Literature
Review
Introduction
Secondary Source
Overview
Colleagues
-Appiah
-Powell
-Alexander
-Bing
Comrades &
Ideological
Authors
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tertiary Sources		 Secondary Sources

Bing

Nkrumah's relationship with Geoffrey Bing was strongest amongst the colleagues mentioned here.  Bing was formerly a lawyer and one of a dozen socialist Members of British Parliament that sent a congratulatory letter to Nkrumah on the victory of the CPP in the 1951 general elections (Padmore 1953).  He became Ghana's Attorney General from 1957 through 1961.  He also became a legal advisor to Nkrumah from 1961 through 1966 (Thompson, W. S. 1968) and conducted significant investigations at Nkrumah's behest.  Bing's work (1968) offers insight into the internal and external intrigue that went on in Ghana with which Nkrumah had to deal with while attempting to build a base for the African Revolution.  At Nkrumah's request, Bing forwarded his initial manuscript.  After reading the manuscript, Nkrumah recommended the following in a letter dated May 27, 1967:

COMMENTS ON MS OF REAP THE WHIRLWIND

1.   I am sure it will have an impact on those who have the patience to read it.  Patience, because the writing is rambling.  The rambling confuses and obscures the main purpose of the book. 

2.   Either the whole of Chapter 12 is deleted or you should re-write it.  As it stands it does not do any justice.  It destroys the scholarship you have put into the whole book.  You should have done with Bretton's book what you have done with Afrifa's book in this chapter. 

3.   Conclusion disappointing.  Why don't you be bold enough to say that the forces that led to Dr Nkrumah's overthrow were the forces of world imperialism and neo-colonialism? They were responsible, and nowhere in the book have you even cast a disguised aspersion as to those who were responsible for the Ghana coup – America, Britain, Western Germany, Israel. 

4.   Is this your book or Afrifa's? 

5.   Too many quotations mar a book of this nature.  The quotations from Afrifa do not help in any way and might as well be deleted. 

6.   Anyone reading the book will think that you use quotations merely to fill pages.  You are quoting others, but write so that others can quote you too. 

(Nkrumah 1990, 154) 

In a subsequent letter to Milne date June 17, 1968, Nkrumah reported that he had received a final copy of the book from Bing's publisher and that Bing had followed much of his criticism.  Nkrumah had a problem, however, with the prohibitive high price of the book and its sheer verbosity.  He was, however, happy that Bing included the Ghana constitution in the book (1990).  That inclusion proved to be a boon for this site.Nkrumah also reported in a letter to Pat Sloan, dated July 1, 1968, that 
Bing did well, but here and there I do not like the apologetic tone.  We make no apologies.  After all, what we went through was a socialist effort to arrive at socialism without a revolution.  Apologies are an attitude characteristic of British liberalism.  And Bing, in certain pages, spits out and then tries to lick up his own spit again.  On the whole, however, the book is good and worth the effort."  (1990, 245)
What surfaces from Bing's book and Nkrumah's response to the book is the question of how to approach the agency of the opposition.  Nkrumah enforced the policy of 'Preventative Detention', which proved uncomfortable to Bing's British training of liberalism.  This aside, the value of Bing's book is in its exposure of the machinations of Ghana's organized opposition at that time.