The Passing Show
No paradise
Now that the native Cypriot owing class, with the help of those Cypriots whom it deluded into helping, has thrown out the former British rulers, its spokes¬ men are making clear to the Cypriot people that they cannot expect much benefit from the struggle. Archbishop Makarios, the leader of the fight for “liberation,” and now President of Cyprus, takes the lead. Recently he was reported as having admitted that unemployment has risen to an unprecedented peak (Daily Express, 22/8/61). He went on to say: “It isn’t going to be paradise.”
Who said it was going to be paradise? When the Cypriot propertied class wanted to throw the British out, there were plenty of promises about the good time coming when Cyprus achieved “independence”: but now the fight is over, the Cypriot workers — like workers else¬ where — are finding out that the only people who ever achieve freedom and independence in a propertied society are the property-owners. The Cypriot workers are no more “independent” or “free” now than they were under British rule.
Freedom and Justice
Another non-paradise is Ghana. There, President Nkrumah’s right to imprison without trial about two hundred of the opposition United Party has been contested unsuccessfully in the courts. Counsel for the prisoners, who have been in jail untried since November, 1959, based his objection on the presidential declaration that “freedom and justice should be honoured and maintained” (The Guardian, 29/8/61). The Ghana Supreme (Appeal) Court has, however, upheld Nkrumah’s Preventive Detention Act, and has decided that the declarations made by Nkrumah on taking office were “similar to the Coronation oath taken by the Queen of England during the Coronation service.” The declarations, they said. “merely represent the goal which every President must pledge himself to achieve,” and held that neither the Coronation oath in Britain nor the presidential declarations in Ghana “can be said to have the statutory effect of an act of parliament.”
Promises
Two points may be made here. The Coronation oath of the British monarch, to keep the laws and customs of the country, is one which would be rigidly enforced if necessary. Any monarch disregarding it would get his or her marching orders from the ruling class forth¬ with. Only twenty-five years ago the ruling class sacked its then figurehead, Edward VIII, giving him less notice than a well-behaved butler could have expected, simply because that monarch showed signs of wanting to ignore the code of behaviour laid down for him by the ruling class and marry a divorced woman. This code, of course, is not observed by the ruling class itself necessarily : indeed, some of our rulers marry and divorce each other with a regularity which would have made a Turkish Sultan shake his head. But the figurehead must observe stricter standards. And if a monarch was dismissed merely for wanting to breach a social code, how much mere speedily the ruling class would act against one who contravened the laws made for the benefit of that class. The Ghana Supreme Court, in fact, was well wide of the mark here.
But in the other half of its judgment it was on firmer ground. How right it was to pour scorn on those who expect a politician to keep his promises! President Nkrumah is not merely a figurehead, but the chief executive of the Ghanaian ruling class, and he is sure of his position so long as he serves his masters well. If the exigencies of policy require that opposition politicians shall be jailed without trial, then to jail they go. And no pious oaths, however solemn, about upholding freedom and justice can be allowed to stand in the way.
Anti-strike effort
But Nkrumah’s police-state methods do not stop there. Some five thousand port and railway workers recently went on strike “over Government austerity wage cuts” (The Times, 11/9/61). The Ghana Government has assumed “far-reaching powers to prohibit meetings, requisition vehicles, control traffic, and imprison saboteurs.” In the twin port towns of Takoradi and Sekondi, the centres of the strike, “convicted saboteurs” can be jailed for ten years.” Anyone suspected of hampering the anti-strike effort can be held for 72 hours instead of the normal 20 hours.” Police headquarters reported that all was quiet in the two towns, and all gatherings of workers were being dispersed. The Minister for Presidential Affairs warned civil servants — a term which includes railwaymen and some of the port workers — that if they stayed out on strike more than ten days they would be sacked and not taken on again. According to the Sunday Times (10/9/61), “the Government is now taking the strike leaders to court, charged with illegally inciting to strike.”
The Ghana Government appears to be going very near to making striking itself illegal — in other words, almost introducing a system of forced labour. What a change of front since the days when the Ghanaian owning class wanted the help of the workers against the British!
More Freedom
A third country to gain its “freedom” in the last decade is Nigeria. There, thirteen citizens of the Northern Region recently had a drink—harmless enough, one might think. But the penal code of the region forbids Muslims to touch alcohol. So the offending Nigerians have been fined, and sentenced to eighty strokes of the cane.
What good does it do the workers to exchange one set of masters for another?
ALWYN EDGAR