Postwar Days #6: August 16, 1945 Pt. 2

Dreams of eternal peace, and eternal empire

Beneath the great triumphant imperial capital, beneath the lands it had conquered and then turned over to their proper European rulers, were the conquests it refused to let go of. Africa, the dark continent, named so because of how it lingered in the dark part of one's consciousness, extending a long-fingered hand every now and then to hand one rubber or diamonds.

But the colonies were growing restless. Just a few months ago, there had been a massive general strike in Nigeria. The workers had watched as their world, with everything carefully circumscribed by the British colonialists, became more expensive and their wages had remained stagnant. All of the restrictions were in the name of a war that had once been close by but now felt entirely far away, against a different set of imperialists.

Tens of thousands had sat and refused to work any more, staying there for ten weeks. The railways, the docks, the hospitals, the taxis, and more all stopped, blocked by the solid wall of labour. They won, eventually, sort of. Pay was to be increased the next year, and backdated to the current moment. Relief would be coming, but not the relief that Nigerians hungered for in their heart. As for the British, they were beginning to learn the strength of the people they had under their lashes.

In a country still known as the Gold Coast, in the long-held territory of Sierra Leone, in Rhodesia, the land marked with the name of its subjugator, movements for freedom were forming. Africans who dressed well and spoke well in the minds of the English, the talented tenth that had received a British education and were meant to be faithful colonial administrators, had instead learned the importance of independence and the importance of power. The anger of the people beneath, the workers and the destitute, was ready to be organized. In Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, the Gambia, and all across Africa's vastness, something was beginning.

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