A document reveals the involvement of the British Foreign Office in the coup against Ghanaian President Nkrumah

Former President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrona of the Asuna clan, was ousted in 1966 (Associated Press)

Accra -

A recently declassified file revealed the involvement of the British Foreign Office in carrying out secret operations to overthrow Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and his government, with the aim of “changing it with a government closer to the West.” The army seized power during Nkrumah’s foreign visit in February 1966. The president remained in exile until his death in 1972.

The Declassified UK website published the document showing that British intelligence sent a field agent from the Foreign Office's "Political Propaganda Unit", known as the "Information Research Department" (IRD) between the years 1962 and 1964, to conduct an assessment and send detailed reports to help develop a plan. Through which measures could be taken to undermine Nkrumah's position in Ghana.

The President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, mediates with the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone and the Prime Minister of Malawi in London to open the annual conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in June 1965 (Getty)

British propaganda

With the end of World War II, Britain realized the rise of the United States of America as a new power, and that it had begun to position itself as a global pole. The matter became clearer with the crystallization of the concept of the Cold War, so two former officers in the British Intelligence Unit proposed remarketing the British Empire as a “third power.” “Between two great poles, the eastern led by the Soviet Union and the western led by the United States.

The proposal included two dimensions: the first was internal, to persuade the Labor and Conservative parties to expand intelligence operations externally, and the second was an attempt to convince countries that did not fall under the umbrella of either camp that the option of a third alignment was possible. The proposal came to light in 1948, and worked for three decades under the name “Research and Information Department.” (IRD), based on recruiting a vast network of newspapers, news agencies, journalists and writers around the world, whether knowingly or without necessarily complicity, to broadcast political propaganda.

The department participated in secret operations that went beyond “fighting the communist tide” to attempts to preserve the empire’s prestige “by distorting the image of its enemies,” who included leaders of African liberation movements, making Kwame Nkrumah one of the victims of British propaganda, as the document reveals.

Nkrumah's political thought

Kwame Nkrona comes from the Asuna clan, one of the most prominent clans of the Ashanti Empire, which took an expansionist form and established an imperial entity at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and established institutional rule with judicial and executive powers and commercial interests. It was at the height of its political experience when the vanguards of European colonialism began to penetrate Africa. Ghana turned into a British colony in the late nineteenth century.

The political personality of who would later become the "Father of Independence" in Ghana was formed through experiences that crossed the borders of Africa, as he studied economics, sociology, philosophy, and theology in the United States, but philosophy prevailed over theology in forming the political thought that shaped Nkrumah.

In the United States, Nkrumah surrounded himself with thinkers and activists of African origin, including the pioneer of the American political rights movement, Martin Luther King, and the pioneer of Jamaican philosophy, Martin Mosier Garvin, the most prominent theorist of the concept of the “United States of Africa.” He also learned about the foundations of secret work at the hands of the historian and thinker. And Trinidadian freedom fighter Cyril Lionel Robert James.

"Father of Independence"

After years of study in the United States and Britain, Karume returned to “Gold Beach” (Ghana’s former name), and engaged in political work under the banner of the “Unified Gold Beach Congress,” and founded the “People’s Congress Party” in the early 1950s with the aim of achieving self-rule for the country. He organized civil disobedience campaigns against colonialism, and the British arrested him.

From behind bars, he led his party to achieve an overwhelming majority in municipal and general elections. He was released to form his government in 1952, and five years later he declared Ghana’s independence in 1957, becoming the first popular leader on the continent to seize his country’s independence and rename it “Ghana.”

It was not surprising that Nkrumah adopted a socialist system of government, as the rise of Ghana as an independent state from colonialism was accompanied by a wave of liberation movements in the southern countries. Egypt was living the dream of a socialist state, India headed left with Jawaharlal Nehru, and Castro established the pillars of communism in Cuba, and while The Cold War was at its most intense, with two camps, eastern and western, and the south rose to prominence with the “Non-Aligned Countries” movement.

Nkrumah considered that the newly independent African countries, and those that were in the process of independence, such as the countries of South America, enjoyed formal sovereign independence, while the former colonial countries held on to the joints of the economy and directed the policy of their former colonies, so he began, with African leaders and pioneers of the liberation movements, attempts to consolidate African unity and non-alignment. As essential tools for combating imperialism and completing the process of peoples' liberation.

From deception to coup

African unity, support for liberation movements, and hostility to apartheid regimes dominated Nkrumah's policies, and the country was swept into a wave of economic decline and a decline in political freedoms. Britain saw this as a threat to its economic and commercial interests, and a threat to its deep influence in Africa.

The British intelligence assessment was based on a description of Nkrumah's policy as relying on "communist advice" inside Ghana, and Foreign Office documents referred to Nkrumah's anti-colonial agenda as "subversive activities" and warned that it was expanding in Africa.

According to the document, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved launching campaigns targeting figures in President Nkrumah’s administration. Political propaganda campaigns took fictitious names for groups such as “patriotic Ghanaians” and others called “African Brothers,” which were sent into Ghana from African and European countries. Disinformation campaigns were also declared. By the British Prime Minister's Office.

The declassified document shows that the campaigns of the Political Propaganda Unit in British Intelligence included issuing statements using the names of fictitious organizations, and directed journalists to write articles aimed at demolishing Nkrumah's image among members of the middle class, youth, university professors, and civilian, security, and military elites.

After the army's successful coup against President Nkrumah, the document dated May 6, 1966 ends with a conclusion that says, "Now that the goal has been achieved, efforts are directed to ensure that the lesson learned from Nkrumah's flirtation with communism is not lost on other Africans."

Source: Al Jazeera