[1] This strike represented the first time a trade union in Sierra Leone was effective in politically organizing with a set organizational structure.
It is also the first strike and act of political disobedience in which the Creole elite identified with and supported the strikers and the working class against the British colonizing power.
In March 1925, for example, they petitioned the general manager to introduce a grading system, in order to create more jobs and generate greater efficiency.
[2] On January 14, 1926, the strike officially began and the government, adopting a staunch resistance policy, placed Freetown under police and military surveillance, prohibiting te sale of intoxicating liquors for specific periods, etc.
Other examples of the increasing divide between the Creole elites and the colonial authority include the racial segregation in Freetown due to establishing an exclusive European residential area at Hill Station in 1904 with its own railway.
[2] Thus, the racial discrimination experienced by the Creole elite gradually caused them to identify with the grievances of the working class as common sufferers against the colony from which they benefitted.
Local newspapers, such as the Sierra Leone Weekly News and other publications, published editorials on the chronology of the strike and criticizing the governmental violent attempts to intimidate the workers.
[2] On January 21, a meeting of ratepayers and citizens took place at Wilberforce Memorial Hall and was chaired by the deputy mayor, the veteran politician J.A.
Governor Slater was informed of these resolutions, but on February 15 he rejected the workers' counter-proposal to have the secretary of state establish a Commission of Enquiry and return working conditions to the status quo ante.
[8] The end of the strike was a capitulation to superior forces, but this was one of the first instances of defiance and protest against the British in Sierra Leone, which presented a major challenge to the colonial government.
This led to the government cracking down on the African elected members of various councils in the following ways: In the end, according to academics such as Martin Kilson, this institutionally violent and repressive response of the government to the strikers, brought them, and the urban masses, into direct contact with its coercive power, providing an important insight to the workers, in their attempt at civil disobedience, into the role of force in maintaining colonial authority.
[10] An example of this are the 1935 and 1938 strikes by workers at the then newly opened Sierra Leone Development Company (DELCO), mining iron ore at Marampa.
[5] This broad structure of trade unions, in addition to public sector workers, still exists and twenty-six organizations constitute the Sierra Leone Labour Congress.