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| The Coat of arms of Kenya (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
An item of news widely reported yesterday, that the British government
has agreed to pay compensation to Kenyans who suffered abuse, torture, and other barbarities at the hands of the
British forces opposing the Mau Mau uprising among the Kikuyus in the 1950s,
comes as a welcome light in the generally dark aspect of global events.
For me, it brings a retrospective, too-late justification to
my friend Henry Munene, who was hounded to his death by the British Colonial Office
for absolutely no reason when he was my fellow-student at an adult education
college in Scotland. I’ve never been able to think of Henry’s fate without
saying to myself, bitterly, “the bastards, the absolute bastards.”
Although I have aways known that both sides commtted
atrocities in the uprising in Kenya, my sympathies have always been rather with
the men who conducted their campaign of rebellion from the bush, without
benefit of any modern technology (not even the wheel, according to some
accounts), than with the overlords who used Lancaster bombers to decimate their
technologically-backward opponents.
In the 1960s I remember reading, and reviewing for The Montreal Star (many of whose readers
took great exception to my review), a remarkable account of the rebellion from
within, written by a Kikuyu who, being able to read and write, acted as
secretary to Dedan Kimathi, the leader of the rebellion (to whose memory as a
great warrior a statue was recently erected in Kenya). One figure that stuck in my mind was that the
British executed (many of these were public executions, I believe) more than
1,000 people. Many thousands died, many tens of thousands were imprisoned in
concentration camps, and I discover, in looking for the title of the book I
mentioned, that dozens of books have appeared analysing the cause, nature and
suppression of the rebellion, and that in these books are revealed, in the words
of survivors from both sides, examples of the most horrendous cruelties visited
on the people in these concentration camps.
For me, the British behaviour in its suppression of the
rebellion put paid to all suggestions of the benefits brought to subject
peoples by the British colonial regime, or, to be more specific, to the
often-repeated claims that British “civilized” savage people around the world.
More likely were they to have murdered, tortured, killed and violated them than
to have civilized them.
Well, back to Henry and his fate. I was one of 16 adult education students who
enrolled at a college called Newbattle Abbey in 1953 to take a non-diploma
course of study designed to increase our knowledge in four subjects: history,
literature, economics and philisophy. I
was 25 at the time, had gone directly from four years of high school into the
work force, and it was my great good fortune to find myself enrolled under the
leadership of the great Scottish poet and writer Edwin Muir, who, for almost a year,
acted as my personal tutor in the writing of English.
The beautiful house which lies in the countryside a few miles
outside Dalkeith in the Scottish Lowlands,
had been given to the nation for use in adult education by Lord
Lothian, a former British ambassador in
the United States, but it had never attained much success, as proof of which in
the year of my attendance we 16 students had four teachers.
Still, the student body was worth knowing: two Kenyan
Africans, one a Luo, one a Kikuyu; a Norwegian girl, daughter of the owner of the country’s biggest newspaper; two
middle-aged working class Scotsmen, one a Communist, one an anarchist; a
similarly fiery working-class scottish socialist, direct from school, without
benefit of higher education; a brace of
Englishmen of what might be called lower-middle-class origin; two Yugoslav
English teachers, sent from their country to improve their skills; one French
trades unionist from Lyon. And me (with my schoolteacher wife along, permitted
to live in the college as she was teaching in a nearby mining village.) The
year I spent with these people was one of the most rewarding of my entire life.
To make up the lack of numbers, the College had a contract
with the National Coal Board to send in every week a group of Scottish miners
for what was described as “refresher” courses. These people left every Friday,
and every Thursday night throughout the school year they presented a farewell
concert at which they were never shy to get up and sing sentimental ballads
like “My Ain Wee Hoose”, and recite endless verses of the great Robbie Burns.
On our side we never had much to offer in the way of
entertainment, but we were able to take pride in the folk tales told every
Thursday night by Henry. He kept all of us, miners included, in gales of
laughter with his stories about hyenas, of which he had an endless supply.
Henry was one of the most amiable, charming people I have
ever met in my life, full of laughter, jokes, and eagerness to learn everything
the teachers could tell him, and I know he was loved by everyone of his fellow
students.
I think it was in February that Jomo
Kenyatta went on trial as the supposed leader of Mau Mau, and evidence given at
the trial said that a Henry Munene, a
student leaving for Britain, was taken into a room and administered the Mau Mau
oath before he was allowed to leave the airport. As soon as this was reported
in Britain the Colonial Office arrived at Newbattle Abbey with a demand that
Henry disavow this supposed oath.
Henry, though ebullient and spiritual
by nature, was no softie, and he refused to collaborate with the Colonial
Office, who were providing him with all the funds he needed to continue his
education. We were getting towards the end of the school year, and after I left
I had a letter from James D. Young, the fiery young socialist working class boy
mentioned above (who, I discovered many
years later became the author of no fewer than 14 published books about the
working class and its struggles in Scotland), telling me that he had taken
Henry home to his home in Grangemouth, halfway between Edinburgh and Glosgow,
“and they will need a ruddy army to get him out of here.” He told me Hnry was not in great spirits,
that he was wilting under the strain of the Colonial Office’s attack.
From London I wrote to Fenner
Brockway, the renowned socialist Member of Parliament, asking if he could look
into Henry’s case, and he replied that he would do so, and I later heard from a
woman who had been alerted by Fenner, who had made contact with James and
Henry.
Although I knew that Henry had been
cut off all support by the Colonial Office, I thereafter lost touch with him
and his fate, as well as with other students from Newbattle of my time. On a visit to Kenya many years later I looked
up the other Kenyan student, Timothy Ramtu, a different type from Henry, a strong Christian with very conventional
views, who had become after his return to Kenya a senior civi servant and had
done a veritable circuit of many government departments, always in senior
positions. He was heading an Aga Khan
company when I met him, and when I asked about Henry, he said that, like e, he
had heard he had a breakdown of some kind, but he had lost touch with him after
his return, and had no idea what happened to him.
More years later I ran across on the
Internet an account of James Young’s activity as a writer and tracked him down
through his publisher. He was, apparently, in terminal illness, but I did have
the pleasure of talking to him by phone, and discovered his thick Scottish
accent was undiminished, as were his fiery socialist beliefs. He told me, when
I inquired, that Henry had had a mental breakdown and had eventually committed
suicide.
Another great triumph for
Colonialism, and for British standards of fair play.
The bastards, the absolute bastards.
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