Alfred Labinjoh: Edinburgh doctor, Nigerian Pan-Africanist

Standing at an imposing 6”2, Dr Alfred Labinjoh was a man of considerable stature in Edinburgh – physically, socially and politically – between the 1920s and 1950s. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, he studied medicine in Edinburgh during the early 1920s and subsequently lived in the city until 1957, working as a popular family doctor. By the 1940s, he ran surgeries in Fountainbridge, Pilton and Newlandrig, as well as the Carnegie Nursing Home at 29 Morningside Road. A prominent freemason, philanthropist, and baritone singer, he was also politically active during the 1920s and 1930s, working with the local Edinburgh African Association to raise money for the Red Cross mission to Ethiopia after fascist Italy’s invasion. Although monetary donations and military volunteers from Scotland to Republican Spain are well known, there were also important earlier precedents set by West African students and graduates in Edinburgh in support of Ethiopian resistance fighters which helped galvanise a new form of popular politics in explicit opposition to colonialism and fascism, at home and abroad.