Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson

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Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson (1895–May 10, 1965) was a British West African workers' leader, journalist, and politician.

I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson was born in Wilberforce, Sierra Leone to poor Creole parents. He entered United Methodist Collegiate School in 1911, but dropped out two years later to support his family. His first employment was at the customs department, and he later dabbled in other jobs. He enlisted as a clerk for the Carrier Corps during World War I. Demobilized in 1920, Wallace-Johnson took credit for exposing corruption in the Freetown municipal government while working as a clerk there.

In 1930, he helped form the Nigerian Workers' Union, the first trade union in Nigeria. He attended the International Trade Union Conference of Negro Workers in Hamburg in July 1930 and was elected to its presidium. He served on the editorial board of the Conference's publication, the Negro Worker, under an alias. During this time he met many prominent black Communists and briefly studied in Moscow. He attempted to return to Nigeria in 1933, but was deported months later.

On the invitation of a sympathetic editor, Wallace-Johnson settled in the Gold Coast, where he would gain his first experience in mass politics. Through contacts in London, he arranged for questions to be asked in the British Parliament about the situation in the colonies. He initiated a fund to assist the legal appeal team in the Scottsboro case in the United States. He also campaigned for civil liberties and improved working conditions after a mining disaster at Prestea in 1934, where 41 miners were killed. Wallace-Johnson disguised himself as a miner to witness first-hand the working conditions there.

Wallace-Johnson founded the West African Youth League in June 1935 and was appointed its first organizing secretary. It was intended to be an all-West African organization, even incorporating the people of nearby French and Portuguese colonies. The WAYL advocated parliamentary representation of the colonies in London, but took on an increasingly anti-colonial tone during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. The rhetoric of Wallace-Johnson and the WAYL utilized Marxist phraseology and Christian imagery, but opposed European interpretations of Christianity because of its use as a justification for slavery and colonialism by some politicians. A newspaper started by the WAYL, Dawn, was intended to be a weekly but published only sporadically. By 1936, the WAYL maintained 17 branches throughout the Gold Coast.

Wallace-Johnson was also involved in the creation of the International African Service Bureau in the 1930s, with several West Indian political and intellectual figures, including George Padmore, C.L.R. James, and T. Ras Makonnen. Wallace-Johnson spent a brief time in London, furthering his contacts with friendly Labour MPs but lacking the financial resources for any independent anti-colonial initiatives. He lived without food at certain times because he lacked money. During this time, though, it is alleged that he was receiving funds from the USSR and that he embezzled money from the newspaper he wrote for. He proudly admitted to receiving Soviet money, but because Communism was then the ideology of choice for many in the nascent anti-colonial movement, this may have been facetious and meant to increase his prestige in radical circles.

He returned to his home colony in April 1938. Shortly after his arrival, the first WAYL branch in Sierra Leone was opened. Its program included equality for women, unity of people from all tribes, cooperation between people of the Sierra Leone colony and the Sierra Leone protectorate, and higher wages for workers. Wallace-Johnson claimed a membership of 25,000 in the colony and 17,000 in the protectorate; while he enjoyed a huge following, these numbers are considered to be exaggerations. The Freetown chapter held biweekly meetings where Wallace-Johnson exercised his considerable oratorical skill and urged mass support for the League's initiatives. The meetings were extremely well-attended. Exploitive mining companies that profited from the mineral wealth of Sierra Leone while ignoring the very poor living and working conditions of the workers were consistent targets of Wallace-Johnson's radical, anti-establishment message.

While not primarily a political party, the WAYL sponsored four candidates for local elections. The WAYL pioneered issue-oriented politics in Sierra Leone and was the first political group to make a concerted attempt to involve the people of the protectorate in the process. Despite restricted suffrage that favored the upper-class Creole elite, all four candidates were elected, including Constance Agatha Cummings-John, the first woman elected to public office in British West Africa. The results severely embarrassed the governor and establishment, especially as it followed the revelation of classified dispatches from the governor to the Colonial Office that signaled the governor's tacit approval of the abuses of the mining companies. The WAYL newspaper, African Standard, was modeled on several left-wing publications in the United Kingdom and was used to print news and editorials often regarded as seditious by senior establishment figures.

Wallace-Johnson was arrested on September 1, 1939, the first day of World War II. Before then, the governor and his legal advisers were attempting to find a way to arrest and convict him for criminal libel, despite the lack of conclusive evidence favoring the prosecution. A series of six acts was passed by the Legislative Council, heavily restricting civil liberties. Added to the wartime emergency provisions, Wallace-Johnson could be arrested without justification. A trial was held without a jury (most of the jurors were WAYL supporters and probably would not vote for a conviction), and Wallace-Johnson was sentenced to 12 months in prison, eventually arriving at Sherbro Island. He was released in 1944. He returned to political activism, but found the WAYL in a state of disarray where tribal and regional issues, rather than the cause of unity that he championed, flourished.

He remodeled himself as a Pan-Africanist and de-emphasized his earlier radicalism. He co-founded the United People's Party in 1956. The UPP became the official opposition after a general election in 1957. Wallace-Johnson was a delegate to the independence talks in London. He died in a car crash in Ghana on May 10, 1965.

[edit] Quotations

• "I am not anything above yourselves. I am at par with you."

[edit] References

• Spitzer, Leo, and LaRay Denzer. "I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson and the West African Youth League". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. Vol. 6, No. 3, and Vol. 6, No. 4. 1973.

There is no study of Wallace-Johnson as yet, but some information can be found in James Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (1967). Wallace-Johnson's career is recounted in John R. Cartwright, Politics in Sierra Leone, 1947-67 (1970).

Good background information is in Martin Kilson, Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone (1966).