Office of the Historian

ODA files, lot 62 D 225, “Togoland”

Memorandum of Conversation, by the United States Representative on the Trusteeship Council (Sears)1

confidential
[New York,] November 23, 1954.
  • Subject:
  • Mr. Sylvanus Olympio’s Views on the Future of British and French Togolands.

This morning I had a long talk in my office with Mr. Olympio. After very careful and persistent questioning, I ascertained a number of his views about the future of the two Togolands.

While it was hard to get him away from philosophizing about the Togoland unification issue, I will record the answers which he gave to me in brief form.

[Page 1423]

He emphasized the appearance since last Spring of a new issue in British Togoland which he describes as “association” as opposed to “integration.” If a United Nations supervised plebiscite is to be held in Togoland in 1956, he says that the people of the southern part of the territory, if given the opportunity, will vote in favor of “association” of their territory as a federated part of the Gold Coast. On the other hand, he says if the issue is merely that of “integration”, by which their territory is absorbed into a unitary Gold Coast, the vote will be in the negative. He also says that the association idea is beginning to spread not only throughout the Ashanti area of the Gold Coast but also into the Moslem part of British Togoland itself.

He expressed some disappointment that the plebiscite should come jointly with the achievement of independence. He would much prefer that Gold Coast independence should come prior to the holding of any plebiscite in the trust territory.

With respect to French Togoland, he believes that the holding of a plebiscite in the British territory will create a strong political movement on the French side for the holding of a similar plebiscite except that the plebiscite question, he thinks, would concern itself with the question of terminating the trusteeship responsibilities of France. If the French Government should persist over a period of time in standing in the way of such a plebiscite, he volunteered that the Communist movement would begin to seriously establish itself in French Togoland. Even today, he observed, the Communists are distributing a profusion of pamphlets throughout the territory.

I asked him what would be the situation if the French blocked the plebiscite on the grounds that the territory was incapable of being economically self-sufficient. He intimated that the issue then would have to be whether the Togolanders desired to promote their future as an ultimate member of the French Union or as a federated portion of the Gold Coast within the structure of the British Commonwealth.

  1. Addressed to Robert R. Robbins, Adviser, U.S. Delegation. Drafted on Nov. 25.↩