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At that time the trade union movement of France was Communist-controlled, and the Communists began taking an interest in the young man who wore those smart European suits and could hold an audience spellbound for hours, whether speaking French, his own native Malinké, or Soussou, the language of the singing and dancing people of the coast. Touré was brought to Europe, visited Warsaw and Prague, came.back spouting Marxism. The founder of Guinea's first labor union, he was the power behind the strikes of 1953, which brought to French African workers their first major concessions. The workers' hero, he began to take on that mystical aura so valuable to African leaders. Once, when a political opponent happened to drop dead a few days after Toure attacked him in a speech, word went around that the tongue of Touré had the power to kill.
Full House. In the days when Toure was just beginning to emerge, the most powerful politician in French West Africa was Félix Houphouet-Boigny, and to this day Houphouet-Boigny is the strongman of the rich Ivory Coast. He organized the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (R.D.A.) as a popular front for various French African political parties, which in Paris voted with the Communists. Young Toure was at his side in the R.D.A. Already a power in labor, Toure now became a formidable figure in politics. He rose from membership in Guinea's legislative assembly to mayor of the capital city of Conakry (pop. 70.000), and finally to Deputy in the French Assembly in Paris, where Houphouet-Boigny already sat. There, Toure began his maiden speech to a Chamber empty except for a few members buried in newspapers. As he spoke, the newspapers were dropped, the absent Deputies began filtering back to their seats. By the time he had finished, the Chamber was full.
Already Touré was beginning to grow apart from his older colleague from the Ivory Coast. Houphouet-Boigny, now mellow with the years, broke with the Communists, came to be regarded by the French government as their indispensable African; he was laden with honors, the one African usually included in every French Cabinet. Touré reorganized Guinea's R.D.A. along Marxist lines. He set up a powerful new union (700,000 members) free of Paris direction both Communist and nonCommunist, stomped out all opposition at home, and at times resorted to burning the homes of those who stood in his way. He had become the most powerful man in Guinea. When France put through the Loi-cadre in 1957, which kept control of each territory in the hands of a French governor but gave Africans the right to elect their own No. 2 man as vice president of the Executive Council, Toure was ready.