Press Controls and Sedition Proceedings in the Gold Coast, 1933-1939

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Periodical article

Title:	Press Controls and Sedition Proceedings in the Gold Coast, 1933-1939
Author:	Shaloff, Stanley
Year:	1972
Periodical:	African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society
Volume:	71
Issue:	284
Period:	July
Pages:	241-263
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ghana
Subjects:	rebellions freedom of the press detention 1930-1939 History and Exploration Literature, Mass Media and the Press Law, Human Rights and Violence colonialism Politics and Government
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/720781
Abstract:	During the 1930s, a period of economic depression and rising unemployment, the African press of the Gold Coast was the main outlet for the frustrations and resentments. There was also an increasing official concern over communist-inspired subversion in the colonial world. This article investigates the controversy over the Gold Coast Criminal Code (Amendment) Ordinance or Sedition Bill of 1934, the attempts by the administration to introduce a simultaneous press control measure, and the eventual arrest and conviction of the two nationalists Nnamdi Azikiwe and I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson on charges of sedition. Although the Sedition Bill must be considered to have been of some benefit to the beleaguered colonial authorities, the mobilization of the masses in opposition to the ordinance brought home to the Colonial Office the realization that it could no longer disregard the wishes of the people. Notes.