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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 — 163To
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INTRODUCTION
This article1 aims to re-evaluate the orthodox understanding of
the British Army’s post-war counter-insurgency experience. This
will be achieved by analysing the four keycomponents to the Army’s
counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine in this period found inthe
secondary literature and then investigating the extent to which
these conceptsapplied in the specific example of the Kenya
Emergency, 1952–60. The article ispresented in two main sections:
the first section outlines the main elements of thedoctrine as
represented in the secondary literature, namely: the legal
underpinnings ofall 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 Army’s enviable reputation
forrestrained and civilized conduct.
The second section questions the validity of these assertions.
On a general level, it isargued that the orthodox understanding is
based on a number of methodological flaws,relating to both sources
and interpretation. Furthermore, the specifics of the
orthodoxyrequire revisiting. On the legal dimension of British
COIN, the framework commonlyadopted actually created a permissive
environment for atrocities, replicating faults ininternational 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 provedineffective in practice, and the much-vaunted
regimental system could present as manyproblems as solutions in
ensuring a disciplined soldiery. Finally, the article argues
thatthe hearts and minds efforts pursued by the British Army have
been seen in a far toorosy perspective, and that measures such as
villagization were usually unpleasant. Infact, civilian support was
gained as often through applying exemplary force, in the formof
collective punishment, atrocity and torture, as it was through
social reforms.Newsinger observed in 1992 that atrocities in Kenya
were marginalized and excused bythe government as isolated and
unofficial.2 This article argues that atrocities in Kenya
Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 143–163,
June 2007
ISSN 1475-1798 print; 1475-1801 online/07/020143-21 © 2007
Taylor & Francis 143DOI: 10.1080/14751790701424705
The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army’s Post-War
Counter-Insurgency Experience
Huw BennettDepartment of International Politics, University of
Wales, Penglais, Aberystwyth, CeredigionSY23 3FE, UK
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stemmed from policy, not individual disciplinary failings,
policies with a long historyand 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 Townshend’s 1986 book above all) discuss
the ways in which thegovernment introduced legal measures to deal
with insurgencies.3 However, the generalimpression from these
studies is that a government-legislated policy is
automaticallylegitimate. Consequently, little attention is paid to
the experiences of those at thereceiving end of government
policies, whether violence or the supposedly benign“hearts and
minds” policies. The assumption remains in large part that laws
werecreated for the good of the people and that they served this
function, with limiteddetailed empirical analysis of what happened
in practice. Clearly, the idea about a legalframework was well in
place before the post-war period, though Thompson’s 1966formulation
in his second of five principles, that “the government must
function inaccordance with law”, is noticeably influential in the
secondary literature, for examplein Bulloch, Jeffery, Kitson,
Mockaitis, Nagl and Pimlott.4
The legalist framework originated in the English common law
tradition whichallowed the executive the right to restore the peace
with no more force than absolutelynecessary.5 According to
Mockaitis, the concept, at first limited to civil unrest inBritain,
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 whenrequired.7 During
civil disturbances, it was a commander’s duty to open fire if he
couldnot otherwise stop the violence before him. In doing nothing
the commander wouldfind that he “. . . certainly will be wrong”,
and, by extension, he legally had to useenough force to be
effective.8 During insurrections, the duty to stop violence
withviolence applied most strongly, which meant troops had to “. .
. be prepared to live andfight hard”.9
Thornton moves beyond Townshend and Mockaitis’s emphasis on the
common lawin arguing that the concept derived from the national
culture. In his view two sourceswere paramount: pragmatism and
“Victorian values”.10 These values were translated“via a quartet of
socializing media: the ideal of empire, the class and public
schoolsystems, and popular culture”.11 Furthermore, the British
national character empha-sizes free will and individuality, leading
to pragmatism within organizations. Ratherthan developing a
complicated counter-insurgency doctrine, the Army extolled
indi-vidual decision-making with minimum force as a simple
guideline to be followed in allsituations.12 Therefore, when
countering revolt, the aim was always to contain ratherthan
extirpate resistance through minimal rather than exemplary force.13
From longexperience, the Army learnt that exemplary, excessive
force provoked the populationand 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
wasclearly understood and taught throughout the Army, which
stressed the practicalimperatives for fighting with restraint. For
example, although reprisals were sometimeseffective in the short
term, in the long run they were unsound, producing hate, fear
andmistrust. The Staff College course declared reprisals “. . .
patently unjust anduncivilised”.17 Instead of employing maximum
firepower in a bid to kill as many peopleas possible, taking
prisoners provided a large pool from which to gather
intelligence,helpful for defeating elusive opponents.18 When
suspects were interrogated, the needfor trustworthy intelligence
ruled out torture, which was thought to provide
unreliableinformation.19 “Respect . . . is necessary: respect is
achieved by law and order appliedfairly and promptly”; keeping to
this policy meant that the “. . . inhabitants willgradually 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 battledepends upon the use of overwhelming
force at the correct time and place. For internalsecurity
operations the reverse applies, since the most important single
principle is thatof minimum force.”21
This position is also reflected in a key 1949 booklet Imperial
Policing and Duties in Aidof the Civil Power: “There is . . . one
principle that must be observed in all types of actiontaken by the
troops: no more force shall be applied than the situation
demands.”22 Atthe Staff College the principle was often repeated;
for example, in 1947: “To enforcelaw 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
inevitablehis “instinctive kindness and decency”.24 A January 1949
article in the British ArmyReview encouraged “discipline and
behaviour [that was] absolutely correct”, “fairplay”, not doing
“any avoidable damage”, and “the minimum force necessary toachieve
your object” during internal security operations.25 Another article
a year lateremphasized the importance of restraint in low-intensity
operations.26
In one view, reprisals against a community for acts committed by
its inhabitants whocould not be identified were sometimes
justified, given the proviso of proportionalitycombined with an
absolute prohibition on killing people. Rather, incarceration,
finesand 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 of firepower wasthe last
resort, for example, in self-defense. When used, a specified number
of singleshots 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 StaffCollege and discussed in the professional
journals. Furthermore, an added incentivecame from the official
position not only recommending minimum force, but
activelycriminalizing excessive force:
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. . . a soldier is guilty of an offence if he uses that excess,
even under the directionof the civil authority, provided he has no
such excuse as that he is bound in theparticular circumstances of
the case to take the facts, as distinguished from thelaw, from the
civil authority.30
In his prominent study, Mockaitis is keen to confirm the
expanding role of minimumforce in British counter-insurgency
doctrine. Initially, the Manual of Military Law dis-tinguished
between riots, where the concept applied, and insurrections, where
it didnot, but the distinction became increasingly blurred.31
Moreman concurs by pointingout how “colonial warfare” transformed
into “imperial policing” after the First WorldWar.32 Raghaven
places the change in the revised 1929 Manual.33 However,
inMockaitis’s view a more substantial change arose in the 1934
publication Notes onImperial Policing.
At this point, the War Office stipulated that when fighting
rebels away from civilianareas 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
forceapplied.34 Arguably complete consolidation between riots and
insurrections occurredin 1949 with the publication of Imperial
Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power.35
The impetus for this evolving extension came from changing
attitudes in Britaintowards violence, evidenced in the public
reactions to the Boer War, the Irish War ofIndependence and the
Amritsar massacre.36 As a result, the Army on the whole
avoidedretaliatory measures and the indiscriminate use of
force.37
Command and control
The Army, according to most accounts, conducted itself in a
restrained mannerbecause its major operational concept in
counter-insurgencies, minimum force,derived from a civilian source.
In connection with this is the close working relationshipseen
between the military and civilian organizations during operations.
McInnes,Jeffery and Kitson accord civilian control a prime position
in their analyses, andconsider it highly effective.38 Pimlott and
Joes concur in asserting political, andtherefore police, primacy.39
Command by committee was the normal system; theopposite approach,
where Templer reigned as “Supremo” in Malaya, was an exception.The
command system was normally imperfect when a campaign started and
requiredmodification. For example, in Kenya there was a lack of
central direction until GeneralErskine took over.40 Townshend not
only agrees that police primacy occurred, butfurther implicitly
assumes that the separation of powers, based on pluralism, is
asafeguard in COIN as it is in peaceful domestic politics.41 This
argument is lent credi-bility considering CIGS-elect Montgomery’s
support in 1946 for hard-line repressionin Palestine, which was
opposed by the Cabinet.42 Mockaitis argues that
Britishcivil–military co-operation arose from the basic
appreciation that insurgencies werefundamentally 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-insurgencyshows it is not always perfect.44 Even when
things went wrong with minimum force, thecivil–military
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 afterthe event.45 This legal situation was
taught at the Staff College, where it was alsostressed that
self-discipline and the soldier’s “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 theArmy’s ability to conduct decentralized operations
thanks to the regimental system.The system is variously credited
with independence, creativity and flexibility.48 Theorganizational
structure is connected to a military culture notoriously averse to
theoryand models.49 The orthodox view holds that, in contrast with
armies restricted by com-plicated doctrinal formulations, British
soldiers freely reacted to circumstances withimprovised solutions.
In these so-called “Subalterns wars” the low-level commanderreally
did exercise a great deal of autonomy, and could invent tactics in
a flexible andinnovative manner.
Hearts and minds
The final component in orthodox accounts of British
counter-insurgency was theattempt to take the population’s support
away from the enemy. Responsibility forcarrying out the so-called
“winning hearts and minds” approach, coined by GeneralTempler,
largely fell upon the civil administration. There is therefore a
limited discussionof it in the British COIN literature.50 This is
especially true where propaganda isconcerned, where only the
excellent survey by Carruthers covers the entire period.51
Nev-ertheless, the original theorists agreed with Templer. Thompson
stressed the importanceof countering subversion by information
policies, while Kitson argued “. . . it is in men’sminds 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-Malayaoperations, and was most significant
in providing intelligence.53
The other method for winning the population’s support consisted
of a myriad ofpossible social measures, including “villagization”,
improved welfare services and foodcontrol. Kitson considers such
social measures vital in persuading the population tosupport the
government, without which the counter-insurgency effort will
fail.54 Thesuccess of these measures is due to the recognition that
the uprising may well stem fromlegitimate grievances.55 Pimlott
provides a rosy view of hearts and minds, which he alsoconsiders a
British priority. Key measures include propaganda, protection of
civiliansby resettlement in secure villages, and removing the
social causes, again partly throughthe wonderful new villages.56
McInnes similarly takes a benign view, arguing that theresettled
squatters in Malaya benefited from the policy, where he cites
improved healthprovision to support his case.57 Nagl affirms the
widely held view that villagization wasintrinsic to success.58 On
Kenya, Kitson thinks that the administration pushed throughmany
progressive measures.59 Page argues that the villages had social
and agriculturalbenefits 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 startedas 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 physicalprotection.63
This section has analysed the four central components of British
counter-insurgencydoctrine 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 forcenecessary, and the basis for civilian oversight and close
co-operation with the Armyduring counter-insurgencies. The other
major characteristic of the command andcontrol structure,
decentralized command through the regimental system,
producedinnovative and flexible decision-making at all levels.
Finally, the hearts and mindsapproach played a significant role,
whether in the form of propaganda, improved socialwelfare
conditions, or political reforms. This often resulted in
increasingly effectiveintelligence-gathering capabilities as the
population moved to help the government.Ultimately, these factors
combined to achieve a successful and restrained way
incounter-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 flawscompromise their overall validity.
First, the literature exhibits a triumphalist tendency,based on a
perception of national success in comparison with other countries,
such asFrance in Algeria and the United States in Vietnam. This
national pride impedes thecritical spirit; for example, John
Pimlott proudly notes the British Army’s “enviable rep-utation for
success in the notoriously difficult art of counter-insurgency”.64
A similartrend is the assertion that the British forces were not as
bad as the enemy. As Chartersputs 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, andwhile the Mau Mau did indeed commit horrific
acts, this is used to detract fromexcesses by the security forces.
For example, Majdalany argues that while the securityforces may
sometimes have been “less disciplined” than strictly desirable, Mau
Mauactions were “the usual demented hacking, severing, and
mutilation”.66 Theseelements in the secondary literature resemble
the government’s 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 pointwhere 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
empiricalreality. For example, Kitson, Thompson and Mockaitis’s
emphatic insistence that thesecurity forces act within the law
should be taken as an ideal worth aspiring to ratherthan something
that historically always (or even mostly) took place.68
Exacerbating theproclivity for theoretical models of
counter-insurgency rather than detailed empiricalanalyses is the
general archival paucity of most of the literature, partly
resulting fromofficial secrecy.
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The dominance of the minimalist school’s interpretation is not
surprising given theinept argumentation and flimsy evidential base
from which attacks have been launched.This pedigree originated
during the Emergency itself, as found in books by Blakesleeand
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 HomeGuard and some King’s African
Riflemen killed all the men in the area. Without men-tioning the
exact date, the unit involved or individual names, the account’s
credibility ismortally weakened.69 Peter Evans, a human rights
lawyer in today’s terms, wrote a bookon government excesses; but
other than open court cases, he limited the informationgiven in
order to protect witnesses from reprisals.70
Recent critical commentators have performed no better. Although
Curtis shouldbe applauded for challenging the assumption that
British foreign policy is basicallybenevolent, his conspiracy
theory-style exaggerations and all-round sensationalismundermine
his book’s impact.71 Unfortunately, a major revisionist publication
on theKenya Emergency’s detention system similarly goes down the
hyperbolic path,assigning genocidal intent in the government’s
policy without producing any evidencefor a systematic plan to
eliminate the entire Kikuyu tribe.72 Indeed, evidence is a
majordefect in most critical analyses.
Newsinger’s work is a case in point, repeatedly making
unsupported statements anditerating a view obviously based on an
ideological opposition to imperialism itself. Theassertion 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 involvingmultiple factions.73 The
ideologically induced myopia leads to other misinterpreta-tions,
such as: “The beatings and the torture, the summary executions and
the judicialmassacre 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 Newsinger’squestionable logic.75
Turning to the empirical weaknesses, a preliminary observation
is that his work isbased entirely upon the secondary literature.
This leads to trouble; for example, whenciting Edgerton’s
inconsistent and sometimes poorly referenced work.76 One claimmade
without evidence is that the “shooting of suspects . . . soon
became common-place”.77 In another case, the major assertion that
beatings, torture, mutilation andmurdering 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 Mockaitis’s response to his 1992 article on
the lack of minimum force inKenya, 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 InformationAct, covering events such as the Chuka
massacre and the McLean Inquiry into Armymisconduct, this empirical
shortfall can be somewhat rectified.80 The remainder ofthis 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, theydo not systematically investigate how it
worked in practice. This is partly because of thedominance of the
rationalist–instrumentalist approach within strategic studies
whichassumes that law and ethics are irrelevant when explaining the
behavior of armedforces. At the highest level, asserting that the
British operated within the law is in itselfrather meaningless.
After all, the Nazis persecuted the Jews within a complex
legalstructure based on the 1934 Nuremberg laws.81 The British
Emergency Regulationswere passed without democratic approval and
were in several instances undoubtedlydraconian and contrary to
international legal requirements then in place. For example,the
Governor’s Detention Orders, essentially giving the Governor the
right to detainpersons without trial, for an unlimited period and
without the right to appeal, hardlyconstitutes an admirable law.
The regulations generally suspended any incompatiblelaws, including
basic liberties such as habeas corpus, so the impression that
minimumforce worked within a cosy liberal framework is certainly
disingenuous.82
Carruthers has even described the rule of law under Emergency
legislation in Kenyaas “sham legalism”, and in this respect Kenya
was no different from the many otheremergencies that Britain
engaged in.83 In common with some other governments afterthe Second
World War, the British deliberately adopted an interpretation of
inter-national law aimed at preserving sovereignty to the maximum
extent possible. Changessuch as the duty to refuse illegal orders
established by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and theattempted extension
of the laws of war to internal conflicts through Geneva
ConventionCommon Article 3, were purposefully marginalized. As a
result, the government couldintroduce 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 towardsnon-combatants is impossible if historical
accuracy is a paramount concern. However,it is imperative to argue
for a more nuanced and qualified understanding, especiallywith
reference to minimum force. In the Kenya context, the Prohibited
Areas policyraises some problems. Mockaitis incorrectly argues that
here “the rules of conventionalengagement” 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 areinstances where this happened, the official policy was not
to do so – and to kill anyonein them on sight; clearly against the
laws of war.
In the Special Areas, troops were authorized to shoot and kill
anyone who refused anorder to halt. Arguably, a truly minimum force
policy would have instructed troops totry and capture those fleeing
first, and to fire only as a last resort. These two
examplesillustrate the more general point that just because a
policy avoids advocating genocidedoes not automatically make it a
minimum force policy. Indeed, those on the receivingend might well
question how minimum an impact the conflict had on their lives.
A related question – perhaps an unanswerable one – is how many
exceptions must
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THE MAU MAU EMERGENCY • 151
one gather before jettisoning McInnes’ argument that minimum
force prevailed mostof the time? Even if it did, apart from
Thornton’s study into the philosophical originsand Townshend’s into
the legal dimension, there is little sense in the literature of
howthis 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 hassomewhat distracted
attention from how soldiers viewed the use of force against
certainenemies in particular conflicts. Ideologically, official
propaganda imaginings de-humanized the Mau Mau enemy in a way
inconsistent with minimum force, leadingsoldiers 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 hereby the Staff College syllabi, cannot be
entirely refuted. However, he does exaggerate theextent to which
minimum force applied in all situations. Official thinking
stillsupported much greater latitude in the use of force in dealing
with insurrections thanriots, and this matters because insurgencies
were insurrections and not riots. Forexample, even by 1958 the
Manual of Military Law stated that “The existence of anarmed
insurrection would justify the use of any degree of force necessary
effectually tomeet and cope with the insurrection.”86 Both official
doctrine and actual practiceallowed a far greater degree of force
to be used in the colonies than in the UnitedKingdom. For example,
the key 1949 publication noted how “The degree of forcenecessary
and the methods of applying it will obviously differ very greatly
as betweenthe 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 StaffCollege advocated harsh
early action to nip trouble in the bud, in contrast to theminimum
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 collectivepunishment Ordinances which provide that
this form of punishment may be usedto 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 themost obvious example) the use of punitive bombing in the
Aden Protectorate . . .what might be described as “collective
punishment” has been used [in Malaya] –e.g., the burning of
villages, and so on – and 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 governmentpolicy in Kenya. The
1949 pamphlet recognized that collective punishment contra-vened
minimum force and also the Hague Convention, but regarded the
consequenthardships as “inevitable” and “a necessity”.90 Another
weakness with the conceptreflected the problem with military
necessity in international law. The concept wasalways limited by
the question of who decided exactly what the term meant: the
militarycommander present at the time. As only a soldier was in a
position to know the powerof his weapons and the commander was
present at the critical moment, he alone coulddecide 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 notpreviously 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 isrelated to
the tactic of downplaying the frequency of atrocities. For example,
in 1960Kitson asserted that security force personnel only very
rarely took the law into their ownhands, further softening this
concessionary statement with vague, euphemistic refer-ences, such
as “these practices”, rather than using words such as torture,
beatings ormurder.94 Mockaitis states that “Examination of the
campaigns between 1919 and1960 reveals that relatively few cases of
documented abuse occurred.”95 The precisewording 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 thelack of evidence in 1990 does
not automatically equate with a lack of atrocities 40
yearsearlier.96 Mockaitis and Newsinger reach a rare agreement,
however, in delineatingthe Kenya Emergency’s exceptional brutality
compared with other post-war counter-insurgencies.97
The notion that atrocities were infrequent needs modification
for two reasons: thefirst reason relates to how military discipline
is interpreted. As Major Clemas, with the23rd King’s African Rifles
noted, there was: “. . . a distinction between the formal andthe
real . . . it was necessary to ignore three out of four
infringements of discipline andthen jump on the fourth”.98 Most
analyses base their conclusions on the number ofcourt martials
held, but if Clemas’ observation were to apply to the whole Army,
thefrequency of atrocities has been underestimated. The second
reason relates toevidence. There is now evidence of official
recognition that in the first eight months atleast, and probably
for some time afterwards, widespread shootings, torture andbeatings
took place.
After this time, General Erskine took command and instigated a
disciplinary clamp-down. Clayton’s influential argument that the
troops obeyed and atrocities stoppedimmediately is not supported by
any evidence, but merely an assumption that orderswould be
followed.99 Another aspect here is whether or not there was any
atrocitypolicy. Although Elkins almost certainly overstates the
case for a genocide having takenplace, the Army participated in the
early indiscriminate shootings, when the LancashireFusiliers were
in-theater in addition to several KAR battalions and the locally
raisedforces. Army co-operation with ruthless vigilante groups, the
Home Guard, KenyaPolice Reserve – not to mention the Kenya Regiment
– shows how complacent it wasabout protecting non-combatants.
Furthermore, the at least 430 persons “shot whilsttrying to escape”
up to 24th April 1953 surely constitutes a pattern incompatible
withthe “no policy” assertion.100 Simply because the archives do
not contain a policystatement saying “Shoot all civilians” hardly
means that government forces did notsystematically target them.
What seems increasingly likely is that at the beginning,
indiscriminate shootingswere 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 MauMau insurgency arose. Murder, torture and
beatings were deployed not only togenerally 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 evictedor leaving voluntarily from November 1952 to
April 1953 at between 70,000 to100,000 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
achievedand the resultant horrific over-crowding in the Reserves
actually aided Mau Maurecruitment.103
In the disciplinary sphere, the Army’s complacency over
prosecuting rape casesshows how thin is the line between actively
encouraging mistreatment by policy, andallowing mistreatment to
happen unofficially by doing nothing to prevent it. TheArmy’s
McLean Court of Inquiry into allegations of misconduct, held in
December1953, considered rape “. . . not the sort of thing we are
concerned with”.104 The officerresponsible for Army prosecutions
considered rape a crime in the same category astheft.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 thebeginning 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 1952until last June there was a great deal of
indiscriminate shooting by Army and Police. Iam quite certain
prisoners were beaten to extract information.”106 This constitutes
thefirst official admission that the security forces, including the
Army, participated inwidespread murder and torture for an
eight-month period during the KenyaEmergency. 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
Armywere one-offs. There is not enough direct evidence to prove a
policy of war crimes, butgiven the clear awareness of how certain
settlers were evicting people – namely by intim-idation and murder
– it 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. Inrelation to civil–military relations, the
assumption here is that civil supremacy acts torestrain 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 themcommitting more. Indeed, in several other cases,
such as Palestine and Malaya, thepolice dominated the security
apparatus during the conflicts’ early stages – also theperiod when
most atrocities seem to have taken place. In Kenya, where the
settlerpopulation exercised considerable influence over the civil
administration and police(especially through joining the Kenya
Police Reserve), the Army struggled to controlthose elements who
should in theory have been restraining the Army. As a matter
ofcounterfactual speculation, General Erskine may well have found
his disciplinarywrestling match far easier if he had enjoyed the
same dictatorial powers as those vestedin 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 werenever called to account after putting down
insurrections.107
The 1947 Staff College course taught its students that so long
as commandersbelieved 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 passan Act of Indemnity. This was “. . . a
statute intended to make transactions legal whichwere illegal when
they took place, and to free the individuals concerned from
legalliability”.109 Therefore the idea that the military were
subject to rigorous civilianoversight and dreaded prosecution is
quite misleading.
The emphasis placed upon the regimental system in explaining
success and restraintis in contradiction with the existence of
other elements in the orthodoxy. If the Armywere so informal in its
modus operandi then legalism, civil–military co-operation
andpursuing political measures would never have emerged as
distinctive patterns. Whilethe argument that the Army disavowed an
exhaustive codified doctrine in this period isgenerally valid,
long-established traditions within the organizational culture
replaceddoctrine functionally. Doctrine is a system of principles
that sets parameters for accept-able action; and as for the Army,
the traditions taught formally through variousinstitutions 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, becauseknowledge 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-armsco-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 Asalready mentioned, both Malaya
and Kenya saw a period of trial and error at thebeginning of each
insurgency, including atrocities which were widespread in Kenya
andpossibly elsewhere – although the other conflicts require
extensive research into theseaspects. Nagl and Mockaitis blame
these on failures in command and control.112 Thiswould logically
include the very regimental system that they and others later
credit withsuch success.
By far the most convincing damage-limitation approach in the
secondary literatureshifts the blame away from the Army by pointing
the finger at other elements in thecommand system. It is plausible
because denying that atrocities took place – ormarginalizing them
as exceptions less malign than the enemy’s misdemeanors –
simplycannot resist empirical scrutiny, especially regarding Kenya.
In this school theargument goes that atrocities were committed –
but seldom by the Army. Thesecondary literature on Kenya is
littered with references to atrocities carried out by theAfrican
militia Home Guard,113 the rapidly-expanded Police (especially the
KenyaPolice Reserve),114 and the territorial Kenya Regiment.115
Mockaitis succinctly sums upthis popular view that “most of the
excesses seem to have been committed by unitshastily recruited from
the local population, white and African, or by inadequatelytrained
police recruits thrown into a difficult situation”.116
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In common with distinctions between official and unofficial
policies, attempts toplace the blame on other security forces have
gone too far. There is certainly value indifferentiating between
the divergent social origins, cultural attributes,
organizationalstructures and role taskings embodied in the various
units. However, an obsession withnarrow typologies only distorts
the way in which the security forces, and the conflictitself,
should be holistically understood. The orthodoxy as it stands
adequately explainsuniqueness, difference and discontinuity. In the
interests of a balanced perspective, thisarticle addresses the
spheres of connections, similarities and continuities between
theArmy and the local forces shouldered with the blame for most
atrocities during theEmergency. Fortunately the logical reasoning
for adopting such a stance is stronglysupported by the empirical
evidence.
Without even considering the moral situation, under British law
the soldiers inKenya were simultaneously citizens obliged to
prevent felonies if they noticed anytaking place. Indeed, some
soldiers did intervene and halt atrocities in the offing. In
hisorder issued on 23 June 1953 and repeated on 30 November,
General Erskine declaredthis duty.117 Furthermore, we know that
British Army units committed atrocities: espe-cially various
platoons in the King’s African Rifles. There is an unspoken
categorizationat work placing these units into the local forces
box, which is inappropriate. AlthoughAfrican Askaris 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
fromTanganyika. Even in the Kenyan battalions, many would have come
from areas notaffected by the Emergency.118 Modelled on the British
Army battalion, the trainingstaff, permanent senior NCOs and
officers were all seconded from the Army. For dis-ciplinary,
logistical and operational purposes they fell directly within the
British Armychain of command throughout the entire Emergency
period. Thus, concluding thatatrocities committed by its members
were the work of “local 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 Army’simage,
trained by NCOs from the Brigade of Guards, and headed by seconded
officers.Though depending upon the Kenya Government for logistical
support, it still cameunder the regular chain of command for
discipline and operations. In addition, theRegiment’s men were
increasingly seconded to work with British and KAR battalionsas
guides and trackers, and platoon commanders with the KAR.119 While
deploring theunit’s reputation for brutality, the Army relied upon
its unparalleled local knowledgeand thus perhaps gave its members
more leeway than would have otherwise been thecase. The notorious
Home Guard were deployed in many joint operations with theArmy, a
number of Kenya Regiment men commanded them, and some
Britishregiments trained them. The last apparently locally raised
force, the Kenya PoliceReserve, included many former policemen from
Palestine, Malaya and even Britain. Aswith the Home Guard, the Army
went on numerous joint operations with the KPR andliaised with them
closely in the intelligence field.120
Even if most atrocities were the work of other security forces,
the point stands that inconsidering the campaign’s functionality,
the Army was closely associated with theseforces. 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 othersecurity forces but actively benefited from
their (mis)behavior. For example, the HomeGuard played a major part
in Erskine’s campaign plan, and actually continued itsexpansion 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 theKAR’s position and increasing new evidence
coming to light which indicates that theBritish 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 optimisticview of winning hearts and minds. Mockaitis
admits that many squatters in Malayawere initially physically
forced to relocate, the amenities took years to install and
severalhundred aborigines died in the process.122 Stubbs points out
how the initial responsewas so coercive as to increase popular
support for the Malayan Communist Party. Inother words, there was
no attempt to win the population over until Templer tookcommand.123
Popplewell also points out the lack of any propaganda campaign
inPalestine.124 Early villagization in Kenya suffered from similar
problems to Malaya, forexample, with deaths from starvation and
disease in the unsanitary settlements. ButMockaitis considers it
nonetheless worthwhile because it defeated Mau Mau, and thatis what
really matters.125
The hearts and minds elements, however, should always be seen
alongside theilliberal collective punishment policy. Mockaitis
provides an unconvincing excuse forthe 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 ofMalaya . . . the
Chinese squatters had not enjoyed such liberties in the first
placeand . . . 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 one’s own
atrocity behavior.126
Mockaitis argues that the British applied collective punishment
because theythought 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 inBritain and evidence in Kenya and Malaya that
it was counter-productive.128 Anotherelement of collective
punishment in Kenya, at least in the early stages, were the
massevictions of Kikuyu from areas where an incident had occurred.
This soon proved ahighly counter-productive course.129 On the
whole, collective punishment, by its verynature thoroughly
indiscriminate, stands in contradiction to the minimum
forceprinciple.
Regarding social reforms, Percox argues that the intention was
to end the Emergencyand then put the development plans into
practice afterwards.130 As Percox says, “What
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mattered most was winning – not ‘hearts and minds’”. The Kikuyu
only got the stick,while the carrot went to other tribes to buy
their non-involvement.131 He argues thatwhile villages introduced
some social improvements, their primary purpose was tomake it
easier to implement the law – including 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 notwork. The government decided that the
population could not be won over, and adoptedinstead a punitive
approach, with “punitive villages”. It was coercion rather than
per-suasion that beat Mau Mau.134 Anderson contributes
significantly to the “fear ratherthan persuasion” thesis by arguing
that through collective punishment, detentionwithout trial, seizure
of property and vastly extending the death penalty, the
Emergencyareas effectively became a draconian police state.135
Clearly the COIN literature presents an overly benign view of
villagization. As Elkinsamply demonstrates, around 800 Emergency
villages were in reality more akin toprison facilities than the
ideal habitations the Administration portrayed them as.136
Villagization represented a fundamental reconstruction of Kikuyu
society, traditionallybased in dispersed hamlets rather than
enclosed, densely populated villages.137
Although successful in isolating insurgents from their supply
base, the policy wasconducted with considerably more brutality than
in Malaya.138 Some people’s hutswere burned down to instil urgency
into the moving, though on what scale thishappened 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, wererelated to the half-hearted
attitude within the Army towards its vaunted “winninghearts and
minds” strategy. The major political concessions came after
militarysuccess, not in tandem with military measures during the
conflict, as is supposed tohappen in British
counter-insurgencies.140 Popplewell similarly argues that rather
thanhearts and minds, the decisions to grant independence were the
real reason for successin UK COIN.141 Paget recognized in 1967 that
the government won the population’ssupport without offering any
political solution. While support for the insurgents isexplained by
reference to the “intimidation policy”, it is assumed that people
automat-ically reverted to supporting the government when Mau Mau
lost the militaryascendancy.142 From the evidence now available,
this argument seems implausible andit increasingly appears that as
the Mau Mau won support through intimidation, so thegovernment 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 andintimidation through a range
of official and pseudo-policies, from mass evictionsencouraged by
murders to forced incarceration in punitive villages. Townshend’s
viewmentioned above that the British eschewed exemplary force is
now seriously open toquestion, and more research is needed on Army
involvement in assisting with largelyadministration-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 lawtradition, the extent
of the powers granted to the government under emergency
regula-tions seriously compromised the law’s integrity. The
regulations resulted in a “shamlegalism” whereby basic rights and
international law were easily sidelined. Second,there is no doubt
that the related minimum force concept was important in the
BritishArmy 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 theconcept was in fact more arbitrary and
subjectively interpreted than normally allowedfor. The doctrine
allowed for a greater degree of force in the colonies and almost
anydegree of force during insurrections. Minimum force did not
prevail as often as isclaimed; intimidation of the population,
summary executions, torture and unrestrainedviolence 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
organizedvigilante groups. Even official organizations, such as the
Kenya Police Reserve, engagedin widespread abuses of the civilian
population. The civil authorities failed to rein in thesecurity
forces and the justice system was seriously compromised, as
Anderson hasrecently shown.143 The regimental system sometimes
impeded co-operation anddisrupted General Erskine’s efforts to
tighten discipline after June 1953. In relation tothe other
security forces, the orthodox view has not acknowledged the
similarities withforces 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-Armyforces should be
seen as part of the overall campaign which played a critical
function inits outcome. For example, the Army often worked from
intelligence gathered by theHome Guard using torture.
Finally, in Kenya the population were persuaded to support the
government by acombination of increasing military success and
violent coercion, rather than by winninghearts 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.
NOTES1 This article was first written for the “Britons at War:
New Perspectives” conference held at
the University of Northampton, 21–22 April 2006. Many thanks to
Professor I. F. W.Beckett for organizing this conference and to the
participants for their helpful remarks. Mythanks also go to
Professors Colin McInnes and Martin Alexander for their comments
onearlier versions of this article.
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2 John Newsinger, “Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and
the Mau MauRebellion”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 3, No. 1,
1992, p. 50.
3 Charles Townshend, Britain’s 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 MilitaryDoctrine to Counter Insurgency
(COIN) Operations – A British Perspective”, Small Warsand
Insurgencies, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1996, p. 166; Keith Jeffery,
“Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency Operations: Some Reflections
on the British Experience”, Intelligence andNational Security, Vol.
2 No. 1, 1987, p. 119; Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, London:
Faberand Faber, 1987, p. xii; Thomas R. Mockaitis, British
Counterinsurgency, 1919–60, NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, p.
186; John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malayaand
Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, London: Praeger, 2002,
p. 63; John Pimlott,“The British Army: The Dhofar Campaign,
1970–1975”, in Ian F. W. Beckett and JohnPimlott (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 Effecton the Process of Change: A Comparative
Analysis of the Reaction of the British and UnitedStates Armies to
the Demands of Post-Cold War Peace Support Operations in the
Period,1989–1999”, 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. 17–62.15 David A. Charters, “From
Palestine to Northern Ireland: British Adaptation to Low-
Intensity Operations”, in David Charters and Maurice Tugwell
(eds), Armies inLow-Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Analysis,
London: Brassey’s, 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
toBritish Counter-Insurgency, 1900–1960”, Intelligence and National
Security, Vol. 10 No. 2,1995, p. 337.
16 Colin McInnes, Hot War, Cold War: The British Army’s Way in
Warfare 1945–95, London:Brassey’s, 1996, p. 117.
17 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947.18 Charters, op.
cit., p. 172.19 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp.
25–27, 54–57.20 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945.21 JSCSC,
Army Staff College syllabus, 1948.22 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,superseding Notes on Imperial Policing,
1934, and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, 1937 (and1945
amendment), p. 5.
23 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947, and also for
1948.24 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945.
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25 “Hints on Internal Security”, British Army Review, Vol. 1,
1949, pp. 54–61.26 C. J. Gittings, “The Bertrand Stewart Prize
Essay, 1949”, Army Quarterly and Defence
Journal, 1950, pp. 161–177.27 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, 1948.29 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus,
1947.30 War Office, Manual of Military Law, London: HMSO, 1929, p.
246. The 1958 edition
altered the wording of this paragraph only for clarification’s
sake. War Office, Manual ofMilitary 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, 1849–1947,
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, p. xvii.33 Srinath Raghaven,
“Protecting the Raj: The Army in India and Internal Security,
c. 1919–39”, 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. 196–197.41 Townshend, op. cit., pp.
26–27.42 Tim Jones, “The British Army and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare
in Transition, 1944–1952”,
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. 19.46 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947.47
Raghaven, op. cit., pp. 259–260.48 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. 118.50 Charters, op. cit., p. 223.51 Susan L.
Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the
Media and Colonial
Counter-insurgency, 1944–1960, 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. 31.53 Charters, op. cit., p. 195.54 Kitson, Low
Intensity Operations, op. cit., p. 50.55 Joes, op. cit., p. 222.56
Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., pp. 21–22.57 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 King’s African Rifles
and East African Forces, London: Leo
Cooper, 1998, p. 204.61 David Throup, “Crime, Politics and the
Police in Colonial Kenya, 1939–63”, in David M.
Anderson and David Killingray (eds) Policing and Decolonisation:
Politics, Nationalism and thePolice, 1917–65, 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, 1952–56”, Intelligenceand National Security, Vol. 5 No. 3,
1990, p. 76.
64 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., p. 16.65 Charters, op.
cit., p. 172.66 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. Britain’s Real Role in the
World, London: Vintage, 2003.72 Caroline Elkins, Britain’s 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, 1952–1960”,
Science and Society, Vol. 45 No. 2, 1981, p. 159; David
Anderson, Histories of the Hanged.Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and
the End of Empire, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005,pp. 9–54
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. 87–89.80 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 Warrior’s Dishonour: Barbarity and
Morality in Modern Warfare, London: Ashgate, 2006;David Anderson,
Huw Bennett and Daniel Branch, “Covering up a Colonial Atrocity:
theBritish 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. 294–298.82 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 andMinds, op. cit., pp. 128–193.
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. 5.88 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p.
26.89 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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92 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947.93 Nagl,
Counterinsurgency Lessons, op. cit., p 68.94 Frank Kitson, Gangs
and Counter-gangs, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960, p. 46.95
Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 37.96 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. 239–242.99 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, 1952–56: 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. 61.108
JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947.109 JSCSC, Army Staff
College syllabus, 1949.110 David French, Military Identities. The
Regimental System, the British Army, and the British
people, c. 1870–2000, 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, Britain’sGulag, 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. 155–156;
Elkins, Britain’s 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, Policeand 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 King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964,Oxford:
James Currey, 1999.
119 On the Kenya Regiment see Len Weaver, “The Kenya Regiment”,
in Malcolm Page (ed.),A History of the King’s African Rifles and
East African Forces, London: Leo Cooper 1998,pp. 239–249; Guy
Campbell, The Charging Buffalo. A History of the Kenya Regiment,
London:Leo Cooper, 1986.
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120 Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency, op. cit., pp.
67–68; Clayton, Counter-Insurgencyin 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. 115–119.123 Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla
Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; Kumar Ramakrishna,
Emergency Propaganda: TheWinning of Malayan Hearts and Minds
1948–1958, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002.
124 Popplewell, “Lacking Intelligence”, op. cit., p. 347.125
Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 130.126 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, Britain’s Gulag, op. cit., especially pp. 244–253.137
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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