Page 149 - Afrika Must Unite

134 AFRICA MUST UNITE
1927, which 208 delegates attended, but after that the move­
ment seemed to fade out for a time.
A non-party organization, the International African Service
Bureau, was set up in 1937, and this was the forerunner of the
Pan-African Federation, the British section of the Pan-African
Congress movement. Its aim was ‘to promote the well-being and
unity of African peoples and peoples of African descent through­
out the world’, and also ‘to strive to co-operate between African
peoples and others who share our aspirations’.
Pan-Africanism and African nationalism really took concrete
expression when the Fifth Pan-African Congress met in M an­
chester in 1945. For the first time the necessity for well-organized,
firmly-knit movements as a prim ary condition for the success of
the national liberation struggle in Africa was stressed.
The Congress was attended by more than two hundred dele­
gates from all over the world. George Padmore and I had been
joint secretaries of the organizational committee which planned
the Congress and we were delighted with the results of our work.
Among the declarations addressed to the imperialist powers
asserting the determination of the colonial people to be free
was the following:

The Fifth Pan-African Congress calls on intellectuals and pro­
fessional classes of the Colonies to awaken to their responsi­
bilities. The long, long night is over. By fighting for trade union
rights, the right to form co-operatives, freedom of the press,
assembly, demonstration and strike, freedom to print and read
the literature which is necessary for the education of the masses,
you will be using the only means by which your liberties will be
won and maintained. Today there is only one road to effective
action - the organization of the masses.1

A definite programme of action was agreed upon. Basically,
the programme centred round the demand for constitutional
change, providing for universal suffrage. The methods to be
employed were based on the Gandhist technique of non-violent
non-co-operation, in other words, the withholding of labour,

1 Declaration to the Colonial Peoples of the World (by the present author),
approved and adopted by the Pan-African Congress held in Manchester,
England, 15-21 October 1945.