1207. 🇬🇦🇹🇬 Gabon And Togo Join The Commonwealth.

News.

🇬🇦🇹🇬 Gabon and Togo join The Commonwealth.

  The two former French colonies of Gabon and Togo have been formally admitted to membership of The Commonwealth this afternoon (Saturday 25 June 2022) at CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting, currently taking place in Kigali in Rwanda. The number of independent countries which are now members of the organisation totals 56 - more than ever before. Neither country has had any previous close links with the countries of what was known as The British Empire.

  In anticipation of this news I discussed the recent issues of both countries in Blogs 1938 and 2103 and future issues of the two countries will now be included in this Blog though the products released by the notorious Stamperija ‘philatelic agency’ on behalf of Togo will not get any notable coverage.

96 year old gets new job in Human Resources.

🇺🇸 Everyone makes a mistake sometimes. Errors on stamps are fun but sometimes they reflect the general carelessness some of the more exploitative purveyors of philatelic items adopt in their approach to the designs which appear on their products. Items intended for sale at rather high prices can be ‘designed’ in a matter of a few minutes in these times of sophisticated computer design programmes and why bother adding to the time consumed to prepare these products when there’s money to be made and more and more of these items to ‘design’ and produce? Over its many years of unloading on to the new issue market vast numbers of such items, the notorious US-based philatelic ‘agency’ IGPC has released numerous items with lazy errors on them which could have been produced error-free by simple checking by someone who knows what they are doing. But why bother?

  Here’s another example of these lazy errors recently offered for sale by IGPC with the name of St Vincent And The Grenadines printed on the items being sold - the ‘stamps’ included in 2 miniature sheets purporting to commemorate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II, Queen of St Vincent And The Grenadines, the country’s head of state, with the monarch described as ‘HR Queen Elizabeth II’. No, she isn’t “HR’ at all - the abbreviation seems to reflect confusion in the designer’s mind between HM (Her Majesty) which is correct and HRH (Her Royal Highness) which is not correct. It’s fairly easy to get it right if you know what you are doing and disrespectful to the country’s Head of State if you get it wrong. One assumes therefore that, at the grand age of 96, The Queen has taken on a new job in Human Resources though with which company or organisation I can not say.

1206. 🇮🇪 Civil War In Ireland.

 

New issues.

🇮🇪 An Post  (Postal service of the Republic Of Ireland) - 

25 June 2025 - Centenary of the outbreak of the Irish Civil War - 1 stamp. Designed from an illustration, ‘Outbreak of hostilities) by Mick O’Dea. The illustration shows the burning of the Four Courts in Dublin (29 June 1922) at the start of the civil war carried out by the IRA faction opposed to the Provisional government and the Anglo-Irish treaty. Lithographed. Rating:- *****.

🇸🇬 Singapore Post -

1 July 2022 - Singapore railway - 5 stamps. Further details awaited. Rating:- ****.

Jersey Post -

7 July 2022 - Centenary of the Jersey Island Cricket Club - 6 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing 2 different stamps. Designed by Ron Mills and lithographed by bpost. Rating:- *****.

 I think that is my all-time favourite set of cricket stamps.

🇲🇹 MaltaPost - 

11 July 2022 - Euromed, Maritime archaeology and historic cities of the Mediterranean - 2 stamps. Designed by Dave Grafton and the University of Malta. Lithographed by Printex. Perforated 14. Designs awaited.

1205. 🇭🇰 25th Anniversary Of Hong Kong’s Return To China.

New issues.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong Post -

1 July 2022 - 25th anniversary of the stationing of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong - 1 miniature sheet containing a single stamp. Designed by Ying-chi Lee and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14.5 x 13.5. Rating:- ***.

1 July 2022 - 25th anniversary of the Return of Hong Kong to the sovereignty of The Chinese People’s Republic - 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing the 4 stamps. Designed by Jason Chum and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14 x 15. Rating:- ****.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

1 July 2022 - ‘Pride’, 50th anniversary of the first ‘Pride gathering’ in the United Kingdom - 8;stamps and 1 ‘collectors’ sheet costing £12.40p. Designed by Sofie Birkin and lithographed by International Security Printers and perforated 14. Rating:- **.

1204. 🇬🇧 Spotted:- Commonwealth Games Stamps.

 

New issues.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

 28 July 2022 - Commonwealth Games, Birmingham - 8 stamps in 2 se-tenant strips of 4. Details and better quality illustrations awaited but the illustration above depicts the presentation pack with the stamps featuring various sports but no special reference to the host city.

🇱🇹 Stamperija products inscribed Sierra Leone -

Stated date of issue, 23 June 2022 - “Glory to Ukraine” and “Glory to the Heroes”, art by Boris Groh originally used on stamps issued by the postal service of Ukraine commemorating Ukraine’s defiance of the Russian invasion and secondly of the important Russian Navy ship, the Moskva - 8 miniature sheets of various formats. Rating:- 0.

2103. 🇬🇦🇹🇬 Gabon And Togo Will Join Commonwealth At CHOGM.

 

Events.

🇬🇦🇹🇬 The Commonwealth is to have two new members - the Francophone African republics of Gabon and Togo. The decision by President Ali Bongo of Gabon to seek Commonwealth membership and it’s likely philatelic consequences for Commonwealth collectors were reported in Blog 1938. Meanwhile moves to enable Togo to become a Commonwealth member have come very recently with the country’s Parliament National Assembly passing a resolution saying that the Assembly, “expresses support for Togo’s process of joining the Commonwealth”. It appeared the President Faure Gnassingbé was moved to apply for membership by President Bongo’s declaration that he was doing so on behalf of Gabon. It is said that both countries will be formally admitted to Commonwealth membership on 24 June at the CHOGM in Kigali, having already received the nod on 12 June. 

  Togoland was a German protectorate from 5 July 1884 until 1914 when British and French forces occupied the territory at the beginning of the First World War. The Allies were interested in capturing the territory because an important German wireless transmitter linking Berlin to its west African territory was sited at Kamina, north of the capital Lomé, and because the territory neighboured both the British colony of Gold Coast and the French colony of Dahomey. In the first British military action of the war British forces landed at Lomé on 7 August with the German command setting for Kamina and on 9 August the Union Jack was flying over Lomé. British and French forces arrived at Kamina on 26 August to find that the Germans had blown up the transmitter and many of the German troops had deserted, those remaining were captured. The Germans formally surrendered on 26 August 1914 and the two allies each occupied parts of the country. The territory was ruled as a condominium until 7 December 1916 when the Condominium collapsed and Togoland was formally divided into British Togoland and French Togoland.

After the British occupation of Togoland a number of overprints were released by the British authorities. Eleven German colonial stamps (3pf - 2m) were initially overprinted  ‘TOGO/Anglo-French/Occupation’ with wide settings and issued on 1 October 1914. Halfpenny and One Penny surcharges were applied and released also on 1 October and towards the end of October 13 more overprints (3pf - 5m) were issued with narrow settings of the overprint. The two surcharges were also released with the narrower setting.

  New versions of the ‘TOGO/Anglo-French’ overprints (5 values, 3pf - 50pf) were issued on 7 January 1915 and then stamps of the neighbouring British colony of Gold Coast (12 values, 1/2d - 20s) with another new, locally printed version of TOGO/Anglo-French/Occupation were issued in May 1915. In April 1916  an issue of 12 basic Gold Coast definitives (1/2d - 20s) with a further version of the overprint applied in London was released. 

A League of Nations Mandate was granted to Great Britain over British Togoland on 20 July 1922 and subsequently British Togoland was ruled as part of The Gold Coast until the 1950s when plans were being laid for the independence of Ghana. A plebiscite was held in British Togoland which voted to join Ghana when it became independent which duly happened on 6 March 1957. Previously unoverprinted Gold Coast stamps had been used in the territory and subsequently the stamps of Ghana were used there.

  Meanwhile French Togo became an autonomous republic on 30 August 1956 and became fully independent on 23 April 1960 as the Republic of Togo - it is this rump territory which is now about to join The Commonwealth. It has never been part of the British Empire since it was occupied by French troops in 1914 and was subsequently French Togo while British Togoland is now incorporated in neighbouring Ghana.

  From a philatelic point of view, the Commonwealth collector may feel some anxiety at the accession of Togo to The Commonweath as presently its postal service is allowing all manner of products from the infernal Stamperija to be released on to the market in its name. But in theory at least we now have two more territories to add to our Commonwealth collections.

Togo’s present definitive series depicting Bella Bellow, Togolese singer:-

Togo’s presidents since Independence featured on 2010 issue commemorating 50th anniversary of Independence:-

Stamperija product inscribed ‘Togo’ depicting Queen Elizabeth II, Head of The Commonwealth:-

New issues.

🇸🇭 Ascension Island  - 

22 June 2022 - 40th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands from Argentinian occupation by British forces - 4 stamps. Designed by Andrew Robinson and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 13.5. Production coordinated by Creative Direction. Thanks to Juliet Warner of Pobjoy Stamps for information about this issue. Rating:- *****.