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ROGER FIELDHOUSE THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT's once comfortable assumption that, whatever might happen in India, colonial administration would continue for an unlimited time in Africa, was undermined by a number of complex and interrelated factors after the Second World War. These included the emergence of the United States and Soviet Union as two superpowers both hostile to colonialism; the anti-colonial principles written into the United Nations Charter; the victory of the British Labor Party in the 1945 general election and the agitation of the African nationalist movements. Until 1948 these factors hastened the progress towards decolonization without causing undue friction. In 1947 the British Government took a giant step towards divesting itself of its empire by conceding independence to India, and a year later Arthur Creech-.Jones, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, declared that British colonial policy was simply "to guide the colonial territories to responsible government within the Commonwealth in conditions that ensure to the people concerned both a fair standard of living and freedom from oppression from any quarter". But in 1948 a number of events shattered this complacent air of dignified, peaceful and paternalistic progression towards eventual independence in British Africa. The communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia followed by the Berlin blockade heralded the ending of peaceful coexistence and the beginnings of the cold war. It was not long before British imperial forces were locked in an anti-communist war in Malaya. Meanwhile in West Africa the Colonial Administration was stunned by the outbreak of violent nationalist agitation, demonstrations, strikes and rioting following Kwame Nkrumah's appointment as general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention in January 1948 and the sporadic echoing of his 'Positive Action' campaign amongst the Zikist nationalists in Nigeria. Fear of cold war communist