Africa: How The British
And Hausa Soldiers Massacred
Igbo Miners In Enugwu, Nigeria,
In I949
On the 18th of November 1949 at
a British government-owned coal mine at Enugwu, Nigeria, 21 striking miners,
and a bystander were shot dead. 51 miners were also injured.
The miners had been sacked
following work to rule order and were fighting for back-pay owed to them for a
period of casualization known as ‘rostering’, later declared illegal. They
occupied the mine to prevent a repeat of the lock-out they had suffered during
the 1945 general strike.
Because of fears of revolt
owing to the fact that Enugwu was home to the Zikist independence movement,
which included Marxists and other freedom fighters; policemen were sent to
remove the mine’s explosives, accompanied by Hausa troops drafted in from the
North of the country. Their language and even their uniforms were unfamiliar to
the Igbo miners.
Local Igbo constables
fraternised with the workers, they were sure the government would pay them what
they were due; in return the miners assured them they did not want to fight.
They would not obstruct the police from removing the explosives, but refused to
help because it wasn’t their job. Their work demarcation imposed by the British
were strict. These were hewers and tubmen.
During the World War II,
Nigerian Coal had been of strategic importance to the British government and
continued to be vital in the re-building of infrastructure by the post-war
Labour government, who sought to maximise output to pay off its debt to the
U.S.
Many of the men had served in
the British armed forces, veterans of guerrilla warfare in Southeast Asia. In
1943 with inflation raging, they had been called on to make up the shortfall in
the British coalfields, caused by the war. They were acutely aware they had
saved Britain’s arse and been led to believe their sacrifices would create a
better world, whilst their bosses were planning for a future that didn’t exist.
They used their regular income
to develop their communities, establishing the self-help mechanisms once
familiar to mining villages in Britain, which were the inspiration for the
welfare state, with free hospitals and relief funds for injured workers and
their dependants.
The Enugwu Colliers supported
maternity clinics, road building, and clean water supplies. Rejecting the
British government’s mass literacy programme, designed to prepare their
children for a life of menial labor, they created permanent, stone-built
primary, and secondary schools. These commitments were undermined by the
economic uncertainty of rostering.
The aspirations of these
workers collided with Labour’s reconstructive ambitions and its cold war paranoia,
plus the racism of the colonial management, desperate to maintain their
privileges. Labour wanted to integrate trade unions into the state, using them
to contain and defuse class struggle, similar to what they had done at home.
The Colonial Office recruited
hundreds of T.U.C. bureaucrats and despatched them around the empire to
institute modern industrial relations practices. However, the colonial officers
thwarted them. It was the thinking of the officers that African workers were
unworthy of political representation.
The Igbo themselves had no use
for the concept, their culture of open assemblies and mass meetings lent itself
to Syndicalism; judging union leaders simply on their ability to execute the
will of the workforce.
Okwudili (Isaiah) Ojiyi the
Zikist General Secretary used his thorough understanding of the political
context and detailed knowledge of colonial labor law to run rings around the
bosses.
Knowing fully well that
striking was illegal, Ojiyi imported the Durham miners’ ‘ca canny’ go-slow
tactic, translated to ‘welu nwayo’ in Igbo. He spent many days in the mines
teaching it.
A T.U.C. advisor named Curry
tried to insert a layer of bureaucracy between Ojiyi and the rank and file by
splitting the union into five occupational branches, in violation of Igbo
organizational principles.
They, therefore, interpreted
this as the creation of five autonomous unions, rendering the negotiating
structure redundant. The hewers who began a wildcat go-slow were sacked and
occupied the mine. They were followed by the tubmen.
Captain F.S. Phillip, a British
policeman initiated the violence, terrified of Africans, and afraid of
communist subversion, he spoke neither Igbo nor Hausa. By this time the miners
were showing their solidarity by tying strips of red cloth to their helmets and
clothing to show their solidarity.
To Phillip, these were
paramilitary insignia. In line with their custom, the Igbo miners began to
dance and chant to keep up their spirits while facing the mass of armed troops.
In a state of panic, Philip
shot dead Sunday Anyasado, a young hewer who had recently married and moved to
the area. He then killed a machine man, Livinus Okechukwuma. Hearing the noise,
Tubman Okafor Ageni, ventured out of the mine asking “Anything wrong?” and was
killed on the spot. The firing continued for several minutes, some miners were
shot in the back. The dead and wounded miners were all left where they lay on
the ground. Blacksmith Emmanuel Okafor told Philip: “I surrender, take me to
hospital”. Philip answered: “I don’t care” and walked away.
Those eighty-seven rounds
sounded the doom of the British Empire; Labour’s strategies of using
intermediaries to buffer class anger, and separating industrial disputes from
their political context had blown up in its face. The regional, ethnic
sentiments, and even class divisions in Nigerian society were temporarily set
aside and replaced by a collective momentum to do away with British rule.
“The revolutionaries and the
stooges, radicals and the moderates, the bourgeoisie and the workers, sank
their differences, remembered the word Nigeria and rose in revolt against evil
and inhumanity.”
From that day till date, the
British and the Igbo have been at loggerheads, although it did not start at the
coal mines of Enugwu. Many years before that, the Igbo had on various occasions
frustrated the British invasion and brutish capture of their lands.
Many accounts of history, such
as the Ekumeku resistance of 30 years, the Aro-British war, the Aba women’s
riot, and many more, proved to the British that the Igbo were not a people who
would bow down easily to European rule.
Just like the coal mines, the
British employed their usual terrorism and mass murder of indigenous African
people, to get the Igbo surrender to colonial rule. But to this day, the
British fear the bravery and intelligence of the Igbo man. And because they
knew they could not control the Igbo, they made sure they formed an alliance
with the Hausa-Fulani in the North, and this alliance has seen to the murder
and massacre of over 5 million Ndi Igbo in last century.
The highlight of this hate and
hunger for Igbo blood would be the Biafran war/genocide of 1967-1970, where the
British sided with the Northerners and Westerners to kill over 3 million Ndi
Igbo.
Using Blacks As Experiment
By White Medical Doctor
-J.Marison Sims
Using Blacks As Experiment
By White Medical Doctor
-J. Marison Sims
Did you know J. Marison Sims
a.k.a "The Father of Modern Gynecology" USED AFRICAN WOMEN DURING
SLAVERY FOR SURGICAL EXPERIMENTS? Sims medical experiments on black women
created a cure for "vesicovaginal fistula," which allowed him to
detect and cure illnesses such as cancer before it became deadly. He did not
provide the slaves with anesthetic or medicine to numb their pain during these
procedures, and if one of them died from complications or excessive bleeding,
he simply replaced them with another slave. Because slaves were not seen as
fully human and considered "private property", it was completely
legal for slaves to be subjected to all sorts of violence and medical
experiments.
Learning about these horrific
things makes my heart heavy, but I refuse TO HIDE THESE HISTORICAL FACTS. I
will NOT allow my ancestors brutal experiences to remain unnoticed just because
some people feel uncomfortable when the history of slavery is discussed. I also
want people to understand that slavery wasn't just about people being raped and
forced to work for free for 400 years. The MOST devastating thing about slavery
was the PSYCHOLOGICAL TERROR that blacks endured. Nothing compares to being
kidnapped from your homeland, sold and treated as "property," having
your families divided for a lifetime, raped and brutalized to the fullest extent,
used as medical experiments, and experienced psychological terror everyday for
CENTURIES. Many African-Americans STILL SUFFER FROM POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE
SYNDROME.
ALOT of people are UNAWARE THAT
SLAVERY WAS LESS THAN 150 years ago, which is NO MORE than 3 generations ago.
The transatlantic slave trade started in the 1400s and slavery legally ended in
1865 in the U.S.. That is over 400 years of social engineering, brainwashing,
and terror that blacks have endured. This dysfunctional behavior has been
passed down from generation to generation, and unfortunately it is going to
take MORE THAN 150 years to properly reverse this mindset. Blacks NEVER
received psychological therapy AFTER they were legally free. They were just
forced to “get over it” and “move on,” and of course we all SHOULD KNOW about
the horrors of the Jim Crow Era, AND racism today. Blacks really never had a
chance to reinvent themselves because they have ALWAYS been under attack in
America. I REFUSE to ignore or downplay my ancestor’s experiences. STOP allowing
others to tell you how to feel about YOUR HISTORY, especially since it plays a
critical role in our condition as a people TODAY—economically, socially, and
mentally. VIA Blacks History And Africa Education.
#SNAPSHOT
IN HISTORY
- KK AND BIAFRA
#SNAPSHOT IN HISTORY
- KK AND BIAFRA
President Kenneth David Kaunda
being welcomed at Heathrow Airport on 17th July, 1968 by Biafran students in
the United Kingdom at the start of his 5 day visit to Britain.
On 30th May, 1967, the Eastern
Region of Nigeria under its former Military Governor Lt. Colonel Chukwuemeka
"Emeka" Odumegwu Ojukwu, with a population of 13.5 million people
declared independence and seceded from the Federation of Nigeria, renaming
itself BIAFRA.
It was formally and
diplomatically recognised by Zambia on 20th May, 1968. Zambia became the second
African country to recognise Biafra after Tanzania. Other African countries who
formally recognised the new state were Gabon and the Ivory Coast.
This bold step by the Eastern
Region led to war with Nigeria from 6th July, 1967 to 15th January, 1970 in
which 2 million Biafran civilians mostly children died, including from hunger
and malnutrition brought on by the Nigerian and British land, air and sea
blockade of Biafra.
The unilateral declaration of
independence by Biafra was preceded by what came to be known as the 'Igbo
pogroms' - a series of massacres committed by Hausa-Fulani tribesmen against
Igbo people and other people of southern Nigerian origin living in northern
Nigeria on 29th May, 1966 at Sabon Gari Market in Kano.
An estimated 8,000 to 30,000
Igbos and other easterners were killed between late May to late September 1966
causing a mass exodus of at least 1 million Igbos fleeing the Northern Region
into the East.
This greatly won the sympathy
of Dr. Kaunda who abhorred what he and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere saw
as ethnic cleansing.
The military coups and
assassinations in Nigeria that preceded the Biafra declaration, the tribalism
and attitude amongst others of Chief Obafemi Awolowo such as his declaration
that “starvation is a legitimate instrument of war" in the Biafran war
strengthened Dr. Kaunda and President Nyerere's resolve to support the
'underdog' in a 'just war', as the parallels with the Congo (Katanga) crisis
were all too raw and fresh.
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