A great friend of Africa is gone: June Milne (Nkrumah's research assistant, later publisher and literary executrix) on the life of Douglas Rogers, one of the Westerners who helped to shape crucial, turning points in Africa's history. (2002 in Review).

The sudden death of Douglas Rogers on Sunday 13 October, will be keenly felt not only by those who It knew him, but by countless others who came to know him through his political work and his writings.

A lifelong socialist and courageous anti-imperialist, his steadfastness and clarity of thought will be sorely missed. Nowhere more than among Africans and all those engaged in the continuing struggle for social justice and peace throughout the world.

He was born in 1919 into a Labour Party family, his father being a Labour councillor in Romford. When he left school, he began work as a journalist. While writing for and editing the Independent Labour Party's journal, New Leader, later renamed Socialist Leader, he came into contact with other stalwart progressive campaigners, and in particular with those in the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF).

Douglas was the first general secretary of the MCF, working closely with Fenner Brockway and George Padmore, the great Caribbean anti-imperialist and writer. As a result, he came to know many nationalist leaders, helping them particularly when they visited London.

Douglas first visited Ghana in 1956, at the invitation of the then Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah. He was asked to help set up an African printing and publishing enterprise, the Guinea Press. Ghana was then still a British colony, though with domestic self-government.

While the Guinea Press was being completed, Douglas worked on the Evening News in Accra, the organ of the ruling Convention People's Party (CPP), the party which was to achieve Ghana's independence on 6 March 1957. He continued after independence to work at the Guinea Press for another year before returning to London to set up an office there.

But he was soon back in Africa, this time in Kenya, where he edited the nationalist newspaper, Pan Africa, the organ of the liberation party, KANU. Once more, his experienced media skills assisted in a successful campaign for independence.

It was during this time that Douglas became close to Oginga Odinga, one of Kenya's most distinguished freedom campaigners. The connection with Nkrumah was renewed when, at the request of Douglas, Nkrumah arranged for a new press to be set up in Kenya to help with KANU's election campaign for independence.

Later, because of his unswerving political commitment, Douglas was compelled to leave Kenya. At Nkrumah's invitation, he went to Ghana where he agreed to launch in London a monthly international magazine called Africa And The World.

From a modest office at 89 Fleet Street, the magazine was to report generally on African affairs, to support liberation struggles in those countries still under colonial or racist domination, and in particular to promote the case for the unification of Africa, a key objective of Nkrumah and the CPP government.

This unique magazine was widely read and respected throughout the world. Thanks to the determination and courage of Douglas, publication continued after the fall of the CPP government in 1966. Sadly, it had to cease publication in 1972, the year of Nkrumah's death. After spending some time in Australia and New Zealand, where he was interested in the conditions of the Aboriginal and Maori peoples, Douglas returned to London. At that time, a group of Ghanaians were publishing a monthly newsletter called The Dawn. It was the organ of the CPP Overseas branch. Douglas was asked to assist on a voluntary basis. He readily agreed.

The newsletter circulated in Ghana as an underground paper, as Africa And The World had done after the coup of 1966. The Dawn helped to keep alive resistance to military dictatorship. The Dawn still continues the campaign for socialism and pan-Africanism.

Douglas visited Ghana many times both before the 1966 coup and after Nkrumah's death in 1972. He also visited Nkrumah several times in Conakry, Guinea, where as co-president of Guinea, Nkrumah continued to pursue pan-African objectives.

I first came to know Douglas when he was editing Africa And The World, Typically, he made room for me to work at 89 Fleet Street when, on the instructions of Nkrumah, I became responsible for Panaf Books Ltd. It was a company founded to keep in print the books written by Nkrumah before 1966, and to publish the new ones he was to write in Conakry.

With the death of Douglas, we have lost one of the previous remaining few whose lives have helped to shape crucial, turning points in Africa's history. He will never be forgotten.

I personally have lost an irreplaceable friend. Douglas leaves his wife Pat, five children, seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

* Tom Mbakwe adds: As you would expect, Douglas Rogers, not a man to take things lying down, consecrated the whole of the April 1966 issue of Africa And The World to the aftermath of the 24 February 1966 coup that overthrew Nkrumah. An excellent issue, Rogers wrote a stinging editorial headlined "Imperialist Counter-Offensive" to expose the lie that the coup was an all-Ghanaian affair.

"The army insurrection in Ghana," he began, "represents a major breakthrough in the imperialist counter-offensive. It is part of a general pattern that has been expressing itself over a period of years.

"In East Africa, the intrigue and interference has not ceased. There is trouble in Uganda. In Kenya, the major preoccupation of the United States embassy has been to force the newly-independent government into proAmerican policies and to eliminate all socialist tendencies.

"It is scarcely a secret that the Americans have participated in intrigue against Vice-President Odinga. To destroy Odinga's reputation and influence has been the main purpose of American political and economic strategy in that country, and at the moment there is a vicious campaign to achieve a political 'coup' against the Kenya leftwing."

Returning his attentions to Ghana, Rogers continued: "Intrigue against Ghana has been constant since even before independence. During 1954-55-56, the campaign was aimed at delaying independence, destroying Nkrumah and the CPP politically, and replacing them with an African leadership more amenable to capitalist interests.

"It did not succeed and so the campaign took the form of subversion directed at the violent overthrow of the government. Economic pressures were exerted to create conditions in which a coup could be passed off propaganda-wise as being the result of popular dissatisfaction with the Nkrumah government.

"But only the purblind could fail to understand the purpose of the insurrection. It has been widely welcomed throughout the capitalist world. It has discarded Nkrumah's socialist policies. It has betrayed the African liberation movement. And, as the latest reports show, it is seeking to impose itself by brutal coercion of the general population.

"Ghana is only a small country with a population of about seven-and-a-half million. But its importance in the world is out of all proportion to its size. For Ghana is one of those countries which have become synonymous with radical policies. It has tried to break out of the stranglehold of reliance upon the American-dominated financial and economic system. And it has had the sense to realise that it cannot do this in isolation.

"It has, therefore, directed its external policies primarily to working for a Union Government of Africa that would enable the independent African states to create internal self-reliance. Only by strong political amalgamation and joint economic planning (including the creation of a pan-African market as a basis for industrial expansion), can Africa hope to face the rest of the world on equal terms..."

Adieu Douglas Rogers, Africa has just launched its Union 36 years after your editorial. It's early days yet, perhaps with time the Union might become the "strong political amalgamation" that you and Nkrumah so desired. If it does, then you and Nkrumah would not have worked in vain.