Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964.
They altered their methods, too, held meetings and even for a while put out a newspaper, la République. For their candidate the BAG chose Barry Diawadou. He thus shifted position from the favourite of the Fulani intellectuals in the AGV, and became the spokesman of the traditionalists and neo-traditionalists. Meanwhile the AGV broke apart, mainly because the PDG attack on chiefs and tribal differences brought into the open issues which had troubled the organization from its beginning. The AGV radicals found they could not on the one hand reject tribal political structure —by saying to the Fulani chiefs that education and merit should count for more than lineage— and on the other hand keep the ethnic principle in recruiting. Some AGV men joined the BAG and backed Diawadou; others, including the president Diallo Abdoulaye (huissier,) Baldé Chaikhou, and Ibrahima Barry dit Barry III founded a new party, the Démocratie Socialiste de Guinée (DSG).
The hope of the DSG founders was to rid socialism in Guinea, until then associated with the AGV and with Yacine Diallo, of its regional origins. The new orientation was partly the work of Jean Paul Alata, a European accountant and treasury official who had previously helped to mount a socialist party in Cameroun. The DSG tried to be socialist in more than the parliamentary affiliations of its élus. The party published a newspaper, Le Populaire de Guinée, sponsored a marxist study group in Conakry, officially opposed tribe and caste differences, and backed equality for all. The party's candidate in the 1954 election, Barry III, 1 set himself directly against Fulani feudalism. His campaign met with some success, since in spite of official disapproval of opponents to Barry Diawadou, he ran up 7,995 2 votes. He did divide the Fulani voters, but had no appeal beyond the Fouta Region. Instead, the existence of the DSG contributed to keeping the PDG weak in the Fouta Djallon, by depriving it of those who might have been its best spokesmen there.
The PDG was well on the way to becoming a national party. In the coastal forest and upper regions of Guinea it gained the monopoly of those who favoured an anti-colonial and egalitarian policy. The PDG had acquired local representatives who urged their kinsmen to respond to the anti-tribal message 'that the misery which kills Togba of Macenta is the same as that of Samba of Upper Guinea, Soriba of lower Guinea, or Diallo of the Fouta Djallon' 3.
Even before the PDG organizers came to the savannah region news of the party spread fast and among receptive peoples.
1. Barry III was one of the rare Guineans to become a member of the French civil service elite corps of inspecteurs des contributfons directes. Drame Alioune was another. Both became ministers after independence.
2. Afrique Informations, 15 March-1 April 1955.
3.Savane MoricandianLa Liberté. 18 August 1954.
