155. George Orwell, ‘Not Counting Niggers’, in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, ed., The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, 4 vols, vol. 1 (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 437. First published in the Adelphi, 1939, emphasis in original.
156. It is worth noting that, many decades later, James reflected on the unwitting underplaying of the dangers of Nazism that he and others might have been party to, in a comment on the failure to foresee the Holocaust: ‘When it came, we were against it, but none of us really knew how mischievous fascism would be if it came to power. We thought it was merely some development of bourgeois hostility to proletarianism but it was more than that, it was an attempt to strike at everything that Europe had developed since the French Revolution in 1789. It wanted to take Europe back to class, and the subjugation of the people, it was a terrible thing altogether, but we saw it late.’ ‘Interview with C. L. R. James’, in Mackenzie Frank, C. L. R. James: The Black Jacobin (London: Hackney Council, 1985). I am grateful to Christian Høgsbjerg for drawing my attention to this.
157. Diana [sic] Stock (Dinah Stock), ‘Anti-fascism Begins at Home’, New Leader, 6 May 1938.
158. Ibid.
159. Dinah Stock, ‘An African Describes His Own People’, New Leader, 1 July 1938.
160. Fenner Brockway, ‘Empire Must Be Freed if Britain Is to Lead European Revolution against Nazism’, New Leader, 18 July 1940, p. 4.
161. George Padmore, ‘To Defeat Nazism We Must Free Colonials’, New Leader, 25 July 1940.
162. J. V. P. de Silva, ‘Beaverbrook Thanks Ceylon’, New Leader, 23 November 1940.
163. Arthur Sudbery, ‘ “Imperialism” – from Z to A – and Even Further’, New Leader, 9 May 1940, p. 4.
164. Padmore, ‘Not Nazism! Not Imperialism! But Socialism!’, New Leader, 27 April 1941.
165. Ibid.
166. George Padmore. ‘We Gave Them Copper – They Gave Us Lead!’ New Leader, 18 April 1940.
167. George Padmore, ‘Lloyd Suppresses Another Report,’ New Leader, 7 December 1940.
168. Ibid.
169. Padmore, ‘Not Nazism! Not Imperialism! But Socialism!’
170. Fenner Brockway, ‘How Far Is the Empire a Dictatorship?’, New Leader, 30 August 1941.
171. Ibid.
172. Ibid.
173. George Padmore, ‘Warning from the West Indies’, New Leader, 3 May 1941.
174. George Padmore, ‘Colonials Demand Britain’s War Aims’, New Leader, 15 February 1941.
175. George Padmore, ‘Lifts the Veil of the Censorship over the Colonies’, New Leader, 5 July 1941.
176. George Padmore, ‘No Solution within Empires’, New Leader, 9 May 1942.
177. Ibid.
178. George Padmore, ‘Socialists Can’t Bargain for India’s Freedom’, New Leader, 4 July 1942.
179. Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, p. 14.
180. George Padmore, ‘Imperialists Treat Blacks like Nazis Treat Jews’, New Leader, 13 September 1941.
181. George Padmore, ‘Imperialists Can’t Solve African Question’, New Leader, 11 July 1942, p. 3.
182. Padmore, ‘Imperialists Treat Blacks like Nazis Treat Jews’.
183. ‘How Natives Are Robbed of Their Lands’, New Leader, 20 September 1941.
184. George Padmore, ‘The Crisis in the British Empire’, New Leader, 27 June 1942.
185. F. A. Ridley, ‘Out of Africa’, New Leader, 15 June 1946.
186. Fenner Brockway, ‘Socialism Cannot Be Built on a Slave Empire’, New Leader, 29 December 1945.
187. George Padmore, ‘Trusteeship – the New Imperialism’, New Leader, 2 February 1946.
188. George Padmore, ‘The Old Firm under a New Name …’, New Leader, 23 February 1946.
189. George Padmore, ‘There’s No Real Difference’, New Leader, 9 March 1946.
190. Brockway, ‘Socialism Cannot Be Built on a Slave Empire’.
191. F. A. Ridley, ‘Where the ILP and the Labour Party Differ’, New Leader, 29 December 1945, p. 3.
192. Brockway, ‘Socialism Cannot Be Built on a Slave Empire’.
193. ‘World-Wide Link-up against Imperialism’, New Leader, 2 March 1946.
194. Fenner Brockway, cited in ‘If Britain Had Statesmanship’, New Leader, 9 March 1946.
195. ‘World-Wide Link-up against Imperialism’.
196. Ibid.
197. For a pithy but full account of the congress and its context, see Christian Høgsbjerg, ‘Remembering the Fifth Pan-African Congress’, available at Centre for African Studies (LUCAS – lucas.leeds.ac.uk).
198. George Padmore to Cyril Olivierre, 11 December 1945, Padmore Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, SMG.624.
199. Geiss, Pan-African Movement, 398.
200. Ibid., 408.
201. Høgsbjerg, ‘Remembering the Fifth Pan-African Congress’.
202. George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (London: D. Dobson, 1956), p. 152.
203. F. R. Kankam-Boadu, ‘Reminiscences’, in Adi and Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited, p. 36.
204. Cited in Sherwood, ‘The Congress’, in in Adi and Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited, p. 44.
205. Ibid., p. 45.
206. Cited in ibid.
207. ‘The Challenge to the Colonial Powers’, in Padmore, ‘Colonial and … Coloured Unity’, in Adi and Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited, p. 55.
208. Ibid. p. 56.
209. G. Ashie Nikoi, chairman of the West African Cocoa Farmers’ Delegation, cited in Padmore, ‘Colonial … and Coloured Unity’, p. 81. He also notes that the congress should be the occasion when the ‘British people and the world’ are told.
210. Jomo Kenyatta, cited in ibid., p. 88.
211. Claude Lushington, cited in ibid., p. 95; J. F. F Rojas, cited ibid., p. 95.
212. Ibid., p. 93.
213. I. T. A. Wallace Johnson, cited in ibid., p. 100.
214. Cited in Hakim Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism in Britain: Background to the 1945 Manchester Congress’, in Adi and Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited, p. 21. See also George Padmore, ‘The General Strike in Nigeria’, in Padmore, ed., The Voice of Coloured Labour: Speeches and Reports of Colonial Delegates to the World Trade Union Conference (Manchester: Panaf Service, 1945).
215. Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism in Britain’, p. 21.
216. See Ahmed Aminu Yusuf, ‘The 1945 General Strike and the Struggle for Nigeria’, available at transforma-online.de.
217. Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism in Britain’, p. 23.
218. Cited in Geiss, Pan-African Movement, p. 386.
219. Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism in Britain’, p. 12.
220. Geiss, Pan-African Movement, p. 387.
221. Pan-African Federation, ‘An Open Letter to the Prime Minister’, in Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism, pp. 156–7. Cited also in Adi, ‘Pan-Africanism in Britain’, pp. 23–4.
222. Carol Polsgrove, ‘George Padmore’s Use of Periodicals to Build a Movement’, in Baptiste and Lewis, George Padmore, p. 103.
223. Cunard and Padmore, White Man’s Duty, p. 133.
224. Ibid., p. 139.
225. Thomas, ‘George Padmore’, p. 47.
226. Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 168.
10. A Terrible Assertion of Discontent
1. George Padmore, ‘Behind the Mau Mau’, Phylon 14: 4 (1953), p. 355.
2. Ibid., 360.
3. Ibid., 361.
4. Ibid., 365.
5. Ibid., 362.
6. Cited in David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of the Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 1. Anderson notes that Huxley, who used it in her No Easy Way (1957), had borrowed the phrase from Gerald Hanley’s The Year of the Lion (1956).
&nb
sp; 7. Robert Chester Ruark, Something of Value (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955), p. 7.
8. Frederick Cooper, ‘Mau Mau and the Discourses of Decolonization’, Journal of African History 29: 2 (1988). p. 317.
9. D. A. Maughan-Brown, ‘Myth and the “Mau Mau” ’, Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 55 (October 1980), p. 72.
10. Cited in D. A. Maughan Brown, Land, Freedom and Fiction: History and Ideology in Kenya (London: Zed, 1985), p. 158.
11. Ibid.
12. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, p. 1.
13. Ibid., p. 3.
14. In his account of his becoming a ‘Mau Mau’ detainee, Josiah Kariuki suggests that the origins of the term lie in children’s anagrams, where the warning ‘Go, Go’ or ‘Uma, Uma’ was turned into ‘Mau, Mau’, to warn those participating in oathing ceremonies to escape. Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, ‘Mau Mau’ Detainee (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 50.
15. See, for example, Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Kinuthia Macharia and Muigai Kanyua, The Social Context of the Mau Mau Movement in Kenya (1952–1960) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006); David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–1953 (London: James Currey, 1987); Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau from Below (Oxford: James Currey, 1997); Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, eds, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 1992); Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, eds, Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and Narration (Oxford: James Currey, 2003); Carl Gustav Rosberg and John Cato Nottingham, The Myth of ‘Mau Mau’: Nationalism in Kenya (New York: Praeger, 1966); Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, 1905–1963 (London: James Currey, 1987).
16. Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, p. 135–6.
17. Ibid., pp. 46, 136.
18. Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspective (London: James Currey, 1989), p. 78.
19. Ibid., 79.
20. Ibid., 103.
21. Ibid., 105.
22. Cooper, ‘Mau Mau and the Discourses of Decolonization’, p. 319.
23. Ibid.
24. Furedi, Mau Mau War in Perspective, p. 118.
25. Kenyatta’s co-arrestees included Bildad Kaggia, Fred Kubai, Richard Achieng-Oneko, Paul Negei and Kungu Karamba, all of whom Pritt represented. For a fuller account, see Dennis Nowell Pritt, The Autobiography of D. N. Pritt (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1965).
26. Montagu Slater, The Trial of Jomo Kenyatta (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957), p. 174.
27. Jomo Kenyatta, cited in ibid., pp. 174–5.
28. Ibid., p. 236.
29. Pritt, Autobiography, p. 71.
30. Ibid., p. 75.
31. David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961: From ‘Colonial Development’ to ‘Winds of Change’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 2.
32. Ibid., p. 2.
33. Ibid., p. 5.
34. Ibid., p. 27.
35. House of Commons, Early Day Motion (EDM) 21 (1952–1953), 4 December 1952, redrafted as EDM 29, 11 December 1952.
36. Bruce Berman, ‘Bureaucracy and Incumbent Violence: Colonial Administration and the Origins of the “Mau Mau” Emergency’, in Berman and Lonsdale, eds, Unhappy Valley, p. 253.
37. Fenner Brockway, 98 Not Out (London: Quartet, 1986), p. 124.
38. Fenner Brockway, Outside the Right: A Sequel to ‘Inside the Left’ (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), p. 169.
39. Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow: The Autobiography of Fenner Brockway (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1977), p. 161.
40. Ibid.
41. The Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams story is the subject of a 2016 film, A United Kingdom (dir. Amma Asante).
42. Greg Rosen, ed., Dictionary of Labour Biography (London: Politico’s, 2001), p. 85.
43. Brockway, 98 Not Out, p. 129.
44. Ibid., p. 124.
45. Ibid.
46. Fenner Brockway, ‘Visit to Uganda, August/September 1950’, Churchill Archives Centre (hereafter CAC), 518 FEBR, no. 48K.
47. Ibid.
48. Fenner Brockway, ‘Visit to Kenya, September 1950. Report Presented to the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs’, CAC, 518 FEBR, no. 48K.
49. ‘ “Big Chief” Brockway Flies Home after 30,000 Mile Tour of Africa’, Windsor, Slough and Eton Express, 15 September 1950, CAC 22.99.
50. Ibid.
51. Fenner Brockway, ‘Fenner Brockway’s 80th Birthday Celebrations, 1968: Fenner’s Speech’, pamphlet, CAC, FEBR 16.62, 3.
52. Fenner Brockway, African Journeys (London: Gollancz, 1955), p. 117.
53. Ibid., p. 130.
54. Ibid., p. 120.
55. Ibid., p. 126.
56. Ibid., p. 131.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., p. 129.
59. Ibid., p. 130.
60. Ibid., p. 144.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., p. 169.
64. Ibid., p. 170.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., pp. 170–1.
67. Ibid., p. 173.
68. Ibid., p. 175.
69. Ibid., p. 179.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., 181.
72. HC Deb 4 November 1953 vol. 520 c. 276.
73. Ibid.
74. This is an example of the kind of parliamentary (not tabloid) discourse about Kenya that routinely surfaced in Commons Debates: ‘Mr Craddock: I cannot give way. If my wife had had a family while we were in East Africa I would certainly not have allowed those children to be in charge of an African nurse because – and here I am going to be brutally frank, because I think these things should be appreciated – it is a common practice among Africans to put children to sleep by the excitation of their uro-genital organs. These are statements of fact and are the sort of things which bring about this situation … The effect of alcohol upon an African is remarkable. I admit that sometimes alcohol has a remarkable effect on Europeans. But, speaking generally, alcohol seems to bring out all the evil instincts in the African in the most astonishing way. I mention all these points to give the other side of the picture and to show that it is not just stupidity on the part of Europeans which has brought about a colour bar and racial discrimination.’ HC Deb, 1 May 1953 vol. 514 c. 2534.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. HC Deb 15 July 1953 vol. 517, c. 2029.
80. Ibid.
81. HC Deb 16 December 1952 vol. 509 c. 1291.
82. Ibid.
83. Fenner Brockway, Why Mau Mau? An Analysis and Remedy (London: Congress of Peoples against Imperialism, 1953), p. 1.
84. Ibid., p. 4.
85. Ibid., p. 14.
86. Barbara Castle, ‘What Price Justice?’, Daily Mirror, 7 December 1955.
87. Ibid.
88. Barbara Castle, ‘The Truth about the Secret Police’, Daily Mirror, 9 December 1955.
89. ‘Barbara Castle’s Articles in “The Mirror” Cause House of Commons Storm’, Daily Mirror, 15 December 1955.
90. Cited in Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p. 276.
91. Ibid., p. 286.
92. Eileen Fletcher, Truth about Kenya – An Eye Witness Account, foreword by Leslie Hale (London: Movement for Colonial Freedom, [n.d.]).
93. Ibid.
94. Joanna Lewis, ‘ “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Mau Mau”: The British Popular Press and the Demoralization of Empire’, in Odhiambo and Lonsdale, eds, Mau Mau and Nationhood, pp. 227–50.
95. See ibid., pp. 231–3.
96. The Times, cited in Slater, Trial of Jomo Kenyatta, pp. 245–6.
97. Ibid., p. 246.
98. Ibid., p. 248.
99. F. D. Corfield, The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau: An Historical Survey (Nairobi: Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, 1960), p. 5.
> 100. Ibid., p. 72.
101. Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, p. 281.
102. Ibid., p. 280.
103. Keith Waterhouse, ‘The Newspaper with a Blind Eye’, Daily Mirror, 7 September 1955, p. 2, emphasis in original.
104. Ibid., emphasis in original.
105. Ibid.
106. HC Deb 9 March 1955 vol. 538, c.430.
107. HC Deb 6 June 1956 vol. 553, c. 1091.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. Brockway, Towards Tomorrow, p. 208.
113. Brockway, ‘Africa’s Year of Destiny: A Political Guide to a Continent in Crisis’, London, Movement for Colonial Freedom, n.d. School of Oriental and African Studies, London (hereafter SOAS), Movement for Colonial Freedom (hereafter MCF) Archives, Box 87.
114. Movement for Colonial Freedom, ‘What Is the Movement for Colonial Freedom?’, in Fletcher, Truth about Kenya, n.p.
115. Ibid.
116. MCF, Young Socialists – Join the MCF, n.d., SOAS, MCF Archives, Box 87.
117. Fenner Brockway, The Colonial Revolution (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973), p. 42.
118. Brockway, Towards Tomorrow, p. 216.
119. MCF, ‘The Movement for Colonial Freedom’, n.d. SOAS, MCF Archives, Box 87.
120. Kenneth O. Morgan, ‘Imperialists at Bay: British Labour and Decolonization’, in Robert D. King and Robin W. Kilson, eds, The Statecraft of British Imperialism: Essays in Honour of Wm. Roger Lewis (London: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 240.
121. Fenner Brockway, ‘Winds of Change’, draft article for Time Life magazine, CAC, FEBR 6.10.
122. Ibid.
123. Minutes of Special Central Council Meeting, 23 October 1958, MCF Archives, SOAS, Box 3.
124. MCF, ‘Together against Imperialism’, n.d. MCF Archives, SOAS, Box 87.
125. MCF, ‘A Labour Government, the Colonial Peoples and the New Nations: A Policy Statement Offered for Consideration by the Movement for Colonial Freedom’, MCF Archives, SOAS, Box 1.
126. MCF, Young Socialists – Join the MCF.
127. MCF, ‘What Is Neocolonialism?’, n.d. SOAS, MCF Archives, Box 87.
128. MCF, ‘The Movement for Colonial Freedom Greets the All-African People’s Conference’, n.d. SOAS, MCF Archives, Box 87.
129. Brockway, ‘What Is the MCF?’
130. MCF, ‘Tasks for the Seventies: Based on the Speech of Lord Brockway, President of the MCF at Annual National Delegate Conference 1970’, CAC, FEBR, 16.62.
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