Convention People's Party
회의인민당
A socialist party of Ghana (then the British Gold Coast) formed in June 1949 when Kwame Nkrumah broke away from the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). Campaigning for “Self-Government Now”, it won the elections of 1951, 1954 and 1956 in succession and led Ghana to independence in 1957. Its government was overthrown and the party banned in a military-police coup in 1966; it survives today as a small party based on Nkrumah's ideas.
In depth
The Convention People's Party descends from a line of anti-colonial movements formed in the Gold Coast in the first half of the 20th century. Its immediate predecessor, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), was formed in August 1947 mainly by members of the professional and business classes, and to broaden its base it invited Nkrumah, then in London, to be its full-time general secretary. Formally introduced as secretary on 28 December 1947, Nkrumah organised youth societies and set up hundreds of branches within six months. After police fired on an ex-servicemen's march in February 1948 and riots broke out in Accra, the UGCC leaders known as the “Big Six”, Nkrumah among them, were arrested, and the rift deepened between the conservative intelligentsia who favoured a gradual approach and the radical “Verandah Boys” who followed Nkrumah.
In August 1948 a Committee on Youth Organisation (CYO) was formed with K. A. Gbedemah as chair and Kojo Botsio as secretary, adopting the slogan “Self-Government Now” against the UGCC's “Self-Government in the shortest possible time”. After the UGCC leadership demoted Nkrumah from general secretary to treasurer, a CYO meeting at Tarkwa in June 1949 agreed to form a new party that would keep the name “Convention”. On 12 June 1949, before a crowd of some 60,000 on the Old Polo Ground in Accra, the CPP was born; Nkrumah resigned as UGCC general secretary and became chairman of the new party.
While the party's leaders were in prison, Gbedemah kept its organisation running, and the CPP swept the 1950 municipal elections in Accra, Cape Coast and Kumasi. In the February 1951 legislative election it fielded the imprisoned Nkrumah in Accra Central and won a landslide; Nkrumah was released and led the government. In the first direct elections in 1954 it won 72 of 104 seats, and in 1956, against the federalist National Liberation Movement (NLM), it again won 71 seats. On 6 March 1957 Nkrumah proclaimed Ghana's independence on the Polo Ground in Accra.
On 24 February 1966, while Nkrumah was abroad on a peace mission over Vietnam, the military and police overthrew the government. The junta abolished the CPP government and banned the party, imprisoned ministers, MPs and party officials en masse, and barred CPP members from party politics for thirteen years until 1979. Regrouped as the People's National Party (PNP), the movement won the 1979 election with Hilla Limann as president, but was again ousted by Rawlings's coup in 1981. After party politics resumed in 1992 it split into several Nkrumaist groups, and in the 2008 election Nkrumah's daughter Samia Nkrumah won a single seat.