincial Council and the Chiefs of the Ashanti Confederacy Council will be consulted.

Our experience is that during the last twelve months Government has adopted a new policy on the Harragin Commission's Report, a new policy on past performance after the war; a new policy in regard to the timber industry, a new policy in their refusal to pay compensation for farmers" cocoa trees cut down in respect of swollen shoot, a new policy in regard to four grades in the marketing of cocoa, a new policy in regard to the industrialisation of our lands for groundnuts, and not in one single case were the Chiefs of the Joint Provincial Council and the Ashanti Confederacy Council consulted.

So our position is that, at the present time, whilst our Chiefs are made to believe that they are part of the Government, it works out in practice that it is merely make believe, and that in most essential things the Government constantly and repeatedly ignores them. So our position is that, whilst we have the unofficial majority in the Legislative Council, we meet only twice a year, and when we meet every one in the official side is in a hurry to close the session on a set day. In all the different policies enumerated above, not once was the advice and consent of the Legislative Council sought. In fact, in the nature of things, not being a constituent assembly on policy, there never was need to consult them until after everything had been completed.

In the specific case of the Harragin Commission's Report, the Government consulted the Financial Secretaries of the Gambia and Sierra Leone and Nigeria and came to their own decision I what came to be called the Accra Conference before ever the elected members of the Legislative Council knew what was happening. This mockery of form without reality we can no longer tolerate.

But perhaps some one would say, why not wait for a new Governor from the West Indies or from the East Indies, he may come and grant to us the power to control policy? He may come and change everything that Sir Alan Burns did and what Sir Arnold Hodson did not do.

But surely, ladies and gentlemen, is it safe and secure for us to live under a constitution in which the system of government depends upon the whims and caprices of a man from anywhere who may be sent to us as Governor? Must we longer tolerate this system of want of continuity which for ever lands us in no where but despair and frustration?

We have, as I said, come to Saltpond for a decision. We have come to Saltpond to ponder and to deliberate upon the ways and means to bring an end to this insecurity and this frustration. British freedom is a precious thing. But British freedom is not Gold Coast freedom. British liberty is grand to have, but you cannot have and possess British liberty in a Gold Coast atmosphere. We must have, here and now, if we are to be well governed, a new kind of freedom, a Gold Coast freedom, a Gold Coast liberty.

Perhaps I strain the point when I speak of a new kind of freedom. Love of freedom from foreign control has always been in our blood. 870 years ago we struck against the attempt of the Arabs to impose a religious slavery upon us in Ghana. We left our homes in Ghana and came down here to build for ourselves a new home.

But there is one thing we brought with us from ancient Ghana. We brought with us our ancient freedom. Today the safety of that freedom is threatened, has been continuously threatened for a 100 years, since the Bond of 1844, and the time has come for a decision. And remember this: When we were attacked by the Arabs in Ghana there was plenty of land to escape into. There was this rain-forest area and gold and diamond bearing lands in the Gold Coast, Togoland and the Ivory Coast. We came here and settled here.

Today we are cut off in the south by the sea, and in the north by the desert, and if fearing that our ancient freedom is dangerously threatened we decided to evacuate this land and go elsewhere there is now here else for us to go. So our duty is clear. We must fight against the new domination. And we must fight with the weapons of today, constitutional, determined, persistent, unflinching, unceasing, until the goal of freedom is attained.

Ladies and gentlemen, as the Chairman said, we have taken six months to draft the terms of this constitution for a United Gold Coast Convention. We call it united because we hate the idea of any one saying "who are the people?" as if the people and their Chiefs are living in warring camps.

We are not at war with our Chiefs. We are at war with our present system of government. We are at war with the system because it pretends to govern us through our Chiefs indirectly, whereas I fact, it governs both our Chiefs and ourselves directly, and our Chiefs are in a very pitiable condition. It is our duty as their people to save them from that pitiable condition. They cannot by themselves act because they have been told they are part of the Government, of the Colonial Power, and that they get their power from the Government.

We must bring an end to that. We must bring an end to a system of government in which the Chiefs who govern us are made an instrument of mis-government, even of oppression, by the Colonial Power. How truly can our Chiefs say they are free to represent us before the Colonial Power when they are themselves part of that Colonial Power?

Our duty is clear. It is our duty to alter the constitution in such a way that both the Chiefs and their people will have the reality of power in their hands. That is the object of this Convention, and I invite you without any reservation to accept the constitution as drafted, and, once for all, to save this country.

Mr Chairman, I have the honour to second the motion so ably moved by Mr Williams.

Culled from Historic Speeches and Writings on Ghana by Dr J B Danquah, compiled by H K Akyeampong, and published by George Boakie Publishing Company, Accra.