The 1926 Railway Strike and Anglo-Krio Relations: An Interpretation

Abstract

On 14 January 1926 a lightning broke out in the Sierra Leone Government Railway. The strikers were all government servants-daily paid artisans in the locomotive, engineering and traffic branches, including permanent and pensionable officers, station masters and station clerks, and almost the entire telegraph personnel.' The phrase lightning is suspect because there is evidence that the government knew before the event that trouble was brewing and had anticipated a strike action. To this end Sir Ransford Slater, the governor of Sierra Leone, 1922-1927, recalling his own strictures against the weakness of the government during the 1919 strike, made certain contingent plans which he believed would end the strike within a few days.2 Despite these precautions, it turned out, the strike went on for six weeks, and before it ended it had assumed wider political dimensions. The government, especially the governor, were convinced that the defiance and disobedience of the railway workers were being given solid support by the Freetown people who used the strike as a stalking horse wherewith to attack the government and the whiteman.3 It was plain to the administration therefore that the labor dispute was a serious trial of strength