His radical political stance, support for Marxist ideologies, and criticism of colonial rule led to repeated arrests, trials, and expulsions across British West Africa.

[1] After losing his municipal government job in 1926, Wallace-Johnson left Sierra Leone and worked as a sailor, though details of this period are unclear due to conflicting accounts.

By 1933, Wallace-Johnson joined Negro Worker's editorial board and attended the International Labor and Defence Conference in Moscow, where he claimed to have studied Marxist-Leninist theory and roomed with Jomo Kenyatta.

[9] Moving to the Gold Coast, he became a political activist and journalist, supporting the Scottsboro case appeal fund and pushing for workers' compensation laws after the 1934 Prestea mining disaster.

His pro-communist writings and critiques of capitalism led to the Parliament of the United Kingdom passing the 1939 Sedition Ordinance[10], banning "seditious" literature, including Negro Worker.

One noteworthy group of men who had strong anticolonial sentiments met at the house of Joseph Ocquaye, the founder of a private school in Nsawam and manager of the Vox Populi newspaper.

[13] Through contacts in London, he arranged for questions to be asked by sympathetic left-wing Labour Party members in the British Parliament about working conditions and rights in the colonies.

The case, in which nine young African-Americans were sentenced to death for raping two white women (who were found to have fabricated the entire story), sent shockwaves to liberal and radical political organisations around the world.

In Das Sdrarstwuiet, Wallace-Johnson praised the freedoms given to citizens in the Soviet Union, while in The Declaration of Capitalism, he described the political oppression faced by those living in a capitalist society.

[20] These bills sparked political agitation by the social elite, who didn't want their freedom of speech and expression to be restricted, and by the lower-middle class, who had resisted the government's prior attempts to levy direct taxes.

He countered by pointing out the fate of Soviet Russia, where the masses were illiterate and impoverished, and yet when Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky sounded the clarion; they rallied round them and a new order emerged.

[26]Having begun with his speeches and activities and influenced by Azikiwe's ideas, Wallace-Johnson founded the West African Youth League (WAYL) in June 1935 and was appointed its first organising secretary.

The political elite responded to Wallace-Johnson in a scathing article in the Gold Coast Independent, in which they reminded the WAYL that freedom of opinion did not entitle someone to "go out of their way to insult, abuse, slander, or libel any one".

[35] In national politics, Wallace-Johnson and the WAYL also became active in pressing for passage of mine safety measures and workers' compensation and campaigned for the repeal of the Levy Bill and the Kofi Sekyere Ordinance, among other things.

With the Ex-Servicemen's Association, the WAYL established the Ethiopia Defense Committee, with the specific goal of educating the Gold Coast of the plight of the Ethiopians and on "matters of racial and national importance" once the war was over.

Governor Arnold Weinholt Hodson wrote to the Colonial Office, asking for suggestions: By 1936, the league had established itself as a powerful force in the Gold Coast political scene.

[40] On 6 June 1936, the police arrested Wallace-Johnson and Azikiwe, who had to be forced by the paper's proprietor to print the article, for sedition,[41] in what the Negro Worker called "another dastardly plot intended to smash the Youth League".

[45] In an anticipation of a guilty verdict, Wallace-Johnson and the WAYL began preparing for his appeal to England's Privy Council and hoped to obtain an English barrister to handle the case.

Besides presenting his appeal case to the Privy Council, Wallace-Johnson planned to establish a lobby in England to pursue claims on behalf of WAYL members and to campaign for a commission of inquiry into Gold Coast political, economic and educational affairs.

[49] To create a lobby for the WAYL, Wallace-Johnson helped found International African Service Bureau (IASB), with several West Indian political and intellectual figures, including George Padmore, C. L. R. James, Chris Braithwaite, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta and T. Ras Makonnen.

The bureau, similar in design and organisation to the WAYL, intended to inform the public about the grievances faced by those in West Africa and created a list of desired reforms and freedoms that would help the colonies.

[62] Although the Colonial Office rejected the suggestion that the African Sentinel fell under the provisions of the Sedition Ordinance, the incident generated much publicity and convinced Wallace-Johnson to pursue his political exploits in Sierra Leone.

In his articles for the Sierra Leone Weekly News, he criticised major politicians, praised the working class, and urged for the creation of an alliance determined toward fighting for rights and civil liberties.

[sic] Instead of progress, after a lapse of twelve years, I find conditions within the colony rapidly declining.... As a people, we have been too lethargic, drowsy and happy-go-lucky.... A very wide margin has been provided for the foreign exploiters—capitalists and imperialists alike—to drive the wedge of divide-and-rule within our social circle: and while we keep grasping at shadows, they [the foreign invaders] are busy rapidly draining out the natural resources of the land for their personal benefits, leaving us in poverty and want.... Now is the time and now is the hour.

[66] The Freetown chapter held biweekly meetings at Wilberforce Memorial Hall where Wallace-Johnson exercised his oratorical skill and urged mass support for the League's initiatives.

[67] According to Spitzer & Denzer 1973b, Wallace-Johnson's success with the WAYL was attributed to his "concrete militant efforts to publicize and combat the economic, political, and social dissatisfaction which by the late 1930s affected the lives of the majority of the population".

[67] Exploitative mining companies, both public and private, that profited from the mineral wealth of Sierra Leone while ignoring the very poor living and working conditions of the workers were consistent targets of his message.

He casually referred to officials on a first-name basis and criticised them "in diatribes and invectives the like of which had never before been heard in the Freetown society where decorum and savoir faire were the hall-marks of the leaders".

The WAYL newspaper, African Standard, was modelled on several left-wing publications in the United Kingdom and was used to print news and editorials often regarded as seditious by senior establishment figures.

A trial was held without a jury (most of the jurors were WAYL supporters and probably would not vote for a conviction), and Wallace-Johnson was sentenced to 12 months in prison, eventually arriving at Sherbro Island.