Institute of Commonwealth Studies

Sierra Leone's 1951 constitution inaugurated a process of increasing self-government culminating in independence in 1961. Its first post-independence elections were won by the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in 1962, but after an unsuccessful attempt to establish a one-party state the SLPP was defeated at the polls in 1967 by the All People's Congress (APC) of Siaka Stevens. This prompted a series of coups and counter-coups until eventually Stevens assumed the prime ministership of the country in 1968. Having himself successfully enacted a one-party state in 1978 he and his successor Joseph Saidu Momoh ruled Sierra Leone until 1992, when the combination of an armed rebellion from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and a coup overthrowing Momoh and installing a National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) plunged the country into a civil war from which it is only now tentatively emerging. The majority of the materials held here date from the period between the granting of the first constitution and the 1992 coup, and originate from both the governing party and opposition groups objecting to failures of democracy and perceived economic mismanagement. There are also a significant quantity of items produced by the country's Electoral Commission for the instruction of voters at the crucial 1967 election.