Editing Kwame Nkrumah (section)

=== London ===

[[File:KWAME NKRUMAH - 60 Burghley Road Kentish Town London NW5 1UN.jpg|thumb|60 Burghley Road, Kentish Town, London, where Nkrumah lived when in London between 1945 and 1947]]

Nkrumah returned to London in May 1945 and enrolled at the [[London School of Economics]] as a PhD candidate in [[Anthropology]]. He withdrew after one term and the next year enrolled at [[University College London]], with the intent to write a philosophy dissertation on "Knowledge and Logical Positivism".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Matera|first=Marc|date=2010|title=Colonial Subjects: Black Intellectuals and the Development of Colonial Studies in Britain|journal=Journal of British Studies|volume=49|issue=2|pages=388–418|doi=10.1086/649838|jstor=23265207|s2cid=143861344|issn=0021-9371}}</ref> His supervisor, [[A. J. Ayer]], declined to rate Nkrumah as a "first-class philosopher", saying, "I liked him and enjoyed talking to him but he did not seem to me to have an analytical mind. He wanted answers too quickly. I think part of the trouble may have been that he wasn't concentrating very hard on his thesis. It was a way of marking time until the opportunity came for him to return to Ghana."{{sfn|Sherwood|p=115}} Finally, Nkrumah enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at [[City Law School|Gray's Inn]].{{sfn|Sherwood|p=115}}

Nkrumah spent his time on political organizations. He and Padmore were among the principal organizers, and co-treasurers, of the Fifth [[Pan-African Congress]] in Manchester (15–19 October 1945).<ref name="Martin">{{cite book |last=Martin |first=G. |year=2012 |title=African Political Thought |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rqYEhtONIBgC |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US |isbn=978-1-137-06205-5 |access-date=31 August 2017 |archive-date=18 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418090708/https://books.google.com/books?id=rqYEhtONIBgC |url-status=live }}</ref> The Congress elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with [[African socialism]]. They agreed to pursue a federal United States of Africa, with interlocking regional organizations, governing through separate states of limited sovereignty.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fulcher|first=James|date=1 November 2000|title=Globalisation, the Nation-State and Global Society|journal=The Sociological Review|language=en|volume=48|issue=4|pages=522–543|doi=10.1111/1467-954X.00231|s2cid=145019590|issn=0038-0261}}</ref> They planned to pursue a new African culture without [[tribalism]], democratic within a socialist system, synthesizing traditional aspects with modern thinking, and for this to be achieved by non-violent means if possible.<ref name=Gebe>{{cite journal|first=Boni Yao |last=Gebe |url=http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol2no3/GhanasForeignPolicyAtIndependenceAnd.pdf |title=Ghana's Foreign Policy at Independence and Implications for the 1966 Coup D'état |journal=Journal of Pan African Studies |volume=2 |issue=3 |date=March 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140611023640/http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol2no3/GhanasForeignPolicyAtIndependenceAnd.pdf |archive-date=11 June 2014 }}</ref> Among those who attended the congress was the venerable [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] along with some who later took leading roles in leading their nations to independence, including [[Hastings Banda]] of [[Nyasaland]] (which became [[Malawi]]), [[Jomo Kenyatta]] of [[Kenya]] and [[Obafemi Awolowo]] of [[Nigeria]].<ref name="Running away from our own shadows">{{Cite web|title=Running away from our own shadows|url=https://www.ippmedia.com/en/features/running-away-our-own-shadows|website=www.ippmedia.com|date=23 March 2020|language=en|access-date=27 May 2020|archive-date=3 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803001032/https://www.ippmedia.com/en/features/running-away-our-own-shadows|url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Rooney|p=23}}

The congress sought to establish ongoing African activism in Britain in conjunction with the [[West African National Secretariat]] (WANS) to work towards the [[decolonisation of Africa]]. Nkrumah became the secretary of WANS. In addition to seeking to organize Africans to gain their nations' freedom, Nkrumah sought to succour the many West African seamen who had been stranded, destitute, in London at the end of the war, and established a Coloured Workers Association to empower and succour them.{{sfn|Rooney|pp=24–25}} The [[United States Department of State|U.S. State Department]] and [[MI5]] watched Nkrumah and the WANS, focusing on their links with Communism.{{sfn|Sherwood|pp=173–178}} Nkrumah and Padmore established a group called The Circle to lead the way to West African independence and unity; the group aimed to create a Union of African Socialist Republics. A document from The Circle, setting forth that goal was found on Nkrumah upon his arrest in Accra in 1948, and was used against him by the British authorities.{{sfn|Rooney|p=25}}{{sfn|Sherwood|pp=125–126}}{{efn|Members swore an oath of secrecy, pledging to "irrevocably obey" orders from the group, to "help a member brother of THE CIRCLE in all things and in all difficulties", to avoid the use of violence, to fast on the twenty-first day of the month, and finally, to "accept the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah".  See: "{{URL|1=https://books.google.com/books?id=h6wsBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA389|2=The Circle}}" in ''Nationalism in Asia and Africa'' by Elie Kedourie, 1970.}}