ASAUK's conference last September on ‘Whites in Africa - Past, Present and Future’ aroused suspicions in at least one correspondent. Addressing himself to the ‘Pink ASAUK’, and enclosing a cutting from West Africa in which news of the forthcoming conference was omenously included on the same page as a report on ‘Freetown’s Rubbish Plan, the writer made two points. ‘Human beings are citizens, not colours or numbers as.your hollow minds suggest’; ‘Now that Africa is nearly free from imperialism and exploitation … dishonest intellectuals from British institutions are conspiring to draw a new map of Africa’.

The first of these points was regularly made and as regularly demonstrated throughout the conference. It did indeed turn out to be very difficult to correlate ‘whiteness’ with any particular range of activities.