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the Masses to illiteracy and to collect taxes by force where there is no employment.

The Government has actually employed all the Churches to help them in exploiting the masses by replacing Education by illiteracy. The status of the Education Policy laid down last year, which was much complained of as being too low, has been reduced 50% this year instead of being raised a little higher. Laws have also been made prohibiting people who refused to send their children to school to teach them at home and quite recently, a cripple was fined £ 5 in court for teaching some helpless children who assist him in his domestic work and to whom he imparts little fragments of education as a reward for their kindness, seeing that their parents could not afford to send them to school. In all the Mission Schools, the fees have been made so high that most peasant children have got to stay out of School and the Government has offered the Mission Schoools [[sp?]] good grant in aid if they do not teach anything above what the Government wishes. For this Grant-in-Aid, the Churches have all decided to keep within the limit of the Government's policy and the masses are thereby reduced to illiteracy.

At regards taxation. It has been decided to get rid of all non-Nigerian natives as the Government is of opinion that they are the people who would open the eyes of the Nigerians to unity and Mass movement. The policy adopted is to retrench all non-Nigerian natives from both Government and Commercial Employment and even from the Churches' roll of employment. When that is done, the Government would send a schedule to such unemployed non-Nigerian native to fill up and state his income per annum. If the individual fills it up with the statement "not employed", in an other few days hence, he receives a notice from the Government to quit the colony within a certain period. Should he fail to do so he is arrested and sent to jail for disobedience and after having served a term of about a month or two, he is released and then sent home under deportation as an undesirable criminal. So if any one who is a non-Nigerian native should decide to stay in any part of Nigeria, even though he may be unemployed, he has to say he is employed and pay such Income-Tax that may be levied on him by the Government to free himself from being black-listed as an undesirable criminal. As far as the Nigerians are concerned, whether they are employed or not, they are so terrorized that when the form is sent to them, they would enter certain income they are not receiving to save being sent to jail.

This is the position of things here. You my [[may?]] use the above information in the interest of our movement.

Fraternally yours, with good wishes, 
West African.

Let Us Close Ranks

As a Negro and a worker, born in what is known as the Commonwealth of Nations, I can say emphatically that every endeavor is being made by British Imperialism to keep us down with the aid of police and bayonets as soon as the workers try to demand bread. This life of hunger and rags, forced upon the Negro worker, is backed by the thumping, psalm singing, mealy mouthed missionaries.

Let us examine teh conditions of the Negro toiling masses; For an African, a working day which may mean anything from 10 to 20 hours. Workers engaged in water transport, taking ships down the coast are paid the miserable sum of 1/9 in return for filling the role of stevedore, sailors, firemen, cooks, etc. for the profit mongers of the Elder Dempster co. This gives the life to the pet stories of Free  
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Labour told so sweetly by the mealy mouthed Missionaries; not to mention the 1,000 able bodied slaves, "freed" by the Government for constructing Railways at 10 d per day, and even less. No tales are told by these hypocrits of the 3,000 miners employed in the Government Coal Mines getting 1/- per day and even as low as 5 d to 10 d per day for surface work. Let us examine the statement of Sir Percy Girouad (former Governor of Kenya) at the Native Labour Commissioners meeting 1912: comprised of British Judges, Missionaries etc.- "The only way to get the natives to make profit is to compel them to work."- Of course only the natives know what this means. Through the wholesale legalized plundering of backward peoples the Dole of the rich is paid enabling them and their papered prostitutes to have the full share of the good things of life, living a life of ease and idleness, wile we Negroes are unable to obtain the most primitive rights of man, namely- the food to keep us and our families alive. 

An outstanding example of the Class Justice is seen in the fact that Negro workers in England are expected to put up with one of the worst forms of humiliation under the "alien Registration Act" passed in 1920 by the scoundrel "JIX". 

In spite of the fact that the Negro worker is the most intensively exploited worker throughout the "Empire" these workers will be called upon to stand ready for the defense of the self same people who live upon their backs and force them into subjection-. Will the Negro workers allow themselves to be drawn into a blood bathe in the interest of Rent, Profits, and Dividends by a class of well fed snobs, crooks and cowards? No. The Negro Workers refuse to take part in crushing down any workers of any country for the profits of these slave owners. We realize that the same gang rob our class economically, and betray our class politically and that the only way to real freedom is by fighting against this gang with the unity of the working class of the whole world for a free commonwealth of Socialist Republics. For the politics of the ruling class have always meant the legalized plundering of members of our class- the producing class. 

Only by unity of purpose and solidarity can the workers go forward to smash the barriers and free themselves from a life of degradation and starvation. Not only by Indian Solidarity, nor by Chinese or African Solidarity, but by the world-wide solidarity of all Colonial workers and oppressed workers of all nations marching forward as a united whole against Capitalism and for the establishment of workers and peasants rule. 
You may publish my letter in the magazine. 
Fraternally yours, Jim Headley

(photo caption: Dockers loading a ship in West Africa. They work 12 hours for 1 shilling)