schools over. "By 1963 – the dawn of Zambia's independence – 800 of the 2,100 schools were L.E.A while the rest were mainly agency schools 30 per cent of which were operated by the Catholics." Despite their decline the mission schools had become the place where the aspiration for independence was established and nurtured, as well as promoting colonial structure they had also encouraged critical thinking enabling students to contest the status quo. "It was the mission centres that became the birthplace of post-war African nationalism." In the wider context the churches had also to become advocates for the people who congregated their buildings for worship and populated their parishes. Although an outside agency they were equipped and informed enough and had sufficient influence both in Zambia and back in Britain to intercede for those who had little voice in the colonial political system. It would not be until after independence that indigenous or even international NGOs would have a comparable voice. Phiri states, "since churches remain 'zones of freedom' and in some cases more or less a 'state within a state', they tend to take up the political functions of repressed organizations. This leads to confrontation with the state. Weller & Linden cite a Catholic missionary who reported that a missionary from the Presbyterian mission was compelled to complain "to the Foreign Office in London about the behaviour of the company's officials in his area. Villages burnt, and chiefs and headmen put in chains, in order to intimidate them into sending their people to do carrier service." In fact one of the briefs of the General Missionary Council was "to watch over the interests of the Native races." Churches were to involve themselves in diverse campaigns such as poll tax reform, the effects on families due to labour migration and issues of racial inequality. During this period there was a rise in African Indigenous Churches (AICs). These churches were founded and run by Zambian's who either defected from the mission churches dissatisfied with their European bias or their stayed theology or they were founded during the labour migrations of the 1920s into the Copperbelt. "Among the labourers were Africans who had been introduced to Christianity in their home regions and who, upon discovering no church whatsoever in the Copperbelt, decided to start a church themselves – one that was entirely directed and sustained by Africans." also. It was AICs