upper-class Creole elite, all four candidates were elected, including Constance Cummings-John, the first woman elected to public office in British West Africa. The results severely embarrassed the governor and establishment, especially as it followed the revelation of classified dispatches from the governor to the Colonial Office that signalled the governor's tacit approval of the abuses of the mining companies. 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. Wallace-Johnson was arrested on 1 September 1939, the first day of World War II. Before then, the governor and his legal advisers were attempting to find a way to arrest and convict him for criminal libel, despite the lack of conclusive evidence favouring the prosecution. A series of six acts was passed by the Legislative Council, heavily restricting civil liberties. Added to the wartime emergency provisions, Wallace-Johnson could be arrested without justification. 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. He was released in 1944. He returned to political activism, but found the WAYL in a state of disarray where tribal and regional issues, rather than the cause of unity that he championed, flourished. Nevertheless he was the representative of the WAYL at the foundation of the Pan-African Federation, held in Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1944. In 1950, Wallace-Johnson merged the WAYL into the new National Council of the Colony of Sierra Leone. However, he left the group in 1954 to found the United Sierra Leone Progressive Party. He remodelled himself as a Pan-Africanist and de-emphasised his earlier radicalism. He co-founded the United National People's Party in 1956. The UPP became the official opposition after a general election in 1957. Wallace-Johnson was a delegate to the independence talks in London. He died in a car crash in Ghana on 10 May 1965. His wife died in early 2008 in Freetown. Notes References . . . . . . . Carol Polsgrove: Ending british rule in africa : writers in a common cause, Manchester [u.a.] : Manchester Univ Press, 2012, 1890s births 1965 deaths People from Freetown Sierra Leonean pan-Africanists Trade unionists Sierra Leonean activists Road incident deaths in Ghana Sierra Leone Creole