[3] The new organisation made opposition to the colour bar its first priority, while also including the promotion of political research, support for the NCBWA and the provision of a student hostel in its founding aims.
While the Colonial Office showed some interest in establishing such a hostel, WASU was keen to maintain control of the project, and in 1929, Solanke left for a fundraising journey through West Africa.
Despite this, the Colonial Office assembled a secret committee to plan for a hostel under its control, and attempted to secure private funding for its construction.
[3] By 1932, when Solanke returned to Britain, Wasu had ceased to appear, and membership had fallen amid disputes between Nigerian and Gold Coast members.
The new hostel did nothing to settle the disputes within WASU, and Solanke was accused of wasting money while in Africa, and of attempting to personally control the new lodgings.
Almost all the Gold Coast Students' Association (GCSA) members left WASU, and even an intervention by William Ofori Atta was unable to settle matters.
WASU opposed the scheme, and formed an "Africa House Defence Committee", including Reginald Bridgeman of the LAI, also gaining the support of the National Council for Civil Liberties and Paul Robeson, who was awarded the title "Babasale of the Union".
With Labour Party MPs Reginald Sorensen and Arthur Creech Jones, WASU campaigned in support of the 1938 Gold Coast cocoa hold-up, where small farmers attempted to pressurise the companies by disrupting their supplies.
WASU became increasingly identified as an anti-colonial group, and it called for dominion status and universal suffrage for the West African colonies.
WASU also affiliated to the World Youth Movement, and in 1946 it held a joint conference with Kwame Nkrumah's West African National Secretariat.
[7] The following year, WASU called for an immediate decision on independence for the West African colonies, and criticised the Labour government for its failure to deliver this.
In the 1951 elections to WASU's executive, he organised an anti-communist slate, which failed to take control from the largely communist leadership of Joe Appiah and Ade Ademola.
[3] WASU affiliated to the International Union of Students (IUS) on its foundation, and its members regularly attended the World Festival of Youth.