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Read these letters from your brothers in Africa and the West Indies and write us to-day. Don't put it off for to-morrow. Do it now, and in this way help to make the Negro Worker a real fighting paper, through which the cries of millions of brutally enslaved and exploited black men, women and children will be heard in all corners of the world.
The Editor.


Workers Correspondence

The Situation in Nigeria (West Africa)

To the Editor of the "Negro Worker"

Dear Comrade,

We members of the oppressed Negro race of the British colony of Nigeria in West-Africa, have been cut off from the outside world for many years. Hitherto, we have had to conduct our struggle as best as we could with our own resources and without any kind of assistance. We have had to suffer many failures in our struggle because our leaders have mostly been lawyers who have received an English education and who have been trained to proceed according to English constitutional and legal methods. Until now the demand for the independence of Nigeria has never been raised. For a number of years we put our trust in the British Labour Party. Now we see that under the régime of the MacDonald Government our position is just as bad as under the previous Conservative Government, and our struggle for freedom is equally persecuted.

The majority of the inhabitants in our country (20 millions in all) are peasant cultivators. The working class is represented by the railway workers and the miners in the coal and tin mines. A certain number of Negroes are also employed in the Government service as small officials or employees. The total white population is not more than five thousand. The rank and file of the army consists of Negroes, but the officers are all whites.

British "Democracy" has provided our country with a "Legislative Assembly." It consists of forty five members of whom only three are elected (in the capital town, Lagos, by citizens who have an income of at least 100 pounds sterling per annum). All the remaining forty two members are nominated by the Government from the ranks of the State officials.

It must be looked upon as a great misfortune for our struggle for liberation that up to now all our political organizations have been under the leadership of leaders who have been hypnotised by "constitutional" illusions. this applies equally to the National Democratic Party, the Union of Young Intellectuals, the Young Negroes' Association and the Lawyers' Reform Club. That the Government by no means shrinks from the application of violence has been proved by the fact that in Lagos in 1928 ten persons, and in 1930 in Abo, forty five persons were shot down and killed. In the last-named case in Abo, the majority of the victims were women who had gathered in a harmless procession in order to make representations to the Governor that they were unable to pay the high taxes that had been imposed. A law has been passed making participation in the demonstrations against the Government punishable with imprisonment for life.

We are burdened with numerous and increasing taxes, such as income tax, poll tax, cattle tax, dog tax and export tax, as well as taxes based on the number of trees on each piece of land owned. All the land in the Northern Regions

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belongs to the Government, in the South there are peasant farmers. The cultivator of the soil has to pay a cultivation tax to the Government. Every Negro is compelled to perform unpaid forced labour for the Government for a definite number of days each year (in the North the average is twelve days). The tribal chiefs provide workers for compulsory labour in the coal and tin mines. 

the European firms which bring their goods to us fix not only the prices for their own goods, but also the prices for our own native products. On the other hand, wage rates paid by private employers are fixed by the Government. Our peasants can only obtain loans from private money lenders (no agricultural credit bank exists) and they have to pay one shilling in the pound every month as interest. No less than sixty percent of the peasants in the Southern regions are in debt. The Southern region has comparatively big peasants who employ hired labour. In the North there are mostly small cultivators who pay rent directly to the Government. 

A very interesting phenomenon among us is the organization of the so-called Ho-Committee. This organizes the illiterate Negro masses. The Ho-Committee has a representative in every street; a meeting takes place regularly every Sunday at which all the street representatives are present as well as representatives of the Mohammedan mosques (15 millions of the native population are Mohammedans, one million are Christian, four millions are "heathen"). In the existing situation the Ho-Committee must be looked upon as the only organization in opposition to the Government. Previously the Ho-Committee formed an independent political party, but to-day it is collectively affiliated with the National Democratic Party. There is a section of the West-African National Congress in Nigeria. 

Of our twelve newspapers in Nigeria, three are in the Jeruba language, the others in English. As a result of our participation in the international Negro Conference in Hamburg last year, some of us have realized that the political methods which we have employed in the past are insufficient for the struggle for emancipation. 

We are sending you this first letter so that you may have some information about our conditions and so that we may get into touch with you and receive your proposals and advice in the drawing up of a programme for our struggle.

With revolutionary greetings,

Lagos, 1931.    Nigerian.

An Appeal From Guadeloupe (French West Indies)

To the Editor of the Negro Worker.

Dear Comrade,

We have received copies of the French edition of your fighting paper, the Negro Worker, and greet your slogans and fully support them.

Up to the present we have not found any friends able to lead us on the correct way. We do not wish any longer to be fooled by the local intriguers, by those people who suddenly remember about the existence of the workers each time there is an election period. And so we firmly decided to carry on this line of class against class, considering that only this line can lead us to victory, and that having adopted these tactics - we shall be able to achieve the satisfaction of our demands, that have been extremely complicated to-day.

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