Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey
1902 – 1963
Of the Big Six, and died in detention
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Why they are here
Lawyer, one of the Big Six arrested in 1948, and one of those who died in detention under the government independence brought.
Emmanuel Odarkwei Obetsebi-Lamptey was a Ga lawyer from Accra, educated at Achimota and called to the bar in London, and one of the founders of the United Gold Coast Convention.
He was among the six leaders detained by the British in March 1948 after the shooting of the ex-servicemen at Christiansborg Crossroads and the riots that followed — the Big Six, whose arrest converted a lawyers' constitutional campaign into a mass movement, and whose faces appear on the cedi.
He stayed with the UGCC when Kwame Nkrumah broke away, and later helped found the opposition United Party. In 1962, after a bomb attempt on Nkrumah's life at Kulungugu, he went into hiding and then into exile; he returned secretly, was arrested in 1962 and held under the Preventive Detention Act. He was never tried. He fell ill in custody, was released only when he was dying, and died in January 1963.
He is the sharpest illustration of a pattern in the early independence years: a man jailed by the colonial power for demanding self-government, and then jailed to death by the self-government he had demanded.
He was among the six leaders detained by the British in March 1948 after the shooting of the ex-servicemen at Christiansborg Crossroads and the riots that followed — the Big Six, whose arrest converted a lawyers' constitutional campaign into a mass movement, and whose faces appear on the cedi.
He stayed with the UGCC when Kwame Nkrumah broke away, and later helped found the opposition United Party. In 1962, after a bomb attempt on Nkrumah's life at Kulungugu, he went into hiding and then into exile; he returned secretly, was arrested in 1962 and held under the Preventive Detention Act. He was never tried. He fell ill in custody, was released only when he was dying, and died in January 1963.
He is the sharpest illustration of a pattern in the early independence years: a man jailed by the colonial power for demanding self-government, and then jailed to death by the self-government he had demanded.
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