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The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army's Post-War Counter-Insurgency ExperienceHuw Bennett aa Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Ceredigion, UK

To cite this Article Bennett, Huw(2007) 'The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army's Post-War Counter-Insurgency Experience', Defense & Security Analysis, 23: 2, 143 163

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INTRODUCTION

This article1 aims to re-evaluate the orthodox understanding of the British Armys post-

war counter-insurgency experience. This will be achieved by analysing the four key

components to the Armys counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine in this period found in

the secondary literature and then investigating the extent to which these concepts

applied in the specific example of the Kenya Emergency, 195260. The article is

presented in two main sections: the first section outlines the main elements of the

doctrine as represented in the secondary literature, namely: the legal underpinnings of

all operations, the related concept of minimum force, command and control dimen-

sions, and the winning of popular support, commonly known as hearts and minds.These factors operated holistically to produce British Armys enviable reputation for

restrained and civilized conduct.

The second section questions the validity of these assertions. On a general level, it is

argued that the orthodox understanding is based on a number of methodological flaws,

relating to both sources and interpretation. Furthermore, the specifics of the orthodoxy

require revisiting. On the legal dimension of British COIN, the framework commonly

adopted actually created a permissive environment for atrocities, replicating faults in

international law. The significance of the minimum force concept has been vastly over-

stated, and did not apply in insurrections or in the colonies. Civil oversight proved

ineffective in practice, and the much-vaunted regimental system could present as manyproblems as solutions in ensuring a disciplined soldiery. Finally, the article argues that

the hearts and minds efforts pursued by the British Army have been seen in a far too

rosy perspective, and that measures such as villagization were usually unpleasant. In

fact, civilian support was gained as often through applying exemplary force, in the form

of collective punishment, atrocity and torture, as it was through social reforms.

Newsinger observed in 1992 that atrocities in Kenya were marginalized and excused by

the government as isolated and unofficial.2 This article argues that atrocities in Kenya

Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 143163, June 2007

ISSN 1475-1798 print; 1475-1801 online/07/020143-21 2007 Taylor & Francis 143

DOI: 10.1080/14751790701424705

The Mau Mau Emergency as Part ofthe British Armys Post-War Counter-Insurgency Experience

Huw Bennett

Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion

SY23 3FE, UK

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stemmed from policy, not individual disciplinary failings, policies with a long history

and similar to those pursued in other COIN campaigns in the same period and since.

THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF BRITISH COUNTER-

INSURGENCY

The legal context

Most studies (though Townshends 1986 book above all) discuss the ways in which the

government introduced legal measures to deal with insurgencies.3 However, the general

impression from these studies is that a government-legislated policy is automatically

legitimate. Consequently, little attention is paid to the experiences of those at the

receiving end of government policies, whether violence or the supposedly benign

hearts and minds policies. The assumption remains in large part that laws were

created for the good of the people and that they served this function, with limited

detailed empirical analysis of what happened in practice. Clearly, the idea about a legal

framework was well in place before the post-war period, though Thompsons 1966

formulation in his second offive principles, that the government must function in

accordance with law, is noticeably influential in the secondary literature, for example

in Bulloch, Jeffery, Kitson, Mockaitis, Nagl and Pimlott.4

The legalist framework originated in the English common law tradition which

allowed the executive the right to restore the peace with no more force than absolutely

necessary.5 According to Mockaitis, the concept, at first limited to civil unrest in

Britain, evolved to incorporate all forms of unrest, from riots to full-scale revolution.6

The common law obliged every citizen, including soldiers who were technically nothingless than citizens in uniform, to assist the civil power in enforcing law and order when

required.7 During civil disturbances, it was a commanders duty to open fire if he could

not otherwise stop the violence before him. In doing nothing the commander would

find that he . . . certainly will be wrong, and, by extension, he legally had to use

enough force to be effective.8 During insurrections, the duty to stop violence with

violence applied most strongly, which meant troops had to . . . be prepared to live and

fight hard.9

Thornton moves beyond Townshend and Mockaitiss emphasis on the common law

in arguing that the concept derived from the national culture. In his view two sources

were paramount: pragmatism and Victorian values.

10

These values were translatedvia a quartet of socializing media: the ideal of empire, the class and public school

systems, and popular culture.11 Furthermore, the British national character empha-

sizes free will and individuality, leading to pragmatism within organizations. Rather

than developing a complicated counter-insurgency doctrine, the Army extolled indi-

vidual decision-making with minimum force as a simple guideline to be followed in all

situations.12 Therefore, when countering revolt, the aim was always to contain rather

than extirpate resistance through minimal rather than exemplary force.13 From long

experience, the Army learnt that exemplary, excessive force provoked the population

and was thus counter-productive to the main objective of restoring the peace.14

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Minimum force

Virtually all writers on the Army since 1945 identify minimum force as a key charac-

teristic of British counter-insurgency.

15

Indeed, McInnes thinks the principle lies. . . at the heart of the British style in counter-insurgency warfare.16 The principle was

clearly understood and taught throughout the Army, which stressed the practical

imperatives for fighting with restraint. For example, although reprisals were sometimes

effective in the short term, in the long run they were unsound, producing hate, fear and

mistrust. The Staff College course declared reprisals . . . patently unjust and

uncivilised.17 Instead of employing maximum firepower in a bid to kill as many people

as possible, taking prisoners provided a large pool from which to gather intelligence,

helpful for defeating elusive opponents.18 When suspects were interrogated, the need

for trustworthy intelligence ruled out torture, which was thought to provide unreliable

information.19 Respect . . . is necessary: respect is achieved by law and order applied

fairly and promptly; keeping to this policy meant that the . . . inhabitants will

gradually drift apart from guerrillas.20 The Staff College course recognized the diffi-

culty in assessing the degree of force to use: Generally speaking, success in battle

depends upon the use of overwhelming force at the correct time and place. For internal

security operations the reverse applies, since the most important single principle is that

of minimum force.21

This position is also reflected in a key 1949 booklet Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid

of the Civil Power: There is . . . one principle that must be observed in all types of action

taken by the troops: no more force shall be applied than the situation demands.22 At

the Staff College the principle was often repeated; for example, in 1947: To enforce

law and order no one is allowed to use more force than is necessary.23 Of course, thisshould be no problem for the British soldier, whose friendly attitude made inevitable

his instinctive kindness and decency.24 A January 1949 article in the British Army

Review encouraged discipline and behaviour [that was] absolutely correct, fair

play, not doing any avoidable damage, and the minimum force necessary to

achieve your object during internal security operations.25 Another article a year later

emphasized the importance of restraint in low-intensity operations.26

In one view, reprisals against a community for acts committed by its inhabitants who

could not be identified were sometimes justified, given the proviso of proportionality

combined with an absolute prohibition on killing people. Rather, incarceration, fines

and the seizure or destruction of property were options at the commander s disposal.Nonetheless, they remained measures only to be resorted to in extreme circumstances,

expert legal opinion deeming them generally illegal.27 In riots the use offirepower was

the last resort, for example, in self-defense. When used, a specified number of single

shots were directed at individual ringleaders and intended to wound instead of kill.28

The Staff Course enjoined rigid discipline when conducting searches, with

civility.29

There is solid evidence that the concept was clearly laid down, taught at the Staff

College and discussed in the professional journals. Furthermore, an added incentive

came from the official position not only recommending minimum force, but actively

criminalizing excessive force:

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. . . a soldier is guilty of an offence if he uses that excess, even under the direction

of the civil authority, provided he has no such excuse as that he is bound in the

particular circumstances of the case to take the facts, as distinguished from the

law, from the civil authority.

30

In his prominent study, Mockaitis is keen to confirm the expanding role of minimum

force in British counter-insurgency doctrine. Initially, theManual of Military Law dis-

tinguished between riots, where the concept applied, and insurrections, where it did

not, but the distinction became increasingly blurred.31 Moreman concurs by pointing

out how colonial warfare transformed into imperial policing after the First World

War.32 Raghaven places the change in the revised 1929 Manual.33 However, in

Mockaitiss view a more substantial change arose in the 1934 publication Notes on

Imperial Policing.

At this point, the War Office stipulated that when fighting rebels away from civilian

areas the principle did not come into effect, but when dealing with a riot or other situ-

ations where the innocent were not clearly separable from the guilty, minimum force

applied.34 Arguably complete consolidation between riots and insurrections occurred

in 1949 with the publication ofImperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power.35

The impetus for this evolving extension came from changing attitudes in Britain

towards violence, evidenced in the public reactions to the Boer War, the Irish War of

Independence and the Amritsar massacre.36 As a result, the Army on the whole avoided

retaliatory measures and the indiscriminate use of force.37

Command and controlThe Army, according to most accounts, conducted itself in a restrained manner

because its major operational concept in counter-insurgencies, minimum force,

derived from a civilian source. In connection with this is the close working relationship

seen between the military and civilian organizations during operations. McInnes,

Jeffery and Kitson accord civilian control a prime position in their analyses, and

consider it highly effective.38 Pimlott and Joes concur in asserting political, and

therefore police, primacy.39 Command by committee was the normal system; the

opposite approach, where Templer reigned as Supremo in Malaya, was an exception.

The command system was normally imperfect when a campaign started and required

modification. For example, in Kenya there was a lack of central direction until GeneralErskine took over.40 Townshend not only agrees that police primacy occurred, but

further implicitly assumes that the separation of powers, based on pluralism, is a

safeguard in COIN as it is in peaceful domestic politics.41 This argument is lent credi-

bility considering CIGS-elect Montgomerys support in 1946 for hard-line repression

in Palestine, which was opposed by the Cabinet.42 Mockaitis argues that British

civilmilitary co-operation arose from the basic appreciation that insurgencies were

fundamentally political in nature, and could not be solved by military means alone.43

The fact that police reform has been a priority in all British counter-insurgency

shows it is not always perfect.44 Even when things went wrong with minimum force, the

civilmilitary relationship ensured that justice would be done. Enforcement came

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through the ordinary courts, which could scrutinize the legality of the use of force after

the event.45 This legal situation was taught at the Staff College, where it was also

stressed that self-discipline and the soldiers high code safeguarded him from prose-

cution.

46

Raghaven argues that mechanisms such as supervision by the civil power andfear of punishment ensured that the abstract concept became a practical reality.47

The other much-vaunted command and control system in British COIN was the

Armys ability to conduct decentralized operations thanks to the regimental system.

The system is variously credited with independence, creativity and flexibility.48 The

organizational structure is connected to a military culture notoriously averse to theory

and models.49 The orthodox view holds that, in contrast with armies restricted by com-

plicated doctrinal formulations, British soldiers freely reacted to circumstances with

improvised solutions. In these so-called Subalterns wars the low-level commander

really did exercise a great deal of autonomy, and could invent tactics in a flexible and

innovative manner.

Hearts and minds

The final component in orthodox accounts of British counter-insurgency was the

attempt to take the populations support away from the enemy. Responsibility for

carrying out the so-called winning hearts and minds approach, coined by General

Templer, largely fell upon the civil administration. There is therefore a limited discussion

of it in the British COIN literature.50 This is especially true where propaganda is

concerned, where only the excellent survey by Carruthers covers the entire period.51 Nev-

ertheless, the original theorists agreed with Templer. Thompson stressed the importance

of countering subversion by information policies, while Kitson argued . . . it is in mensminds that wars of subversion have to be fought and decided.52 In the next generation,

Charters argues that the concept of winning hearts and minds underlay all post-Malaya

operations, and was most significant in providing intelligence.53

The other method for winning the populations support consisted of a myriad of

possible social measures, including villagization, improved welfare services and food

control. Kitson considers such social measures vital in persuading the population to

support the government, without which the counter-insurgency effort will fail.54 The

success of these measures is due to the recognition that the uprising may well stem from

legitimate grievances.55 Pimlott provides a rosy view of hearts and minds, which he also

considers a British priority. Key measures include propaganda, protection of civiliansby resettlement in secure villages, and removing the social causes, again partly through

the wonderful new villages.56 McInnes similarly takes a benign view, arguing that the

resettled squatters in Malaya benefited from the policy, where he cites improved health

provision to support his case.57 Nagl affirms the widely held view that villagization was

intrinsic to success.58 On Kenya, Kitson thinks that the administration pushed through

many progressive measures.59 Page argues that the villages had social and agricultural

benefits as well as improving security.60 Throup views villagization as a success,

although the early decision to detain so many people without evidence was a mistake.61

Even the generally critical Maloba sees the villages as beneficial; although they started

as a punitive measure, the villages did help win people over.62 Villagization can also be


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seen as successful in proving that the government would win and providing physical

protection.63

This section has analysed the four central components of British counter-insurgency

doctrine in the post-war period as presented in the academic literature. Operationswere conducted within a framework originating in the English common law tradition.

This resulted in both an operational doctrine requiring the minimum use of force

necessary, and the basis for civilian oversight and close co-operation with the Army

during counter-insurgencies. The other major characteristic of the command and

control structure, decentralized command through the regimental system, produced

innovative and flexible decision-making at all levels. Finally, the hearts and minds

approach played a significant role, whether in the form of propaganda, improved social

welfare conditions, or political reforms. This often resulted in increasingly effective

intelligence-gathering capabilities as the population moved to help the government.

Ultimately, these factors combined to achieve a successful and restrained way in

counter-insurgency.

REVISITING BRITISH COIN: QUESTIONING THE

MINIMALIST CONSENSUS

Before analysing the specific problems with the four elements of the orthodox under-

standing of British COIN, it should be noted that some methodological flaws

compromise their overall validity. First, the literature exhibits a triumphalist tendency,

based on a perception of national success in comparison with other countries, such as

France in Algeria and the United States in Vietnam. This national pride impedes the

critical spirit; for example, John Pimlott proudly notes the British Armys enviable rep-utation for success in the notoriously difficult art of counter-insurgency.64 A similar

trend is the assertion that the British forces were not as bad as the enemy. As Charters

puts it, minimum force . . . was respected more in the breach than in the observance,

particularly by those whom the British were fighting.65

This tendency to blame the other side is also blatant in the Kenya literature, and

while the Mau Mau did indeed commit horrific acts, this is used to detract from

excesses by the security forces. For example, Majdalany argues that while the security

forces may sometimes have been less disciplined than strictly desirable, Mau Mau

actions were the usual demented hacking, severing, and mutilation.66 These

elements in the secondary literature resemble the governments delegitimizing propa-ganda during the Emergency, and should thus be treated with caution.67

Second, numerous writers glorify the great British victory in Malaya to the point

where the characteristics seen in that campaign are over-generalized onto all the others;

and ideals, or principles as Mockaitis calls them, are mistaken for actual empirical

reality. For example, Kitson, Thompson and Mockaitiss emphatic insistence that the

security forces act within the law should be taken as an ideal worth aspiring to rather

than something that historically always (or even mostly) took place.68 Exacerbating the

proclivity for theoretical models of counter-insurgency rather than detailed empirical

analyses is the general archival paucity of most of the literature, partly resulting from

official secrecy.

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The dominance of the minimalist schools interpretation is not surprising given the

inept argumentation and flimsy evidential base from which attacks have been launched.

This pedigree originated during the Emergency itself, as found in books by Blakeslee

and Evans, for example. Dr Virginia Blakeslee, a missionary in Kikuyuland, included inher 1956 book an account of a massacre on Mununga Ridge where the local Home

Guard and some Kings African Riflemen killed all the men in the area. Without men-

tioning the exact date, the unit involved or individual names, the accounts credibility is

mortally weakened.69 Peter Evans, a human rights lawyer in todays terms, wrote a book

on government excesses; but other than open court cases, he limited the information

given in order to protect witnesses from reprisals.70

Recent critical commentators have performed no better. Although Curtis should

be applauded for challenging the assumption that British foreign policy is basically

benevolent, his conspiracy theory-style exaggerations and all-round sensationalism

undermine his books impact.71 Unfortunately, a major revisionist publication on the

Kenya Emergencys detention system similarly goes down the hyperbolic path,

assigning genocidal intent in the governments policy without producing any evidence

for a systematic plan to eliminate the entire Kikuyu tribe.72 Indeed, evidence is a major

defect in most critical analyses.

Newsingers work is a case in point, repeatedly making unsupported statements and

iterating a view obviously based on an ideological opposition to imperialism itself. The

assertion that the Kenya Emergency was a revolt against oppression and exploitation

is a seriously one-sided view in what was in reality a highly complex civil war involving

multiple factions.73 The ideologically induced myopia leads to other misinterpreta-

tions, such as: The beatings and the torture, the summary executions and the judicial

massacre were only possible because the victims were black. This conclusion isinescapable.74 It is also mono-causal, completely ignoring not only other equally sig-

nificant causal mechanisms but the fact that many of the perpetrators were also black.

But then again, such people were probably merely collaborationist in Newsingers

questionable logic.75

Turning to the empirical weaknesses, a preliminary observation is that his work is

based entirely upon the secondary literature. This leads to trouble; for example, when

citing Edgertons inconsistent and sometimes poorly referenced work.76 One claim

made without evidence is that the shooting of suspects . . . soon became common-

place.77 In another case, the major assertion that beatings, torture, mutilation and

murdering prisoners were everyday occurrences relies upon a single memoir publishednine years after the Emergency ended.78 This is all utterly self-defeating for Newsinger,

as seen in Mockaitiss response to his 1992 article on the lack of minimum force in

Kenya, where he presents the devastating criticism that there is no detailed, corrobo-

rated empirical evidence supporting these sensational claims.79

With the release of important new information through the Freedom of Information

Act, covering events such as the Chuka massacre and the McLean Inquiry into Army

misconduct, this empirical shortfall can be somewhat rectified.80 The remainder of

this article will therefore reinterpret the four main components of British counter-

insurgency in Kenya.


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The legal framework as an enabler of atrocities

On the legal dimension, although most studies mention that a framework existed, they

do not systematically investigate how it worked in practice. This is partly because of thedominance of the rationalistinstrumentalist approach within strategic studies which

assumes that law and ethics are irrelevant when explaining the behavior of armed

forces. At the highest level, asserting that the British operated within the law is in itself

rather meaningless. After all, the Nazis persecuted the Jews within a complex legal

structure based on the 1934 Nuremberg laws.81 The British Emergency Regulations

were passed without democratic approval and were in several instances undoubtedly

draconian and contrary to international legal requirements then in place. For example,

the Governors Detention Orders, essentially giving the Governor the right to detain

persons without trial, for an unlimited period and without the right to appeal, hardly

constitutes an admirable law. The regulations generally suspended any incompatible

laws, including basic liberties such as habeas corpus, so the impression that minimum

force worked within a cosy liberal framework is certainly disingenuous.82

Carruthers has even described the rule of law under Emergency legislation in Kenya

as sham legalism, and in this respect Kenya was no different from the many other

emergencies that Britain engaged in.83 In common with some other governments after

the Second World War, the British deliberately adopted an interpretation of inter-

national law aimed at preserving sovereignty to the maximum extent possible. Changes

such as the duty to refuse illegal orders established by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and the

attempted extension of the laws of war to internal conflicts through Geneva Convention

Common Article 3, were purposefully marginalized. As a result, the government could

introduce extremely draconian measures to combat insurgencies and still claim theywere legal and, therefore, just.

The limits of minimum force

Entirely rejecting the centrality of law in determining how soldiers behaved towards

non-combatants is impossible if historical accuracy is a paramount concern. However,

it is imperative to argue for a more nuanced and qualified understanding, especially

with reference to minimum force. In the Kenya context, the Prohibited Areas policy

raises some problems. Mockaitis incorrectly argues that here the rules of conventional

engagement applied.

84

If the conventional rules, i.e. the laws of war, applied, then thesecurity forces would have taken prisoners in the Prohibited Areas. Although there are

instances where this happened, the official policy was not to do soand to kill anyone

in them on sight; clearly against the laws of war.

In the Special Areas, troops were authorized to shoot and kill anyone who refused an

order to halt. Arguably, a truly minimum force policy would have instructed troops to

try and capture those fleeing first, and to fire only as a last resort. These two examples

illustrate the more general point that just because a policy avoids advocating genocide

does not automatically make it a minimum force policy. Indeed, those on the receiving

end might well question how minimum an impact the conflict had on their lives.

A related questionperhaps an unanswerable oneis how many exceptions must

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one gather before jettisoning McInnes argument that minimum force prevailed most

of the time? Even if it did, apart from Thorntons study into the philosophical origins

and Townshends into the legal dimension, there is little sense in the literature of how

this principle came to operate in practice, largely because it is understood in doctrinalrather than cultural terms. The focus on minimum force as a long-term principle has

somewhat distracted attention from how soldiers viewed the use of force against certain

enemies in particular conflicts. Ideologically, official propaganda imaginings de-

humanized the Mau Mau enemy in a way inconsistent with minimum force, leading

soldiers to consider the population as a whole a brutal race anyway.85

The case made by Mockaitis for the ubiquity of the concept, further supported here

by the Staff College syllabi, cannot be entirely refuted. However, he does exaggerate the

extent to which minimum force applied in all situations. Official thinking still

supported much greater latitude in the use of force in dealing with insurrections than

riots, and this matters because insurgencies were insurrections and not riots. For

example, even by 1958 the Manual of Military Law stated that The existence of an

armed insurrection would justify the use of any degree of force necessary effectually to

meet and cope with the insurrection.86 Both official doctrine and actual practice

allowed a far greater degree of force to be used in the colonies than in the United

Kingdom. For example, the key 1949 publication noted how The degree of force

necessary and the methods of applying it will obviously differ very greatly as between

the United Kingdom and places overseas.87 As Mockaitis himself admits, in contra-

diction of his own argument, two standard textbooks taught at Sandhurst and the Staff

College advocated harsh early action to nip trouble in the bud, in contrast to the

minimum force concept.88

In addition, the Colonial Office admitted that the concept clashed with Britishpractices in the colonies:

. . . a number of Colonies (notably in Africa) have on their Statute Book collective

punishment Ordinances which provide that this form of punishment may be used

to deal with offences such as cattle stealing and the like . . . There are, however,

the more difficult cases of the present disturbances in Malaya, and (to quote the

most obvious example) the use of punitive bombing in the Aden Protectorate . . .

what might be described as collective punishmenthas been used [in Malaya]

e.g., the burning of villages, and so onand may well be used again.89

This last remark proved prescient, as the destruction of traditional dwellings accompa-

nied by the forced movement of the population into villages was a major government

policy in Kenya. The 1949 pamphlet recognized that collective punishment contra-

vened minimum force and also the Hague Convention, but regarded the consequent

hardships as inevitable and a necessity.90 Another weakness with the concept

reflected the problem with military necessity in international law. The concept was

always limited by the question of who decided exactly what the term meant: the military

commander present at the time. As only a soldier was in a position to know the power

of his weapons and the commander was present at the critical moment, he alone could

decide upon the degree of force to be used.91 In this sense, what minimum force meant

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was uncertain, and therefore arbitrary. This was partially inevitable as the circum-

stances of each particular case obviously varied.92 But this qualification has not

previously been sufficiently acknowledged.

As a result, deviations from minimum force patently happened, as several authorsacknowledge, but their frequency and significance is diminished in several ways. First,

atrocities are mentioned briefly in passing without explanation or elaboration.93 This is

related to the tactic of downplaying the frequency of atrocities. For example, in 1960

Kitson asserted that security force personnel only very rarely took the law into their own

hands, further softening this concessionary statement with vague, euphemistic refer-

ences, such as these practices, rather than using words such as torture, beatings or

murder.94 Mockaitis states that Examination of the campaigns between 1919 and

1960 reveals that relatively few cases of documented abuse occurred.95 The precise

wording here is telling. What exactly is the alleged British restraint relative to? Also,

Mockaitis undermines his own argument later on with the admission that many

sensitive government files were still closed when he conducted his research, so the

lack of evidence in 1990 does not automatically equate with a lack of atrocities 40 years

earlier.96 Mockaitis and Newsinger reach a rare agreement, however, in delineating

the Kenya Emergencys exceptional brutality compared with other post-war counter-

insurgencies.97

The notion that atrocities were infrequent needs modification for two reasons: the

first reason relates to how military discipline is interpreted. As Major Clemas, with the

23rd Kings African Rifles noted, there was: . . . a distinction between the formal and

the real . . . it was necessary to ignore three out of four infringements of discipline and

then jump on the fourth.98 Most analyses base their conclusions on the number of

court martials held, but if Clemas observation were to apply to the whole Army, thefrequency of atrocities has been underestimated. The second reason relates to

evidence. There is now evidence of official recognition that in the first eight months at

least, and probably for some time afterwards, widespread shootings, torture and

beatings took place.

After this time, General Erskine took command and instigated a disciplinary clamp-

down. Claytons influential argument that the troops obeyed and atrocities stopped

immediately is not supported by any evidence, but merely an assumption that orders

would be followed.99 Another aspect here is whether or not there was any atrocity

policy. Although Elkins almost certainly overstates the case for a genocide having taken

place, the Army participated in the early indiscriminate shootings, when the LancashireFusiliers were in-theater in addition to several KAR battalions and the locally raised

forces. Army co-operation with ruthless vigilante groups, the Home Guard, Kenya

Police Reservenot to mention the Kenya Regimentshows how complacent it was

about protecting non-combatants. Furthermore, the at least 430 persons shot whilst

trying to escape up to 24th April 1953 surely constitutes a pattern incompatible with

the no policy assertion.100 Simply because the archives do not contain a policy

statement saying Shoot all civilians hardly means that government forces did not

systematically target them.

What seems increasingly likely is that at the beginning, indiscriminate shootings

were perpetrated deliberately in a manner directly denied by Townshend as

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exemplary violence, aimed at intimidating the Kikuyu population from which the Mau

Mau insurgency arose. Murder, torture and beatings were deployed not only to

generally dissuade Kikuyu civilians from joining or passively supporting the Mau Mau,

but also to encourage population movement into the Reserves (today called ethniccleansing).101 For example, one estimation puts the number of people forcibly evicted

or leaving voluntarily from November 1952 to April 1953 at between 70,000 to

100,000 from the Rift Valley and Central Provinces.102 The policy was reversed in mid-

1953 when it became clear that the brutality with which the movements were achieved

and the resultant horrific over-crowding in the Reserves actually aided Mau Mau

recruitment.103

In the disciplinary sphere, the Armys complacency over prosecuting rape cases

shows how thin is the line between actively encouraging mistreatment by policy, and

allowing mistreatment to happen unofficially by doing nothing to prevent it. The

Armys McLean Court of Inquiry into allegations of misconduct, held in December

1953, considered rape . . . not the sort of thing we are concerned with.104 The officer

responsible for Army prosecutions considered rape a crime in the same category as

theft.105 Furthermore, in a letter to the Secretary of State for War in December 1953,

General Erskine hoped that an independent inquiry investigating everything from the

beginning of the Emergency would not happen as . . . the revelation would be shatter-

ing. The letter continued: There is no doubt that in the early days, i.e. from Oct 1952

until last June there was a great deal of indiscriminate shooting by Army and Police. I

am quite certain prisoners were beaten to extract information.106 This constitutes the

first official admission that the security forces, including the Army, participated in

widespread murder and torture for an eight-month period during the Kenya

Emergency. As there were plans in place beforehand and the military conducted oper-ations during this period, it cannot be argued that any crimes committed by the Army

were one-offs. There is not enough direct evidence to prove a policy of war crimes, but

given the clear awareness of how certain settlers were evicting peoplenamely by intim-

idation and murderit is probable that the Army were involved as an informal policy.

Command and control as a problem as well as a solution

The orthodox conception of command and control also requires some modification. In

relation to civilmilitary relations, the assumption here is that civil supremacy acts to

restrain the use of force and make for a benevolent policy. In Kenya, the police were farfrom innocent of atrocities and more centralized control may have prevented them

committing more. Indeed, in several other cases, such as Palestine and Malaya, the

police dominated the security apparatus during the conflicts early stages also the

period when most atrocities seem to have taken place. In Kenya, where the settler

population exercised considerable influence over the civil administration and police

(especially through joining the Kenya Police Reserve), the Army struggled to control

those elements who should in theory have been restraining the Army. As a matter of

counterfactual speculation, General Erskine may well have found his disciplinary

wrestling match far easier if he had enjoyed the same dictatorial powers as those vested

in Templer in Malaya. In addition, although advocates have stressed how soldiers


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remained answerable to the civil courts, in practice commanders and soldiers were

never called to account after putting down insurrections.107

The 1947 Staff College course taught its students that so long as commanders

believed their action to be right, they should not fear an enquiry into their conduct.

108

In order to protect soldiers who had used force, it was usual for the government to pass

an Act of Indemnity. This was . . . a statute intended to make transactions legal which

were illegal when they took place, and to free the individuals concerned from legal

liability.109 Therefore the idea that the military were subject to rigorous civilian

oversight and dreaded prosecution is quite misleading.

The emphasis placed upon the regimental system in explaining success and restraint

is in contradiction with the existence of other elements in the orthodoxy. If the Army

were so informal in its modus operandithen legalism, civilmilitary co-operation and

pursuing political measures would never have emerged as distinctive patterns. While

the argument that the Army disavowed an exhaustive codified doctrine in this period is

generally valid, long-established traditions within the organizational culture replaced

doctrine functionally. Doctrine is a system of principles that sets parameters for accept-

able action; and as for the Army, the traditions taught formally through various

institutions and through informal transmission from one generation to the next,

soldiers possessed a coherent view of how to respond to insurgency. In this sense, then,

the significance of the regimental system is exaggerated in the literature, because

knowledge could still be passed on informally.

A related question is whether the system was necessarily a good thing, as is ordinar-

ily assumed. There is reason to think not; for example, it proved detrimental to all-arms

co-operation.110 In Kenya the perils inherent in decentralized command made them-

selves abundantly obvious as General Erskine gradually discovered how his orders, forexample banning soldiers from chopping hands off corpses, were often ignored.111 As

already mentioned, both Malaya and Kenya saw a period of trial and error at the

beginning of each insurgency, including atrocities which were widespread in Kenya and

possibly elsewherealthough the other conflicts require extensive research into these

aspects. Nagl and Mockaitis blame these on failures in command and control.112 This

would logically include the very regimental system that they and others later credit with

such success.

By far the most convincing damage-limitation approach in the secondary literature

shifts the blame away from the Army by pointing the finger at other elements in the

command system. It is plausible because denying that atrocities took place ormarginalizing them as exceptions less malign than the enemys misdemeanorssimply

cannot resist empirical scrutiny, especially regarding Kenya. In this school the

argument goes that atrocities were committed but seldom by the Army. The

secondary literature on Kenya is littered with references to atrocities carried out by the

African militia Home Guard,113 the rapidly-expanded Police (especially the Kenya

Police Reserve),114 and the territorial Kenya Regiment.115 Mockaitis succinctly sums up

this popular view that most of the excesses seem to have been committed by units

hastily recruited from the local population, white and African, or by inadequately

trained police recruits thrown into a difficult situation.116

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In common with distinctions between official and unofficial policies, attempts to

place the blame on other security forces have gone too far. There is certainly value in

differentiating between the divergent social origins, cultural attributes, organizational

structures and role taskings embodied in the various units. However, an obsession withnarrow typologies only distorts the way in which the security forces, and the con flict

itself, should be holistically understood. The orthodoxy as it stands adequately explains

uniqueness, difference and discontinuity. In the interests of a balanced perspective, this

article addresses the spheres of connections, similarities and continuities between the

Army and the local forces shouldered with the blame for most atrocities during the

Emergency. Fortunately the logical reasoning for adopting such a stance is strongly

supported by the empirical evidence.

Without even considering the moral situation, under British law the soldiers in

Kenya were simultaneously citizens obliged to prevent felonies if they noticed any

taking place. Indeed, some soldiers did intervene and halt atrocities in the offing. In his

order issued on 23 June 1953 and repeated on 30 November, General Erskine declared

this duty.117 Furthermore, we know that British Army units committed atrocities: espe-

cially various platoons in the Kings African Rifles. There is an unspoken categorization

at work placing these units into the local forces box, which is inappropriate. Although

AfricanAskaris formed the vast majority of the KAR, they were not all raised in Kenya;

for example, the 4th KAR came from Uganda, and the 6th KAR and 26th KAR from

Tanganyika. Even in the Kenyan battalions, many would have come from areas not

affected by the Emergency.118 Modelled on the British Army battalion, the training

staff, permanent senior NCOs and officers were all seconded from the Army. For dis-

ciplinary, logistical and operational purposes they fell directly within the British Army

chain of command throughout the entire Emergency period. Thus, concluding thatatrocities committed by its members were the work oflocal forces is disingenuous.

Despite their obviously closer affiliation with Kenya than the British and KAR bat-

talions, the genuinely local units also bore some similarities. The Kenya Regiment,

despite being a territorial unit composed of settlers, was constructed in the Armys

image, trained by NCOs from the Brigade of Guards, and headed by seconded officers.

Though depending upon the Kenya Government for logistical support, it still came

under the regular chain of command for discipline and operations. In addition, the

Regiments men were increasingly seconded to work with British and KAR battalions

as guides and trackers, and platoon commanders with the KAR.119 While deploring the

units reputation for brutality, the Army relied upon its unparalleled local knowledgeand thus perhaps gave its members more leeway than would have otherwise been the

case. The notorious Home Guard were deployed in many joint operations with the

Army, a number of Kenya Regiment men commanded them, and some British

regiments trained them. The last apparently locally raised force, the Kenya Police

Reserve, included many former policemen from Palestine, Malaya and even Britain. As

with the Home Guard, the Army went on numerous joint operations with the KPR and

liaised with them closely in the intelligence field.120

Even if most atrocities were the work of other security forces, the point stands that in

considering the campaigns functionality, the Army was closely associated with these

forces. At the lowest level, not all units performed their legal duty to restrain the local


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forces. Up at the high command level, the Army not only failed to control the other

security forces but actively benefited from their (mis)behavior. For example, the Home

Guard played a major part in Erskines campaign plan, and actually continued its

expansion in the midst of plausible atrocity allegations being made against it. Thewhole contention that the Army committed no atrocities is in any case flawed, given the

KARs position and increasing new evidence coming to light which indicates that the

British battalions may simply have been more adept at concealment and denial.121

Hearts and minds, or the punitive use of force?

There are some qualifications in the secondary literature to the generally optimistic

view of winning hearts and minds. Mockaitis admits that many squatters in Malaya

were initially physically forced to relocate, the amenities took years to install and several

hundred aborigines died in the process.122 Stubbs points out how the initial response

was so coercive as to increase popular support for the Malayan Communist Party. In

other words, there was no attempt to win the population over until Templer took

command.123 Popplewell also points out the lack of any propaganda campaign in

Palestine.124 Early villagization in Kenya suffered from similar problems to Malaya, for

example, with deaths from starvation and disease in the unsanitary settlements. But

Mockaitis considers it nonetheless worthwhile because it defeated Mau Mau, and that

is what really matters.125

The hearts and minds elements, however, should always be seen alongside the

illiberal collective punishment policy. Mockaitis provides an unconvincing excuse for

the policy:

Suspension of civil liberties is one of the thorniest problems of counterinsurgency,

and . . . can only be justified by a successful end to the emergency. In the case of

Malaya . . . the Chinese squatters had not enjoyed such liberties in the first place

and . . . they were subject to intimidation and fear at the hands of the Commu-

nists.

This returns us to the logic of blaming the enemy for ones own atrocity behavior.126

Mockaitis argues that the British applied collective punishment because they

thought colonial peoples too uncivilized to understand notions of individual responsi-

bility. Practised in most campaigns, collective punishment consistently failed toproduce positive results.127 In Kenya, Governor Baring repeatedly used collective pun-

ishments such as fines, relocation, or property confiscation, despite opposition in

Britain and evidence in Kenya and Malaya that it was counter-productive.128 Another

element of collective punishment in Kenya, at least in the early stages, were the mass

evictions of Kikuyu from areas where an incident had occurred. This soon proved a

highly counter-productive course.129 On the whole, collective punishment, by its very

nature thoroughly indiscriminate, stands in contradiction to the minimum force

principle.

Regarding social reforms, Percox argues that the intention was to end the Emergency

and then put the development plans into practice afterwards.130 As Percox says, What

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mattered most was winningnot hearts and minds. The Kikuyu only got the stick,

while the carrot went to other tribes to buy their non-involvement.131 He argues that

while villages introduced some social improvements, their primary purpose was to

make it easier to implement the lawincluding collective punishments.

132

But collec-tive punishment was essentially an Administration policy rather than an Army one.133

Heather argues that hearts and minds was not really implemented in Kenya and did not

work. The government decided that the population could not be won over, and adopted

instead a punitive approach, with punitive villages. It was coercion rather than per-

suasion that beat Mau Mau.134 Anderson contributes significantly to the fear rather

than persuasion thesis by arguing that through collective punishment, detention

without trial, seizure of property and vastly extending the death penalty, the Emergency

areas effectively became a draconian police state.135

Clearly the COIN literature presents an overly benign view of villagization. As Elkins

amply demonstrates, around 800 Emergency villages were in reality more akin to

prison facilities than the ideal habitations the Administration portrayed them as.136

Villagization represented a fundamental reconstruction of Kikuyu society, traditionally

based in dispersed hamlets rather than enclosed, densely populated villages.137

Although successful in isolating insurgents from their supply base, the policy was

conducted with considerably more brutality than in Malaya.138 Some peoples huts

were burned down to instil urgency into the moving, though on what scale this

happened and how deeply the Army was involved remains under-explored.139

Arguably, a substantial explanation for the encouragement of negative enemy stereo-

types and mistreatment of non-combatants, or at least indifference towards it, were

related to the half-hearted attitude within the Army towards its vaunted winning

hearts and minds strategy. The major political concessions came after militarysuccess, not in tandem with military measures during the conflict, as is supposed to

happen in British counter-insurgencies.140 Popplewell similarly argues that rather than

hearts and minds, the decisions to grant independence were the real reason for success

in UK COIN.141 Paget recognized in 1967 that the government won the populations

support without offering any political solution. While support for the insurgents is

explained by reference to the intimidation policy, it is assumed that people automat-

ically reverted to supporting the government when Mau Mau lost the military

ascendancy.142 From the evidence now available, this argument seems implausible and

it increasingly appears that as the Mau Mau won support through intimidation, so the

government won it back.The new literature on Kenya presents a strong case for jettisoning the orthodox per-

suasion thesis and instead emphasizing how government forces employed fear and

intimidation through a range of official and pseudo-policies, from mass evictions

encouraged by murders to forced incarceration in punitive villages. Townshends view

mentioned above that the British eschewed exemplary force is now seriously open to

question, and more research is needed on Army involvement in assisting with largely

administration-run policies.


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CONCLUSION

This article has analysed the four central components of British Army counter-

insurgency in the context of its operations in Kenya from 1952 to 1960. First, althoughoperations were conducted within a legal framework deriving from the common law

tradition, the extent of the powers granted to the government under emergency regula-

tions seriously compromised the laws integrity. The regulations resulted in a sham

legalism whereby basic rights and international law were easily sidelined. Second,

there is no doubt that the related minimum force concept was important in the British

Army and widely understood.

In Kenya, however, policies such as Prohibited Areas, collective punishment and

nipping trouble in the bud plainly contradicted the concept. This is because the

concept was in fact more arbitrary and subjectively interpreted than normally allowed

for. The doctrine allowed for a greater degree of force in the colonies and almost any

degree of force during insurrections. Minimum force did not prevail as often as is

claimed; intimidation of the population, summary executions, torture and unrestrained

violence were prevalent for at least eight months.

Third, the close relationship with the civil power sometimes encouraged indiscrimi-

nate violence rather than restraining the military. This was especially the case in Kenya,

where an angry settler population agitated for draconian policies, and organized

vigilante groups. Even official organizations, such as the Kenya Police Reserve, engaged

in widespread abuses of the civilian population. The civil authorities failed to rein in the

security forces and the justice system was seriously compromised, as Anderson has

recently shown.143 The regimental system sometimes impeded co-operation and

disrupted General Erskines efforts to tighten discipline after June 1953. In relation tothe other security forces, the orthodox view has not acknowledged the similarities with

forces such as the KPR, Kenya Regiment and Home Guard, and the very close co-

operation in place during many operations. The atrocities conducted by non-Army

forces should be seen as part of the overall campaign which played a critical function in

its outcome. For example, the Army often worked from intelligence gathered by the

Home Guard using torture.

Finally, in Kenya the population were persuaded to support the government by a

combination of increasing military success and violent coercion, rather than by winning

hearts and minds. Villagization was largely punitive, painful in practice and a major re-

configuration of society against the will of its people. In sum, this article has challengedthe COIN orthodoxy on a number of grounds and calls for a similar questioning of con-

ventional understandings in relation to other post-war British counter-insurgencies.

NOTES

1 This article was first written for the Britons at War: New Perspectives conference held at

the University of Northampton, 2122 April 2006. Many thanks to Professor I. F. W.

Beckett for organizing this conference and to the participants for their helpful remarks. My

thanks also go to Professors Colin McInnes and Martin Alexander for their comments on

earlier versions of this article.

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2 John Newsinger, Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau

Rebellion, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1992, p. 50.

3 Charles Townshend, Britains Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century,

London: Faber and Faber, 1986.

4 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam,London: Chatto and Windus, 1966, p. 52; G. Bulloch, The Application of Military

Doctrine to Counter Insurgency (COIN) OperationsA British Perspective, Small Wars

and Insurgencies, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1996, p. 166; Keith Jeffery, Intelligence and Counter-

Insurgency Operations: Some Reflections on the British Experience, Intelligence and

National Security, Vol. 2 No. 1, 1987, p. 119; Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, London: Faber

and Faber, 1987, p. xii; Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 191960, New

York: St. Martins Press, 1990, p. 186; John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya

and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, London: Praeger, 2002, p. 63; John Pimlott,

The British Army: The Dhofar Campaign, 19701975, in Ian F. W. Beckett and John

Pimlott (eds),Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985,

p. 20.

5 Townshend, op. cit., p. 19; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 18.6 Mockaitis, op. cit., British Counterinsurgency, p. 13.

7 Joint Services Command and Staff College Archive (hereafter JSCSC), Army Staff College

syllabus, 1947.

8 Ibid.; this point is also made in Townshend, op. cit., p. 19.

9 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945.

10 Rod Thornton, Understanding the Cultural Bias of a Military Organization and its Effect

on the Process of Change: A Comparative Analysis of the Reaction of the British and United

States Armies to the Demands of Post-Cold War Peace Support Operations in the Period,

19891999, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2001, p. 128.

11 Ibid., pp. 74, 83, 89.

12 Ibid., p. 75.

13 Townshend, op. cit., p. 18.

14 Thomas R. Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conflict: the British Experience, Conflict Quarterly,

Vol. XIII No. 1, 1993, p. 10. See also Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 1762.

15 David A. Charters, From Palestine to Northern Ireland: British Adaptation to Low-

Intensity Operations, in David Charters and Maurice Tugwell (eds), Armies in

Low-Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Analysis, London: Brasseys, 1989, p. 194; Pimlott,

op. cit., p. 23; Anthony James Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsur-

gency, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004, p. 221; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 119;

Richard Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence: Some Reflections on Recent Approaches to

British Counter-Insurgency, 19001960, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 10 No. 2,

1995, p. 337.

16 Colin McInnes, Hot War, Cold War: The British Armys Way in Warfare 194595, London:

Brasseys, 1996, p. 117.


18 Charters, op. cit., p. 172.

19 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 2527, 5457.



22 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), WO 279/391. Booklet Imperial Policing and Duties in

Aid of the Civil Power, War Office Code No. 8439, issued by the Army Council 13 June 1949,

supersedingNotes on Imperial Policing, 1934, and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, 1937 (and

1945 amendment), p. 5.

23 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947, and also for 1948.



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25 Hints on Internal Security, British Army Review, Vol. 1, 1949, pp. 5461.

26 C. J. Gittings, The Bertrand Stewart Prize Essay, 1949, Army Quarterly and Defence

Journal, 1950, pp. 161177.

27 D. A. L. Wade, A Survey of the Trials of War Criminals,Journal of the Royal United Services

Institute, Vol. XCVI No. 581, 1951, p. 67.28 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1948.


30 War Office, Manual of Military Law, London: HMSO, 1929, p. 246. The 1958 edition

altered the wording of this paragraph only for clarifications sake. War Office,Manual of

Military Law, Part II, London: HMSO, 1958, p. 1, Section V.

31 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 18, 24.

32 T. R. Moreman, The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 18491947,

Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, p. xvii.

33 Srinath Raghaven, Protecting the Raj: The Army in India and Internal Security,

c. 191939, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 16 No. 3, 2005, p. 260.

34 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 24.

35 Ibid., p. 25.36 Ibid., p. 18.

37 Ibid., p. 27.

38 McInnes, op. cit., pp. 117, 125; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 119; Kitson, op. cit., p. 300.

39 Pimlott, op. cit., p. 21; Joes, op. cit., p. 222.

40 Charters, op. cit., pp. 196197.

41 Townshend, op. cit., pp. 2627.

42 Tim Jones, The British Army and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare in Transition, 19441952,

Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7 No. 3, 1996, p. 270.

43 Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conflict, op. cit., p. 8.

44 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., pp. 341, 346.

45 Townshend, op. cit., p. 19.


47 Raghaven, op. cit., pp. 259260.

48 Charters, op. cit., p. 178; Beckett and Pimlott, Introduction, op. cit., p. 6; Mockaitis,

Low-Intensity Conflict, op. cit., p. 11.

49 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., p. 19; Townshend, op. cit., p. 19; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 118.


51 Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial

Counter-insurgency, 19441960, London: Leicester University Press, 1995.

52 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 186; Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations:

Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1971, p. 31.


54 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, op. cit., p. 50.

55 Joes, op. cit., p. 222.

56 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., pp. 2122.

57 McInnes, op. cit., p. 123.

58 Nagl, op. cit., p. 75.

59 Kitson, Bunch of Five, op. cit., p. 58.

60 Malcolm Page,A History of the Kings African Rifles and East African Forces, London: Leo

Cooper, 1998, p. 204.

61 David Throup, Crime, Politics and the Police in Colonial Kenya, 193963, in David M.

Anderson and David Killingray (eds) Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the

Police, 191765, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, p. 148.

62 Wunyabari Maloba,Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt, Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 17, 90.

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63 Randall W. Heather,Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, 195256, Intelligence

and National Security, Vol. 5 No. 3, 1990, p. 76.

64 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., p. 16.


66 Fred Majdalany, State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1963, p. 117.

67 Bruce Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya. The Dialectic of Domination, London:

James Currey, 1990, p. 353.

68 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, op. cit., p. 49; Thompson, op. cit., p. 52; Mockaitis, British

Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 13.

69 H. Virginia Blakeslee, Beyond the Kikuyu Curtain, Chicago: Moody Press, 1956, p. 255.

70 Peter Evans, Law and Disorder, or Scenes of Life in Kenya, London: Secker and Warburg,

1956.

71 Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit. Britains Real Role in the World, London: Vintage, 2003.

72 Caroline Elkins, Britains Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, London: Jonathan Cape,

2005, p. xiv.

73 John Newsinger, Revolt and Repression in Kenya: the Mau Mau rebellion, 19521960,Science and Society, Vol. 45 No. 2, 1981, p. 159; David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged.

Britains Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005,

pp. 954 on the factions in the civil war.

74 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland, Basingstoke:

Palgrave, 2002, p. 80.

75 John Newsinger, English Atrocities,New Left Review, 32, 2005, p. 156.

76 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 78; for example, Edgerton claims a calcu-

lated settler policy of brutality and murder without offering supporting evidence, see,

Robert Edgerton,Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London: Collier Macmillan, 1989, p. 142.

77 Newsinger, Revolt and Repression, op. cit., p. 171.

78 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 77.

79 Thomas R. Mockaitis, Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau

Rebellion: A Reply, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 3 No. 1, 1992, pp. 8789.

80 For an analysis of disciplinary breakdowns in Kenya see Huw Bennett, The British Army

and Controlling Barbarisation During the Kenya Emergency, in George Kassimeris (ed.),

The Warriors Dishonour: Barbarity and Morality in Modern Warfare, London: Ashgate, 2006;

David Anderson, Huw Bennett and Daniel Branch, Covering up a Colonial Atrocity: the

British Army and the Chuka Massacre, Kenya 1953, History Workshop Journal, forthcom-

ing 2007.

81 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich. A New History, London: Pan Books, 2001, pp. 294298.

82 A. W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire. Britain and the Genesis of the

European Convention, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 78, 84.

83 Susan Carruthers, Being Beastly to the Mau Mau, Twentieth Century British History,

Vol. 16 No. 4, 2005, p. 494.

84 Mockaitis, A Reply, op. cit., p. 88.

85 PRO WO 32/21720: McLean Court of Inquiry proceedings, p. 315 (Lt.-Col. D. H. Nott,

4th KAR). On the government propaganda campaign see Carruthers, Winning Hearts and

Minds, op. cit., pp. 128193.

86 War Office,Manual Part II, 1958, Section V, p. 10.

87 War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 5.


89 PRO LCO 2/4309. Letter from Trafford Smith, Colonial Office to C. G. Kemball, Foreign

Office, 25 June 1949.

90 War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 35.

91 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. Commander denotes anyone in command of

other soldiers, potentially anyone from a Field Marshal to a Lance-Corporal.


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93 Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, op. cit., p 68.

94 Frank Kitson, Gangs and Counter-gangs, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960, p. 46.


96 Ibid., p. 43.97 Ibid., p. 44; Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 1; Newsinger, English Atrocities,

op. cit., p. 158.

98 Anthony Clayton and David Killingray,Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial

Africa, Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989, p. 239242.

99 Anthony Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya. A Study of Military Operations Against Mau

Mau, Nairobi: Transafrica Publishers, 1976, p. 40.

100 According to a statement made by Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton to the Commons. See

Edgerton,Mau Mau: An African Crucible, op. cit., p. 159.

101 Edgerton,Mau Mau: An African Crucible, op. cit., p. 76; Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in

Perspective, London: James Currey, 1989, pp. 116, 119.

102 David A. Percox, British Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, 195256: Extension of Internal

Security Policy or Prelude to Decolonisation?, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 9 No. 3,1998, p. 69.

103 Furedi,Mau Mau War in Perspective, op. cit., p. 8; Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 349.

104 PRO WO 32/21720:McLean Court of Inquiry Proceedings, p. 316.

105 PRO WO 32/21720: McLean Court of Inquiry Proceedings, p. 350 (Major C. J. Dawson,

DAPM).

106 PRO WO 32/15834: Letter from Erskine to Secretary of State for War, 10 December 1953.

107 Simpson, op. cit., p. 61.



110 David French,Military Identities. The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British

people, c. 18702000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 3.

111 See Bennett, British Army and Controlling Barbarisation, op. cit.

112 Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, op. cit., p. 68; Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conflict, op. cit.,

p. 14.

113 For example, Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 358; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged,

op. cit., p. 255; Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency, op. cit., p. 79; Elkins, Britains

Gulag, op. cit., p. 244.

114 For example, Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 357; Edgerton,Mau Mau, op. cit., p. 155;

Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 45.

115 For example, Edgerton,Mau Mau, op. cit., pp. 155156; Elkins, Britains Gulag, op. cit.,

p. 253; Evans, op. cit., p. 205.

116 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 50; Maloba,Mau Mau and Kenya, op. cit.,

p. 93; Charles Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring: The Last Proconsul, London: Collins, 1978,

p. 250; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 37; McInnes, Hot War, Cold War,

op. cit., p. 133.

117 PRO WO 32/21721: Exhibit 5, Message to be Distributed to all Officers of the Army, Police

and the Security Forces, GHQ Nairobi, 23 June 1953; PRO WO 32/21721: Exhibit 6:

Message to be Distributed to all Members of the Army, Police and the Security Forces,

GHQ, 30 November 1953

118 See the excellent social history of the KAR by Timothy H. Parsons, The African Rank-and-

file. Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the Kings African Rifles, 19021964,

Oxford: James Currey, 1999.

119 On the Kenya Regiment see Len Weaver, The Kenya Regiment, in Malcolm Page (ed.),

A History of the Kings African Rifles and East African Forces, London: Leo Cooper 1998,

pp. 239249; Guy Campbell, The Charging Buffalo. A History of the Kenya Regiment, London:

Leo Cooper, 1986.

162 HUW BENNETT

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120 Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency, op. cit., pp. 6768; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency

in Kenya, op. cit., p. 45.

121 See Anderson, Bennett and Branch, Covering up a Colonial Atrocity, op. cit.

122 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 115119.

123 Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 19481960,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda: The

Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds 19481958, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002.

124 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., p. 347.


126 Ibid., p. 122.

127 Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conflict, op. cit., p. 13.

128 Percox, British COIN in Kenya, op. cit., p. 64.

129 Ibid., p. 69.

130 Ibid., p. 64.

131 Ibid., p. 83, emphasis in the original.

132 Ibid., p. 85.

133 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 46.134 Randall W. Heather, Of Men and Plans: the Kenya Campaign as Part of the British Coun-

terinsurgency Experience, Conflict Quarterly, Vol. XIII No. 1, 1993, p. 21.

135 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 5.

136 Elkins, Britains Gulag, op. cit., especially pp. 244253.

137 Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Book Two:

Violence and Ethnicity, London: James Currey, 1992, p. 254.

138 Newsinger, Minimum Force, op. cit., p. 49.

139 Percox, British COIN, op. cit., p. 85; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit.,

p. 13.

140 Ibid., p. 65.

141 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., p. 351.

142 Julian Paget, Counter-insurgency Campaigning, London: Faber and Faber, 1967, p. 111.

143 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 7.


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