The Convention People's Party (CPP) is a socialist political party in Ghana based on the ideas of the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. The CPP was formed in June 1949 after Nkrumah broke away from the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).
History
Origins
The Convention People's Party is descended from a line of political movements formed in the early half of the 20th century to spearhead the anti-colonial struggle in the Gold Coast. The movement that preceded it was the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) formed in August 1947 and led predominantly by members of the professional and business classes. To expand its support base and step up the struggle for independence, the leadership of the UGCC decided to appoint a permanent general secretary to lead its expansion and step up the pace of change. Ebenezer Ako Adjei, then a young lawyer, was offered the paid secretaryship of the UGCC but he declined the position and instead proposed Kwame Nkrumah, a political activist then in London, for the position. Ako Adjei had known Nkrumah as a fellow at Lincoln University in the United States and at the London School of Economics. He was also the past President of the West African Students Union (WASU) in London which first hosted Nkrumah when he arrived in Britain from the United States.
The leadership of the UGCC accepted Ako Adjei's suggestion and agreed to invite Kwame Nkrumah, who already had a wide reputation as an experienced political organizer with a gift for leadership. Together with George Padmore and others he had organised in 1945 the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England. Nkrumah personally drew up the dynamic Declaration to the Colonial Peoples of the World, approved and adopted by the Congress. He was an eminently suitable person to galvanize the mass of the Gold Coast people and the youth to play an active part in the national liberation movement.
Initially, Nkrumah was hesitant about accepting the position, being aware that both the composition and objectives of the UGCC fell far short of the radical, political program he envisaged for the Gold Coast and for Africa. But after discussion with his colleagues he decided to accept, knowing that it might not be long before he would find it impossible to continue working within the UGCC. On 14 November 1947, Kwame Nkrumah set sail from Liverpool aboard the SS Accra, accompanied by Kojo Botsio, another friend from London who was also member of WASU and with that, the beginning of a new chapter in the modern political history of Ghana begun.
Kwame Nkrumah was officially introduced to the UGCC's Working Committee as their Secretary on 28 December 1947 and soon got to work seeking to expand the support base of the UGCC by mobilizing the youth through local youth societies in the Colony (e.g., Apowa Literary and Social Club) and the Ashanti Confederacy (e.g., Asante Youth Association- AYA), whose members were farmers, petty-traders, drivers, artisans, school, teachers, clerks and letter-writers, many of whom were the growing number of elementary-school-leavers. In the beginning, the UGCC had only a handful of branches in the larger coastal towns and Kibi. It had no official presence in Ashanti and there had been no attempt to enlist support for the organization in the Northern territories. Nkrumah setting about to change this, travelled extensively and organized mass meetings and within six months hundreds of branches of the UGCC had been established throughout the Gold Coast.
The 1948 riots
At the time of Nkrumah's arrival in the Gold Coast in late 1947, there was growing discontent among ordinary people with the economy due to shortages of consumer goods and rising prices. Farmers were dissatisfied with the policy of cutting-out cocoa trees ravaged by the swollen-shoot disease with no compensation. Ex-servicemen who had fought in World War II "for King and country" had only been awarded a meagre gratuity and were experiencing the same hardships as the general populace.
Neither the chiefs nor the political class championed the growing disaffection in the country and it fell to Nii Kwabena Bonne II, Osu Alata Mantse, to lead the agitation against the growing economic hardship and especially the rising prices of consumer goods. Just over a month after Nkrumah's arrival in the Gold Coast, the growing discontent found expression in a boycott of mostly foreign-owned trading firms organized by Nii Kwabena Bonne on 26 January 1948.
The boycott continued for a month, while its leaders negotiated price reductions with the government and the trading firms in the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM). There was unrest also among the ex-servicemen and both Kwame Nkrumah and Dr Joseph Boakye Danquah addressed them at a rally in Accra on 20 February 1948. A petition expressing their grievances was drawn up to be presented to the Governor.
Nii Bonne's boycott agreed new reduced prices that were to come into effect on 28 February 1948 and the boycott of the foreign trading firms was called off. As fate would have it, however, on that same day, 28 February, the ex-servicemen set off to march to Christiansborg Castle to present their petition. Their way was blocked by armed police commanded by a British officer, Superintendent Colin Imray. When the marchers refused to halt, Imray gave the order to open fire. Three ex-servicemen – Sergeant Adjetey, Private Odartey Lamptey and Corporal Attipoe – were killed and many others were injured. News of the shooting sparked off days of rioting in Accra by already angry crowds incensed at the high price of food, which they blamed on the greed of foreign merchants. Shops and offices owned by foreigners were attacked and looted. Violence spread to other towns.
Faced with widespread disorder, the Governor, Sir Gerald Creasy, declared a state of emergency. Troops were called out, while police arrested so-called trouble makers. The executive committee of the UGCC sent telegrams to Arthur Creech Jones, the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, asking for a Special Commissioner to be sent to the Gold Coast with power to call a Constituent Assembly.
Leaders of the UGCC — J. B. Danquah, Ofori Atta, Akufo Addo, Ako Adjei, Obetsebi Lamptey and Kwame Nkrumah, subsequently known as The Big Six – were arrested and flown to the Northern Territories, where they were detained for six weeks before being taken to Accra to appear at a Commission of Enquiry set up by the Governor under the chairmanship of Aiken Watson Q.C.
After interrogating the accused, the Watson commissioners concluded that Nkrumah was mainly to blame for the disorders. In their words: "The U.G.C.C. did not really get down to business until the arrival of Mr. Nkrumah on December 16, 1947." They correctly detected that Nkrumah's political objectives were far more progressive than those of his colleagues. They recommended the drafting of a new constitution to replace the outdated Burns constitution. As a result, in December 1948, a constitutional committee was appointed by the Governor under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Coussey.
The leadership of the UGCC blamed Nkrumah for the riots and some, including Obestebi-Lamptey and William Ofori-Atta, ransacked his house looking for evidence that he was a communist. It was becoming clear that differences between Nkrumah and other leaders of the UGCC would soon make it impossible for them to continue to work together.
Although the detentions increased the popularity of the UGCC leaders, it also led to infighting and finger-pointing among the UGCC leadership and created a split between the conservative intelligentsia of the UGCC who favoured a gradualist approach to independence on one hand, and the radical "Verandah Boys", on the other, who listened willingly to Nkrumah and were opposed to the convention.
The appointment and acceptance of some UGCC members including J. B. Danquah as members of the Justice Coussey's "Committee on Constitutional Reform" enabled Nkrumah to organize the local youth societies on which the UGCC was based while lawyers of the UGCC, then on good terms with the Colonial administration were absorbed in the Coussey committee meetings.
In August 1948, the "Committee on Youth Organizations" was formed with K. A. Gbedemah as chair and Kojo Botsio as Secretary. J.B. Danquah and his colleagues had become alarmed at the rapidly growing support of their members for Nkrumah and his dynamic leadership. They disapproved of his founding of the Committee on Youth Organisation (CYO), regarding it as a pressure group advancing Nkrumah's determination to speed up the campaign for self-government. The CYO adopted the slogan "Self-Government Now", in contrast to the UGCC slogan "Self-Government in the shortest possible time". They feared Nkrumah's policy might lead to further disorder and further arrests.
Nkrumah was called before the UGCC Working Committee and suspended from his post as general secretary following questioning about his persistent use of the word "Comrade" as a term of address and his continued connections with the West African National Secretariat in London.
The UGCC leadership was determined to remove Nkrumah as general secretary. After the publication of the first issue of the Accra Evening News, founded and managed by Nkrumah and edited by K. A. Gbedemah in September 1948, UGCC's main financier affectionately known as Paa Grant demanded Nkrumah's removal from office. At a meeting of the UGCC executive in Saltpond, matters came to a head, with Nkrumah's private secretary being dismissed and Nkrumah himself demoted to the position of treasurer, which he at first refused but later accepted in November 1948.
Nkrumah and his supporters became increasingly exasperated at what they saw as the timidity of the UGCC by mid-1949; with the mass of the people and the youth behind him, Nkrumah and his colleagues were in a strong position to split with the UGCC to form a new party.
Birth of the CPP
After a three-day meeting of the CYO in early June 1949, in Tarkwa, one faction led by K. A. Gbedemah and Kojo Botsio advocated for a clean break with the UGCC while another, led by Kofi Baako's faction demanded Nkrumah's reinstatement as general secretary of the UGCC to enable them to capture the convention from within. The compromise reached was that a new party be formed but should retain the name "Convention".
On 11 June 1949, the Working Committee of the UGCC issued two resolutions declaring that membership of the CYO and the UGCC were incompatible and gave notice that Nkrumah was to be "served with charges" for disregarding "the obligations of collective responsibility and party discipline" and by publishing in The Accra Evening News, views, opinions, and criticisms, "assailing the decisions and questioning the integrity of the Working Committee", he had undermined the convention, abused its leaders and stolen its ideas.
A day later, on 12 June 1949, before a crowd of some 60,000 people which had gathered on the Old Polo Ground, the CPP was born and Kwame Nkrumah resigned as general secretary of the UGCC. He declared that the CYO had decided to break away from the UGCC to become an entirely separate political party, the Convention People's Party (CPP).
Kojo Botsio sent a telegram to the UGCC Working Committee informing them about the formation of the CPP under the chairmanship of Nkrumah with the aim of "Self-Government Now for Chiefs and People of the Gold Coast, a democratic government and a higher living standard for the people". The UGCC Working Committee responded with a statement on 15 June 1949 warning members that the convention had nothing to do with the newly formed CPP, and that Paa Grant expects loyalty from all UGCC members and considers "formation [of a] new political party inimical to interests of [the] country".