While committed to the eventual granting of independence, the British authorities were reluctant to move quickly. In 1957, while on a visit to Tanganyika, Alan Lennox-Boyd, Britain's Colonial Secretary, remarked that progress towards independence was 'in danger of becoming too rapid rather than too slow'. He added that the British government was determined not to grant power to 'irresponsible people or to any government under which responsible people of all races in Tanganyika would not feel secure'. Lennox-Boyd did not mean to sound racist; his intention was to include all those Tanganyikans, whether indigenous, European or Asian, whom he regarded as responsible. However, his choice of words was interpreted by native Tanganyikans as implying that they were judged as being not yet capable of responsible self-government.
Lennox-Boyd's lack of political judgement added to the difficulties confronting Nyerere, who had set himself the task of putting pressure on the British authorities so as to oblige them to grant independence as early as possible. But he was also intent on restraining the militants among the nationalists who were becoming increasingly frustrated in the face of what they regarded as Britain's obstructive methods. Nyerere's fear was that peaceful transition to self-government for Tanganyika would be jeopardized if extremism took over the movement. In 1956 it had been announced by the Governor-General that, in 1958, for the first time in Tanganyika's history there would be free elections to the Legislative Council in which Africans could take part. Seeing this as a mere gesture, there were TANU members who wanted to boycott all elections held under British auspices. But Nyerere dissuaded them from such a course by setting a personal example. In 1957, he accepted an appointment to the Legislative Council, and although he subsequently resigned, he announced that TANU would participate in the elections. This was in spite of the regulation that only one-third of the elected Council members could be African.
Nyerere opposed a TANU boycott of the elections not because he accepted the injustice of the regulation but because he was concerned that, if TANU did not stand, its rival African parties, the United Tanganyika Party (UTP) and the African National Congress (ANC), would gain undue influence. His fundamental aim was to make TANU the only acknowledged representative of the Tanganyikan people.
World History
