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Meetings West Midlands Regional Branch Sunday 20 January 2pm Branch meeting. 11 Dagger Lane, West Bromwich, B71. Phone: Ron Cook: 0121 553 1712 West London As the first Tuesday of the month is New Years Day, the branch meetings in January, in the Committee Room, Chiswick Town Hall,  Heathfield Terrace, W.4, will be on the second and third Tuesdays, 8 and 15 January. South West Regional Branch Saturday 12 January, 2pm to 5pm. Is socialism inevitable?  Does it depend on the actions of the Socialist Party  or will it happen anyway? Village Public House, 33 Wilton Road, Salisbury (near Salisbury railway station). Central London January meeting will be on  Wednesday 9 January at 6.30 pm. at the Old Crown pub, 33 New Oxford St, WC1. Manchester Monday 28 January, 8.30pm ‘Social Care-Less’ Unicorn, Church Street,  City Centre East Anglia Saturday 26 January, 12noon to 4pm The Conservatory, back room of Rosary Tavern, Rosary Rd, Norwich.

Upset in Accra:  Dr. Nkrumah upsets his friends

50  Years  Ago In 1951 the Gold Coast legislature for the first time represented all the territory's inhabitants, voting in secret ballot. The elections of 1951 and 1954 were won by the Convention People's Party (CPP), whose leader, Dr. Nkrumah was brought from jail to fill the newly-created post of Prime Minister. The CPP stood on a programme of independence from British rule and when they won a third overwhelming victory in the 1956 elections, Whitehall agreed to the inevitable. At midnight on 5th March, 1957, the Gold Coast ceased to exist and the State of Ghana took its place. A new national anthem—Ghana Arise, by Hector Hughes, a British Labour M.P.—was substituted for God Save the Queen. ( . . .) The first signs that Ghana was going to betray the hopes of its friends came when Dr. Nkrumah appeared to be fostering his own little personality cult, by having his head stamped on the new coinage and going to live in Christiansborg Castle which, as the old residence of Danish and British governors, is heavy with unpleasant memories. Then came the expulsions and a Special Bill to allow Mr. Edusei to deport two men without the right of appeal. The municipal councils of Accra and Kumasi were suspended and so was the chief of the 300,000 Akim Abuakwa tribe. Several members of the opposition were kidnapped and from the other side, a plot to assassinate Dr. Nkrumah was alleged. In this hysterical atmosphere, it seemed. Africa's immaculate embryo democracy had been born a deformed dictatorship. The truth of the matter is that last March saw the end of Nkrumah's days of agitation and faced him with the realities of power over a country which is trying to make its way in the capitalist world. The first reality was a staggering fall in the price of cocoa, so that the first budget was chillingly austere and the Ghanaian workers were told that it would be unpatriotic to ask for higher-wages. They had expected better than this from Nkrumah ; a national transport strike was called and rioting broke out in Accra. Another difficulty is that Nkrumah is struggling to establish government on modern capitalist lines and to stamp out the old system of tribal rule. (from article by Ivan in Socialist Standard, January 1958)

Declaration of Principles   This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained. Object The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. Declaration of Principles the socialist Party of Great Britain holds, 1. That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced. 2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess. 3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people. 4. That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. 5.  That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself. 6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic. 7. That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party. 8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slaver to freedom.

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Socialist Standard January 2008