Empire of Crime

by Tim Newark

  In the meantime, word came out that Harun – the rebel who had come closest to unnerving Drummond – was back in the area. The policeman decided to use his pseudo-gang to make contact with him. The plan was that his Kikuyu comrades would suggest joining Harun’s gang. This overture was accepted and they were invited to share food with the Mau Mau.

  ‘Harun meant something very special to me,’ said Drummond, admitting his nervousness at the meeting. ‘I didn’t fancy the idea of having supper with somebody who had sworn he was going to castrate me.’

  That night, eight of the pseudo-gang arrived at Harun’s camp. Drummond had his trademark Beretta and 200 rounds of ammunition. As they pushed through the undergrowth, they were told they would be searched, which meant an examination of the colour of their skin beneath their clothes. Harun had heard rumours of undercover policemen. For a moment, the white men were drenched in a cold sweat. Then Drummond took the initiative, using his knife to silence the sentry sent to check them. Hiding the body in the bush, the pseudo-gang entered Harun’s encampment. Each man shook hands with the rebel leader in the Mau Mau manner – a strong clasp, followed by the gripping of right thumbs.

  ‘I looked up and there was his face a foot away,’ remembered Drummond. ‘His eyes boring into me.’

  Supper was rancid meat that smelled terrible. Drummond put it against his mouth, then palmed it, fearing if he ate it he would throw up. Fortunately, the apparent pseudo-gang leader was Thiga, a veteran fighter, and Harun concentrated on talking to him. They spoke deep into the night and then Thiga suggested a drill contest to demonstrate their professionalism. Harun’s men stood to attention and presented arms smartly. When it came to the pseudo-gang, they sloped arms with two fine smacks and Harun’s men applauded.

  ‘Company! Order arms!’

  The police guns were lowered and pointed at the rebels. At that moment, Harun realised something was wrong, but it was too late. The undercover firing squad blasted the Mau Mau. Harun was wounded but dived into the bush. Fearing that his pseudo-gang would be compromised if Harun escaped, Drummond brought in extra police to track him down. A week later, the wounded leader was found.

  In prison, Harun demanded to see Drummond. From inside his cell, he congratulated the policeman on winning the duel between them. They spoke for some time, revealing the other side’s story, then shook hands Mau Mau-style. It was the last time Drummond would see him. Harun was sentenced to death and hanged.

  Despite this success, the situation in Molo deteriorated. Loyalist Kikuyu were murdered along with their families, and white farmers were regularly threatened, their property attacked and animals mutilated. It was the presence of General Jimmy and his gang that encouraged the other Mau Mau assaults and yet they stayed well away from Molo on their mountain-top hideout.

  Drummond’s luck changed in June 1955. With his pseudo-gang, he picked up the Mau Mau commander’s trail. The rebels liked to post scouts to cover their movements and one of them intercepted the pseudo-gang; however, turning it to their advantage, Drummond managed to convince the scout that they wanted to link up with General Jimmy’s followers.

  A fake oathing ceremony was organised by the pseudo-gang and as some of General Jimmy’s Mau Mau crawled beneath an arch of twigs, they were clubbed and bound by the undercover Kikuyu. One of the gang members proved to have a very tough head, as Drummond recalled: ‘The clout he got made no impression, he just looked up very surprised and demanded to know why he had been hit like that. He had just got on his feet, and the next moment we found ourselves grappling with this huge African, trying to pull him to the ground. With one heave he threw us off and dashed into the bushes.’

  Drummond unsheathed his knife and ran after him. Pulling him down with a rugby tackle, he silenced him. Some of the other Mau Mau bolted when they heard the brawling, but the captured ones joined the pseudo-gang and helped lead them towards General Jimmy’s camp. More operations followed and in the clashes Mau Mau were cut down rather than being captured.

  The incessant killing was getting to the 22-year-old Drummond. His Kikuyu comrades marked the notches on the stock of his Beretta and he was horrified when they reached a fifth row.

  ‘I began to wonder if I was getting a kick out of my business,’ said the policeman. ‘I used to tell myself it was a nasty job that had to be done, that after all I was only doing my duty, and that the important thing was I should do it well. But did all of them have to die?’

  Drummond loathed talking to other policemen, who spoke of their victims as ‘baboons’ and liked shooting them.

  Despite these doubts, Drummond and his pseudo-gang had no compunction when they caught a Mau Mau who boasted about killing an elderly couple with pangas. He was executed on the spot. The Kikuyu serving alongside Drummond were happy to act as avengers, believing they were ridding their country of the evil of Mau Mau.

  ‘I was in this thing, this killing machine – and there was no way of getting out. We had a terrible momentum, and nothing, apart from getting eliminated ourselves, could have stopped us going on the way we were.’

  On one occasion, they were planning to murder 11 Mau Mau who had joined the pseudo-gang. The plan was to wait until every one of the rebels was sleeping before knifing them, but McNab, the other white policeman, nodded off. As he did so, his boots went into a fire and he woke up, cursing in English. In the pandemonium that followed, some of the Mau Mau escaped, but they were all eventually tracked down and killed before they could inform General Jimmy.

  To begin with, Drummond had insisted on removing the bodies of dead Mau Mau to identify them back at police headquarters, but as the headcount mounted, Thiga and his Kikuyu followers refused, resorting to providing only severed hands. The police authorities objected to this, but Drummond said there was little he could do about it. An earlier British Court of Inquiry had looked at the practice:

  In the Prohibited Areas it was an accepted – although not a universal – practice to cut off either one or both hands from a body where the body could not be brought in … The hand was brought back in order that fingerprints could be taken from it.

  The need for this was reduced when fingerprinting equipment was issued to all police units and from late 1953 the severing of hands was officially forbidden.

  Drummond’s search for General Jimmy culminated when they found his camouflaged headquarters deep among the bamboo forest on a mountainside. The camp was surrounded and shot-up in a storm of bullets, but the commander was nowhere to be seen. It would be two weeks before he was found. This time, he was surprised in bed with his mistress. With his pants around his ankles, he was taken into captivity. Later, as Drummond was interrogating his girlfriend, a shot rang out. General Jimmy had been killed while trying to escape – or at least that is what he was told by Jim McNab.

  With the death of General Jimmy, by the beginning of 1956 Mau Mau raids had wound down in Molo. It was a victory for the pseudo-gang, but in a final operation, Jim McNab was shot dead. Thiga and the Kikuyu who had fought alongside him were so upset by his death that they shaved off their long beards and cut their hair to attend his funeral. This sign of respect had initially annoyed Drummond, as it destroyed their disguise, but the Africans declared that their enthusiasm for the hunt had gone with McNab’s death.

  Throughout Kenya, similar ruthless action by British police and soldiers – plus the behind-the-lines action of the pseudo-gangs – brought an end to the Mau Mau uprising in 1957. At least 11,000 rebels had been killed and over 1,000 of them hanged. Drummond received the George Medal in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, but he was not happy in London.

  ‘When I first got to know him, he was gay and amusing,’ said his wife. ‘But when we got home he never wanted to go anywhere. He would just sit and gaze into space, day after day.’

  The deaths haunted him – as did the thrill of going into action on an operation.

  ‘Now it was all over,’ he later admitted, ‘and there were no more kicks, just the horror of it
all, the regrets, and the loathing I had for myself.’

  Thiga and the pseudo-gang were recruited into the regular police force, but it didn’t suit their temperament. When directed towards everyday law and order, the Kikuyu overreacted. A bunch of Masai cattle thieves were rounded up and shot. After that, they were disbanded.

  Drummond was promoted to chief inspector, the youngest in the Kenya Police, and was happy going back to his police job. His luck finally ran out during a routine mission, when his aircraft crashed. He was badly injured, with his face requiring reconstructive surgery over many operations. The pain he suffered during his long process of recuperation helped him overcome the guilt he had felt at surviving the Mau Mau period. The destruction of his face had obliterated his old self.

  More at ease with himself, Drummond eventually returned to work and retired as an assistant superintendent in 1962. Independence came to Kenya in 1963 and, initially, he felt nervous about staying on, but he was encouraged to stay in the new country by his Kikuyu comrades. They wanted him to help build their new country. He developed a whole new career as a security officer for the Kenyan National Parks and a safari tour operator.

  By the late 1960s, the British Empire was coming to an end. Almost all its Asian and African colonies had been granted independence; however, one colonial settlement remained a major generator of money and business: Hong Kong. With its wealth and high population concentrated across a small urban landscape, it attracted an array of gangsters determined to turn it into an underworld bonanza – and with that came many temptations, both for its citizens and its police.

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  16

  THE OBLIGING MR LOU

  ‘THE WALLED CITY IN KOWLOON is now neither walled nor a city,’ said a Foreign and Commonwealth Office report on the most notorious district of Hong Kong. ‘It is a small (6½ acres) area of densely-packed tenement slums near Kai Tak Airport, with an estimated population of some 40,000.’

  When a British parliamentary delegate visited it, she was shocked. ‘It is a place of real horror, and danger in case of fire. The congestion, lack of sanitation and mixture of living quarters and factory work are really appalling.’

  In October 1956, the Walled City was just one part of a district heavily populated with nationalist Chinese refugees, recently fled from communist China. It was a political tinderbox waiting for a spark to set it off and that ignition was provided by a dispute over flags.

  ‘Double Ten Day’ – 10 October – is one of celebration for Chinese nationalists, as it commemorates the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, and in Kowloon the nationalist émigré community wanted to party in style. The nationalist organising committee was happy for flags to be displayed on poles or strings but did not want them stuck on walls, as they were difficult to remove afterwards. In one estate in Kowloon, some residents had ignored the ban and pasted two giant Double Ten symbols alongside several other smaller flags on a housing block. When these were torn down, a crowd of residents gathered outside a resettlement office demanding that the flags be replaced.

  By 1.15 p.m., the crowd had swollen to 2,000 and at least one agitator was observed to be stirring up the protestors. They wanted 100,000 firecrackers – a traditional sign of apology – plus portraits of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek erected beside a giant nationalist flag. Among the crowd on that day were Triads belonging to the 14K, a notorious drugs-smuggling gang based in Kowloon. They had been busy expanding their membership since arriving in Hong Kong the previous year from southern China and were keen to demonstrate their authority over the population.

  Police riot units hurried to the estate near Castle Peak Road and found the crowd had already attacked the resettlement office. As some of the staff had tried to escape, they were set upon and badly beaten. As the police tried to protect them, they were pelted with bottles. Fearing they did not have enough men to carry out a baton charge, police officers fired four tear-gas shells. The mob dispersed back into the estate.

  ‘This incident proved to be a turning point,’ noted the official report. Until that moment, the fury of the crowd had been directed at the resettlement staff who had interfered with their nationalist celebrations. The intervention of the police triggered a more general feeling of discontent aimed at the forces of law and order.

  Police reinforcements arrived to a storm of stones thrown from the balconies of housing blocks. The resettlement office was looted and set on fire. Using more tear gas, the police managed to quieten the situation and there was a lull in the late afternoon.

  By early evening, as workers returned home, there was a revived mood of militancy and it was at this point that the local gangsters took a more active role.

  ‘It is now known that as early as 6.00 p.m.,’ said the government report, ‘Triad Society members were being mustered to exploit the situation; this undoubtedly had a bearing on the temper of the crowd at this stage.’

  Police riot squads marched through the streets, using tear gas to make the crowd disperse, but, knowing their way around the maze of passageways between tenement blocks, the mob quickly reappeared elsewhere, hurling stones at the police. It was then that 14K Triad members, waving nationalist flags, led thousands-strong crowds in an assault on the riot units wherever they found them, taking the opportunity to also loot shops and torch cars. There were serious concerns that the rioting would spread across the island.

  The report went on to describe an accident that had occurred as two fire engines arrived to deal with a small fire in a street parallel to the main Castle Peak Road:

  At about 10.00 p.m., the leading fire engine, a Dennis Rolls-Royce machine carrying a 55-foot fire escape ladder, met a heavy fusillade of bricks, pieces of concrete and bottles thrown by crowds of rioters who also attempted to block its passage. The driver was struck on the head by a stone and lost control of the vehicle, which crashed into the crowd, mounted the pavement and pinned several people against a wall at the side of the road. Two people, one a woman, were killed outright and one died in hospital as a result of this accident, while five of the crowd were seriously injured.

  While the casualties were being put on stretchers and loaded into ambulances, the rioters continued to throw stones at the emergency services, launching rocks from balconies and rooftops. As one of the wounded was being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance, he was hit by a stone thrown from above.

  The fire engine accident and the resulting serious injuries inflamed the crowd, which lashed out at any authority figures caught in its path.

  One of these was the wife of the Swiss Consul. Her car was blocked by the mob, stoned and set on fire. The unfortunate woman was engulfed in the flames and later died. Eight Chinese were charged with her murder. An officer of 10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles was also trapped in his car. He described the rampaging mob:

  The crowds of several thousand were very mobile, seemingly well organised. The police operated in company sized ‘wedges’ and soon exhausted their supplies of tear smoke, which was relatively easily ‘muzzled’ by placing tins and buckets over smoking cartridges and grenades.

  In the midst of the chaos, Triad gangsters did not miss a trick in making money out of the mayhem by selling nationalist flags to rioters from the back of their bicycles. They even held up drivers at junctions and forced them to buy flags.

  As the rioting entered its second day, barricades were erected and the police had to bring in armoured cars to smash them down. Frequently, the mob lit bonfires to attract fire engines, which were then mercilessly attacked. The police were too thinly spread and had suffered too many casualties to be able to deal with the widespread looting and violence. By the afternoon of 11 October, battalions of heavily armed soldiers had moved into Kowloon. Their presence made all the difference and by the next morning the protests were over.

  In the wake of the rioting, serious thought was given to the involvement of organised crime in the violence. Although it was agreed that the initial disturbances were spontaneou
s and not at all planned, it was felt by the authorities that the continuation of hostilities was directed by criminal elements.

  ‘What is certain,’ said Sir Alexander Graham, Governor of Hong Kong, ‘is that from a very early stage the disorders were exploited for their own purposes by gangs of criminals, hooligans and Triad Societies. It is significant that nearly half the reported crime in the colony occurs in the northern part of Kowloon, which was the main centre of the rioting.’ Explaining this further, he argued that ‘it would appear that people of a Nationalist persuasion joined in collaboration with Triad gangs to redress old scores and to attempt to win a dominant position in the Labour world’.

  A further report concluded, ‘The Triad Societies’ capacity for making serious trouble was obviously not appreciated. Up till recently the crime problem in Hong Kong was dealt with almost entirely by deporting criminals and suspects.’

  Since January 1955, owing to its strained relations with communist China, this arrangement had stopped. ‘The CID [Criminal Investigation Department] now have to gear their machine to the changed conditions, which will include considerably enlarging the branch which suppresses the activities of the Triad Societies.’

  This recommendation was taken up, and by 1958 the Hong Kong Police had established its Triad Society Bureau, dedicated to collecting criminal intelligence on Chinese organised crime. It coincided with a boom in the criminal enterprises of the Chinese gangsters.

  The 14K were the leading Triad gang in Hong Kong. Since the 1940s, they had been so closely associated with the Kuomintang that nationalist soldiers were conscripted into the society, making their oaths not in the traditional way but before a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese Republic. Civilians were keen to show membership of the Triads to prove their anti-communist credentials. With this kind of broad-based support, it is little wonder that the gangsters led the nationalist mobs in 1956.