Gambian politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may be characterized as conforming to a “patrician” model. It was dominated by a handful of educated Aku and Wolof who lived in Bathurst. This political elite was linked in a clientelist relationship with a larger number of Aku and Wolof in the Colony, but the Protectorate was largely excluded from the political process. The elite was by no means homogenous, but was divided into factions which were drawn up on the basis of personal and family connections, social and religious status, political ambition, and ethnic identity. The rivalry between these factions was the essence of politics, particularly after World War I.

The Forster family headed the dominant faction throughout this period. The first Samuel John Forster was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1886 and remained a member of it until his death in 1906. One of his sons, also called Samuel John, filled the vacancy and continued to serve until his death in 1940. The younger Forster was assisted by a network of relatives, friends, and clients, the most important of whom was his nephew, W. Davidson Carrol. Carrol was expected to become his political heir, but his untimely death in 1941 brought the Forster political dynasty to a close. This enabled the main rival faction in Bathurst politics, headed by Edward Francis Small, to secure representation on the Legislative Council for the first time.

The Rise of the Forsters: 1886–1900

Samuel J. Forster was born in Bathurst, probably in the 1830s or 1840s. His father was a freeborn Ibo trader who traveled to Freetown from Nigeria with two of his brothers to make a living and had then moved on to Gambia. A Wesleyan Methodist (either by birth or conversion), S. J. Forster worked as a clerk in the Commissariat Department in Bathurst in the 1860s before resigning to concentrate on commerce. He specialized in trading in rice and, thanks to family connections in the interior, he prospered; by 1875, he was said to be the owner of a house and land worth some £300, which made him one of the wealthiest men in Bathurst. As indicated in Chapter 3, he was a leading opponent of cession in the mid-1870s, but does not appear to have been involved in the Gambia Native Association (GN Assocn) in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Until the end of the 1950s, Gambian politics was essentially an urban phenomenon with the four-fifths of the population that lived in the Protectorate being excluded from national politics. However, the promulgation in 1959 of a new constitution, which allocated twelve out of nineteen directly elected seats to the Protectorate, transformed the situation. The People's Progressive Party (PPP), which was specifically founded to give a voice to rural society in national affairs, won more seats than any other party in the first nation-wide election in 1960. Despite suffering a setback when P. S. N'Jie of the rival United Party was appointed chief minister in 1961, it achieved an overall majority in the 1962 election and its leader, D. K. Jawara, was appointed premier. The party strengthened its position after the election, so that by independence in February 1965, it controlled three-quarters of the House of Representatives. The urban parties, in contrast, were by now in terminal decline. Consequently, a “green uprising,” a term coined by Huntington to describe the seizure of power by a rurally based political movement opposed to urban based parties, had taken place in Gambia.

The Origins of the People's Progressive Party

During the 1950s, the number of Mandinka living permanently in Bathurst (and Kombo St. Mary) increased significantly, with the recorded Mandinka population of the Colony rising from 4,115 in 1951 to 6,657 in 1963 (see table 1.5). Most Mandinka remained poorly educated and employed in low status jobs as laborers, petty traders, or domestics, but an increasing minority were now better educated and ambitious to advance themselves in the face of the economic ascendancy and social disdain of the urban literate community. Some of these were alumni of Georgetown's Armitage School. As noted in Chapter 1, Armitage was established in the 1920s to cater for the sons and close relatives of Protectorate chiefs, but after World War II, it increased its enrolment. Others had been “adopted” by Christian or Muslim families in Bathurst and had attended secondary schools in the capital, before obtaining clerical posts in the civil service or in the private sector.

This is the first full-length account of the modern political history of The Gambia, covering the period from the establishment of the British settlement of Bathurst on St. Mary's Island (site of the modern capital, Banjul) on the estuary of the River Gambia in 1816, to the overthrow of the elected government of President Sir Dawda Jawara in an army coup in July 1994. During this long period, British colonial rule gradually spread up river to form the British Protectorate of Gambia. Initially disputed over with the French, this territory subsequently was contested by African political movements seeking a transfer of power to an elected Gambian parliament. This was achieved with Gambian independence in February 1965.

Following independence, Gambians refuted the claims of skeptics, British as well as African, that such a small state could not long survive the economic challenges of statehood without being absorbed by its larger neighbor, Senegal; or only surviving as a client-state of its former rulers. Adroit political leadership kept the Senegalese at bay, even during the crisis years of the early 1980s, and established an uncommonly harmonious and unexpectedly equal relationship with Britain.

Doubts were also expressed about the political skills of the country's newly elected and inexperienced political leaders. Yet here too, The Gambia came to acquire a reputation both for political stability and an unusually democratic system of government. Credit for this enviable state of affairs goes as much to Gambians themselves as to their leaders. Gambian politics has been characterized by a lack of extremism: relations with the British were seldom rancorous and those between rival political parties conducted within a shared system of political beliefs that repudiated the systematic use of violence in pursuit of political objectives; or authoritarianism to maintain those objectives when once in power.

Likewise, no doubt reflecting their country's smallness, Gambians have escaped the pretensions and extravagant posturings of larger African countries in their external relations. Instead, a low-key realism and pragmatism has informed foreign policy decision making.

One of the most important developments in West Africa in the late 1940s and early 1950s was the sudden proliferation of political parties. Both before and immediately after World War II, most political organizations were of the “congress” type. They had loose-knit structures and sought to embrace all shades of political opinion to achieve specific (and limited) reforms, or to block undesirable legislation. Often as a result of an internal split, these congresses then gave birth to political parties that aimed to mobilize the mass of the population, both for immediate electoral purposes and to hasten the process of decolonization. As the political stakes became higher, rival parties, which often adopted a communal or regional complexion, were formed to challenge the monopoly of the dominant party.

This chapter shows how this transition from the broadly based congress to the more narrowly focused party occurred in The Gambia as elsewhere. Although the Bathurst Ratepayers’ Association (RPA), a typical congress organization, managed to win the first direct election to the Legislative Council in 1947, it was swept aside in the 1951 election by the colony's first genuine political party, the Gambia Democratic Party (GDP). Two other parties, the Gambia Muslim Congress (GMC) and the United Party (UP), were established by the time of the 1954 election. Nevertheless, party politics remained in a fledgling state at the end of the 1950s. Political parties remained undeveloped, with each depending on the personality and actions of its leader. They could therefore be described as “elite” or “patron” parties. Moreover, all parties continued to draw their support exclusively from the urbanized area in and around Bathurst, with the Protectorate remaining very largely excluded from the national political process.

Legislative Council Politics: 1941–47

The death of W. D. Carrol in October 1941, following that of Sir Samuel Forster in 1940, meant that for the first time since 1883, the African Christian community was not represented on the Legislative Council. Governor Southorn did not seek to fill the vacancy left by Forster's death, because he believed that Carrol could adequately represent Christian interests. However, after Carrol's death, Southorn invited the members of the Bathurst Advisory Town Council (BATC) to nominate a successor.