Mass Politics: Strikes, Parties and Protest

After 1945 anti-colonial politics moved from small circles of lawyers and teachers to mass movements. Trade unions organized strikes, such as the 1947–48 Dakar–Niger railway strike in French West Africa, which lasted more than five months and won workers better conditions. Veterans, farmers, market women and students joined political parties that held rallies, ran newspapers and contested elections.

Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party in the Gold Coast, founded in 1949, and Julius Nyerere's Tanganyika African National Union, founded in 1954, built branches in towns and villages. Women such as Bibi Titi Mohammed, who led TANU's women's section, mobilized tens of thousands of members. Mass politics mattered because colonial governments could ignore petitions but found it harder to ignore general strikes and election landslides. It also forced Europe to choose between costly repression and negotiated transfer.