4. Crown Counsel in Accra

As I left the Gold Coast some seven years before, so we entered the Gold Coast on November 27 1956 through Takoradi harbour. My sister, Beryl, was there to meet us. So were Fred and Sam Anie, both of whom were stationed in Takoradi at the time. We were also met by a welcome letter from my cousin, Fifi Quartey, containing the princely sum of £200 as a gift to start us off in the country. It was a fantastic and most pleasurable surprise for which we were extremely grateful. In the money of the day, it must have represented a small fortune. Fred knew his way around the harbour as he had been doing business there on behalf of his company, the United Company of Africa (UAC). He quickly got our things organized, and were soon on our way to Accra. The road to Accra did not continue on the coast straight through to Accra; we had to pass through Swedru and Nsawam. At Swedru, we stopped to see my uncle, Bruce-Lyle, whom the family and friends had all called Baby Lyle since childhood. He was then the Magistrate stationed there.

It is a matter of regret to think that those relatives of mine would not extend the same welcome to me now as they did then. In Fifi's case, it is difficult to explain why. But some time in 1989 when I rang his house in Cambridge because I had arranged with his youngest brother, Kai, who was then visiting him, to ring and Fifi took the telephone, his first reaction when he heard who it was, “Oh, you want to speak to Kai”. I replied that I wanted to talk to him too, but the conversation which followed was rather forced and stilted. In Baby Lyle's case, it is no doubt due to the fact that when in 1966 the Courts of Ghana were reorganized and he ceased to be a judge in the country, he and his close family attributed his misfortune to me, as I was then acting as the Attorney General. It led to the extraordinary situation that thereafter, we from time to time visited his mother's home, but she, Lady Julia McCarthy~[* changed form M'Carthy to be consistent with an earlier spelling ]~, who had always been Auntie Awura Adjua to me, a sister of my grandfather on my mother's side, would not talk to us. We enjoyed going to chat with her urbane and intellectual husband, Sir Leslie McCarthy~[* changed form M'Carthy to be consistent with an earlier spelling ]~, lawyer, historian, himself a former Crown Counsel and judge, who in his old age wanted someone to talk to about world affairs and history.

We were met by a welcoming party of family members in the last house that my father built - “Mango House”, so named because of the abundance of mangoes at the site when it was built. I had never lived there before. There was the customary prayers said by a priest, to give thanks for our safe return and to pray for our future. Stella and I stayed at the house for the next three days or so. But it was clear that, however much we loved my mother, brothers and sisters who lived there, we would be happier on our own. And we continued efforts, started before we arrived, to get into a Government bungalow.

That was not easy. The increase in the number of indigenous civil servants, all asking for housing from the Government, had put a great deal of pressure on the limited number of bungalows and flats available. Sometimes one had to wait for a long time for a bungalow or flat to become vacant to move into. We were almost despairing of getting into anything early when we were offered a house just outside the Accra Racecourse. It was the oldest building on the Ridge. Built of wood on concrete pillars, half of it was in its hey-days, the Church for the expatriate community, and the other half was the home of the priest. I think we were offered the home of the priest, the other part being then occupied by another indigenous civil servant, Grey-Mills. Our luck in getting the accommodation was due to the fact that the building was due for demolition to make way for more Government office buildings to be put up. But as these plans often take time to materialise, those responsible thought that it could be used in the meantime for hard cases. The senior officers responsible for the allocation of accommodation were R.P. Baffour, whom I mentioned earlier as claiming to be the head of my family from Elmina, although I did not know of this claim at the time, and Michael Dei-Annang, the poet and public servant, who in Nkrumah's Republic became one of his closest advisers on African Affairs. I had approached neither for this favour, my application being pursued entirely by the Attorney General's Department. What I cannot say is whether the fact that both men knew me or of me made any difference. My mother would have preferred us staying with her longer, but she accepted our explanation without fuss. Before starting at the office, we moved to our new home. After taking the few days of grace granted to enable me to settle my personal affairs before starting work, I joined the office, which was then situated at left hand side of the main gate to the Ministries' compound built around the old white colonial Secretariat building, in Accra sometime in December 1956. I had already been a member of the Department for just over a year, that is since the 17th of October 1955. I arrived with quite a number of financial commitments, for the education of brothers, for support of my mother and for the payment of the fare for my wife, Stella, which I had undertaken to repay just before we left from England. As a result, I had very little left of my salary for Stella and myself. But looking back now, it was quite a handsome salary that I earned. I started on something like £840 per annum. But at that time, that amount could buy a decent small car. The first car that we bought, which we ordered just before leaving England through the agents in the Gold Coast, Edward Nasser, was a Borgward Isabella. I did not have to pay outright for it, as, like every senior civil servant, I was entitled to and took a loan repayable over some five years for it. But the point I make is that my annual salary at that time could have paid for the car. Years later, after many promotions to more exalted positions, I found that the salary I earned could not pay for a fraction of the cheapest cars on the market. Such was the erosion of the value of money as one progressed through the public services of my country.

The Attorney General's Department was then small indeed. Most of the personnel were members of the British Colonial Legal Service, liable to be transferred with or without promotion to other colonies. The Attorney General was George Patterson. Alfred Lonsdale was the Solicitor General but he had gone back to England prior to leaving the Department on health grounds. Acting in his position was A.H. (Fred) Simpson, who had only recently come to the Gold Coast as the Legal Draftsman, but had had to step into Lonsdale's shoes, soon after. He was promoted a judge of the High Court not long afterwards, leaving the country a few years after to go to Australia. But he was soon back in Africa; this time on the east coast, where he ended up as Chief Justice in Kenya in the 70s. Johnny Glover was next in line as Senior Crown Counsel. When he was promoted, it was to the Solomon Islands as Attorney General. As he said, he was moving to another part of the world where he would be in greater need of a speed boat than a car. But due to the acting position of Fred Simpson as Solicitor General, Johnny Glover was acting as the Legal Draftsman. Garvin Scott from Trinidad was the second Senior Crown Counsel. As the senior of the two Senior Crown Counsel at post, he was resident in Accra. Another Senior Crown Counsel was resident in Kumasi. He was in charge of Ashanti Province, which at that time consisted of what is now Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions, as well as the Northern Province, which was the rest of the Gold Coast north of Ashanti. F. Hilary Battcock held this position.

The most senior Gold Coast national in the office was Akilano (Lano) Akiwumi. He was a Crown Counsel. One other Crown Counsel was Edmund de Unger, a Hungarian thought to be a nobleman who had left Hungary and now held a law qualification from England. Then came the three Gold Coast nationals at the bottom of the table, all recruited in 1955, in order of seniority, Festus Amarteifio, Vincent Cyril Richard Arthur Charles Crabbe (called Charles Crabbe for short) and myself. We were all then Assistant Crown Counsel. We shared the same room which was fairly large in size. It was the classroom, which afforded us the opportunity to exchange views freely on any legal problem any one of us had. Sometimes we were joined by Lano who led the discussion.

Next door, was Lewis Rouse Jones, a somewhat eccentric character on loan from some British civil service department, acting as the consultant on the negotiations on the Volta River Project. Apart from Rouse Jones, other expatriates came to the Department on a temporary basis during the next five to six years.

I also came to meet two men in the administrative grade who had been friends of my father and who were kind to me. One was Mr. Djabanor, who was the senior administrative officer in the Attorney General's Department, and the other was Mr. Tawiah, who was clerk of the West African Court of Appeal. I saw Mr. Djabanor often in our house before I went to England. I was greeted on my return with the news that he was one of the witnesses to my father's will, but could not remember who the other witness was, the signature being undecipherable, although he remembered their signing the will together. He and my mother had wondered about the identity of the second witness from the time my father died for all these years. They thought that forgetting who he was affected the validity of the will and had kept the matter quiet. The will was shown to me, but I did not know the signature. My sister, Audrey, had been living with her husband, Ernest Kwabi Adisi, in Mango House together with my mother for some time before I got back. I did not know Kwabi before. Soon after my arrival, I saw Kwabi sign his name. It reminded me of the mysterious signature on the will, so I asked him whether he witnessed my father's will. Yes, he said. He remembered all the circumstances. I later asked Mr. Djabanor whether he remembered Kwabi Adisi signing the will with him as witnesses. Of course, he did. But what had been even more remarkable was the fact that my mother had for years worried about who this witness was, while all the time that witness had been staying in her house. She had never mentioned the subject to Kwabi.

I had little to do with Attorney General Patterson. He was engaged in discussions on the independence constitution of Ghana and was very often away to London. All I remember him asking us to do was to make recommendations for the purchase of books for the office library, of which more later. My regular relations were with my colleagues in the lower rungs, rising to the state of Senior Crown Counsel. But I occasionally had official contact with those near the top. I wished I had met Alfred Lonsdale. He had been the Legal Draftsman and was acting as Solicitor General just before his departure to the UK on health grounds. He had a reputation for being brilliant and I thought I could have learnt something from him, even though he was supposed to have had a quick temper. Because of Lonsdale's ill-health, Fred Simpson, later to become puisne judge in Ghana and, still later, Chief Justice of Kenya, was catapulted from his position as Senior Crown Counsel to that of Legal Draftsman and, shortly afterwards, to Solicitor General as there was that vacancy. I saw a bit of him and we were friends. He taught me one thing at an early stage, to try and avoid quarrels on paper. As he said an angry exchange of words can easily be forgotten, but not a document. But he soon moved on to become a High Court judge. I thought Johnny Glover, a small wiry man, later to become Attorney General of the Solomon Islands, a very sharp lawyer. It was always useful to discuss a legal problem with him. One might find after a laborious statement of a problem that he might help dispose of it by asking one illuminating question. It was difficult to learn any law from Garvin Scott, simply because he never gave reasons for any opinion that he gave. When he was elevated to the Bench, his judgments suffered from the same deficiency. But he was a very good social companion.

The composition of the Attorney General's Department at this time could be set against the public services in general by the time of independence. The Judiciary had a Ghanaian Chief Justice, Justice K.A. Korsah, and a number of Ghanaian judges: as President of the West African Court of Appeal, there was Sir Henley Coussey. In the High Court were Justices Acolatse, Adumua-Bossman, Manyo Plange, Ollennu, Quashie-Idun, Sarkodee Adoo and Van Lare. Their number exceeded, by far, the number of expatriate judges, who at the time were Justices Benson, Lingley and Windsor Aubrey. In the Civil Service, most of the high positions were manned by Ghanaians. It will be recalled that during the colonial period, the first African District Commissioners selected were Dr. K. A. Busia and Mr. E. L. Adu. Later Major Anthony, who had attained the highest officer status in the Royal West African Frontier Force during the Second World War was also appointed a District Officer. Dr. Busia had by independence joined the academic fraternity at the University as a Professor and later became the leader of the Opposition in Parliament to Nkrumah. E. L. Adu was, at the time of independence in charge of Africanisation of the Public Services. Major Anthony joined the infant Diplomatic Service in the country and had several postings, including Ambassadorships and High Commissionerships abroad at a later stage. Some said, perhaps, with a tinge of malice that Nkrumah deliberately kept him abroad because Nkrumah feared his leadership qualities if he were to stay in the country. The head of the Civil Service, the Secretary to the Cabinet, was Mr. Chapman-Nyaho. He was succeeded not very long after by E. L. Adu. They were supported in-depth by Enoch Okoh, Michael Dei-Annang, Robert Baffour, Chinbuah, Appeadu and others. The top echelons of the Civil Service was not wholly Africanised, but there was quite a number of Ghanaians in such positions. In the Attorney General's Department, however, all the Ghanaians were at the bottom of the ladder. This was consistent with what Sir Henley had told me on the day of my interview at the Colonial Office in London in 1951 that the Department had been the one place in respect of which Africanisation had been resisted by the British administration.

True to Attorney General Patterson's prediction when we first met in London, I started off with a work basket somewhat weighted in favour of criminal cases, especially on advice to the Police on dockets that they submitted. But work in the office was varied. Apart from advice and prosecution of criminal matters, there was a lot of advice of Ministries and departments on all kinds of governmental and civil matters. Members of the Department get to be known primarily as criminal lawyers as most of their public appearances in the courts are connected with criminal prosecutions. But their work load would include anything of a public law nature, such as questions involving the jurisdiction of courts, the powers of Ministers and Government departments and officials, workmen compensation, public acquisitions, contracts and torts generally. This was a time when following the legal procedure established under English law that the Crown could do no wrong, action against Government could not be brought without the fiat of the Attorney General. Any case in tort, therefore, had to come to the Department by way of a petition for authority to sue. The practice of the Department was to study the petition and supporting documents, request the Government department, office or official immediately affected to explain Government's position and, if there was merit in the petition, a recommendation for an appropriate ex gratia award was made to save the costs of proceedings. If the case had no merit whatsoever, the petition might be refused. In the few cases where the justice of the case could not be easily determined by us, the fiat was granted for the case to proceed in court. If one examined the law reports up to that time, therefore, one would hardly find cases of tort against Government. We did no conveyancing because the Lands Department had its own lawyers to deal with that; or with divorce except incidentally, for example, because the very nature of our “client” ruled a practice in divorce out of the question. It always, therefore, irritated me a bit when I heard of myself being described as a criminal lawyer.

Even before I had got that valuable advice to avoid quarrelling on paper, I ran into difficulties with the Police at an early stage. I was sent a docket on something like dangerous driving in which the Police were seeking confirmation to proceed against one person. The only problem was that this person had originally been the complainant in the case. The Diary of Action Taken, which always precedes the statements of witnesses in the Police docket and which is very revealing to read, showed that the person to be charged had, after the complaint, been treated as the complainant almost to the end of the enquiry. Then there was an entry in the diary to the effect that he was invited to see the investigating officer. The next entry was to the effect that he was to be charged with the offence of which he complained. There was no explanation either in the Diary or in the statements which followed for the sudden turn. I queried this, admittedly, in some strong language. But I thought that in the circumstances it was justified. A few days later I was called up by Garvin Scott. With him was Police Superintendent Carruthers, who wanted to know who had written such an opinion to the Police. I explained to Garvin why I had written the way I did. He had the courtesy to wait until the fuming Carruthers had left. Then he advised me to be more careful about my language on these matters. I must say that I later did several cases with Carruthers during which we enjoyed a friendly relationship and that was not due to the fact that I was always watching my language.

My first court appearances were as a junior to de Unger in the West African Court of Appeal (WACA). I was happy to sit and watch one of the great African judges of our time, Justice Coussey, who had been so helpful to me six years before, preside over that court. WACA was at the time limping to its end. Apart from Coussey, there was one permanent member, Verity J.A., who had formerly been Chief Justice of Nigeria. The third member was ad hoc, appointed for the session.

I was supposed to be learning the ropes in appearances on appeals from de Unger. He did one thing which made me think that there was not much that I could learn from him. After all, why should I learn anything from de Unger arguing an appeal when I had watched some of the best practitioners of the art perform before the Privy Council? His conduct which led me to this conclusion arose in this way. A point had been raised by appellant's counsel. Counsel just mentioned it without developing it further. But later, the judges wanting to help him out pointed out that there was substance in that point and wanted him to show them the authority for the proposition he had made. He was not ready with any authority. To accommodate him, the judges adjourned for a short time. But they resumed without counsel finding the authority. [D]de Unger was called upon to answer the appellant's case and was asked by Coussey P. if he was aware of the authority wanted. He was not. I could understand that counsel on his feet could be flustered by questioning from the bench and, therefore unable to provide an authority when asked. Free from the pressures on counsel on his feet, I started looking for the authority and, indeed, found it in Archbold. I passed it on to de Unger, who looked at it and turned the book down at the page it was opened. I whispered to him that that was what the judges were after and asked if he was not going to show it to them. He ignored me. But Coussey observed our conversation and asked de Unger to show him the Archbold lying in front of him at the page opened. He was obliged to. That was the end of the appeal, which succeeded. I soon began to have cases of my own in court. These cases were not before the Court of Appeal at that stage, but small prosecutions, first before Magistrates' Courts. My first case outside Accra, was a prosecution in Mampong in Akwapim before Azzu Crabbe, then a Senior Magistrate. My opponent was Dua Sekyi who was then in private practice. I made several visits, taking Stella with me. On one occasion, we went with my cousin Joyce (Kay) Odamtten. On another occasion, it was with Naawaa Torto. Stella and Joyce were quite embarrassed during their visit together when they were chased out of court by a persistent wasp.

The Gold Coast then had the system of Assizes which took place every quarter in the Assize towns of Accra, Cape Coast, Takoradi, Kumasi and Ho. The opening of the Assizes was marked by great pomp and ceremony. Distinguished personalities were invited to watch. The Assize judge dressed in his flowing scarlet robes and full-bottomed wig inspected a guard of honour in the court grounds. Then the judge, lawyers and guests went into court where the roll of cases was called and any special application which needed to be made with respect to particular cases was made and disposed of. The jurors for the session were selected by drawing names out of a box; those who wanted to be excused made their applications for consideration by the judge. From those who were selected, the juries of seven members for the serious cases to be tried by the judge and a jury; and three assessors for the other cases to be tried by the judge with the aid of assessors, were selected in each case. After these formal matters, the Assize judge would serve his guests refreshments. The real business of the court began the next day and continued more or less on a day to day basis until the roll was exhausted.

The first time I appeared in an Assize was in Accra, with Lano as my senior. We appeared then before Justice Benson. I had known Akilano ever since I could remember. His father, Augustus Molade Akiwumi, was called to the English Bar before my father. He had read law at Cambridge, where Lano also went and had practised in Accra. At one time during the colonial era when African Magistrates were sought by the British administration, the senior Akiwumi had been a Magistrate. He later became a member of the Ghana Court of Appeal and, thereafter, the Speaker of the House of Parliament. He and my father were friends, and he had the habit of coming round to greet such friends on every New Year's day, sometimes with one of his sons in tow. Lano was several years my senior at Achimota. The brother after him, Akilebu, who became an engineer and worked for many years with the Ghana Supply Commission, was also a year ahead of me at school. But the younger brother, Akilowu, who did medicine, was my classmate. Lano was a friendly, carefree person. This attitude was, without the fault of either of us, to lead later to some strain in our relationship. He was also a very good teacher. As his junior in a case, he would tell you which witnesses he would like you to take, so that you prepare to examine them. As you started examining your witnesses, he would be beside you ready to give any assistance needed. But suddenly you realised that he was no more there. He had just slipped out without your noticing and that you were all on your own. It was very good training.

After that, I took the Criminal Assizes in Accra and a few times in Sekondi Takoradi. In Accra, apart from Justice Benson, I appeared at Assizes before my uncle, Justice Manyo Plange, known by everybody as “Uncle Jack”. He was a formidable personality. Over six foot tall, he had a strong, deep voice, and was impeccably turned out every day, sporting a carnation in his button hole. He had been a policeman and Crown Prosecutor in his younger days. He was in the Police Force when he qualified as a barrister. But in confirmation of what Justice Coussey had said, he was kept out of the Attorney General's Department, then more often called the Law Office, for quite some time in the 1930s. Sir Leslie McCarthy, whose family hailed from Sierra Leone, was the African who had most recently served as a permanent officer in that Office. Before Sir Leslie, the only indigenous person who had been admitted into the office was Sir Emmanuel Quist who, in his old age, became the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. There is the story about how Sir Emmanuel came to leave the service which well illustrates the conditions of the country at his time, and also gives an idea of the hazards run by a prosecutor. According to that story, he used to travel to Cape Coast to prosecute by bicycle, as motor vehicle transport had not come to the country. On one occasion, while he was in Cape Coast, he was informed that some people on the route to Accra, probably, people he had prosecuted before or whose relative or friend had suffered such fate, have been threatening to kill him on his way back. Sir Emmanuel finished his assignment in Cape Coast. But instead of cycling back to Accra, he cycled on to Sekondi, where he took the next boat to Accra and, on arrival, resigned.

Anyway, Manyo Plange, after qualifying as a barrister, prosecuted at first as a Police Prosecutor. Even when the Law Office was short of Crown Counsel and he was invited to conduct criminal cases on behalf of the Office, he was obliged to go back to his Police duties after an assignment. This went on for some time until the Inspector General of Police of the day confronted the Attorney General and asked him to take a decision as to what he wanted to do with Manyo Plange; did the Attorney General want him or not? Faced with that stark choice, the Attorney General agreed to have Manyo Plange as a permanent Law Officer. He acquired the reputation of being the best prosecutor the country had ever known. As a cross-examiner, he probably had only one equal in his day, his cousin Albert (Agbado) Heward Mills, who was the great criminal defender. I only saw Uncle Jack prosecute once when I was a very young boy and the proceedings were then not very meaningful to me. But I came to meet Uncle Albert at the Bar and even had him as an opponent in a couple of cases that I did. He once held a watching brief for one of the commercial companies which was the complainant in the criminal case. So he sat behind me as I stood on my feet to examine and cross-examine witnesses and tried to suggest the questions which I should ask. I found this quite a nuisance. But the criminal cases were prepared and conducted with admirable care and skill. He was the leading defence counsel in a murder case which I prosecuted in Accra. The murder was committed in a village some way out of Accra. It was obvious from the way he cross-examined the prosecution witnesses that he had taken the trouble to visit the village and compared the witnesses' evidence on the depositions with the facts on the ground. In one other case which I did against him, I just sat and admired his skill in cross-examination as he slowly led my chief witness unsuspectingly step by step into a trap. He eventually came to a point when he put a question to the witness. I knew that if my witness answered yes, it was bad for my case; if he answered no, it was equally bad for the case. At that point I jumped up, extended my hand and said enthusiastically, “Congratulations, Uncle Albert!” He took this with his wry smile and sat down. If the standard of cross-examination of Uncle Jack was as high, then I am sure that a clash between the two would have been a real battle between giants. Uncle Jack was supposed to have done his cross-examination without a note, usually in a conversational manner with the witness. I tried this when I thought I was well-experienced enough. But I could never manage it in complicated cases.

He was posted to Nigeria as Senior Crown Counsel just before I went to England. There he was elevated to the bench and, was some time thereafter posted back to Ghana. I think he, for quite some time, disputed his seniority on the bench with Justice Van Lare who was elevated in the Gold Coast about the same time. As a judge, he insisted that lawyers who appeared before him should be properly dressed. They had to be not only in their black jackets but also in a dark pair of trousers. He did not insist on a flower in the button hole but he only recognized those who had their jackets buttoned. If at any time a lawyer was addressing him and his jacket became unbuttoned, he ceased to take a note of the lawyer's submissions. As the judge's notes were the only record of the proceedings, lawyers soon stopped to protest at the judge apparently refusing to note down the submissions. He would quickly point out to the lawyer in his booming voice that he could not see him. This brought about a quick search for and correction of whatever lapse in appearance caused his disappearance from the judge's view. I have seen him reduce a lady lawyer of some seniority to tears with a few sharp words because the lawyer was making too much noise with her high-heeled shoes in his court. He was known as the terror of the courts. He took his skills as a public prosecutor on to the bench. He wanted Crown Counsel to conduct their examinations and cross-examinations in the same orderly manner as he would have conducted them himself and, very often, took over the questioning of the witness if, in his opinion, Crown Counsel was not following such order. That was most irritating and disconcerting to Crown Counsel, who found himself helpless as the judge assumed Counsel's functions. I remember de Unger complaining to me once about the conduct of Manyo-Plange. de Unger said he had made up his mind that next time he appeared before Manyo-Plange, he was going to ask each of his witnesses his name, address and occupation and then invite the judge to take over the examination. de Unger did not know that Manyo-Plange was my uncle whom I often saw, so I suspected that he did not expect me to convey the message to my uncle and I did not.

To me he was very courteous and encouraging. I did not consider that he interfered with my conduct of cases very much. But that I took to be the indulgence of a fond uncle. His wife, Auntie Gladys, was a delightful woman with an exquisite sense of humour. They had no children. But they loved people around them. While a student in London, I was under unexpressed orders to join them for dinner as often as possible. If I missed two consecutive days, the next time I appeared, I was met by Auntie Gladys at the door with the question, “Why have we not seen you for so long?” Any explanation that I gave was answered by, “You go and tell that to your uncle. He is sitting in there. But I do not think he would be talking to you.” True enough, when I went in, I found a heavy, expressionless face which only thawed as the evening wore on. I decided too late to take a recording of his recollections of his life. What I did was to get him to talk, taking his recollections wherever he wanted, with the hope that I would edit it all later. He started from his childhood, and had just got to the time when he was called to the Bar and returned to the Gold Coast when he died. The rich source of contemporary history which I had hoped to tap from him was lost.

I also took the Sekondi/Takoradi Assizes a few times. The judge then stationed there was Justice Charles Acolatse. I had known him as Uncle Charles and his wife, Auntie Mary, from my childhood, when he was a lawyer in private practice. He was one of the earlier African Magistrates, after Sir Samuel Okai Quashie Idun and Justice Van Lare, appointed to the bench. By the time I returned from England, they were all High Court judges. Uncle Charles would not have described himself as a profound lawyer. But his judgments were always simple and sound. He and Auntie Mary were always kind to Stella and myself, taking the responsibility of looking after us when we were in Sekondi/Takoradi. The judge's bungalow was then in Windy Ridge in Takoradi, where the prosecuting Crown Counsel for the Assizes was allocated a house during his stay. We often went for meals, drinks and games at the Acolatses after the Court sittings, which were held in the old courthouse in Sekondi. We continued seeing quite a lot of them when they were later moved back to Accra and after he had retired from the bench. Uncle Charles died in 1967. But Auntie Mary is today still one of our closest friends.

About the most memorable case which I dealt with at the Sekondi Assizes was the trial of Nana Sanwuabra Atta Agyemang, the Paramount Chief of Sefwi Ahyiaso, who together with some of his supporters were charged with murder of a man by beating him to death. The charge against the Chief was on the basis that he had ordered the beating and supervised it. He was convicted of manslaughter and given a long prison sentence. Years later, I was once driving from the Ministry of Justice to the Public Works Department on the Kinbu Road, when a man splendidly attired in kente stopped me. It was a determined effort on his part to get me to stop. I did. He jumped into my car and asked me to drive on. He had a commanding look about him. It was unusual of me, but I complied. After I had started the car, he asked me whether I remembered him. I confessed I did not. Majestically, he told me that he was Nana Sanwuabra Atta Agyeman. He had finished his prison sentence. I did not know whether I should stop the car immediately and let him out. I wondered whether he intended to do me some harm. I soon found that he did not. He was rather enquiring after my welfare. We continued a friendly conversation for a while until suddenly he asked me to stop the car and he got out. That was the last I saw of him.

He was not the only one who reminded me years later of how I had treated him when I was prosecuting him. I once met another man at a requiem mass in Accra. The Church was so full that I was standing outside and chatting to some others in the same position as myself. The conversation was joined in by someone I did not recognise, who asked me whether I remembered when I prosecuted him in the High Court in Accra some years ago. Of course, I realised that to people like him, their one tryst with the law would leave an indelible memory. For a prosecutor dealing with so many cases, one case may seem very much like another. I had to confess once more that I did not. He said, do you not remember when I was in the dock and I asked to go to the toilet and you agreed on condition that I was accompanied by a Police Officer? I did not but, as it was the precaution I would in any case have taken, I had to concede to the freshness of his memory.

Before my appearances at the Sekondi/Takoradi Assizes, I had taken my first High Court case outside Accra. It was before Justice Kofi Adumua Bossman. Friends called him “Ladi”. When I heard it first, I thought it was a comment on his success with the ladies but I believe it was actually his name. In my opinion, he was the most erudite of our Ghanaian judges of his age. He had had a very successful practice at the Bar. With Justice Ollennu and Justice Akuffo Addo, he must have cornered the major legal work available when in practice. As judges, Ollennu was the most prolific writer both on and off the bench, Akuffo Addo expressed himself in the most beautiful language, but Adumua-Bossman wrote the most learned judgments. As a practising lawyer, he had the reputation of abandoning all points in favour of what he thought the most important and winning his cases on that. But his judgments did not justify that impression and, as his practice days were before I returned to the Gold Coast as a lawyer, I was unable to judge for myself. Of all the many messages of congratulations which I got some years later when I was made Director of Public Prosecutions, I recall his best which started with, “As the oldest friend of your father, I congratulate you...”

The case in Cape Coast before Justice Adumua-Bossman, which I mentioned earlier, was a simple application for bail pending appeal brought by someone who had been convicted by the High Court, which I had been instructed to resist. These applications came on quite often and one soon knew the submission of the Crown by heart. Unless obviously wrong, the conviction was taken to be correct. Bail was in such circumstances granted rarely, the main case being where the sentence was so short that it would have been served by the time the appeal came on for hearing. The sentence in that case was one of those in which different views of its length vis-a-vis the possible date for the hearing of the appeal could be taken by different people. Justice Bossman disposed of the case on the ground that he personally did not like granting bail to a convicted prisoner thereby giving him false hopes of eventual release on appeal and then having him thrown back into jail again after the appeal had been heard and the conviction confirmed. He would rather make an order to expedite the hearing of the appeal, which he did.

I retain two recollections of that day. Not knowing how long it took to Cape Coast, and not wanting to be late, Stella and I started off from Accra when it was still dark. I was the butt of jokes from Stella for a long time after that as we arrived in Cape Coast so early that it was still quite dark and we had to spend hours waiting for the city to wake up and the courts to open. The other recollection, reinforced by a study of the rolls for Assizes in that jurisdiction, was that court work was so light that if the lawyers did not have any other work engagements to occupy them, they would be tempted to succumb to the indulgences of drink from very early in the day. The court that morning finished its business at about 11 am. We had several invitations from colleagues at the Bar to drinks immediately after. It might have appeared unfriendly but we declined them all.

I had further opportunities of appearing before Justice Bossman but they were in Accra. The first time was on the detention case of Kofi Dumoga and others in the High Court. The other times were when he was in the Supreme Court.

Most of the experiences which I have related took place during the period after the country had been translated from the Gold Coast colony to independent Ghana. Before our return, Nkrumah had won another election run earlier that year, which was bitterly fought over the question of whether Ghana should become a Federal State, as demanded by the federalist party, the National Liberation Movement (NLM) based in Ashanti, otherwise popularly known as “Maatemeho”, literally meaning, I have separated or broken off myself, and the CPP of Nkrumah. His pre-independence election victories, starting from the first which he won in 1952 under the Constitution based on the recommendations of the Coussey Committee, after which he came out of prison to become the first Prime Minister in the British colonies in Africa South of the Sahara, until the 1956 elections, all took place in my absence. I got news of how these elections were conducted while I was at Oxford from friends who joined me there. Those friends were not supporters of the CPP and they said derogatory things about its performance and the causes of the political violence in the country which started about that time. I was quite impressed with the performance of the CPP and thought that perhaps the position taken by dissenting friends was biased. I had for some time thought that the problem with our intellectual leaders was that they thought they had a divine right to succeed the British, so they did not do as much as Nkrumah's party to win the trust of the ordinary people. This feeling strengthened with time after my return. Independence followed only a few months after our arrival in Accra, that is on the 6th of March 1957. It was a memorable occasion. Prior to that there had been anxious moments when the demands of the NLM resulted in a last minute appointment of a constitutional expert, Sir Frederick Bourne, to look into the matter. The NLM boycotted Bourne. Independence was, however, granted after the British Colonial Secretary, Lennox Boyd, had visited the Gold Coast and had come to the conclusion that independence under a unitary government had the support of the majority of the people. All these manoeuvres created an atmosphere of tension, uncertainty and excitement. But eventually the great day arrived. I was not at the Old Polo Ground in front of the Parliament building when at midnight before the 6th of March, independence was proclaimed by Nkrumah from the podium, the British flag was lowered and the new Ghana flag raised. I thought it was wiser to avoid the crush of the crowd. Stella has always regretted this decision not to join the crowd in celebration. I have often seen the film of the proceedings and, although I regret depriving Stella of the opportunity, still feel I was right to have stayed at home.

After independence, the excitement in our Department began. To our responsibility, was added cases with a political dimension. The very first one was indirectly to have a marked influence on my life for the next few years. The Government decided to deport the leaders of the Moslem community in Kumasi, Alhaji Amadu Baba and Alhaji Othman Larden Lalemie, on the ground that they were not Ghanaians but Nigerian citizens. The reason for this must be the suspicion of Government that some of the disorders in Ashanti were caused by Moslem youths and that these leaders had been instigating their activities. When the deportation order came out, it was couched in the formula which soon after gained recognition as the formula which got rid of undesirable aliens whose deportation was ordered by Government without assigning any specific reasons. The order stated that their continued presence in Ghana was not conducive to the public good. But the Ghana Nationality Act which had, by this time, been passed by Parliament provided that no Ghanaian national could be deported. So they challenged the order on the ground that they were Ghanaian nationals. The affidavits in support of their case showed a ramification of family relationship and birth which they claimed made them such nationals. I was not involved in the case in any way. The Attorney General, George Patterson, advised on it. I believe his advice was that the matter was not free from doubt. This did not satisfy the Government. What was more, Government must have asked him to present the case in court. He probably had not expected such requests in cases where he did not agree with the proceedings in court. Geoffrey Bing, who had for a number of years been Nkrumah's constitutional adviser, without any official governmental designation, was asked to do the case. From then on, we all knew that Patterson was on his way out and was to be succeeded by Bing. In fact, the first time I was introduced to Mrs.(Teddy) Bing, her opening remark was, “Oh, you come from that useless office. You'll soon see what will happen to you.”

I had met Bing before. That was at the home of our dear friend Jytte Cartright. Jytte was introduced to Stella and me by Lano and his wife Doreen. Jytte was Danish and sweet; she had followed her father to the Gold Coast, where he was manufacturing soap by the Korle Lagoon. She married her father's partner, Hank Cartright, who was about her father's age. By the time we met her, Hank was not around. We never met him. The marriage could not have been successful. Jytte's home was a meeting place of all sorts of interesting people. It was there that I ran again into the old English lawyer, Harry Verney Alfred Franklin, known by all as “Mungo”, an allusion to the explorer, Mungo Park. The last time we had met before this was at Hans Crescent in London, when he had told me about my father collapsing in court and he, Mungo, having to carry him out. We often met Mungo at Jytte's for tea and he later turned into our regular tea guest, remaining in that position until we left for England in 1982. Later, when Jytte had got her divorce from Hank, she married the Danish architect, Max Gerlach, who survived her. Later, when we had got to know Jytte well, she became more or less my personal banker, as indeed she was to some other of her friends. She told me that she had some money lying about, so if ever we needed anything we should ask her and pay back when we were able to. I occasionally used this facility. I am glad that I managed to pay her back all I asked of her. Although when she died, our children received gifts from her. I remember it was at Jytte's that Bing made the point about the incongruousness of our using post office boxes as our addresses in divorce petitions. As the English divorce practice, which we followed in the Gold Coast, required the petitioner should state where they had, as a married couple, cohabited since their marriage. Imagine, said Bing, someone going to open such a letter-box; he would have to shut it quickly in embarrassment because of what he sees inside. Bing was interested in Stella keeping up her Swedish, Finnish and German, he did not mention why at that stage. But he was some years later to send both Jytte and me on separate missions unknown to each other to Southern Africa. By then, he was my Attorney General. Looking back now, movement in the Department appears to have been quite staggering in rapidity. Bing came to head it in September 1957. Fred Simpson was soon confirmed as Solicitor General. But he did not last long in that office before he was made a High Court judge. Johnny Glover was promoted out of Ghana to the Solomon Islands. Garvin Scott became Solicitor General after Fred Simpson. Hilary Battcock was brought down to Accra as the senior of the Senior Crown Counsel. Akilano Akiwumi was promoted to Senior Crown Counsel and posted to Kumasi. Later, Festus Amarteifio was posted also to Kumasi as Akilano's junior.

But the Department was not the only organisation dealing with the administration of justice which had a rapid change of officers during this time. There was a steady stream of retirements from the bench after independence. Justice Lingley retired within two months of independence and was replaced by Justice H.C. Smith, and Justices Dennison and Benson retired within a few months from that. Ghana at that time decided to break away from the system of appeals to the West African Court of Appeal (WACA) which had existed during the colonial era, in terms of which the appeals from Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and The Gambia went first to WACA before going, if need be, to the Privy Council. Ghana withdrew from WACA and established a Court of Appeal of its own. This left the curious situation that the deserted Court continued with its President being no less a person than the Ghanaian, Sir Henley Coussey. The new Court of Appeal had Sir Arku Korsah, the Chief Justice, as its head and Justice Van Lare was promoted from the High Court to join him. The third appointment to the Court was Justice Granville Sharp, who came from the Bar in England. The appointment of Van Lare led to the retirement of Justice Quashie-Idun, who was previously senior to him. Several vacancies were created by the retirements and necessitated further elevations. Justice Murphy from the Magistrate's bench filled one of them, and Fred Simpson from our Department filled another. When in 1958 Justice Windsor-Aubrey retired, he was succeeded by Garvin Scott from our Department. All the new appointees were expatriates. That appeared odd, having regard to the fact that Ghana had had a legal profession with a long history and that the last appointments of judges before independence, were Justices Adumua Bossman, Ollennu and Sarkodee-Adoo, all drawn from the Bar. But part of the problem was that during the war years, not many went from the Gold Coast to read for the Bar in England or Ireland, the two places where its lawyers qualified in and, therefore the newly independent country was suffering from a shortage of lawyers of the right age and experience from whom the judges could be drawn.

All this movement created an atmosphere of excitement and intrigue. For those of us not immediately involved, it was like watching a thriller unfold.

I managed to escape from Geoffrey Bing's notice for a few weeks. He had his preoccupations when he arrived. But it was not long before he asked me to be counsel for the Commission appointed to look into the affairs of the Akim Abuakwa State. From then on, I probably worked with him more closely than most officers in the Department. By any measure, he was one of the most fascinating men I ever met. He had the reputation of being the sinister legal adviser of Nkrumah. And indeed, he had the grin to match that reputation. Some time after I had got to know him, in a reminiscent mood, he told me of his experiences during the last Great War in which his face was shot up and he had massive facial surgery. Indeed, he had the habit of passing the tips of his fingers round the edges of his face as if testing whether it was still there. I concluded that his grin might not have been due to an inward evil spirit but to the results of the surgeon's efforts. He was disliked alike by the Ghanaian public and by his own countrymen from Britain. It was one of his countrymen who, in the early days when Ghana was still a monarchy under the British Queen, welcomed a fellow-countryman by saying: “Welcome to the Bingdom of Ghana.” Apart from Nkrumah, he appeared not to have had a friend amongst the Ghanaians with whom he worked in the Cabinet. He gave the impression of fawning on politicians, which probably made them contemptuous of him. Except for the time after he was so ill that he was almost certified dead, he never, as far as I can remember, took leave. The explanation given for this was that he was afraid that, if he stayed away long enough, his job would be taken away from him. There were many times when rumour was strong that he was going to be removed. Somehow, a timely crisis always saved him.

From time to time, during Bing's tenure as Attorney General, Nkrumah appointed a Ghanaian as Minister of Justice. Some of my Ghanaian colleagues always welcomed such announcements which appeared to cut down Bing's influence. I retained a more open mind. Ako Adjei was one such Minister. Once in office, Ako Adjei thought of belittling Bing as he had to show Bing who was boss. They occupied two offices with the office of the Solicitor General between them. Ako Adjei enjoyed summoning Bing to his ministerial office several times a day. Sometimes no sooner had Bing got back to his office than the Minister asked him to come back. This went on for some time, until one day in the famous one o'clock news it was announced that Ako Adjei had been moved. Ako Adjei came to the office that afternoon in a definite state of shock. Bing could not hide his relief from me. “Austin”, he said, “the position was simply intolerable!”

As I said earlier, my first major contact with Bing was when he selected me to act as counsel for the Commission of Enquiry appointed to look into Akim Abuakwa affairs. The Commission of Enquiry consisted of a sole Commissioner, Judge Robert Jackson, who had recently acted as land boundaries Commissioner but had before been a High Court judge, I believe both in Ghana and Nigeria. Akim Abuakwa had a paramount chief at that time, Okyenhene Nana Ofori Atta II, who had been one of the leading chiefs against Nkrumah's CPP in southern Ghana before independence. Akim Abuakwa was the home of Dr. J.B. Danquah, the lawyer, writer and politician, a member of the Akim Abuakwa royal family, “who but for the accident of birth” as said by the Coussey Committee report, would himself have been Chief. For years, he was a leading light in the country's independence movement, a member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) of which Nkrumah became Secretary-General, but from which he broke off to form the CPP. He had been an implacable opponent of Nkrumah since then. The Okyenhene, who was a close relation of Dr. Danquah, had supported his cause.

But Akim Abuakwa was also the home of Ministers in Nkrumah's Government like Aaron Ofori Atta, one of the sons of Nana Sir Ofori Atta I, the predecessor of the present Okyenhene, and of Kwaku Boateng. The Okyenhene was in the capital of the State at Kibi. But as Akim Abuakwa is a matrilineal community, Minister Ofori Atta, whose mother came from the Kukurantumi in the Adonten Division of the State, he saw himself as coming from that division. As did Kwaku Boateng, later to become the Minister of Interior. Before that, he was a Deputy Attorney General under Bing, which made people think that he was being groomed to take over the Attorney Generalship. From this Adonten Division, led by the Adontenhene, Nana Kwabena Kenna, the Chief who was next in importance in the State, the CPP drew its support. The people of the Adonten Division had accused the Okyenhene of all kinds of maladministration leading to losses of money and prestige of the State. Further, the Okyenhene was charged with being against the CPP and making life difficult for those who became members of that party. These were the matters that the Commission was to look into. Some of the charges raised went very far back in history. One then learnt that the Ghanaian would appear to support his Chief and to make all sorts of approving noises to his actions as long as the Chief appeared powerful. But once there is suspicion of the power having deserted him, then charges which he did not know existed before will be remembered and brought against him. The witnesses could be divided on straight party lines.

The procedure in Commissions of Enquiry in Ghana by this time had been established by the adoption by the Commission of Enquiry established to enquire into the disclosures of Captain Benjamin Ahwaitey, which involved the politicians Amponsah and Apaloo, of the procedure in the Lynskey Tribunal in Britain. Bing himself acted as counsel in the Awhaitey Commission. According to this procedure, the proceedings were not a prosecution but merely a fact finding body with no accused person(s). It was left to the Commission itself to decide which witnesses to call. Counsel for the Commission was responsible for the statements taken from the witnesses which counsel studied with the Commission and between them decided which witnesses would advance the enquiry of the Commission if called. There were a few differences from the precedent established by the Lynskey Tribunal: counsel for the Commission in Ghana would have to examine the witness in chief and then immediately turn to cross-examine and there was no statement to the effect that no prosecution would flow from the report of the Commission.

As counsel for the Commission, I had to take the statements of the witnesses. I was given the assistance of Police Officers and I travelled to various parts of Akim Abuakwa collecting statements from potential witnesses for examination by Judge Jackson and myself. I was accompanied by Stella on most of those trips, living in various resthouses for various periods. We enjoyed the opportunity that this gave us to know Akim Abuawa, visiting Kibi, Tafo, Bunso, Akwatia and other places. The proceedings of the Commission gave me a lesson in self-preservation when it was disclosed by several of the witnesses called that they carried both the CPP and the opposition party cards, producing the appropriate one as and when necessary. The Commission resulted in a finding of mal-administration against the Okyenhene. He was destooled and another Paramount Chief of Akim Abuakwa was installed. When he died, Ofori Atta II regained the Stool.

On my visit to the western part of the State, in the diamondiferous area of Akwatia, to take statements, I was accompanied by Kwodwo Boison. We paid our respects to the Divisional Chief who, as custom demands, gave us presents of money and whisky. I was embarrassed by this because I was aware of the Civil Service General Order to the effect that presents should not be accepted by officers in the course of the performance of their duties. There was an exception to this rule, which said that in situations and gifts from chiefs were specifically mentioned, where refusal of the gift would lead to embarrassment, the officer was to accept the gift but must surrender it immediately to his head of Department. We duly reported the gift of money and whisky to Bing on our return to Accra and handed them over. A few days later, Bing told me that he was having problems with the Civil Service authorities over taking the whisky into Government chest. The money was easily taken over; there were rules governing the acceptance of money. But there was no rule about taking a bottle of whisky into chest. Bing decided to keep it in the safe in his office until the appropriate officers decided what to do with it. Several months went by. He was on one of his difficult assignments, which meant that he worked throughout the day and finished off with a bottle of some hard liquor. About that time he met me on the verandah of the office one day and casually remarked, “Oh, do you know what happened to your bottle of whisky? I drank it.” That was all right with me, as I had not drunk it. The Treasury must have been relieved of an embarrassing problem.

The next major assignment I had, not given to me directly by Bing, but of which he must have known about, was the prosecution of Mumuni Dimbie, the then Member of Parliament of Lawra-Nandom in the north-west of the Northern Region. He had also been a chairman(?) of the local authority in the area of Lawra. He was charged with theft of the moneys of the Council which, according to the evidence, he did by the device of drawing money from time to time from the Council's safe leaving behind an I.O.U. saying that he owed that money to the authority. His defence, of course, was that he had no intention to steal as he intended to repay. But I thought it was an open and shut case. His intention to repay was irrelevant as long as he deprived the owner of his property without the owner's consent. The case had some political charge to it. I had, to some extent, got used to the concerns of a lawyer dealing with that type of case through doing the Akim Abuakwa enquiry. However, what it did for me was to introduce me to the north. It also brought me against Joe Reindorf, one of the best advocates of his generation, because Joe was the defence counsel.

The case was tried by George Djabanor, then the Magistrate resident in the Northern Region at Tamale. But it was first called with me in it as prosecuting counsel in Wa in the north-west. I travelled by air from Accra to Tamale and then joined the Chief of Police in the Region, Mr. T.A. Adjirakor, by car to Wa. It was a revealing introduction to that part of the country. Adjirakor turned out to be a delightful companion. We shared an old resthouse in Wa. My first night was quite eerie. Here was I in a part of the country which I did not know at all, to prosecute one of the leading personalities of the place. The night noises, including the lowing of cattle around the area, disturbed me, so I tried to shut my resthouse window, only to find that the window swung into the room without shutting. I felt unsafe in that situation. Adjirakor was happily asleep next door. Next day, I related my concerns for the safety of the accommodation to Adjirakor. His solution was to invite me to his room after work that day. There I found a young lady seated. Adjirakor said this was the companion he had found to keep me company in the night so that I did not worry about noises outside. I thanked him but declined the offer.

In Wa, we met an old friend, Smiley Chinery, who was the District Officer. In those days, the DO was still a very important pro-consul. He was responsible for all functions of government within his area. He probably did not have the same powers as he had exercised just before but he was, at one time, the local governor administering his area and he sat as magistrate over cases. To most of the inhabitants, therefore, this representative of Government in the far outpost was, in fact, Government. His judicial functions had, by and large, been taken away by the spread of the magisterial system, with cases being done by peripatetic magistrates. We three were invited to dinner by the Lebanese brothers, Hallaby. They were trading in the north. I there had the experience of what I later learnt were the characteristics of a Lebanese dinner: its usual lateness and the impossible number of courses served.

We were invited for seven o'clock. We got there on time. We were served with drinks and small chop from then until after nine. I had not expected this. I was hungry. I asked Adjirakor at this point whether we had not been invited to dinner. He signalled me to pay attention. He then rose from his seat and thanked the hosts for their kind invitation and told them that we now wished to take our leave back to our resthouse. This caused consternation among our hosts. But we had not had the dinner they had invited us to. We should wait a little while longer and dinner would be served. When it was served, I ate the first three courses in the expectation that that was the whole meal. To my surprise, these three were followed by six more. It was unbelievable. When back in Accra I told Stella about this fantastic dinner, she accused me point blank of over-exaggeration. She got to accept it many years later after she had heard my story repeated several times over.

The Mumuni Dimbie case was not heard in Wa. George Djabanor, the Magistrate, adjourned it for later hearing at Tamale. I think that trial was the first time I met Joe Reindorf as an opponent. It is always a delight to meet a superb intellect. But to me, the case against the accused was beyond question and he was convicted, sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and lost his Parliamentary seat. The case went on appeal to the Court of Appeal later. I did not then handle it. But the conviction was upheld.

It was during the course of the Mumuni Dimbie case that Bing called me one day and asked me to proceed to Kumasi to take over the station. Akilano, the Senior Crown Counsel in charge was being transferred to Cape Coast. His junior, Festus Amarteifio, would be recalled to Accra. When did I have to go, I asked him. “As soon as is convenient to you”, was his reply. I was not too keen to leave Accra, so I thought that I would finish the Mumuni Dimbie case before moving. Two weeks after we had had the chat about my posting to Kumasi, I ran into Bing on the veranda of the office. He asked me what I was doing in Accra and I explained why I had not yet moved to Kumasi. In any event, he had said that I could leave at my own convenience. He pointed out that that meant that I should leave as soon as possible. My expectations~[* “expatiations” suggested ]~ as to time had to be drastically revised. Several old men talked to me about how to comport myself in Kumasi. Among these was Sir Arku Korsah who gave me a lecture on it. It boiled down to my trying to live a quiet life with Stella and not getting involved with professional colleagues who might embarrass my position as prosecutor. It came out in the course of these lectures that the objection to Akilano continuing in charge of Kumasi was that he was too friendly with the lawyers, like Joe Appiah, who represented the opposition. Both Akilano and Joe Appiah had English wives, so both families were likely to seek each other's company often. My wife, although not English, was white and it might have been suspected that I would seek similar company. Perhaps I should have told this to Akilano. I did not because I did not see what good it would do. Akilano was on his way to Cape Coast already and I was going to take over Kumasi anyway.

By the time we left for Kumasi, we had moved from our wooden bungalow we shared with the Grey-Millses near the racecourse. We were notified one day that the proposed demolition of the building was about to take place. We, therefore, sought the help of the Department, and were found a small chalet near the huge residences of the judges on 2nd Circular Road. We had some wonderful times in the racecourse bungalow. It was during our stay there that we were made members of the Accra Turf Club, which was right next door to the bungalow. We were proposed by Mr. Solomon Odamtten (Uncle Solo), the husband of my Aunt Marion, who had for a very long time been one of the senior managers of UAC; a politician and, at the time in question, the Chairman of the Turf Club. I had, from my school days, always been fond of horse racing, which I followed very closely. To be made a member of the Turf Club was, therefore, a great privilege. It meant that we could attend the races every racing day, which was usually on Saturdays and on holidays. The position of the Chairman and Stewards of the Club, who supervised the affairs of the Club generally and the racing, was honorary. But they concluded their duties on each race day by having a drink on the roof-top of the Club building. To this Uncle Solo invited us. The drink served was usually champagne. In our condition of relative poverty, we found this delightful and ironic, as after the party we often walked to our bungalow to our simple meal of kenkey, sardine and pepper, which Stella loved. Although we were told that the demolition of the bungalow was to commence almost immediately, it took some time after our departure before work started. Had we been stout-hearted, we could have stayed on for several more months without disturbance by the work.

The chalet we moved to was one of a number of two-roomed chalets, consisting of a bedroom and a sitting-cum-dining room with a stoep in front, that had been built in lovely stone-work near the Star Hotel as accommodation for the expatriate secretaries that the colonial administration used and had expected to increase in number over the years. For our purposes, the chalet was quite adequate. I remember that when our Nigerian friend, Alex Boyo, who stayed with us in all the houses that we occupied in Ghana, came visiting us while we were there, he had to stop by Legon to borrow a camp bed from Kojo and Iris Torto which he parked somewhere near the dinner table for the night. We had warned him that he might find the chalet so small that his feet might have to hang out of the window when he slept. As usual, he enjoyed his stay. Our nights, especially on Saturdays, were enlivened by music from the Star Hotel. But our neighbours, including Justices Van Lare and Granville Sharp of the Court of Appeal, were so important that one might well have felt intimidated by their nearness.

It was about the time we left for Kumasi that the Preventive Detention Act, 1958 was enacted. It basically authorised Government to detain citizens of Ghana “if satisfied” that they were acting in a manner prejudicial to the State. There was some talk that Nkrumah had been advised by Nehru when both attended one of the Commonwealth Conferences for the heads of governments that this was an effective way of dealing with the security problems faced by newly independent States. The first order made under the Act was not to be until I was well installed in Kumasi.

To me personally, Geoffrey Bing was a mixture of influences. He got me involved in some difficult assignments, at least one of them having nothing to do with law. He knew of my desire to take Stella visiting home in Finland and he exploited this desire mercilessly. Whenever he had some difficult or unpleasant work to be done, he told me of the assignment at the same time as plans he had for me to go abroad on some Government business which would enable me to take Stella, then we would break off at a convenient point to visit Finland. First, it was to send me to work in the Attorney General's Office in a State like Oregon, which he said was about the same size as Ghana, for a year, then on the way back we could go to Finland. Later, I was to go round to various countries promoting Ghana's view on the Law of the Sea. Then, when the South West African case was brought before the International Court of Justice, I was to work in the New York office of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, with Ernest Gross who was the leading lawyer representing the applicants. None of these materialised. When the bait wore thin, he would nevertheless say that he would try and arrange some trip for me but add that, if it did not work out, it would not be for want of trying on his part. I do not know whether he ever did anything about my going to Oregon or on the Law of the Sea jaunt. But I know that he tried with Ernie Gross, because Gross visited Ghana. The three of us discussed my coming to work with him on the South West African case. As he said, everything was fine by him. He had a place for me in his office. The problem then was that some other matter came up which required me remaining in Ghana and I lost my chance to go to New York. However, Stella quickly saw through him in this game and lost any enthusiasm for these carrots which never materialised sooner than I.

But in other ways, I had reason to be grateful to him. He gave me a self-confidence which I may not otherwise have acquired. He told me that he was not really a lawyer but a politician. Perhaps that was why he found me useful because, from time to time, he would ask me to research and give him a legal opinion on a subject. Later, he would greet me with his terrible grin and say that the opinion was good so he sent it to the President, meaning Nkrumah. “Of course”, he would add, “I signed it myself.” It really lifted my confidence whenever that occurred. It also taught me what turned out later to be a most useful skill, the art of writing in the person of someone else. Bing promoted my interest without my asking for it. When Kwodwo Boison who joined the Department after me, made a case for advancing his seniority as he was called to the Bar before me, that is, he was called in May 1955 while I was called in July 1955, so that the resulting effect would have been to make him my senior in office, he saw to it without my asking that my seniority was preserved by cutting my probation period by six months. Once I had been confirmed as a Crown Counsel, he made me act in the next senior rank, as Senior Crown Counsel, a position I kept until I was confirmed in the equivalent post of Senior State Attorney on Ghana becoming a Republic. When he invited George Djabanor, by years my senior at the Bar, who was then on the Magisterial bench, to join the Department as a Senior State Attorney, and I understand that George wanted a clear undertaking that he was coming in as my senior, Bing thought that in that case, he need not come.

Through these and other causes by which he promoted my interests I think I lost the friendship of colleagues. I often wondered whether they thought I spoke derogatively about them while I was in the company of Bing that was why I was so quickly promoted. I did visit his residence often. But not once did I go without invitation and there was no occasion when we discussed my colleagues. He regarded me as his protégé which he stated in his book, “Reap the Whirlwind”, and rued my signing his deportation order and taking his house.