Issue #0

West Africans in Britain, 1900-1960

nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and communism

Plot

This work captures the dynamism of the West-African student movement in Britain, and the struggle to articulate a coherent, anti-colonial politics. The emergence of the West African Students Union (WASU) and its alliances with influential Labour MPs, the Communist Party of Great Britain, as well as organizations in Africa, paved the way for the successful independence movements to influence so many African states. Hakim Adi documents the achievements of the student movement in overcoming racism and the "colour bar", and shows how the hostility of British society served only to create a sense of unity, which allowed WASU the ideological and political space to question and, ultimately, to expose the illegitimacy of colonial rule. More than an account of Africans within the context of British soceity, the book emphasizes the effects these pioneers have had on a world stage. Hakim Adi is the author of "The History of African and Caribbean Communities" and "African Migrations", and co-author of "The 1945 Manchester Pan African Congress Revisited".