MOORE, GEORGE EDWARD

George Edward Moore (1879-1950) won a reputation in the Gold Coast and in Britain as an outstanding nationalist politician, traditionalist, and pan-Africanist.

He was born at Cape Coast, where he was educated at the Government School from 1886-95. Subsequently, he worked first as a treasury clerk at Cape Coast, and later as a clerical officer in the West African Frontier Force at Jebba, Northern Nigeria. He returned home in 1901 to become chief storekeeper in the service of the British expedition to Asante during the Yaa Asantewaa War of 1900, for which he received the Ashanti Medal.

A cocoa broker at Akuapem in the early 1920s, George Moore entered politics in 1924 as an uncompromising nationalist. He was a member of the Gold Coast Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (A.R.P.S.), on whose executive committee he served for several years. Moore and his closest associates, W. E. (Kobina) Sekyi, and Samuel Richard Wood, formed the anti-government and anti-imperialist wing of the A.R.P.S. after the Guggisberg Constitution of 1925 had split the leadership of the society.

He vehemently denounced the Guggisberg Constitution of 1925 had split the leadership of the society. He vehemently denounced the Guggisberg Constitution and the Provincial Council of Chiefs which had been institutionalised by the Native Administration Ordinance of 1927. When J. E. Casely Hayford and others accepted the Provincial Councils and decided to serve in the Gold Coast Legislative Council, Moore and Sekyi and their militant “rump” of the A.R.P.S. devoted most of their efforts to attempting to destroy the Provincial Council system. When the attempt failed, they tried to gain recognition from the government as the only body entitled to speak on behalf of the chiefs and people of the Gold Coast.

Until the historical reconciliation of the two parties – the Provincial Council of Chiefs on the one hand and the A.R.P.S. on the other – initiated by Justice Nii Amaa Ollennu and other high-ranking citizens in 1948-49, Moore and Sekyi consistently refused to work with either the Provincial Council of Chiefs or their collaborators, even when it meant weakening their united African stance against colonial domination.

It was this intransigent stance of Moore and his associates which split the united front of the country initiated by the Committee of Twelve, led by J. B. Danquah in opposition to the passing in 1934 of the Sedition Bill (which extended the definition of sedition), and the Waterworks Bill (which sought to shift the cost of water supplies in coastal cities from the government to the taxpayer).

Consequently Moore, in the same year, led a rival A.R.P.S. delegation of two to England, in addition to the delegation sent from the Gold Coast and Asante, to protest against the two bills. Although the delegation was a failure, the activities of Moore in England impressed Danquah, who stayed on after the larger delegation of which he was secretary, had returned home. In a congratulatory note dated June 7, 1935, Danquah told Moore’s delegation that their labours in carrying the case of the people of the Gold Coast to the supreme political tribunal of the Empire will, whatever the result, add to the honoured name of your Society and enshrine it in the hearts of our people.

Late in 1940, Moore succeeded Kobina Arku Korsah as the member for Cape Coast in the Legislative Council. Danquah hailed Moore’s election as a “swing of the pendulum from the professional man to the layman,” saying that it showed that “the day of the lawyer, as a lawyer” in the Legislative Council was over. He argued that Moore had a policy whereas his predecessor had none. Moore’s maiden speech in the Legislative Council in February 1941 was described as a notable statement of policy, a manifesto of a kind not heard in the Council before.

In his speech, Moore declared: “It is time we are given a better constitution,” and he respectfully drew attention “to the constitution just given to Trinidad where the elected members of the Legislative Council are equal with the appointed – nine officials and nine unofficial, the Governor having a casting veto.

Moore subsequently argued for African representation on the Executive Council, the appointment of Africans to higher posts in the public services, the need for proper administration of town councils, and free elementary education. A “revolutionary conservative,” Moore spoke strongly against the Native Authority Ordinance of 1944, which required that all organs of local government should henceforth be recognised by the central government. He demanded its withdrawal and the reenactment instead of the Native Jurisdiction Ordinance of 1883 (initially only applied to certain chiefs, but which formed the basis of native jurisdiction from 1883-1950). Moore was well known for his extreme political views, which were anti-governmental in nature.

Known as “Tufuhen”, (a work meaning “captain of a company”), Moore was a traditionalist who was influential with all the leading chiefs of the Gold Coast. He was an active participant in customary ceremonies, and became a captain of the Asafo (local militia) companies in Cape Coast. In the traditional councils of the Oguaa (Cape Coast) state, Moore was a prominent figure, and for several years was a member of the Cape Coast Town Council. Well-versed in the traditional political systems of the country, he declared in the Legislative Council in 1944 that sovereignty rested not in the chiefs but in the people.

As a pan-Africanist, Moore was interested in the progress of the African race and tenaciously fought the African cause whenever possible. While in England in 1935 he became an executive member of the International African Friends of Abyssinia, a society formed in the summer of 1935 to arouse the sympathy and support of the British public for Ethiopia, in the face of the Italian aggression against Ethiopia that was to come in October of that year. His colleagues on the executive included Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, C. L. R. James of Trinidad, the veteran pan-Africanist, and Amy Ashwood Garvey, the ex-wife of Marcus Garvey, the charismatic Jamaican who founded the Back to Africa movement which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s.

Moore on several occasions spoke on the pan-African platform of this organisation, reminding the imperialist powers that the days of the Scramble for Africa were past, saying that the watchdog of Africa was now awake to her duties and responsibilities, and maintaining that Ethiopia was the idol of Africans the world over, and, spiritually, their “Tower of Refuge”.
He died early in 1950.

S.K.B. ASANTE