Introduction

Summary

Of all groups of unionised workers in Ghanaian society, the railway-men of Sekondi occupy a place of quite unrivalled importance in the history of their country's political organisation and development. Among the first groups of workers to unionise in the 1920s, they alone were able to sustain their organisation on an active footing throughout the inter-war period, staging a number of effective (if only partly successful) strike actions. Other workers were to establish union organisations after the Second World War, but the railway workers continued to occupy a position of unchallenged leadership over the young trade union movement as a whole. Dominating the executive of the first Gold Coast TUC, which they had initiated in 1945, they attempted, in January 1950, to stage a general strike in support of Kwame Nkrumah's ‘Positive Action’ phase of the nationalist campaign. Although most other workers failed to respond, the railway workers' own strike action, solidly maintained for two weeks, undoubtedly harassed the colonial regime into speeding up the devolution of power, and strengthened Nkrumah's personal claim to national political leadership. Having helped bring Nkrumah to power, the railway workers also, however, revealed their preparedness to pit their strength against him. They led resistance against the attempt of the Convention People's Party to subordinate the trade union movement to its control, and, in September 1961, staged a seventeen-day strike which the Government recognised as the most serious challenge to its existence since Independence (1957).