Campaigns and Key Events
State of Emergency Declared
Sir Philip Mitchell, the governor of Kenya, was leaving office just as the rebellion gathered pace. It was quite clear that he wanted an easy exit from government, as reports were steadily arriving in London about the escalation of Mau Mau violence. In the UK, the Colonial Office dismissed it as localised violence that could be easily and quickly dispatched. Sir Evelyn Baring, as the new governor, arrived to what can be described as an maelstrom to which he was given no warning by either the Colonial Office or Sir Philip Mitchell. Certainty, the Army had realised the severity of the situation, but seems to have been ignored despite reports asking for reinforcements being sent home.
Up until 3rd October, Mau Mau violence was directed at those Africans they felt had colluded with the British; more specifically, Kikuyu who owned land and had profited from their relationships with the British. However, when a white woman was stabbed to death near Thika on the 3rd October, it caused uproar within Kenya’s settler community. A week later, on 9 October, Senior Chief Waruhiu, a staunch supporter of the British in Kenya was shot to death in broad daylight in his car. His assassination gave Baring the final impetus to request permission from the Colonial Office to declare a State of Emergency which was declared on 20th October 1952 and didn’t end until 1960. Once the State of Emergency was in place, the government moved quickly to suspend African political activity and round up 180 suspected Mau Mau leaders. The operation, known as ‘Operation Jock Scott’, aimed to decapitate the Mau Mau leadership and secure a quick end to the troubles, but details were leaked, meaning key leaders such as Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge were able to make their escape to the forests.
Mau Mau Atrocities
The Mau Mau committed a range of brutal crimes, particularly when they were at their strongest between late 1952 and august 1953. These atrocities were committed against both British and Kenyans, including the Kikuyu tribe that formed the majority of the Mau Mau. Their brutality sparked a fear amongst the settlers; Anderson reports how even a Kenyan policemen stated after a massacre ‘These people are animals. If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness”.
The most notorious of the atrocities committed by the Mau Mau is the Lari Massacre, on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which they herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with ‘pangas’ (machetes) anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back in to the burning huts. the official death toll was placed at around 75. African security forces retaliated with their own violence, which neither the military nor the regional government administration made any attempt to regulate.
This was not the only massacre the Mau Mau were involved in; one that shocked the settler population the most was the murder of the Ruck family, farm owners who were hacked to death including their 6 year old child Michael Ruck. This incident made headlines throughout Africa and Europe, and some settlers, dissatisfied with the governments response, formed their own militant groups. Many settlers entered the Kenyan Police Reserve, which was formed in response to the rebellion and staffed by settlers. Its members often were responsible for operating detention facilities and camps. The Mau Mau are officially reckoned to have killed 1,819 murders of Africans as well as around 200 members of the British Security forces and 32 civilians. However, historical consensus places the number of African dead far higher.
Military Operations
By 1953, the seriousness of the rebellions was being realised by the British Government, who drafted in battalions from the Kings African Rifles. Security Service investigations into the leadership of the Mau Mau also dramatically increased. In June 1953, General Sir George Erskine arrived to oversee the restoration of order in the colony, and the focused military and intelligence activities on the forests around Mt. Kenya and Nairobi, which was considered central to Mau Mau activities.
General China was captured in January 1954, which acted as the first real blow to the Mau Mau leadership. Erskine’s tactic was to create mobile unit of British troops who could clear areas of suspected Mau Mau insurgents, before placing loyalist forces and police in the area to prevent it falling back into Mau Mau hands. This proved very successful, but the real problem or Nairobi, the real centre for recruitment into the Mau Mau remained.
Operation Anvil
Operation Anvil was an attempt to remove the Mau Mau from Nairobi in one huge swoop in April 1954. the idea was to quickly move from district to district in the city, whereby Kikuyu, Embu or Meru were placed in temporary barbed wire camps and screened. The search was conducted by the British Military with help from African informers. Suspected Mau Mau men were taken to Langata Camp, while suspected women and children were taken to ‘reserves’, both of which have been compared to concentration camps by modern historians. The Operation lasted for two weeks, at the end of which 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves.
Operation Mushroom
Operation Mushroom was the use of air power against the Mau Mau between 1953 and 1956. Initially, the RAF confined its activities to the jungles, but proved very successful; British estimates placed the number of killed or wounded insurgents from air attacks at around 900. Operation Mushroom was extended to beyond the forest limits in 1954, something that was personally supported by Churchill in 1955. Air force was also used to distribute propaganda, as part of many attempts to win over the African Kenyan population.
Swynnerton Plan
The Swynnerton Plan, something for which baring himself was personally responsible, was intended to be a total revolution in African farming based on redistribution, consolidation, efficient farming, and the opening up of new areas for cash crops. the ultimate aim was to create self-sufficient peasant family holdings with one or more cash crops, and in this respect can be seen a concession to the rising demands of Kenya’s African population. This rapid and forceful change advocated by this policy was made possible by the fact that emergency legislation resulting from the Mau Mau rebellions provided the government with powers for mandatory resettlement of Mau Mau detainees in areas of the government’s choice and of agricultural potential. The result of this proved relatively successful: by 1959 a successful African farmer class was growing cash crops previously reserved for European farms, and certainty helped to appease some anti-British settlement.
‘The Pipeline’
The detention or screening camps run by the British were intended to be a quick way of ascertaining Mau Mau supporters; but it soon became clear that the system soon got out of hand. Only 15 camps were officially sanctioned by government, yet many more sprung up. These camps were run by ‘Temporary District Officers’, who often had little training or authority other than the title they were given by Baring. Quite clearly, there was a lack of control when it came to running these camps. Thomas Asquith, the architect of the system of screening and detention camps, named his system ‘The Pipeline’, a system which would ultimately rehabilitate suspects through education.
The initial process of determining Mau Mau suspects was run on a three tiered system. ‘Whites’ were those who were cleared of involvement with the Mau Mau and moved back to their ‘reserves’, ‘Greys’ were those who had taken an oath to the Mau Mau but were reasonably compliant; these were moved down the Pipeline for minor rehabilitation, and finally ‘Blacks’, who were considered hard core supporters of the Mau Mau; they would be moved to special detention camps.
Quit clearly, his plan did not materialise, with increasingly violent and brutal measures were taken by those running the camps- often the very settlers who were at threat from the Mau Mau. Along with other historians, Elkins has likened these camps to Gulags and concentration camps. Unquestionably, the central government lost control of some of these camps, which in some cases descended into centres of torture and atrocities against suspects.
The Pipeline developed, from the British perspective, into an organised and effective method of extracting confessions from Mau Mau suspects, and establishing a network of informants. Many Kenyans ‘switched sides’ to work for the British in the camps, with reports suggesting even Jomo Kenyatta’s son was involved on the British side. Violence was high in the camps- new arrivals who did not take a Mau Mau oath were often attacked and frequently murdered by other detainees. Capital punishment was strictly enforced by the British, with a great number hung inside the detention camps. In fact, the huge number hung is the subject of David Anderson’s book ‘Histories of the Hanged’, in which he shows how over 1000 suspects were hung, often with little semblance of a fair trial.
Hola Massacre
The Hola Massacre was not the largest atrocity perpetrated by the British, but it came to be one of the most important. Hola camp was a detention facility in Eastern Kenya designed for the most hard-line of Mau Mau suspects. Those imprisoned there often forced into hard labour in appalling conditions for refusing to confess to their membership of the Mau Mau or provide the British with information about the operations of the Mau Mau.
By January 1959 the camp had a population of 506 detainees of whom 127 were held in a secluded “closed camp.” This more remote camp was reserved for the uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial “rehabilitation process” or perform manual labor or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On March 3, 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action – as a result of which 11 of the detainees were clubbed to death by guards. All the 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.
While the British were careful to cover up a great deal of information about other atrocities committed during the Emergency, news of the Hola Massacre got out, and was even made into a leading article in ‘Time’ magazine in June 1959. The repercussions were huge for the British government, and there was growing international condemnation of their actions. The massacre also came under close scrutiny in British Parliament, and was widely condemned by MP’s and blame was ultimately attributed to the Camp Commandant, his assistant, and also the ministers in charge of running Kenya’s penal system. This report from the House of Commons in June 1959 is excellent evidence reaction to the massacre.
Villagisation
The ‘Villagisation programme’ really began in late 1954, and began to place those who had passed through the screening camps and back into reserves into protected villages defended and policed from Mau Mau influence. The villages were often used to punish any Mau Mau sympathizers, and were unquestionably harsh places to live, but they were also very effective in quelling the passive support of the Mau Mau. By late 1955, support for the Mau Mau’s resistance was limited, along with its widespread violence. This in turn meant that their existence outside of the forests became increasingly limited. However, these villages were to remain, with deteriorating conditions for the inhabitants- even Baring was to comment on the malnutrition of inhabitants on a visit to a village in 1956. In reality, the villages were brutal places to live, and were brutally policed by both the Kenyan Police Force and the British Army.