CULTURAL NEWS
Friday, February 16, 2007.
(Down Memory Lane)
THE GHANA EVENING – Friday, February 15, 1957
The Hatchet is buried
After Britain Parliament Declared
Gold Coast Independent Commonwealth Member
By: GEORGE PADMORE
After every storm there comes a calm. Similarly, in politics after every political conflict there must be a reconciliation between the parties.
This spirit of live and let live was fittingly demonstrated when Mr. William Ofori Atta, former member of the Ghana Legislative Assembly and now the official representative in Great Britain of the opposite National Liberation Movement, was among the first to congratulate Mr. Kojo Botio, Minister of Trade and Labour and Mr. Komla Gbedemah, Minister of Finance, after the House of Common had unanimously passed the proposed constitution for Ghana as the first African dependency to attain independent under the sagacious leadership of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
This gesture of reconciliation between former political opponents was a fitting climax to the historic event in Parliament earlier in the morning of February 8, the seventh anniversary of the coming into power of the Convention People’s Party which won its first general election on February 8, 1951. An event which led to the freeing of Dr. Nkrumah from prison and the beginning of the final struggle for independence legalized by the Ghana Act of Independence.
Conservation And Labourities Join in Saluting Ghana.
In presenting his White Paper to the House of Commons at 11 O’clock on Friday, the Secretary of State for the Colonies reviewed the origin and nature of the proposals embodied in the Gold Coast Government’s White Paper which was debated in the Legislative Assembly on the 12 and 14 of November last, and approved as amended in one small respect by a vote of 70 to 25. Mr. Lennox Boyd then went on to inform the House that, “the existing constitution of the Gold Coast is according to normal colonial practice, contained in an Order in Council. The amendments necessary or desirable on account of independence must similarly be made by Order in Council. The Order will have to be made after the Ghana Independence Act has received Royal Assent but before the appointed day that is before independence comes about (March 6).
“The final responsibility for the terms of the Order in Council must therefore necessarily rest with the United Kingdom Ministers. In drafting the constitution the United Kingdom Government has naturally taken the fullest possible account of the views of the Gold Coast Government “.
Commenting on his visit to the Gold Coast, to be official designed Ghana on March 6 – Independence Day to coincide with the Anglo-Fante Treaty of Friendship known as the Bond of March 6, 1844 – Mr. Lennox Boyd told the Members of Parliament that he had talks not only with the Governor, the Prime Ministers and his Cabinet, but with the Leader of the Opposition Dr. K.A. Busia, the Asantehene and other Chiefs.
*Source:
The Ghanaian Times - Friday, February 16, 2007. Page: 20
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