Gambia: Political Parties and Trade Unions Material
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- Creator
- Institute of Commonwealth Studies
TitleGambia: Political Parties and Trade Unions Material
Reference codePP.GM
Date1954-
Scope and ContentPeriodicals, constitutions, manifestos, platforms, communiqués, speeches, codes of conduct, letters and other miscellaneous election materials from 1954, issued by the Alliance for Patriotic Re-orientation and Construction (Gambia), the Gambia Muslim Congress, the Gambia Peoples Party, the Gambia Workers' Union, independent candidates, the National Convention Party (Gambia), the People's Democratic Organization for Independence and Socialism (Gambia), the Peoples' Progressive Party (Gambia) and the United Party (Gambia).
NotesAlthough trades unions had functioned in The Gambia from the 1920s, it was not until the 1950s that the first political parties emerged. Disputes between these parties, which included the Gambia Muslim Congress, the United Party and the Protectorate People's Party (later to become the Peoples' Progressive Party), delayed agreement on the transition to independence until 1965, when Dawda Kairaba Jawara of the PPP became the country's first Prime Minister. Though Gambia had a multi-party electoral system Jawara and the PPP remained in power until the 1994 coup, during which time the country became a republic (1970), experienced its first coup (1981) and formed a confederation with Senegal (Senegambia, 1982-1989). The leader of the second coup, Yahya Jammeh, has since won two presidential elections under a new constitution with his Alliance for Patriotic Re-orientation and Construction (Gambia), although several opposition parties were either banned from or boycotted the polls. The materials here cover the entire period from the end of colonial rule to the Jammeh era.
Conditions governing accessAccess to this collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the supervised environment of the library.
Extent1 box
System of ArrangementAlphabetically by party or group, and then in rough chronological order.
Finding aidsItem-level descriptions are available on the library catalogue: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S17/
Related files
See also Political Party, Trades Unions and Pressure Group Materials for other Commonwealth countries and material in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library's main classified sequence.
Level of descriptionfonds