In March 2026, with the support of the Society for the Study of Labour History, I visited the National Archives in Kew. During this research trip, I collected material for the third chapter of my PhD project. In my research, I investigate urban labour struggles in late and post-colonial Accra, the capital of today’s Ghana (1930-1965). I explore how shifts in the colonial labour system were reflected in the everyday lives of urban workers. Conversely, I investigate how different worker groups organised themselves and (re)imagined the boundaries of urban colonial labour politics.

The primary focus of this research trip focused on material produced during and in the aftermath of the Accra Riots (1948). The protests emerged from a longer history of restrictive colonial economic policies, which, throughout and after the war, concentrated the regulation of imports and exports in the hands of a few European companies. The immediate catalyst was a demonstration organised at the end of February 1948 by ex-soldiers demanding pensions and resettlement benefits the colonial government had promised prior to their service in World War II. When the march reached the governor’s residence, a British police officer opened fire. Several protesters were shot, and many more were injured.

The ex-soldiers’ protests subsequently spread into a colony-wide strike that lasted for several weeks. The protesters targeted, above all, the shops, office buildings and warehouses of those foreign trading companies whose dominance of the import and export trade had long been a source of discontent amongst the population. The strikers raised very concrete concerns about urban life in Accra, including how different groups negotiated issues relating to work, housing, prices, political representation, and racial discrimination in the workplace and beyond.

Meanwhile, many people’s immediate experiences during the Second World War and strengthening anti-colonial networks opened up new global political horizons and, although they were still only vaguely defined, new political possibilities. The way in which these different levels interrelated, overlapped or influenced one another and affected workers within the space of Accra was one of the main concerns during my time in London.

One of my primary focuses were the records of the Watson Commission of Enquiry (series CO 964). The commission was convened by Sir Gerald Hallen Creasy, the Governor of the colony, shortly after the riots. The declared goal was to identify the causes for unrest and to make recommendations thereupon. The commission compiled a surprisingly rich archive of petitions and statements from across different sections of the population and provinces that were collected after the protests. The files range from testimonies by policemen and ex-soldiers who directly participated in the demonstration to teachers, nurses, high school students, goldsmiths, ex-prisoners, and clerks.

A central theme in the petitions concerned the negotiation of working relations. Working conditions, wage disparities, and employment discrimination were frequently presented as both immediate sources of discontent and broader indicators of colonial subjugation. As such, petitioners’ claims often oscillated between rights-based demands for standardised working hours and salary schemes that compared with British standards, and outright rejection of colonial institutions that had introduced these schemes in the first place. Similarly, the Commission of Inquiry itself was part of a wider negotiation process for recognition. Both, the access to petition writing and the design of the Watson Commission, composed exclusively of British trade union experts and scholars, were challenged by petitioners for reproducing colonial hierarchies, and merely strengthening the legitimacy of the colonial government.

Through the petitions, I sought to understand how accessible these commissions actually were, who petitioned and under what conditions, and what they might tell us about those groups and individuals who appear only between the lines in the submissions. Engaging with the petitions revealed that the relationship between the commission, the colonial state and the petitioners was far from self-evident but actively negotiated by the petitioners. For example, the Commission often categorised personal experiences with job loss or imprisonment as ‘individual’, and isolated incidents of no broader relevance. In contrast, many petitioners grounded their claims in shared historical experiences of land expropriation and other past injustices, and deliberately cited other examples of affected parties in order to highlight the structural causes for the protests.

Overall, my research trip to London was an important step for my project. It provided me with crucial insights into both the negotiation of late colonial labour relations and the (im)possibility of adequate representation and communication between petitioners and the colonial state. The material raised many new questions and contradictions that challenged my perspective and will also shape the next steps of my project. I am very grateful for this opportunity and for the generous support provided by the Society for the Study of Labour History.

Rosa Lange, PhD candidate at the European University Institute.

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