Chapter 6: Low Intensity Conflicts and Decision-making in Parliamentary Democracies: The
6.2 Kenya
6.2.3 The Decision to Fight in Kenya
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for Eden was less widespread than in the party or the public.595 Moreover, as long as Eden saw his future hinging on Churchill’s will and not on the Cabinet, the Prime Minister could also be safe, as a failed leadership struggle would have removed Eden from his sure front-runner positions for the premiership. Eden appears to have been aware of this, as his policies were cautious so as not to upset the Prime Minister or possible rivals and guarded his privileged position with jealousy. He did clash in views with Churchill, especially when Churchill interfered into foreign office business but did not plan plots to remove him.596 Consequently, in the absence of a credible challenger, attacks on the Prime Minister are expected to surface through the parliamentary party.
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the Korean War and the cost of nuclear weapons that Attlee had decided to acquire, which had sobering effects. This limited the government’s options, making Eden and the more progressive cabinet members’ position prevail in colonial matters on many issues.598
Reaction to troubles in Kenya started according to this choreography. However, Churchill’s pro-Empire views explain his behavior only partially. Sensitivity to the domestic political standing of the government appears to account for the rest. To begin with, London first got wind of the deteriorating situation in Kenya from Acting Governor Henry Potter on August 17, 1952. The reaction of the Colonial Office was supportive but action was limited to introducing legal restrictions. The idea of sending the new Governor, Evelyn Baring out, was considered, but Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton finally rejected the idea.599 Not a month passed and Churchill himself suggested sending Baring earlier. From his letter to Lyttelton, it is obvious that he was primarily motivated by negative press coverage of Baring staying in London too long when “alarming tales” were arriving from Kenya. In his reply Lyttelton unequivocally put it to the Prime Minister that he was not making policy on the basis ofDaily Mail criticism. Moreover, he did not find the situation too alarming, so Baring was not sent.600 Churchill’s letter is also telling in another respect. His chief source of information appeared to be the press rather than his own government. His letter suggests that he was not included in much in the discussion over action in Kenya. The letter of the Cabinet Secretary, Norman Brook on September 26 allow for a similar conclusion. Brook requested information on repressive laws introduced in Kenya for the Prime Minister. It is clear that the subject was mentioned on the September 11 cabinet meeting, which Churchill did not attend.601 Neither was it the cabinet minutes that prompted Churchill’s reactions but the leading article of the
598 Sked and Cook 1993, 111-114; Elkins 2005, 139; Kyle 1999, 54; Louis 1999, 339; Hennessy 2000, 20; and Colville 1985, 652.
599 PRO CO 822/544, August 28, 1952, “[Unknown official] To Lloyd,” and August 30, 1952, “Lloyd to Corell-Barnes.”
600 PRO PREM 11/472, September 7, 1952, “WSC to Colonial Secretary,” September 9, 1952, “O.L. to Prime Minister,” and September 11, 1952 “PM (52) 29, Colonial Secretary to Prime Minister”.
601 PRO CO 822/437, September 26, 1952, “Brook to MacKintosh,” and PRO CAB 128/25 79 (52), September 11, 1952.
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Daily Express. However, his lack of knowledge of this situation as a result of his absence is a lame explanation. It took him two weeks to enquire about the details of the cabinet meeting he missed, which may well indicate his general lack of participation in a great number of political decisions. His illness, old age and reluctance to read his boxes and keep track of events fostered his exclusion, which served the Cabinet right: it had a Prime Minister whose wartime reputation made it impossible to get rid of him, but it could operate quite independently of him so his premiership made little impact on certain policies.
Such an interpretation is supported by Macmillan’s notes. Churchill appeared to miss cabinets after his return from the US, i.e. most of January. The Cabinet appeared to be efficient in Churchill’s absence. However, when he was present, he appeared to ramble on too long, which kept postponing decisions. When he was there he did not seem to have a general grip on the situation and failed to understand some issues. 602 As a result, the Cabinet seemed to loose grip on events.603
The public nature of the crisis may be one reason for excessive attention to press coverage. Newspapers of all shades – both Labour and Conservative – got wind of the disturbances in Kenya at about the same time as the government did in London. Newspapers were writing about rising violence, anti-white conspiracy of secret societies, white settlers’
resolve to fight Mau Mau, the condemnation of atrocities by the religious missions in Kenya and a cerfew introduced as a result of violence. Openly or not, all of them hinted at the necessity of strong government action.604 Such news started to appear in theSunday Dispatch on August 22 and was carried in the following two weeks by the Daily Telegraph, News Chronicle, The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, the Evening News, and the
602 See for example, Macmillan 2003,132 (January 17, 1952), 135-6 (January 25-26, 1952), 139 (February 5, 1952), 140 February 7, 1952).
603 Macmillan 2003, 165 (June 21, 1952).
604 For the articles see, PRO CO 822/436.
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Manchester Guardian.605 Although officials in London tried to counter criticism by publishing their facts and counter-arguments, they quickly understood that they had very limited means to change the prevailing mood in the press. As one Colonial Office official wrote on September 12, “We must resign ourselves, I am afraid to the fact that there is little or nothing we can do to prevent the situation […] in Kenya being depicted in a sensational manner.”606
As expected, the place of real trouble for the government was the House of Commons.
It was receiving parliamentary questions over Kenya already in October 1952 and the flow of questions did not cease. As a Colonial Office note reveals, the government was flooded with questions over Kenya by March 3, 1953: “There were 20 [questions] for Kenya alone for Wednesday and Thursday.”607
Nonetheless, it was not the members of the radical backbenchers of the governing party but the opposition that criticized the governement. Unlike the press, Labour criticized the government for too harsh a reaction at the end of September 1952. Neither was criticism as benign as the opposition criticism in the course of the Malaya conflict. Fenner Broackway, a Labour MP, voiced his views in a letter to the Foreign Office, saying that the government overreacted to the situation, the importance of the Mau Mau was exaggerated, thus, nothing could explain the Kenya legislature’s drastic measures to deny essential human rights (such as freedoms of speech, press, and assembly).608 In late November 1952, the government was criticized for curtailing political activity in Kenya and for not using moderate Africans for political solutions.609 In November 30, 1953, Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee asked the Prime Minister about a rather embarrassing issue, that is, the fact that Captain Griffiths of
605 TheDaily Mail article Churchill referred to is available at PRO PREM 11/472, September 6, 1952, “Colony Calls for A Strong Man.”
606 PRO CO 822/436, September 12, 1952, “G. H. Hall to C.H. Hartwell.”
607 PRO CO 822/450, March 3, 1953, “Rogers to MacKintosh.”
608 PRO CO 822/437, September 19, 1952, “Fenner Brockway to O.L.”
609 PRO CO 822/450, “Note, November 28, 1952.”
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the KAR was court marshaled because of beating up and murdering inhabitants.610 Two days later, Fenner Brockway asked Churchill if he knew that there was a competition between military units in Kenya fuelled by the fact that they were paid head-quotas after the number of Mau Mau terrorists killed.611 Just four month into the crisis, Fenner Brockway accused the government of racism over the designated membership of the Royal Commission on land tenure that was designed as a positive step toward doing away with the causes of Mau Mau.612 In the light of such detailed press coverage and heavy criticism from the opposition, it is not surprising that the event enjoyed much more cabinet attention than Malaya ever did. In the first three years of the emergency, Kenya was on the agenda of the Cabinet twenty-seven times (nine times each year) and was the subject of five cabinet papers. While the Cabinet was mostly used for rubber stamping decisions, it was much more a forum of real discussion than in Malaya. Not only did the Cabinet make the major decision of declaring the emergency, the banning of KAU and sending additional troops that Baring requested on October 10,613 but it had also been the forum where the idea of sending troops had been suggested probably not knowing that it had already been considered and quickly discarded by the Colonial Office in early September.614 It was the Cabinet that authorized the sending of a commander familiar with guerilla tactics and further reinforcements.615
Only once did the Cabinet drag its feet: in August 1953 it refused to make a decision on sending three additional battalions at the oral request of the Colonial Secretary. It requested a review of the situations before a decision. When it was done, the Cabinet agreed to send two battalions and, finally, consenting to sending a third if the Prime Minister sees it necessary.
610 PRO CAB 21/2906, November 30, 1953, “Private Notice by Mr. Attlee.”
611 PRO CAB 21/2906, December 1, 1952, “Parliamentary Question by Fenner-Brockway to Prime Minister.”
612 PRO CAB 21/2906, Excerpt from Hansard, February 25, 1953, 2080.
613 PRO PREM 11/472, October 10, 1955, “Sir Evelyn Baring to the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs,”
PRO CAB 128/25, 85 (52), October 14, 1952 and PRO CO 822/443, October 14, 1952, “Secretary of State for the Colonies to Sir Evelyn Baring.”
614 PRO CAB 128/25, 81 (52), September 26, 1952, Item 1 and PRO CO 822/437, September 10, 1952, “T.
Lloyd to [Unknown official].”
615 See for example PRO CAB 128/26, 18 (53), March 10; CAB 128/26, 33 (53), May 21, 1953.
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This suggests that the Cabinet itself was a great deal less enthusiastic about providing reinforcements than the Prime Minister or the Colonial Secretary, but its bargaining powers were also limited.
There was only one decision that the Prime Minister and the ministers concerned did not take into the Cabinet. This was the most important decision from the point of view of the success of the military campaign, namely unifying the command of the armed forces under General Erskine. The idea for such a move appeared after another request for troops had already been approved by the Cabinet. As neither Lyttelton nor the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) nor the Secretary of State for War (Anthony Head) were particularly satisfied with the developments in Kenya, they proposed sending General Erskine to Kenya as commander-in-chief East Africa. This discussion entirely ignored the Cabinet and it was the Prime Minister who approved the decision.616
Although pressure in the press might have predisposed the government toward war, Britain’s reason to send troops to Kenya was primarily strategic. It wished to make sure that when Britain would leave Kenya for good, Kenya would be left in pro-British hands. In other words, Britain’s main concern was to ensure its strategic interest in the region when its formal colonial rule would end. Baring’s reason for requesting further troops and the authorization of the declaration of the emergency are in line with ensuring British control of the region. He feared that without such measures the trouble would spread further and the outburst of a civil war was not unlikely either.617
Throughout the emergency, just as in Malaya, an important problem was troop availability without compromising other commitments. On September 29, 1952, it was made clear that troops could only be diverted from Egypt at the expense of other duties. The KAR troops were judged adequate and it was stressed that the problem was a police problem rather
616 PRO PREM 11/472, May 27, 1953, “Oliver Lyttelton to Prime Minister,” May 27, 1953, “A. Head to Minister of Defense,” and May 28, 1953, “Alexander to Prime Minister.”
617 PRO PREM 11/472, October 10, 1955, “Sir Evelyn Baring to the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs.”
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than a military one.618 It took the government six months to realize the scale of the problem and acknowledge in the Commons that the situation in Kenya was indeed war terrain.619 Such realization was, in part, hindered by the fact that colonial officials in Kenya were keenly aware of the cost of further troops requests. This prompted them to make modest requests, not therefore conveying the seriousness of the problem in clear terms. Consequently, the chief of staff had to make it clear that requests should be made on the basis of need “without feeling restricted by any question of costs.”620
What, however, did not figure in the decision was the worldwide struggle against Communism. Neither the Cabinet nor the Colonial Office saw any connection until the idea surfaced in November 1953 when the Foreign Secretary inquired into the matter. However, the only evidence that could be unearthed was Kenyatta’s ten-month long visit to Moscow in 1932-1933 when he shortly studied at the Lenin Institute. In the end the Colonial Office unequivocally rejected the existence of any Comunnist connections.621
White settler influence is less obvious than the number of settlers or general scholarly views on British colonial policy622 – i.e. strong action in favor of the settlers where there were large settler communities – might predict. Settlers had a prominent role in calling attention to atrocities in the crisis. They did not only lobby the Governor and the Colonial Office, but were, in a large part, responsible for media attention to developments in Kenya.623 They pressed the Colonial Office for the emergency and measures against the native population.624 This, and especially media attention, made it impossible for the government in London to ignore the issue. However, HMG was less than enthusiastic in the settlers having their way.
618 PRO COS (52) 138, September 29, 1952, “Dispatch of British Troops to Kenya,” PRO CO 822 437, October 1, 1952 “Minister of Defense to Colonial Secretary,” and October 8, 1952, “Oliver Lyttelton to Minister of Defense.”
619 PRO PREM 11/472, Excerpt from Hansard, March 31, 1953. 1036-1064.
620 PRO CAB 129, C.P. (53) 92, March 7, 1953.
621 PRO CO 822/461 especially [no date] “Is Mau Mau Communist Inspried?” and October 17, 1952 “Situation in Kenya: Possibility of Communist connexion in the Mau Mau.”
622 Louis 1999, 352; Elkins 2005, 47, 59. Newspaper articles in PRO PREM 11/472 suggest the same.
623 Elkins 2005, 42. See also PRO CO 822/436, September 12, 1952, “G. H. Hall to C.H. Hartwell.”
624 See for example CO 822/437, [no date], “John Whyatt to Rogers.”
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They advised the Colonial Secretary against sending Baring earlier, because it would only strengthen the hands of the white settlers.625 In November, the Colonial Office was dismayed that Baring had not taken a “stiffer line against Europeans.”626
The pattern would be upheld throughout the emergency. Civilian military command was unified in May 1953 and strict security measures were introduced a month later despite the opposition of the white settlers.627 In a similar vein, constitutional changes, election of black Council members in 1954, black majority rule and an open franchise in 1960 were all carried through in the face of settler protest.628 Finally, from the earliest moments on, the government also made efforts to tackle the discrimination of the native population rather than uphold settler supremacy.629
6.2.3.2 Unfulfilled Opportunities for Cabinet and Backbench Revolt
Kenya cast a threatening shadow over the Prime Minister and the government throughout, that is, backbench revolt or open cabinet dissatisfaction could have easily arisen. In particular, there were two points in the history of the Kenya campaign that could have resulted in problems for the government or the Prime Minister: the Lari massacre in 1953 and the Hola massacres in 1959.
6.2.3.2.1 The Lari Massacre
As for the former, on March 26 1953, Mau Mau terrorists captured a large amount of weapons and, diverting the loyal Kikuyu Home Guard, burnt down 40-50 huts and massacred 97 loyalist Kikuyu near Lari. This brought the perilous nature of the war in Kenya home to Britain, making it clear that things were not going too well for Britain in Kenya. The Lari
625 PRO CO 822/544, August 30, 1952, “Lloyd to Corell-Barnes.”
626 PRO CO 822/443, November 12, 1952, “Lloyd to Colonial Secretary.”
627 Anderson 2005, 69, 178-179, 262-268, 284-286; Elkins 2005, 52-3; Carver 1990, 33-42.
628Anderson 2005, 331-335; Elkins 2005, 355-360; Kyle 1999.
629 See documents in PRO CO 822/544.
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massacre led to an overheated debate in the House, which was nothing but a very public bantering of the government by the opposition. The government was accused of failure. It was said to have committed every mistake that could further alienate the people in a colony where there was already a popular uprising. Collective punishment, inciting fear, ignoring poverty, indifference to the plight of the Africans, letting Mau Mau demonstrate its capabilities, and corrupt legal proceedings were not to win the hearts and minds of the people. The Lari massacre was called “the most shocking in the history of the Commonwealth and the Empire.”630 Responsibility was seen to be shared between the white settler community, the Kenya administration and the Conservative government in London, concluding that “the government have failed and they should be removed.”631 All in all, by mid-1953, with “a slim majority in parliament,” “the embarrassment of the Kenya campaign posed an increasing political threat” to the government.632
Suggestions about the government’s mishandling of the problems in Kenya had surfaced in November and December,633 but by the end of March 1953 events clearly supported accusations that things were not going well in Kenya. Even Lyttelton could do nothing but meekly agree that it was a new situation asking for new action and for the first time acknowledged that the situation had a semi-military character and “is more like a war than an emergency.” 634
To save face the government finally hastened to initiate changes. To be fair, the review of the situation had started earlier – in November 1952 when Lyttelton had already acknowledged in the Commons that the situation in Kenya had changed for the worse.635 As
630 PRO PREM 11/472, Excerpt from Hansard, March 31, 1107.
631. PRO PREM 11/472, Excerpt from Hansard, March 31, 1114.
632 Anderson 2005, 278.
633 PRO PREM 11/472, Excerpts from Hansard, November 25, 1952, 255-344 and December 16, 1952, 1222-1334.
634 PRO PREM 11/472, Excerpt from Hansard, March 31, 1953. 1036-64. The government still insisted on the police-action nature of the Kenya emergency as late as January 28, 1953. See Lord Swinton’s (Secretary of State for War) statement in the House of Lords, PRO CAB 21/2906, Excerpt from Hansard, January 28, 1953, 48.
635 PRO CO 822/450, November 24, 1952, “Sir Evelyn Baring to the Colonial Secretary.”
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Baring had also reported in November 1952, the situation was “dark” and not improving much. He also warned London that the police operation was being replaced by “a small scale guerrilla war.” Baring also suggested that a soldier with experience in fighting guerilla warfare should be sent out to be director of operation. The government agreed to send General Hinde but changed nothing else. At the end of February 1953, the CIGS’s report on his visit to Kenya concluded that if the emergency was not finished quickly, the government was facing another possible Malaya. With quick action and further reinforcements the problem could be rooted out in a few months. To this effect he suggested to send military reinforcements again (two infantry brigades, one signal troop, one infantry headquarters, and a small number of aircrafts). He also found the creation of a small emergency council and the extension of the police and intelligence forces desirable. 636 To this, first the Defence Committee then the Cabinet gave its support.637
Things, however, did not change for the better fast enough. When Lyttelton returned from his visit to the colony in May, he suggested that further reinforcements were necessary, telling the Cabinet that if a few more troops could be provided, order could be fully restored in a few months. Speed was judged important to prevent the development of further atrocities in Africa for which a potential was forecast.638 The Cabinet dutifully agreed.639 More battalions were sent after General Erskine’s request in August 1953. However, it took until October 1953 for the Cabinet to realize that the crisis will not be over in a few months but was
“likely to be a long one.”640
Nonetheless, the Lari massacre was not the only skeleton in the closet. Ongoing criticism pointing to cruelty by the armed forces or restricting political freedoms were
636 For the report by the CIGS. see Annex to PRO PREM 11/472, D (53) 12, February 27, 1953, “Defence Committee, Kenya, Report by the Chiefs of Staff.” See also PRO CAB 21/2906, March 5, 1953, “Alexander to Prime Minister.”
637 PRO PREM 11/472, D (53) 12, February 27, 1953, “Defence Committee, Kenya, Report by the Chiefs of Staff” and PRO CAB 128/26, 18 (53), March 10, 1953.
638 PRO PREM 11/472, May 27, 1953, “Oliver Lyttelton to Prime Minister.”
639 PRO CAB 128/26, 33 (53), May 21, 1953.
640 PRO PREM 11/472, October 9, 1953, “Oliver Lyttelton to Prime Minister.”