ODA files, lot 62 D 225, “US Representative in Trusteeship Council”
Memorandum by the United States Representative on the Trusteeship Council (Sears) to the Director of the Office of Dependent Area Affairs (Gerig)
- Subject:
- Future of French Togoland.
I had lunch today with Messrs. Grunitzky, Brenner and Sousseni, who are probably the three top pro-French African leaders in French Togoland. Mr. Grunitzky is a member of the French Parliament.
In the course of our conversation, the following information I believe represents their joint thinking with respect to the future of French Togoland.
In the first place, they are all delighted that the British Government is ending its trusteeship responsibilities in British Togoland. If a United Nations supervised plebiscite is held in British Togoland next year and the people vote for integration with the Gold Coast, the French Togolanders will immediately press the French Government for much more rapid progress towards self-government.
According to Mr. Brenner, if the French authorities did not restrain the Togolanders, he believed Togoland could be ready for self-government in five years. None of them wanted to join the Gold Coast or fall under the political control of Prime Minister Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party. On the other hand, if the French were too slow in promoting the people toward self-government, they said that the issue of liberty would enter into the picture and that in that case there would be strong agitation to leave France and join the Gold Coast.
[Page 1426]They said that the whole political face of French Togoland had changed for the better since the election of Prime Minister Mendès-France. They also said that the political lift which the forthcoming independence of the Gold Coast would give to all of West Africa would not be confined to trust territories but would include Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and all other French areas. They asked what was the difference between a trust territory and a colony, inasmuch as, to use their expression—“black men were involved in both places”. They expressed satisfaction that Governor Pignon was about to become the Chief Political Officer in the French Colonial Office. They seemed to believe, as I do, that he is a very understanding and forward-looking man.
After talking with these three very moderate African leaders, I conclude that the impact of Gold Coast independence will have a very profound effect almost immediately throughout West Africa and that it may easily bring about some basic changes in the structure of the French Union, probably bringing it nearer to the theory of the British Commonwealth.