by Richard Toye
Churchill’s own instinct was to find some way to negotiate with the Mau Mau. His quest for a Michael Collins-type leader with whom to strike a deal helps to explain his support for clemency for one of the movement’s most notorious leaders, Wahuriu Itote, known as ‘General China’. To understand this episode fully, we also need to be aware of Churchill’s attitude to capital punishment. He was a firm supporter of hanging. However, as Home Secretary – with the power to reprieve condemned criminals – he had been modestly lenient.175 Much later, in Opposition in 1947, he was one of several MPs who intervened on behalf of five men in the Gold Coast who had been condemned to death for ritual murder. He objected to the fact that several times they had been on the brink of execution, only to be granted a stay at the last minute. He criticized this as ‘ “cat and mousing” men up to the scaffold’.176 (Three of the five were later hanged.)177 In respect of Mau Mau, then, he had no objection to executions as such, but he did sound a note of caution. In May 1953 Baring pressed for measures to speed up trials, and Lyttelton warned the Cabinet that up to two hundred hangings might take place as a consequence of the Lari massacres.178 Churchill told the Cabinet that ‘care should be taken to avoid the simultaneous execution’ of large numbers of people as ‘Public opinion in this country would be critical of anything resembling mass executions.’ It is important to emphasize that he was objecting here, not to large numbers of executions per se, but to large numbers of people being hanged at the same time. Lyttelton promised that he ‘would seek the advice of his Cabinet colleagues if any question arose of carrying out simultaneously death sentences imposed on more than, say, twelve persons’.179 He also tried to use Churchill’s views as a means to restrain Baring’s zeal. ‘All of this is likely to be a troublesome question,’ he told the Governor, ‘and I wanted to give you the earliest warning of the PM’s attitude.’180 But the warning had little effect. Very soon after, rules for new fast-track courts were approved in Nairobi, without being scrutinized in London.181
Churchill may have felt some reservations about developments in Kenya, but he never said so openly. He did, however, seize the chance to advocate mercy when it could be justified in terms of policy. This opportunity presented itself with the capture of General China. China had served with the King’s African Rifles during World War II, but afterwards became disillusioned with the lack of prospects for ex-servicemen in Kenya. In 1950 he took a Mau Mau oath and not only oathed others in turn but killed those regarded as traitors to the cause. When the emergency was declared he and a small band of followers had already sought refuge from the police in the Mount Kenya forest. As the numbers of forest fighters grew – he eventually commanded four thousand of them – he played a key role in attacks on European farms and on the loyalist Kikuyu Home Guard. In January 1954 his luck ran out when he was wounded in a battle with the security forces. Expecting to die of his injuries, he gave himself up. His capture was a major intelligence coup for the British, as he provided crucial information on the numbers and disposition of the Mau Mau forces to his interrogator, Assistant Superintendent Ian Henderson, who managed to win his trust. Within little more than a fortnight he was tried and sentenced to death. He would have been hanged, as so many others were, but Henderson was convinced that he would be more useful alive, and that he might even be able to help broker a surrender pact with the Mount Kenya armies.182 The hope of a large-scale capitulation was the background to the British Cabinet’s discussions of China’s fate.
In the background too was Churchill’s concern about press attacks regarding the use of the death penalty in the fight against Mau Mau. On 10 February Churchill told his colleagues that there was much in the criticisms. Executions, he said, should ‘serve a public service’, the implication being that sometimes a greater good could be served by giving a reprieve.183 According to the formal minutes of the meeting he said that Baring, in considering whether or not to reprieve China, ‘should give due weight’ to the fact that it was now being claimed on his behalf that he had given himself up in response to the amnesty that already had been offered to fighters who surrendered. That claim was untrue. However, Churchill asked, ‘In view of the importance of convincing Mau Mau supporters generally of the reliability of this offer, might it not be advantageous to exercise clemency in General China’s case, even though the Government did not in fact accept his claim to have surrendered under the terms of the amnesty?’ The minutes also record Lyttelton’s reply: ‘he was in full agreement with the Governor’s view that commutation of the sentence would have a deplorable effect in Kenya, particularly among the Government’s Kikuyu supporters’.184 The Cabinet Secretary’s notebook upon which the minutes are based record a franker exchange. Churchill spoke critically of ‘Execution of men who fight to defend their native land’ to which Lyttelton replied ‘But this is armed rebellion.’185 At this stage the balance of opinion was to let the execution go ahead.
However, by the following week Baring had changed his tune, and cabled London to say that it seemed possible that China could negotiate the surrender of gangs not only in his own area but in Kenya as a whole. Under these conditions, commutation of his sentence was desirable. Taking a firmer line against the settlers than was his wont, he said that the violent criticism that this was likely to produce should be ignored.186 Churchill raised the issue again in Cabinet, and said that once negotiations had been opened with China on the basis proposed he should not be hanged even if the talks broke down: ‘you can’t bargain with a man under sentence of death and hang him if he doesn’t come across’. Lyttelton said that he still disapproved of the whole thing, but that he would leave the decision to Baring. It was possible that only a few fighters would lay down their arms: ‘He will get a bad bargain if only a few come across & you have to let him [China] off.’187 However, even Lyttelton came round once he had arrived in Kenya himself on a tour of inspection.188 China’s reprieve was announced on 4 March.189 Settler leader Michael Blundell declared, ‘The record of “General China” was one of murder, butchery, and arson, and from what has happened one could only conclude that the hallmark of the Government was expediency, and that they had no principles at all.’190
Blundell’s own visit to Churchill in Downing Street took place that December. The parley conducted via General China with other rebel leaders had not led to large-scale surrenders, in part because a detachment of the King’s African Rifles had attacked a group who were waiting to give themselves up. It looked as if British promises could not be trusted.191 Nevertheless, the Mau Mau were now on the back foot militarily. This did not put an end to Churchill’s desire for negotiations; again and again he urged Blundell to find someone to do a deal with. ‘I’m sure that you need negotiation’, he insisted, asking repeatedly if there was any possible partner: ‘You must find someone to negotiate with. I’d like to come and do it myself.’ He also spoke of ‘the bad odour that the shootings, the brutalities and the detention camps gave to Britain in the world’.192 Churchill’s last significant contribution on Mau Mau occurred early in 1955. The government promulgated a new amnesty for all crimes committed by both sides prior to January that year. This has been viewed as a very one-sided offer. Although spared the death penalty, surrendering fighters would be subject to indefinite detention, whereas loyalists who had committed atrocities would get off scot free.193 In Cabinet, Churchill raised a similar objection, saying it was a pity to confuse the surrender offer with the withdrawal of proceedings against loyalists. Alan Lennox-Boyd, who had replaced Lyttelton as Colonial Secretary, replied that it would be impossible to defend the first without the second. Kikuyu Home Guard members would desert and the settlers would be affronted. Churchill returned to the point, asking if it would not be enough merely to suspend proceedings against loyalists until it was clear whether or not there had been a general Mau Mau surrender. Lennox-Boyd again rebuffed him, saying that it could not be allowed to appear that the fate of loyalists depended on the success of the surrender appeal.194
There was to be no end to the rebellion before Churchill left office in 1955. The bulk of the fighting was over by 1957, although the formal State of Emergency continued until 1960. In sum, it is true that, as Prime Minister at the head of the whole system, Churchill presided over some appalling abuses committed by the imperial regime, but he did not actively will them. In fact, he showed signs of being troubled by them and made some efforts to prevent them. It is worth remembering that as a young and vigorous Colonial Office minister in the Edwardian era he had railed against similar abuses, on a smaller scale, often without being able to do much to stop them. His failure to do so now can in part be explained by the fact that he was growing increasingly decrepit and had many other questions to deal with. His sense of the urgency of colonial issues at this time is hinted at by his response to Lennox-Boyd’s request for a new Colonial Office building. All that was needed, Churchill thought, was a suite of rooms with ‘a large sitting room, a fine kitchen and dining room’.195 His remaining energies were spent mainly on problems of Cold War politics, and although his occasional fits of interest in Kenya were largely benign, only a more concentrated effort could have made a real difference.
VII
Churchill’s final months in power formed an inglorious end to a great career. Colonial policy was not much to the fore. After Stalin’s death in 1953 he had sought a summit meeting with the new Soviet leaders. He clearly hoped that, if he brought a thaw to the Cold War, he could then retire in a blaze of glory. Nehru endorsed the summit idea warmly, telling the Indian parliament that ‘fear-laden humanity will bless those who will rid it of these terrible burdens and lead it to peace and happiness’.196 Churchill’s pursuit of a rapprochement with the Russians was a way of trying to prove that Britain – positioned at the point of overlap of the ‘three circles’ – could still be a key player. However, the idea was not viewed warmly by the Americans or even by Churchill’s own colleagues, and it died a prolonged death. In July 1954, in an attempt to sidetrack him from it, Eisenhower suggested to Churchill that his hope for ‘a fitting climax’ to his career could be satisfied by other means. Colonialism, the President wrote to him, was ‘on the way out as a relationship between peoples’. Churchill should make a speech on this: ‘If you could say that twenty-five years from now, every last one of the colonies (excepting military bases) should have been offered a right to self-government and determination, you would electrify the world.’197 In a caustic reply, Churchill denied, implausibly, that he was ‘looking about for the means of making a dramatic exit or of finding a suitable Curtain’. Furthermore:
I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly, in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years.
As a matter of fact the sentiments and ideas which your letter expresses are in full accord with the policy now being pursued in all the Colonies of the British Empire. In this I must admit I am a laggard. I am a bit sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet. I shall certainly have to choose another topic for my swan song: I think I will stick to the old one ‘The Unity of the English-speaking peoples.’ With that all will work out well.198
Churchill continued to hang on in office, driving his ministers to distraction by his refusal to set a firm date for his departure. Harold Macmillan, exaggerating somewhat, said that Churchill’s ‘almost child-like determination to get his way at all costs and regardless of other results must be, partly at any rate, a result of his mental illness’.199 Eden, of course, was the chief sufferer. According to Oscar Nemon, the Prime Minister would sit gazing into space and mumbling half-aloud, ‘Those hungry eyes. Those hungry eyes! I really should resign. One cannot expect Anthony to live forever.’200 Churchill-admirer Nirad C. Chaudhuri saw him in the Commons in what was one of his final appearances as Prime Minister. ‘He looked very much like his figure on a Toby jug, but was much more rosy, white-haired, and child-like than I could have imagined him to be’, Chaudhuri wrote. ‘It was surprising how successfully he had divested himself of all atmosphere, of all suggestion of being not only a writer, historian, and political thinker, but also a statesman and war leader.’ He later added that he had intended these words in a complimentary sense, saying that he saw Churchill as ‘an English incarnation of one of the early heroes of Rome, Cincinnatus’, a model of virtuous simplicity.201
Churchill finally stood down in April 1955. Leo Amery, even now keeping an eye on events, wrote, ‘It cannot be said that he has been a great Prime Minister this last time,’ but thought that he would ‘always live by his war leadership’ and by his great post-war speeches.202 (By the end of the year Amery himself had succumbed to old age, earning a tribute from Churchill as ‘above all, a great patriot.’)203 The evening before his formal resignation, the soon-to-be-ex-Prime Minister played host to Queen Elizabeth at a dinner party at No. 10. In proposing a toast to Her Majesty, Churchill said, ‘Madam, I should like to express the deep and lively sense of gratitude which we and all your peoples feel to you and to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh for all the help and inspiration we receive in our daily lives and which spreads with ever-growing strength throughout the British Realm and the Commonwealth and Empire.’204 The news of his retirement made headlines throughout the world, but not in London; Fleet Street was in the throes of a newspaper strike. There were some critical voices on the left. F. A. Ridley, writing in the Socialist Leader (which was unaffected by the strike), poured scorn upon Churchill: ‘He tried to hold Ireland by force, and it is now an independent republic; he helped to conquer South Africa, and it is now treading the republican road; he assisted to garrison Egypt, and he himself had to sign the agreement abandoning the Suez Canal. An unbroken record of disaster!’205 In France, l’Humanité made a similar point: ‘all his life, Churchill has fought against the emancipation of the colonial peoples, and these today have risen up against their oppressors; all his life, Churchill has sought to defend the privileges of British capitalism, and this has led him ultimately to mortgage his country’s national independence to American imperialism.’206 However, a perhaps more authentic note of popular feeling was struck by the Gold Coast’s Daily Graphic. It observed that Churchill still liked to be controversial, but it added that ‘the years have mellowed old antagonisms and he is regarded now with affection and respect by everyone, even those who opposed his policies most bitterly’.207 In this, the paper surely spoke for many throughout the now all-but-liquidated Empire.
EPILOGUE
In retirement, Churchill told his cousin, the sculptor Clare Sheridan, that his life’s work had ‘all been for nothing. [. . .] The Empire I believed in has gone.’1 This pessimism was surely in part the product of the depression induced by his departure from office and worsening health, but his gloom about British decline was not wholly misplaced. Even though his compatriots were benefiting from low inflation, full employment and increasing living standards, affluence at home seemed to some to be poor compensation for the concurrent collapse in influence abroad. That collapse, if inevitable in the long run, was dramatically accelerated by the actions of Anthony Eden. Churchill had expressed his own private doubts about his successor on his last night in Downing Street. Sitting on his bed after his dinner with the Queen, still wearing his knee-breeches and decorations, he was silent for several minutes before suddenly exclaiming, ‘I don’t believe Anthony can do it.’2
At first it seemed that this prediction would be falsified. Eden seemed glamorous, even dynamic, and won a decisive general election victory in May 1955, just weeks after taking over. Soon, however, he appeared to be drifting. One Daily Telegraph journalist lamente
d the absence of the ‘smack of firm government’.3 Living in the shadow of Churchill’s myth, Eden was greatly irritated by such comments, which does much to explain his spectacular over-reaction to the events of July 1956. He also, of course, had to contend with the right-wing Suez Group of backbenchers that Churchill had previously encouraged behind the scenes. His desperation to avoid any accusation of weakness conditioned his response to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, which was owned by an Anglo-French company. This act – highly provocative but not illegal – came just weeks after the withdrawal of British troops under the 1954 treaty that Eden himself had negotiated. His determination to undo the humiliation by facing down Nasser was to lead him to disaster.
The government began planning military action while maintaining a façade of negotiation. Eden kept Churchill informed of developments. ‘I am pleased with the policy being pursued about Suez’, the latter told Clementine in early August, ‘We are going to do our utmost.’4 On the 5th of that month the hawkish Harold Macmillan, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited Churchill at Chartwell. When Churchill asked his opinion of the government’s existing military plan, Macmillan said that it was not bold enough. As he recorded in his diary, he suggested involving Israel: ‘Surely, if we landed we must seek out the Egyptian forces; destroy them; and bring down Nasser’s Govt. Churchill seemed to agree with all this’.5 Indeed, Churchill was so excited that the next day he rushed off to see Eden at Chequers. Eden’s wife Clarissa – who was also Churchill’s niece – recalled, ‘It turned out he had dictated “a plan” on the road and the secretary had miraculously managed to type it as they were going along.’ She was not impressed: ‘Naturally Anthony had covered everything Winston mentioned in his plan – which turned out to be Harold’s anyway.’6 The following day the Prime Minister was in a bad mood, and Macmillan concluded ‘that the source of the trouble was the Churchill visit. Eden no doubt thought that I was conspiring with C against him.’7 Even though Eden himself wanted to overthrow Nasser, he resented anyone else appearing to outdo his fervour. His longstanding resentment of Churchill was undoubtedly mixed up in this.