Imperial Reckoning

by Caroline Elkins

  Not all of those responsible for the destruction of the Kikuyu people chose to exert their power physically. The agricultural redevelopment policies of the colonial government fit hand in glove with the ongoing enforcement of mass detention without trial; in fact, these policies were arguably as destructive as the physical brutality against the detainees and villagers, ensuring as they did the Mau Mau population’s continued economic marginalization in the post-Emergency future. In the end, outright violence and bureaucratic manipulation cannot be divorced. They worked in concert toward the ultimate goal of restoring and strengthening British colonial control in Kenya.

  Critics like Barbara Castle soon came to realize this, as did many others. Much of the protest came from the ranks of the Labour Party, some from within the British colonial government itself. Some came from missionaries, others from the press. Together, the critics marshaled forth a stream and then a flood of evidence and decried the continued use of detention without trial, torture, famine, abuse of Emergency Regulations, and summary executions, leaving little doubt that officials at the highest level—the prime minister, the colonial secretary, and the governor—had detailed knowledge about the ongoing brutality in Kenya.

  • Chapter Nine •

  Outrage, Suppression, and Silence

  Barbara Castle

  In the heart of the British Empire there is a police state where the rule of law has broken down, where the murder and torture of Africans by Europeans goes unpunished and where the authorities pledged to enforce justice regularly connive at its violation. And at last the Labour Party has declared war on this state of affairs.

  —BARBARA CASTLE, Tribune, September 30, 19551

  BY THE FALL OF 1955 THE SITUATION IN KENYA HAD DETERIORATED TO its worst level, and the British Labour Party’s outrage had exploded. Reports of atrocities continued to make it back to Britain, directly contradicting Lennox-Boyd’s repeated protests that the situation was improving. On the floor of the Commons the Opposition continually pressed the colonial secretary on allegations of atrocities, as well as the numbers of those detained without trial, those forcibly removed, the legal defense of the politicals, the rate of release of those still detained, and the day-to-day operations and conditions of the camps and villages.2 Never wavering, Lennox-Boyd fought off accusations of brutality, neglect, and widespread suffering with regard to the Kikuyu. When specific incidents of violence were brought to light, he condemned them as deplorable but argued vociferously that they were isolated. Lennox-Boyd was stonewalling, and Labour Party members like Barbara Castle knew it. “You were chasing a sense of complacency and cover up by the government in Kenya and at home,” she later recalled, “that made one realize there was something very wrong.”3 And so Castle made her party’s very public declaration of war against the Conservative government on the front page of the Tribune. The headline read “Labour to Fight Kenya Thugs,” but the thugs in this case were not the Mau Mau insurgents; they were the leaders of the British colonial government and their men on the spot.

  Colonel Arthur Young’s resignation as commissioner of police in Kenya incited Labour outrage. In February 1954, Young had been posted to the colony from his position as the City of London’s police commissioner with the express purpose of cleaning up Kenya’s police force and transforming it into an impartial instrument of the rule of law. His appointment came after a bipartisan parliamentary delegation traveled to Kenya earlier in 1954 and reported that the best way to address the allegations of brutality was through a reorganization of the police, which did not operate as an independent unit in Kenya, but rather came under the direct control of the Administration and ultimately the governor himself.4 Young’s task was to establish the police force as an autonomous and incorruptible division within the colony’s government in Kenya, one that not only would transcend the local Emergency mentality but also bring cases of brutality and torture to the attention of the attorney general for prosecution. In the context of the times this would be a monumental task, but if anyone were to succeed it would be Young. The colonel brought with him a proven record of success, having recently returned from Malaya, where he had overseen a similar housecleaning. There was every expectation that he would at the very least help to establish some control over the chaotic law enforcement situation in Kenya.

  It was not long, however, before Young was thoroughly disgusted with colonial officials in Kenya and, most specifically, with the governor himself. “I felt it my unpleasant duty,” the colonel later recalled, “to pursue with Baring my apprehensions that members of the civilian security forces were uncontrolled and were committing crimes of violence and brutality upon their alleged enemies, which were unjustified and abhorrent.”5 But the governor did nothing. In fact, he seems to have done everything within his power to stymie Young’s work. On later reflection, Young recalled:

  I addressed an official report to H.E. [His Excellency] expressing my apprehensions in writing, with the belief that supporting evidence would soon be forthcoming. I also requested that he should take an initiative in administrative action which would indicate his own repugnance of brutality committed by security forces and do what he could to bring this to an end. I received no acknowledgment of this appreciation, far less an answer to it, in spite of a number of reminders. 6

  Less than a year after his arrival the colonel handed Baring his letter of resignation, which stood as a personal indictment of the governor’s refusal to rein in the colony’s forces of law and order. In the letter Young detailed the reasons for his “anxiety at the continuance of the rule of fear rather than that of impartial justice.”7 The first of his complaints was about Baring’s refusal to allow the Police Department, and its ancillary Criminal Investigation Department, to operate independently from the Administration. Young had repeatedly demanded “impartial status” for the police, insisting that it was essential to Kenya’s law enforcement. But neither Baring nor his men on the spot were about to relinquish their control over police investigations or investigations into brutality by the civilian security forces.

  For his part, Baring insisted that prosecuting any of his men, black or white, would undermine morale and damage whatever inroads they had made against the so-called Mau Mau savages. In correspondence with the Colonial Office the governor insisted, “If we have a weak Police force we have a strong Administrative service; and I am convinced that we cannot and should not weaken the position of our Administrative officers.”8 In other words, Baring knew a strong independent police force and a powerful cadre of colonial officers in the reserves were mutually exclusive, as an independent police force would surely have weakened the Administration by exposing its corruption and brutality. In fact, Young had provided Baring with exhaustive details of the “many serious and revolting crimes [that] were being perpetrated both by ‘loyal’ Africans and by Europeans, not infrequently with the tacit approval of the Administration, concerning which no reports were being received at Police Headquarters.”9 Many members of the police force were, of course, also complicit in these “revolting crimes,” making Young’s job of creating an impartial investigation unit all the more challenging. Indeed, it was commonplace for the police force to act in concert with some members of the Administration, as well as with camp officials and the Home Guard.

  Even more disturbing was the governor’s deliberate intrusions into ongoing police investigations. In September 1954, for example, Chief Mundia in the Mathira Division of Nyeri District, and a handful of his Home Guards, were accused of beating several detainees in their charge, one of whom died. The corpse was allegedly transported in the chief’s car, then buried, only to be exhumed later by the police. According to Young and K. P. Hadingham, the assistant police commissioner in Nyeri, both Ozzie Hughes and Monkey Johnston, then the district commissioner of Nyeri and the provincial commissioner of Central Province, respectively, actively sought to thwart any investigation. Most astounding was Hadingham’s report that the governor had also become involved. According
to Nyeri’s assistant commissioner of police, “On the occasion of a recent visit of the Secretary of State for the Colonies accompanied by His Excellency the Governor to South Nyeri, HE drew me aside for some ten minutes to discuss the Chief Mundia case.” Hadingham then went on to describe the nature of His Excellency’s request.

  HE said that his discussion with me was “off the record,” and while he would not give me any directions in the matter he considered it would be politically most inexpedient to prosecute a loyal chief who had taken a leading part in the fight against Mau Mau. He said that a loyal Kikuyu would find it difficult to differentiate between killing Mau Mau in the heat of battle and killing the government’s enemies out of battle. He said that one should take into account the difference of mentality between loyal Kikuyu and, say, European security force personnel who were well able to realize the wrong of taking the law into their own hands. 10

  Young was outraged by this turn of events. Later both Baring and Monkey Johnston called the young Hadingham to Nairobi, apologized for their heavy-handed tactics, and gave him the green light to continue with the investigation. Eventually, Mundia and his underlings were tried for the murder and acquitted, but convicted of the lesser charge of assault.11

  When Young returned to London in January 1955, his reception at the Colonial Office was decidedly chilly. Lennox-Boyd had been friends with Baring since their days at Oxford, and they shared a ruling-class conviction and vision of empire. The colonial secretary had every intention of supporting the governor, which meant he first had to silence Young as best he could. If the commissioner’s letter of resignation were published or otherwise made its way to the press, the ensuing political damage would have been irreparable, both for Baring and for Lennox-Boyd. In a later statement Young hardly equivocated on this point. “In retrospect,” he wrote, “it is clear that if my report had been published to Parliament, the Governor in the very least would have been recalled and the Colonial Secretary himself would have been in a very hazardous position.”12 Young, like all others who served in the colonial government during the Emergency, had signed the Official Secrets Act, binding him to confidentiality under penalty of law. But his departure still had to be explained—a delicate task. Together he and Lennox-Boyd drafted a carefully scripted press release that was wholly devoid of any of the particulars contained in the colonel’s original resignation letter. Nevertheless, its implications were clear, even shrouded in the studied language of the Colonial Office.

  There was…a difference of opinion between the Kenya Government and Colonel Young on the functions of the Police Force in the Emergency. It was their common aim that the Kenya Police should be regarded as impartial custodians of the law and should command the trust and confidence of the public. Colonel Young explained to the Secretary of State that in his view no progress towards this aim could be made unless the Police were given a greater measure of independence in the performance of their functions than they at present possessed in the Emergency areas and unless it was recognized that the respect of the public for the impartial administration of the law was seriously jeopardised by the activities of the Home Guard whose powers were liable to abuse owing to their lack of discipline. The Kenya Government for their part were determined to eradicate abuses among members of Kikuyu Guard. But they considered that for as long as the present violent phase of the Emergency lasted it was essential that the Administration, the Police and the military should jointly concentrate all their efforts on bringing terrorism to an early end and that for this purpose there must be the highest degree of integration and co-ordination between the three bodies at all levels. 13

  Absent from the statement was any reference to crimes by Europeans, which Young had described in his earlier internal memoranda. Despite the release of this joint statement, there were still other matters outstanding, not the least of which was some internal reshuffling. During his ten months in Kenya, Young had managed to secure a handful of allies, most notably John Whyatt, the colony’s attorney general, and Duncan McPherson, Kenya’s assistant commissioner of police. Whyatt had supported the prosecution of brutalities perpetrated during screening and detention operations, going as far as assuring Young that he would move forward with cases even if it meant doing so without the governor’s prior knowledge. 14 On the heels of Young’s departure Whyatt was shipped out of Kenya, promoted to chief justice of Singapore. He was soon replaced by Eric Griffith-Jones, whose views on the prosecution of crimes perpetrated by the civilian security forces, and on the use of force more generally, could not have been farther from those of his predecessor. McPherson, who had been transferred to Kenya from Hong Kong expressly to assist Young, was virtually powerless without an attorney general willing to prosecute cases. Moreover, his new boss, Richard Catling, had been transferred from Malaya and was clearly cut from the same cloth as Baring and Griffith-Jones.

  The coup de grâce was the colonial government’s decision to issue an amnesty for all crimes committed prior to January 1955. This amnesty also applied to those Mau Mau insurgents still in the forests, though surrender meant only that they would not be prosecuted for a capital offense. In other words, amnesty for Mau Mau adherents translated into detention without trial and Emergency justice in the Pipeline. For white and black members of the security forces amnesty meant they would remain wholly unaccountable for any torture, rape, or murder they had committed against Mau Mau people in the reserves or in detention camps. Of course, this had been the British colonial government’s de facto policy for years. But the blanket pardon left little doubt that the colonial government, including Churchill and his cabinet, who discussed and approved the amnesty, were wholly willing to abandon the enforcement of law and order and to subordinate the basic human rights of Mau Mau adherents in order to maintain the support of the security forces and, ultimately, uphold British colonial rule in Kenya. 15

  Criticism in London over the Young affair came from several corners and built to a maelstrom of outrage. The first round of public censure came not from the Labour Opposition but from the Anglican Church. The Executive Committee of the Church Missionary Society, the Anglican Church’s oversight committee for its missionary work around the world, launched its first round of censure with a letter to the editor at the Times. The committee targeted Baring’s amnesty declaration, stating, “[The] appeal to the security forces in the Governor’s speech not to maltreat people held in captivity and warnings to the effect that ‘any of you, or any other person, who commits any offence [in the postamnesty period] will be prosecuted with the full strength of the law’ are welcome, but they are not new. Hitherto they have not led to a cessation of malpractices by members of the security forces.” 16 The Anglican Church had been hearing for years that the British colonial government was going to rein in its men and prosecute perpetrators of brutality. Yet nothing new had been introduced into Kenya’s system of policing to herald a dramatic change in policy. In fact, with Young’s departure the situation appeared to worsen rather than improve.

  It was the Church Missionary Society’s publication of the pamphlet Kenya—time for Action that first signaled serious skepticism over the standards of colonial rule in Britain’s empire. Anglican leaders labeled the brutality and breakdown of law and order “the Government’s Mau Mau,” an especially insulting analogy given Mau Mau’s presumed savagery. They pointed to Canon T. F. C. Bewes’s initial report about colonial violence during the early days of the Emergency, accusations that the Colonial Office had characterized as relating to widely isolated events. At the time Bewes and the Church were assured that “vigorous steps” were being taken against any abuses, though subsequent events rendered these official promises hollow. The pamphlet decried the official amnesty, stating, “An amnesty does not itself make bad men good,” and went on to point out “that under Colonel Young’s direction, an increasingly vigilant police force had uncovered an alarming number of contraventions of the law and of elementary standards of decency and reasonable restraint by som
e whose duty it was to be upholders of civilized standards against barbarism; but that Colonel Young found reluctance in some official quarters to support the taking of proceedings against these offenders.” 17

  The debate quickly moved to the floor of the House of Lords, where Lord Jowitt, who had been solicitor general and then attorney general in the postwar Labour government, teamed up with the archbishop of Canterbury to launch an exhaustive review of the events surrounding Young’s resignation, highlighting several known atrocities that had been perpetrated by Britain’s forces of law and order. “We must paint these events in their true colours,” Jowitt urged his fellow Lords. “There is nothing whatever to be said for massacring disarmed prisoners or for employing torture to exact confessions. These things are repellent to the Christian ideal and repellent to the British system of justice. He who tries to gloss them over as a mere excess of loyalty, or to make light of them, is doing no good service to our good name.” 18 In response Lord Lloyd, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for the colonies, agreed that “the ultimate responsibility for affairs in Kenya—including the surrender offer—rests with Her Majesty’s Government,” but went on to add, “I do not dispute that it would be impossible to deny that serious malpractices have taken place, though here again I cannot entirely forget the circumstances in which such malpractices have arisen.” 19