It was not long before the reputation of Wamumu spread to the other camps in the Pipeline. When the principal probation officer, Colin Owen, came to assess the youths being held in places like Manyani, young detainees clamored to be selected for transfer to Askwith’s camp, though there clearly was not enough room in Wamumu for all of the boys being held at Manyani and elsewhere. Hundreds of those who were arrested and either imprisoned or detained as teenagers remained in the camps for several years, by which time they were too old to be transferred to Wamumu because they appeared to be over eighteen and were thus classified as adults. 52 Some young detainees, in an attempt to get around this, did their best to appear even younger than they were. “When the teams were identifying those who were young enough to be transferred to Wamumu,” Samuel Gakuru later recalled, “they checked for the presence of beards, pubic and armpit hairs. I was lucky since I had no beard. As for the other hairs, we had devised a way of getting rid of them by applying hot ash to these spots, and the hairs would just come off.” 53 In Samuel’s case, he was successful. Twenty-three years old at the time of the transfer inspection, he passed for a teenager and was sent to Wamumu, a move which brought an enormous change to his life not just in the Pipeline but well after his release, as he was later hired as a clerk in the Community Development and Rehabilitation Department.
Samuel was one of the lucky ones. Most of the boys in the Pipeline would remain in the adult camps, and all of the girls would be sent to Kamiti Camp as there was no female equivalent of Wamumu. Aside from those boys and girls detained or imprisoned, there were also thousands of others who were lumped into the colonial government’s orphan, waif, and stray problem. Many had lost their parents to the war or had become separated from them during the upheavals of the forced removals, leaving them “wandering about” the White Highlands and Nairobi, according to official reports. 54 Juvenile delinquency and child prostitution skyrocketed as these children did what they could in order to survive. Young girls worked in the Nairobi brothels or traveled with the help of local taxi drivers to the African servants’ quarters in the European and Asian areas of Kenya, where they sold their services for roughly two shillings, or the equivalent of a meal. 55 No single party within the government wanted to, or could, assume the fiscal or administrative responsibility for these unclaimed children and instead looked to voluntary associations and the missionaries to take care of them. Beniah Ohanga, the minister of community development and rehabilitation, voiced his outrage over this state of affairs: “The lack of remand homes [i.e., facilities for juveniles] is nothing short of a scandal, and the Judiciary has on many occasions expressed its grave disquiet at the failure of Government to fulfill its statutory obligation to provide remand homes.” 56 Simply put, the situation was hell for the children, and no one wanted to deal with it. Rather than improving, it only worsened when camps like Langata were condemned and youngsters either were released with nowhere to go or were sent to the arguably worse conditions in places like Manyani. Most colonial officials refused to accept responsibility for the juvenile crisis, instead adopting the same line as the district commissioner of Fort Hall, who blamed Kikuyu parents for not “looking after their own children in the traditional manner.” 57
The crisis of the incarceration of juveniles, along with the spike in delinquency and prostitution, was occurring at the very time that Fletcher leveled her allegations. Labour MPs, though unaware of many of these details that supported Fletcher’s claims, still held up the former rehabilitation officer’s account as unimpeachable proof that all was not right in Kenya. This time it was Labour MP Leslie Hale who took the lead in demanding a full explanation from Lennox-Boyd. From the start, Hale became Fletcher’s chief liaison with the Colonial Office, assisted her with press conferences, and wrote a foreword to her much-referenced pamphlet Truth about Kenya—an eye witness account by Eileen Fletcher. 58 In the days leading up to the first showdown on the floor of the Commons over Fletcher’s allegations, Lennox-Boyd and Baring fired secret memoranda back and forth, trying to get their stories straight. 59 There was, of course, no reasonable explanation for Fletcher’s account, but there would be no mea culpa. Lennox-Boyd and Baring never deviated from their script, instead conceding that perhaps there were one or two incidents in the Pipeline, but that these should be evaluated not just in the context of Mau Mau but also in the light of the progressive reforms they were introducing through their massive rehabilitation campaign in the camps and villages.
But what to do about Fletcher? If the colonial government could not credibly contradict each of her charges, Lennox-Boyd had to somehow discredit the character of an abundantly well-qualified woman, one who had earlier received a glowing review by Askwith. Colonial officials did their best to besmirch her character, alleging she was hysterical in temper and had a “catty manner.” 60 After her allegations were revealed, Fletcher was suddenly found to be disliked by her fellow officers and detainees, her work was substandard, and her knowledge of the Pipeline, despite her numerous and detailed safari reports, deemed superficial. But even during this assault, Lennox-Boyd knew he needed to minimize his public exchange with Labour. When the first Commons debate began in early June 1956, the colonial secretary announced he would provide no response to the Opposition until it had introduced all of its charges. The Labour MPs would then have little opportunity to redirect after he provided the government’s defense against Fletcher’s allegations. By the end of the six-and-a-half-hour session the colonial secretary had refuted some of Fletcher’s charges, stating, for example, that errors had been made in prison and court documents relating to the ages of the alleged juveniles. Once those errors were corrected, it turned out that every single juvenile detained in the Pipeline was, in fact, over the legal age for imprisonment. As for the remainder of Fletcher’s charges, he did not seek to refute them directly but dismissed them obliquely by questioning the integrity and judgment of Fletcher herself. 61
In light of the private evidence in front of the Colonial Office pertaining to delinquency, prostitution, and abhorrent detention conditions for the Mau Mau juveniles, Lennox-Boyd’s deceptions and outright lies were, and remain today, stunning. During the debate Labour MPs like Barbara Castle, Leslie Hale, Aneurin Bevan, and Fenner Brockway refused to accept the colonial government’s spin on the situation, demanding an independent judicial investigation into Kenya. When their calls fell on deaf ears, the debate nevertheless played out in the press. The Observer led the liberal media with its headline “No More Whitewash.” Its article plainly stated that Lennox-Boyd had failed in his efforts to shake the public’s confidence in Fletcher’s testimony, and that the “mysterious alteration in prison records of the ages of Kikuyu girls…is in itself disturbing.” The Observer also called upon the colonial secretary to introduce an independent investigation, declaring, “If we tolerate such practices in British territories, on what grounds do we criticise Russian prison camps?” 62
Had Lennox-Boyd acceded to the investigation, Young, Fletcher, Castle, and the rest of the government’s anticolonial critics would have been vindicated. Instead, the colonial secretary stood his ground. That thousands of men, women, and children were living under abhorrent conditions, enduring torture, and being murdered was of secondary importance to maintaining the image of colonial trusteeship as well as British rule over Kenya. Personal and political reputations were also obviously at stake. But as the level of cover-up became more blatant with each passing month, there emerged the sense that Lennox-Boyd and those around him must have actually believed their public representations of the facts. In a later debate over Fletcher in the fall of 1956 he implored the public to look at the evidence as he did: “I am quite satisfied that Miss Fletcher’s charges are based in the main on hearsay, on partisan opinion and personal prejudice. The negligible amount of criticism which could be levelled has proved to be wholly disproportionate to the impression that she has contrived to create. I would ask all fair-minded people to read carefully the docume
nts in the Library of this House and to make up their own minds.” 63 Lennox-Boyd’s Labour critics would have none of it. Aneurin Bevan leveled one of the most bitter responses during the ongoing Fletcher debates, shooting back:
Is not that a most monstrous statement to make, to accuse a person of telling lies—a person who is very respected indeed? Is it not the fact that both the Government of Kenya and the right hon. Gentleman [Lennox-Boyd] are now seeking to be judges in their own cause? Accusations have been made against the Administration there; is it not a fact that no one can have any confidence in what the right hon. Gentleman says unless he allows an impartial investigation to take place into the allegations? So far, all he has said is that he is satisfied, and he is satisfied, but we are not satisfied…What we want to know is: as charges of the gravest possible kind have been made against the administration of justice in Kenya and against the prison administration, is it not the right hon. Gentleman’s proper course now to justify his own charges by having an investigation into the whole case, and not call people “liars” in the way he has? 64
A little over two months after Bevan’s attack, another British officer stepped forward with allegations of atrocities. This time they came from Captain Philip Meldon, who had spent from March 1954 to May 1955 working in the Pipeline, first as a temporary officer in the Kenya Police Reserve and then as a rehabilitation officer in Askwith’s department. During his service Meldon worked in five camps and received positive evaluations from all his superiors. One came from James Breckenridge, the senior rehabilitation officer in the Rift Valley camps, who stated, “Meldon is extremely good with Africans and if he learns Kiswahili or Kikuyu, he will make an excellent Rehabilitation Officer.” 65 By the end of May 1955, however, Askwith had terminated Meldon’s contract “owing to absence without leave.” Nearly a year and a half after his return to Britain, Meldon came forward with a series of detailed accounts that alleged brutalities, poor administration, and cover-ups. Perhaps prompted by Fletcher’s revelations, Meldon broke the code of silence, writing to Breckenridge in December 1956, “I have given this matter a lot of consideration but my conscience will not let me keep quiet any longer.” 66 Meldon first published his allegations in Peace News and Reynolds News in January 1957 and followed them up with a personal letter to Lennox-Boyd that provided further details of his observations and offered names of specific British officers who had perpetrated crimes in Kenya’s camps. 67
Like Fletcher, Meldon revealed a picture of widespread torture and suffering in Britain’s East African colony. “The plight of detainees…during 1954 and 1955, except for those in Marigat Camp,” he wrote, “included short rations, overwork, brutality, humiliating and disgusting treatment and flogging—all in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” 68 Meldon described “lavatories [at the Gilgil transit camp that] were merely large pits in the ground, about 20' by 14' by 12' with the excreta lapping over the top,” as well as a security officer at Tebere Camp in Embu District who “kicked one detainee head-first into a large container of boiling maize meal which a Kikuyu detainee was stirring.” 69 In his letter to Lennox-Boyd the former officer provided a table that listed the “most flagrant irregularities” under various headings with titles like “Torture,” “Floggings,” “Beatings,” “Assault,” and “Overwork.” The same catalog also attached the camps and the names of the officers associated with the offenses. 70 In his account “My Two Years in Kenya” Meldon emphasized, as Fletcher and Askwith also had, the poor quality of the British officers in the camps, as well as the absence of any kind of systematic rehabilitation program. He went on to add, “The rehabilitation of these people and offering them a more hopeful outlook on life and future was a problem of vital importance to the future of Kenya, as the Kikuyu are the largest, most intelligent and hardwoking of all the peoples of Kenya, and are absolutely essential to the economy of the country. Tragically, this responsibility was not met and the opportunity was lost.” 71
By the time Meldon made his allegations the Colonial Office was better prepared to take the offensive. Having learned from their experiences with Fletcher, Lennox-Boyd and Baring sought to control the political agenda immediately, which meant foremost questioning the character of the former British officer. With Meldon’s first suggestion of exposing the Pipeline in December 1956, the governor sent a secret telegram to the colonial secretary, stating, “[The] letter may be bluff or blackmail but I am inclined to take it seriously. It may have the makings of another Eileen Fletcher affair.” 72 The governor went on to note that his office was “collecting all possible further information which may be of use in discrediting him if necessary,” and in fact labeled Meldon as “quarrelsome,” “indebted,” and “pugnacious” even before any investigation into his character had been launched. 73 For his part, Lennox-Boyd had to manage the political damage that would inevitably follow Meldon’s revelations. To this end, he stressed to Baring the importance of trying to keep press coverage to a minimum.
Fletcher campaign had shown how much heat and little constructive action was occasioned by launching of allegations through Press which neither the Governor of Kenya nor the Secretary of State had been given prior opportunity to investigate. While no one could or would attempt to stop publication by Press of what they considered it was in the public interest to publish, nevertheless the political encouragement of such campaigns might be unproductive. 74
The colonial secretary was now going as far as to meddle with the Opposition, inveigling Labour MP James Griffiths to do what he could to limit his party’s negative publicity of the Meldon case. But even with this behind-the-scenes scheming, Lennox-Boyd only hoped to weaken the coming storm. As he later telegrammed Baring, “[The] maximum results we can hope for from this approach is moderation and control of political exploitation of any disclosures made.” 75
That Meldon waited two years to come forward with his revelations was to the advantage of the Colonial Office. Together, the colonial secretary and the governor pointed to this lapse, to Meldon’s questionable character, and to the alleged success of rehabilitation to dismiss the former officer’s charges. Internally, the colonial government was fully aware that many of Meldon’s accusations were true. Gilgil Camp, for instance, was known for its wretched conditions and had been condemned by Kenya’s Medical Department in 1955. Similarly, Manyani Camp was overcrowded, lacked a rehabilitation program, and was plagued by violence and neglect, facts which Meldon had pointed out several times both publicly and privately to the colonial secretary. 76 Nevertheless, in correspondence with the Opposition and in written responses in the House of Commons, Lennox-Boyd rejected any credibility in Meldon’s claims. In one of several letters to Meldon’s leading supporter in the Labour Party, Fenner Brockway, the colonial secretary wrote:
I do not think it is necessary to go too deeply into Mr. Meldon’s general allegations. That “the opportunity was lost” to rehabilitate detainees is of course patently absurd. As you know, over 40,000 have already found their way to freedom and well under 30,000 now remain…. I think I should add, for your private information, that Mr. Meldon, as is obvious from his statement, spent a relatively short time in most of the camps with which he was concerned, and that the reason for this was that he was not considered suitable for rehabilitation work…. He was personally at odds with several officers, including the Staff Officer of the Rift Valley Works Camps. I would not wish you to infer from this that we have treated his allegations with any less care than we would otherwise have done or that because he has this background it is to be inferred that they are to be treated a priori as a complete fabrication. Nevertheless I cannot agree that on examination of the allegations, particularly as they are made after a lapse of two years and do not refer to conditions in detention camps today, reveal any grounds whatsoever for appointing a judicial commission of enquiry into these matters. 77
Meldon’s revelations never resulted in an independent judicial inquiry.
While witnesses were being discredited, Lennox-Boyd bolstered his defenses with the many positive reports coming in from government-sponsored evaluation committees. The colonial secretary certainly emphasized that regular inspection committees, as provided for under Emergency Regulations, toured the Pipeline. Of course, he had to have been aware that these committees did not visit the Pipeline on a regular basis. Moreover, the few reports that were issued were perfunctory and biased, or, in the words of Kenya’s Defence Ministry, “the whole thing is window dressing anyway.” 78 There were also the visits conducted by the missionaries’ liaison officers, Father Colleton, Reverend Howard Church, and Canon Eric Webster. All three of these men toured the camps on a regular basis, filing reports that assessed the Christian progress being made in the Pipeline. Several of the reports bemoaned the lack of proper religious facilities in the camps, the limited access enjoyed by Colleton, Church, and Webster to the detainees, the absence of rehabilitation programs, and the relentless labor routines and prolonged shackling of Mau Mau suspects. 79 Quite notably, in July 1956, Church was released from his duties, largely because he protested internally over the conditions of some of the camps, while attributing some of Mau Mau’s influence and demands to the harsh actions of the colonial government. At the time of Church’s sacking, both Baring and the colonial secretary feared he would go public, so they issued a memorandum stating, “For information—a ‘warning note’ in order, in the words of the Department, that a latter-day Fletcher may not strike without warning. The Minister of State has seen and minuted that Mr. Church may well be difficult.” 80
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