One hundred and eighteen year ago, on January 29, 1891, in the town of Bathurst, a baby boy was born to an immigrant woman from Sierra Leone, Annie Eliza Thomas, and a Bathurst tailor, John W. Small. Robert B. Llewelyn was administrator overseeing the injustice of the destruction in Kombo with the British Colonial Boundaries Commission marking out the borders of The Gambia just as France was mapping what it wanted as Senegal.

Chiefs who dared to resist were killed, others routed. Brikama, Gunjur, Sukuta and Busumbala were strafed and sacked by British ground forces and marines from British warships, the Raleigh, Satellite, Magpie, Widgeon and the Alecto. Gunjur was completely destroyed and its Seyfo Foday Silla was captured by the French as he fled and was taken into exile in St. Louis, where he died.

That was the political environment into which Annie’s and John’s baby boy, Edward Francis Small, grew. He studied hard on a two-year scholarship at the Wesleyan High School in Bathurst and in 1906, he went to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to polish off a well-rounded education covering language, rhetoric, logic and the classics in addition to standard reading, writing and arithmetic. He also studied music and became an accomplished organist.

In 1910 he took a government job as a stamp seller at the Freetown Post Office returning home to Bathurst in 1912 to work as a cost clerk at the Public Works Department. Edward read all kinds of newspapers he could lay hands on; his appetite for news on about the greater world increased. He wrote away to Europe and paid to have newspapers sent to him. This way, he followed the thinking and work among African scholars of the day, and feeling increasingly attracted to their ideas on the future of Africa and African peoples.

Small took up the struggle; he saw immediately that the exact issues were at play in The Gambia—taxation without representation, unfair trade, inferiority on the part of the African, superiority on the part of the European. He raised his voice on them and soon he was considered a thorn in the flesh, not only of the government but of the Methodist church as well where he was planning on a life in ministry.

In July 1918, Small was dismissed from his position as missionary agent in Ballangharr where he stood his ground against European and African traders who mercilessly cheated farmers on the prices of their groundnuts. To give the illiterate farmers more bargaining power, he formed them into the Gambia Farmers Cooperative and Marketing Association (GFCMA)—thus panting the seed for the cooperative union we know today.

Not only farmers needed help. Junior civil servants were badly paid under horrible conditions of service. To help them he formed the Gambia Native Defence Union (GNDU) in 1919—forerunner of the civil service associations. Positions became more secure and civil servants did not have to sing any body’s praises to keep their jobs. The government attacked Small and said his work among the natives was only a pretext for political propaganda.  

Undaunted, Small, a tiny man indeed with only 5 ft. 4 inches of him above ground, continued his fight to make Europeans realise that Africans were human as well and had needs and feelings and demanded respect and improvement. They too demanded dignity and equality. When Cecil Armitage became governor in 1921, he arrived with zeal to put Small out of business.

He hated the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) that Small had helped found in Accra in 1920 in the company of legends such as J. Casely-Hayford, T Hutton Mills, Sam R Wood and other intellectuals and political figureheads. Armitage harassed Small pushing the patriot into exile in Senegal.

But Small, bent on keeping in touch with his unions, started a newspaper, the Gambia Outlook and Senegambia Reporter in 1922—to keep his union activities alive and to promote African unity through the seeding of the Senegambia idea.He formed the Bathurst Trade Union (BTU) in 1929—forerunner of the Gambia Labour Union. In 1931, he consolidated the following into the Committee of Gentlemen which became the de facto the first political party in The Gambia   

The Gambia Outlook thawed the ice cap in Gambian journalism which had set years before with the folding of The Bathurst Times (1871 to 1874), The Bathurst Observer and West African Gazette (1884 to 1886) and The Intelligencer that started in 1884 but closed down in 1898. That was how important Small’s founding of his newspaper was.

Small had tough issues to contend with. Muslim and Christian sentiments were always just below the surface, with stiff ethnic sentiment at the roots. From 1919 to 1950 while he strove relentlessly to unify religion- and ethnic-based associations of tradesmen and artisans under a national common cause, political cohesion regularly cracked along the religious, especially among the youth.

To keep the unity of purpose in focus, he chose two youths—I. M. Garba Jahumpa, a Muslim, and Charles Withfield Downes-Thomas, a Christian—to be his protégés. He sat them at his feet and taught them the rubrics of nationalism and the forward-looking programme for national and continental development. But Downes-Thomas died prematurely and Garba Jahumpa left him to promote a political movement that appealed to the parochial specificities as the name Gambia Muslim Congress suggested. This inflicted Small with a deep sense of defeat and began the psychological decline of the fighter.

In drawing the attention of the Members of the Gambia National Assembly to such illustriousness, let us list the rest of the patriotic achievements of Small while also addressing most directly the chief executive of government, himself a man of demonstrably equal vision and patriotism as Small, that January 29 is consigned nationally as Edward Francis Small Day.

We humbly petition that this day be considered and passed for marking with the highest national recognition:— 1922:  Africans are appointed for the first time to sit in the Colonial Budget Appropriation Committee, thanks to Small’s campaign of ‘No Taxation Without Representation’.  
1922:    Workers go on strike. Small influences the outcome of their pay rise. He goes into exile in Senegal and founds the "Gambia Outlook and Senegambian Reporter breaking a lull of 26 years in press activity in The Gambia.

1923:    Small goes into deeper exile in London fruitlessly trying to escape the tentacles of Governor Cecil Armitage. 1926:     Small ends his London exile and returns to Dakar, Senegal. His campaign forpopular suffrage suffers a setback. The Foreign Office in London turns down the recommendation by Governor Armitage to introduce the popular vote.  1927:    Small accepts Governor Middleton’s invitation to end his exile. He returns home to a massive welcome by his supporters.

He sets up the Senegambia Press and the Gambia Outlook begins publishing in Bathurst.
1929:    Small and Sheikh Omar Fye found the Gambia Planters' Syndicate. Small uses the core of that group to found the Bathurst Trade Union. As a background figure, he encourages Richard S. Rendall to organise the Bathurst Rate Payers Association.
1929:    Workers down tools in a nationwide strike that lasts 42 days crippling government and commerce. Small leads negotiations which secures a major pay rise for workers.   
 
1930: Small campaigns against the introduction of the Cyprus Bill to The Gambia Colony. Governor Palmer shelves the bill until 1933 when Governor Richards signs it.
1930:  The government denies Small the office of Liberian consul in The Gambia and declares him a communist. Small is appointed West Africa editor of The
 Negro Worker published in Berlin, Germany.
1931:    Small founds The Committee of Citizens as a means of continuity for the failing fortunes of the NCBWA. This group turns out to be the first ‘political party’ in The Gambia considering that the same year Samuel John Forster founds The Gambia Representative Committee and constitutes a political base in reply to Small’s group. There is much influence to gain in the control of seats in Bathurst Urban District Council (BUDC).  

1932:    R.S. Rendall founds the Bathurst Rate Payers Association and organises mass rallies against the Criminal Procedures and Penal Code Bills. (Not being a yard owner, Small works in the shadows.)

1933:    The government recognises the breakaway faction of the BTU and undermines Small’s control of the unions.
1934:     Four candidates of he BRPA win seats against candidates of The Gambia Representative Committee in the elections to the BUDC.  
1935:     Small founds The Gambia Labour Union.
1936:    BRPA candidates win all six African seats in the BUDC.
1937:     Small attends as The Gambia’s official representative at the coronation of King George V in London.

1939-1945: Small becomes an unflinching supporter of the cause against Nazi tyranny.
1942:    Small is nominated to the Legislative Council upon the death in 1941 of Councilor Wilfred Davidson Carrol.
1943-1944: Small leads a vigorous campaign against the Newspaper Registration and the False Publication Bills.
1944:     The registration and false publication bills are passed. Small loses to a solid European block vote of 8 to 2 African votes (Small and J.A. Mahoney).  
1945:    Dissolution of The Bathurst Trade Union; I.M. Garba Jahumpa leads the breakaway Amalgamated Trade Union under the umbrella of the Young Muslim Society.

1946:    Small presses in the Leg. Co. and with his organs outside the Council for the extension of popular suffrage to all citizens.
1947:    Constitutional reforms give Gambian citizens 21-years old and over the right to vote.
1947:    Small is elected into the Legislative Council, the first time an African is elected to the body. He represents the Leg. Co. in the Executive Council, the official cabinet of the Colonial Government. He successfully leads the campaign for the granting of municipal status to Bathurst. The Bathurst Town council is established.
1947:    Small revamps the old Committee of Citizens into The Gambia National League taking on more national issues such as Africanisation of the civil service, self-determination and paving the way for what successor politicians called independence.

1951:    The Gambia National League fails to make the necessary impression in elections. Small loses re-election to Council. He retires into private life and continues publishing his newspaper. His people decorate him "Watchdog of The Gambia".
1952:    Small finishes his term in the Leg. Co and the Ex. Co. and steps down in place of election winner, J.C. Faye.
1953:    Small attends as a member of the official Gambian delegation at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London.

1953:  The Government of Percy Wyn-Harris recommends Small and he is decorated with the insignia of Member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
1954:  Governor Percy Wyn-Harris nominates Small back into the Legislative Council.
1958:     Small dies on January 3.  Governor Percy Wyn-Harris paid tribute to our hero in 1958: "By his death The Gambia has lost the services of one of her most devoted citizens—a man whose kindness, help and wise advice have been so widely known and experienced by the people of The Gambia…

May the Hon. Edward Francis Small, O.B.E., a worthy comrade, rest in the Lord in peace, perfect peace, and may the monument of his undying fame be an incentive to stir up the minds of sons and daughters to emulate the example in rendering selfless service to their country."