ABSTRACT
In 1950, the Acting Chief Commissioner for the protectorate, Logie Wilson, wrote a series of letters to the governor of the colony in Freetown and the Home Office in London suggesting ways to increase the political empowerment of the people of the protectorate. At the national level, the rise of political parties can be attributed to the commissioners of the protectorate. In the elections of 1951, the National Council won three seats and became the official opposition in the Legislative Council. In April 1951, several proto-nationalist parties and pressure groups from the protectorate merged to establish the Sierra Leone’s peoples party. In 1941, Lamina Sankoh returned to Sierra Leone and entered the not-for-profit business sector. He founded the Sierra Leone Cooperative Society, the first registered micro-savings bank, which encouraged its members to save a penny in every pound sterling they earned. With encouragement from Hotobah-During, Lamina Sankoh entered protectorate politics and, under Hotobah-During’s tutelage, founded the People’s Party in 1948.
