(1908-1972)
HERO OF THE "GUNNERS' REVOLT"
Emmanuel Cole was an ordinary soldier who demanded fair treatment and reasonable pay from the colonial power.
He was a gunner attached to the Royal Artillery at the heavy battery in Murray Town Barracks. In January, 1939, Cole convinced a group of his fellow gunners to join him in sending a letter of protest the their British commanding officer, complaining that their meagre pay was not enough to meet expenses and British officers were secretly pocketing a portion of it. Cole and his fellow gunners also demanded to be treated in the same way as British soldiers of the same rank; and, most of all, they demanded boots or some sort of footwear as part of their uniform.
The Inspector-General of the West African Frontier Force had recommended boots for the soldiers as early as 1903, but the British officers on the sport preferred the African soldiers to remain barefoot to suggest their inferiority to British troops. When the commanding officer ridiculed the soldiers' demands, Cole asked bluntly: "Is our flesh different from that of the white gunners?," and when their demands received no consideration, Cole organised a strike. They refused to dress properly or to come to parade until given a fair hearing.
The British decided to deal with Cole and the others in the harshest possible way, and they charged them with "mutiny," a crime carrying severe punishment under the military code. Throughout the court martial proceedings, Emmanuel Cole was coolly defiant. The British authorities had found receipts for dues to I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson's Youth League in his quarters, and hoped to pin the supposed "mutiny" on Wallace-Johnson. When asked if he knew the great union organiser, Cole would only say: "Yes, he is a man." The British officers sentenced Emmanuel Cole to fifteen years in prison and his fellow gunneers to period ranging down to eighty-four days, but Labour MPs in Britain agitated until Cole and the others were pardoned.
Soon after the so-called "mutiny," the British were finally forced to provide boots and improved conditions of service to their troops in Sierra Leone and throughout British West Africa.. Emmanuel Cole's efforts had brought increased dignity to many thousands of his fellow Africans.