An excerpt from Revolutionary Passions shows that Bhagat Singh – who the Hindu Right tends to project as an antidote to the Congress and Gandhi – not only had close relations with Congress leaders, but was also critical of Hinduism.
Bhagat Singh. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Note: This article was first published on September 13, 2017 and is being republished on March 23, 2022, Bhagat Singh’s death anniversary.
In the mid 1920s, the Kakori Conspiracy Case left the revolutionary movement headless, as all its front-ranking leaders were arrested and sent to the gallows or to jail. The following generation of militants – who were to revive the movement – was of a different kind. The strongest personality in this group, Bhagat Singh, is proof of this. Born in Lyallpur, Punjab, to a Sikh family that came under the influence of the Arya Samaj and the Ghadr Party – his uncle Ajit Singh had been deported to Mandalay along with Lajpat Rai when he was a child – Bhagat Singh was trained at the National College of Lahore. He was particularly shocked by the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in Amritsar in 1919, where General Dyer killed hundreds of people. He then took part in the non-cooperation movement and like many others, joined the revolutionary movement after Mahatma Gandhi suspended the non-cooperation struggle. In 1926, he started the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and tried to draw the youth from the province into its fold, in order to develop a socialist and non-religious organisation. If the British were naturally the chosen target of Bhagat Singh, he also put the blame on his compatriots, paralysed by superstitions:
“A branch of peepal tree is cut and religious feelings of the Hindus are injured. A corner of a paper idol, tazia of the idol-breaker Mohammedans is broken, and ‘Allah’ gets enraged, who cannot be satisfied with anything less than the blood of the infidel Hindus. Man should receive more attention than the beasts and yet, in India, people break their heads in the name of ‘sacred beasts’.”
The combination of socialism, humanism and nationalism that was the trademark of Bhagat Singh was going to become even stronger after the launch of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HRSA) in September 1928. While Bhagat Singh remained the key figure of the HSRA, among its leaders were other outstanding men, including Sukhdev, a great admirer of communism, Vijay Kumar Sinha, an avid reader, Shiv Verma and Chandrashekhar Azad, who was in charge of the Association’s “military” operations. These men formed a Central Committee, which included two representatives of each province where the movement was well established – Punjab, the United Provinces and Bihar. The organisation was immediately divided into two branches, the ideological and the military. Bhagat Singh was at the helm of the former but took part in the latter too. Indeed, he was directly involved in the assassination of J.P. Saunders, a policeman who had been mistaken for the police chief J. A. Scott, whom Bhagat Singh held responsible for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai. An Arya Samaji and a Congress leader, Lajpat Rai had been killed after a lathi charge while he and others demonstrated against the Simon Commission’s Lahore visit. Like terrorists of the 19th century, the HRSA thought – expressed in an “official” communiqué – that by killing Saunders, it could “let the world know that India still lives; that the blood of youths has not been totally cooled down and that they can still risk their lives if the honour of their nation is at stake”.
Hamit Bozarslan, Gilles Bataillon, Christophe Jaffrelot Revolutionary Passions: Latin America, Middle East and India Social Science Press, 2017
But Bhagat Singh transitioned from terrorism to revolution. In his last piece of writing – drafted in February 1931 – he refers to his past action in a very telling manner:
“Apparently I have acted as a terrorist. But I am not a terrorist. I am a revolutionary who has got such definite ideas of a lengthy programme (…) Let me announce with all the strength at my command, that I am not a terrorist and never was, (except) perhaps at the beginning of my revolutionary career.”
Bhagat Singh’s worldview had been reshaped in the meantime by some rare readings. The list of authors in his library shows many books by various Western authors. One finds there Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Thomas Paine, Upton Sinclair, Morris Hillquit, Jack London, Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Kautsky, Bukharin, Burke, Lenin, Thomas d’Aquin, Danton, Omar Khayyam, Tagore, N.A. Morozov, Herbert Spencer, Henry Maine and Rousseau.
These books, that Bhagat Singh read in jail as much as before being arrested, contributed to making him a rationalist and a socialist. He was the first revolutionary to express clearly his rejection of religion in Why I am an atheist, written in prison – just when he was condemned to death. In this text, Bhagat Singh states lucidly how he awaits death without hoping for a life beyond:
“A God-believing Hindu might be expecting to be reborn as a king, a Muslim or a Christian, might dream of the luxuries to be enjoyed in paradise and the reward he is to get for his sufferings and sacrifices. But what am I to expect? I know the moment the rope is fitted round my neck and rafters removed, from under my feet. That will be the final moment – that will be the last moment. I, or to be more precise, my soul, as interpreted in the metaphysical terminology, shall all be finished there. Nothing further. A short life of struggle with no such magnificent end, shall in itself be the reward if I have the courage to take it in that light. That is all. With no selfish motive, or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise. The day we find a great number of men and women with this psychology who cannot devote themselves to anything else than the service of mankind and emancipation of the suffering humanity; that day shall inaugurate the era of liberty.”
Bhagat Singh’s rejection of religion, which alienates the masses, complemented his socialist criticism of two systems of oppression – capitalism and casteism. Before that, Indian revolutionaries had only targeted capitalism and colonialism.
In February 1931, Bhagat Singh, inviting the youth to embrace Marxism, pointed out that “Revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order. For that purpose our immediate aim is the achievement of power. As a matter of fact, the state, the government machinery is just a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to further safeguard its interest. We want to snatch and handle it to utilise it for the consummation of our ideal, i.e., social reconstruction on new, i. e. Marxist basis.”
Christophe Jaffrelot. Credit: Twitter
In fact, Bhagat Singh is a Janus-like figure, combining different sources of inspiration, some of them Marxist, others harking back to the anarchists’ “propaganda by action”. This is evident from his last deed. On April 8, 1929, along with B.K. Dutt, he threw two bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly “to make the deaf hear”, as written on the tracts they distributed in the assembly after their lightening coup. This formula was borrowed from Auguste Vaillant, a French anarchist. But Bhagat Singh also presented this action as being part of a larger game plan. First, it was aimed at dissuading the assembly from voting for a law – the Public Safety and Trade Disputes Bill – whose implementation would have penalised Indian workers. Second, it was also meant to denounce the manner in which this so-called Indian parliament projected itself – as an accomplice of the British. Finally, it aimed at avenging the death of Lajpat Rai. All these explanations relate this act as much to the anarchist as to the socialist agenda. The latter side of the coin shows that Bhagat Singh did not valorise violence. To get a proper understanding of his political philosophy, one must read till the end the leaflet that Bhagat Singh and Dutt threw in the assembly after hurling their bombs. Its concluding words are remarkable:
“We are sorry to admit that we who attach so great a sanctity to human life, who dream of a glorious future, when man will be enjoying perfect peace and full liberty, have been forced to shed human blood.”
These words reveal a denial of violence, a denial that would take a more systematic form in the declaration of Singh and Dutt made before the judges. There, they would emphasise that the two bombs had been thrown at the unoccupied rows and that their composition – the details of which they provide, like great chemists – made them inoffensive: had they been loaded with some other high explosive, with destructive pellets or darts, they could have wiped out a majority of the members of the legislative assembly.
Singh and Dutt even defended themselves against their recourse to violence – they merely speak of “force”:
“We are next to none in our love for humanity. Far from having any malice against any individual, we hold human life sacred beyond words (…) Our sole purpose was ‘to make the deaf hear’ and to give the heedless a timely warning (…) Force when aggressively applied is ‘violence’ and is therefore, morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in the furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification.”
Interestingly, Bhagat Singh regarded Jesus Christ as one of his role models, like Gandhi: “If we set aside motive, then Jesus Christ will appear a man responsible for breaking peace and preaching revolt, and a dangerous personality in the language of the law. But we worship him. He commands great respect and a place in our hearts; the sight of his image fills us with spiritual energy”.
Not only did Bhagat Singh, a truly exceptional revolutionary, never pay allegiance to Hinduism, but he also actually valued non-violence.
Christophe Jaffrelot is Senior Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris.
INTROSPECTION
Bhagat Singh: An emerging symbol of struggle against economic imperialism
At a time when the world is being ripped apart by terrorism executed
in the name of religion and the western world led by the US is forcing
the developing countries to open their resources for exploitation to
tackle the economic depression looming large, a piece of news from
Pakistan has come as a ray of hope for millions of poor labourers,
workers and farmers reeling under the economic imperialism for decades.
The authorities of Lahore district in Pakistan have renamed the Shadman
Chowk (intersection) after legendary revolutionary Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat
Singh. The Chowk and a residential colony near it was built in 1961
after demolishing the central jail where Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and
Sukhdev were hanged on March 23, 1931. Singh was just 23-year-old. He is
perhaps the only freedom fighter who is popular both in India and
Pakistan (the undivided India). The Pakistan government was forced to
name chowk after the revolutionary because of the public pressure. The
next demand is to set up a museum on Bhagat Singh at his birthplace at
Bange in Lyallpur.
Most Indians would be elated by the fact that Bhagat Singh got due
recognition in Pakistan. However, socialists active in two sides of the
border see the development has emergence of Bhagat Singh as a symbol of
the struggle of the toiling masses in entire south Asia against the
economic imperialism of the West. In my view, Bhagat Singh is not only
the representative of havenots but is also the uniting force of
followers of different faith. Although Bhagat Singh called himself an
atheist, he followed the true value enshrined in every religion -- the
sacrifice. He believed in the couplet in Guru Granth Sahib (which in my
view is essence of the good in all the religions) "Soora so pehchaniye
jo lade deen ke het, purja purja kat mare, kabuhn na chhade khet” (A
brave is a person who fights for the downtrodden till last breath).
The masses are being exploited today because they are divided along
religious lines. Terrorism in the name of religion has aggravated the
situation. Today the western world seems to be fighting against
terrorism but the fact that it created terror outfits to suit its needs
in Asia. The purpose was to divide and rule. But the same outfits have
now turned Frankenstein’s monsters for the western world. One of the
main reasons why the masses have not been able to put up a strong
resistance against the economic imperialism so far is that they are
divided on religious lines.
Bhagat Singh is not a person but an ideology which can bring working
class from across the world at a common platform irrespective of their
faith and nationality. Though many would call it far-fetched, I believe
the process of change has begun. Total change may take time -- a decade
or a generation -- but it will happen. In fact, under pressure from
hardliners, Pakistan denied visa to Indian delegation which wanted to
take part in birth anniversary celebration of Bhagat Singh organised by
over 40 political and social organisations but the move has not dampen
the spirit activists. Instead, they have decided to organise a bigger
celebration on the martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh in India in which
representatives of workers, farmers, forest dwellers and labourers from
across Asia will be invited. The movement will take shape gradually.
And, this movement will be non-violent. It is unfortunate that most
Indians associate Bhagat Singh with violation. Our knowledge about him
is very limited -- a young man who adopted violent means to free the
country from clutches of British ruler, shot a British officer, exploded
bombs in the central assembly and was hanged to death. However, the
fact is that Bhagat Singh advocated violence only in extreme condition
but the `non-violent' part of his personality is neither part of our
school syllabus, nor told to us at home.
I don't agree with many who treat Bhagat Singh at par with Marxist
revolutionary Che Guevara. The `Indian-ness' and `non-violent' character
of Bhagat Singh's ideology makes him much taller than Che. In his
article `why I am an atheist', written a few days before his martyrdom,
Bhagat Singh has said that a mass movement can only be raise through
non-violence. The non-violent character was also on display when he
threw bombs in central assembly taking care that they did not hurt
anybody. He allowed police to arrest him. Later, his historical 114-day
hunger strike for jail reforms is also an example of the sacrifice
enshrined in Indian culture. Every word of the statements given by
Bhagat Singh in the court during his trial had much more impact in
comparison to the bullets fired by Che. Bhagat Singh martyrdom is the
highest level of non-violence. Bhagat Singh's death awakened the
sleeping masses. Bhagat Singh is regarded as great because he willingly
sacrificed his life and not because he took lives. The dead Bhagat Singh
turned out to be more dangerous for the British. He was a democrat and
motivated people. He never forced his ideology on anyone. He also
believed that after overthrowing British rulers, at least two
generations would have to work tirelessly at the grassroots level to
remove socio-economic and political inequality to attain independence in
the true sense.
The revolutionary in his prison diary had noted: the aim of life
is no more to control the mind but to develop it harmoniously. Not to
achieve salvation here after but to make the best use of it here below.
Not to realise truth, beauty and good only in contemplation but also in
the actual experience of daily life. Social progress depends not upon
the ennoblement of the few but on the enrichment of democracy; universal
brotherhood can be achieved only when there is an equality of
opportunity - of opportunity in the social, political and individual
life. Bhagat Singh threw bomb in the central hall to awaken sleeping
Indian masses and to make deaf ears of those supporting the British
government. But very few know that it was also to oppose the repressive
laws Pulic Safety Bill, Trade Dispute Bills and Press Sedition Bill
being brought by the colonial rulers. Today the country is independent
but people are not free, at least it is true for over 80% of the toiling
masses. The feudal mindset of the ruling elite is not allowing the poor
dalits, tribals, workers and farmers to avail their rights. Caste,
communalism, corruption, criminalisation and commercialisation have made
situation pathetic. It’s time for the youth, particularly middle class
who admires Bhagat Singh and has means, to stop lip services and follow
the "path of sacrifice" shown by him, at least try up to some extent.
Last and not the least: The question bothering me why naming of a
chowk after Bhagat Singh did not get the coverage in national media it
deserved?
The Hindu
The photograph of Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt was taken by Sham Lal in
Delhi on April 4, 1929 and sent for publication to newspapers by Bhagat
Singh's comrades. Photo Courtesy: Chaman Lal
The Hindu
A letter in Bhagat Singh's own handwriting. Photo Courtesy: Chaman Lal
Digitalised records with the Supreme Court reveal some inspiring
facets of the revolutionary. Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt offered
themselves for arrest after throwing harmless bombs in the Central
Assembly to 'make the deaf hear.' Their case drew worldwide attention.
When the Supreme Court of India established a museum to
display landmarks in the history of India's judicial system, it also put
on display records of some historic trials. The first exhibition that
was organised was the ‘Trial of Bhagat Singh.' It was opened on
September 28, 2007, on the occasion of the birth centenary celebrations
of one of the most significant among martyrs and popular heroes. Noorul
Hooda, Curator of the Museum, and Rajmani Srivastava of the National
Archives worked to collect documents, items like bomb shell remains,
pictures and publications. Not all of what was collected could be
displayed in the exhibition. In 2008, the Supreme Court digitalised the
exhibits. Some of Bhagat Singh's rare writings thus came to light for
the first time since he was executed on March 23, 1931 at the Lahore
Central Jail along with Rajguru and Sukhdev. How the three young
patriots were put to judicial murder, is brought out by the eminent
legal scholar, A.G. Noorani, in his book, The Trial of Bhagat Singh — Politics of Justice.
The
most significant part of Bhagat Singh's life is that spent in jail
since his arrest on April 8, 1929 from the Central Assembly in Delhi,
where he and B.K. Dutt offered themselves to be arrested after throwing
harmless bombs in the Assembly to ‘make the deaf hear.' They faced two
trials. The first was in the Delhi bomb case. It started on May 7, 1929
in Delhi and was committed to the Sessions Judge, on charges under
Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code and the Explosives Act. That trial
started in June. Bhagat Singh and Dutt made a historic statement on June
6. Dutt was represented by the nationalist counsel Asaf Ali. Bhagat
Singh fought his own case with the help of a legal adviser.
On
June 12, in less than a week, both were convicted and transported for
life. From the June 6 statement to his last letter to his comrades
written on March 22, 1931, a day before his execution, Bhagat Singh read
and wrote so much: one can only marvel at the explosion of talent at
the age of 21 years-plus. He wrote letters to family members and
friends, jail and court officials, and penned major articles including Why I am an Atheist, Letter to Young Political Workers, and Jail Notebook.
On
June 14, after the conviction, Bhagat Singh was transferred to Mianwali
and Dutt to the Lahore jail. That was the start of a chain of struggles
throughout the period they were in jail. It began with a hunger strike
from June 15 by both Bhagat Singh and Dutt, demanding the status of
political prisoners. Bhagat Singh was also shifted to Lahore jail after
some time. He and Dutt were kept away from the other accused in the
Lahore conspiracy case, such as Sukhdev. The trial in that case, related
to the murder of Saunders, began on July 10, 1929. Bhagat Singh, who
was on hunger strike since June 15 along with Dutt, was brought to the
court on a stretcher. The other accused in the case came to know about
this hunger strike on that day, and almost all of them joined the
strike.
This historic hunger strike by Bhagat Singh
and his comrades resulted in the martyrdom of Jitender Das on September
13, 1929. Bhagat Singh and the other comrades ended their hunger strike
on September 2 after receiving assurances from a Congress party team and
British officials on the acceptance of their demands, but they resumed
it on September 4 as the British officials went back on their word. It
finally ended on October 4 after 112 days, though the status of
“political prisoner” was still not given; some other demands were
acceded to.
During the Lahore conspiracy case trial
conducted by Special Magistrate Rai Sahib Pandit Kishan Chand, an
incident occurred on October 21, 1929. Provoked by an approver named Jai
Gopal, Prem Dutt, the youngest among the accused persons, threw a
slipper at him. Despite the other accused dissociating themselves from
the act, the magistrate ordered the handcuffing of all of them. Bhagat
Singh, Shiv Verma, B.K. Dutt, Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Ajoy Ghosh, Prem Dutt
and others were beaten after they refused to be handcuffed. They were
treated brutally inside the jail and at the court gate in front of the
magistrate. Ajoy Ghosh and Shiv Verma fell unconscious following the
police brutality. Bhagat Singh was targeted by a British officer by name
Roberts.
The details of the brutalities were
recorded by Bejoy Kumar Sinha. In February 1930, Bhagat Singh resumed
his hunger strike for 15 days, as the British officials did not fulfil
the promises they had made earlier with respect to demands.
Meanwhile,
the fame of revolutionaries, arising from their hunger strikes and
court statements, soared, while the image of the British was at its
lowest ebb. The case drew attention the world over. While dismissing
appeals from Bhagat Singh and Dutt against the Delhi bomb case judgment,
the Punjab High Court in Lahore acknowledged Bhagat Singh to be a
‘Sincere Revolutionary.'
The British colonial regime
led by Viceroy Irwin took the unprecedented step of issuing the Lahore
conspiracy case ordinance on May 1, 1930. Under this, the proceedings
that were being conducted by a Special Magistrate in Lahore were
transferred to a three-judge Special Tribunal established to complete
them within a fixed period. The Tribunal's judgment was not to be
challenged in the superior courts; only the Privy Council could hear any
appeal. This ordinance was never approved by the Central Assembly or
the British Parliament, and it lapsed later without any legal or
constitutional sanctity. Its only purpose was to hang Bhagat Singh in
the shortest possible time. That judgment sentencing Bhagat Singh,
Sukhdev and Rajguru to the gallows was delivered on October 7, 1930.
The
Tribunal began its proceedings on May 5, 1930. The accused in the
Lahore conspiracy case refused to attend the proceedings after May 12.
On that day they raised slogans and sung revolutionary songs.
Brutalities were repeated on them, as in October 1929, in front of the
Special Magistrate. This time Ajoy Ghosh, Kundan Lal and Prem Dutt fell
unconscious. The accused remained absent during the whole proceedings
and remained unrepresented by counsel. Advocates engaged to defend them
were insulted by the Tribunal. Subsequently, the accused themselves
directed them not to defend them in their absence. These details are in
A.G. Noorani's book, The Trial of Bhagat Singh.
What
remained out of view all these years were the many letters that Bhagat
Singh wrote and the petitions he sent to either the jail authorities or
to the Special Tribunal or to the Punjab High Court, during the period
1929-1930. In these letters and petitions, Bhagat Singh sought to expose
the British colonial regime's determined efforts to get him hanged by
denying the accused any defence during the trial. Even though the
accused were choosing not to be present in the court, they were
participating in the legal proceedings through counsel. The Tribunal
refused the revolutionaries' counsel, Amolak Ram Kapoor, permission to
cross-examine 457 prosecution witnesses and allowed the
cross-examination of only five approvers. This was a farce.
The
letters reveal another hunger strike by Bhagat Singh from July 28,
1930, on which he himself informed the High Court it was against the
jail rules. He was joined in the hunger strike by Kundan Lal, Prem Dutt
Verma, Sukhdev and Bejoy Kumar Sinha. This hunger strike continued till
at least August 22. With this, the total period of hunger strikes
observed during his nearly two-year incarceration becomes about five
months. Probably this is more than the total period of Mahatma Gandhi's
hunger strikes during his prolonged political career starting from South
Africa.
When the court finally allowed interviews as
sought by Bhagat Singh to prepare his defence, and when he asked for an
adjournment of the case, the court closed the proceedings without
giving any chance to defence counsel to cross-examine prosecution
witnesses or present defence witnesses. Then it reserved judgment, which
was delivered on October 7, 1930.
More such
documents might emerge. The compilation of the complete proceedings of
the Delhi Assembly bomb case and the Special Magistrate Court's
proceedings could bring more facts to light. The Punjab Archives in
Lahore has 135 files of the Bhagat Singh case. These are not accessible
even to Pakistani scholars; Kuldip Nayar is now trying to get access to
them. In 2006, at the time of the 75th anniversary of the martyrdom of
Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, the Acting Chief Justice of the
Pakistan Supreme Court, Rana Bhagwan Dass, handed over to the Punjab and
Haryana High Court in Chandigarh four volumes of exhibits of the Lahore
conspiracy case. These included some new documents.
While
the source of the documents in the Supreme Court records is not clearly
mentioned, undoubtedly these are part of the trial proceedings at both
levels. The letters, self-explanatory in the context of the freedom
struggle, show the amazing command Bhagat Singh had over the English
language, apart from Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, his knowledge of legal
terminology and his beautiful handwriting. In the book, Gandhi and Bhagat Singh,
historian V.N. Dutta expressed doubts about Bhagat Singh's command over
English as he was an under-graduate. He sought to ascribe the language
to Jawaharlal Nehru or Asaf Ali. For legal professionals, scholars and
students, the letters present a wonderful experience of how Bhagat Singh
had such maturity in complex matters of legal defence.
But
Bhagat Singh's very talent and competence scared the British colonial
regime and it became even more determined to get rid of him.
The
Supreme Court's digitalised records include nearly 20 written Bhagat
Singh documents. Some of these, such as the June 6, 1929 statement,
‘Ideal of Indian Revolution,' have been published. Only 12 letters or
petitions remain unpublished. This writer acknowledges the permission
granted by the Supreme Court to do so. Ten of the documents are in
complete form. Only the first page remains of two letters/documents, one
relating to the October 21, 1929 incident in court and another petition
from early-1930; the second and likely final page in these two are not
in the digital records. Also available now is a photograph of Bhagat
Singh and Dutt, published in ‘Bande Matram', Lahore (on April 12, 1929)
and Hindustan Times (April 18, 1929). This was taken by
photographer Sham Lal of Kashmere Gate in Delhi on April 4, 1929 and
sent to newspapers for publication by Bhagat Singh's comrades. The
writer is grateful to the National Archives, New Delhi, for providing
the rare newspaper photographs.
[Chaman Lal, the editor of the Bhagat Singh Documents (Hindi: Publications Division) and the Jail Notebook and Other Writings (LeftWord), is
a Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, now on deputation to The
University of the West Indies, Trinidad &Tobago, as Visiting
Professor.]
British Imperialism in AfricaLONDON: Britain was on Thursday expected to announce compensation for thousands of Kenyans who claim they were abused and tortured in prison camps during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising, according to a government source.
The foreign office (FCO) last month confirmed that it was negotiating
settlements for claimants who accuse British imperial forces of severe
mistreatment including torture and sexual abuse.
Around 5,000 claimants are each in line to receive over £2,500 ($3,850, 2,940 euros), according to British press reports.
The FCO said in last month's statement that "there should be a debate about the past".
"It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history," it added.
"We understand the pain and grievance felt by those, on all sides, who
were involved in the divisive and bloody events of the Emergency period
in Kenya."
In a test case, claimants Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu
Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara last year told Britain's High Court how
they were subjected to torture and sexual mutilation. Lawyers said that Nzili was castrated, Nyingi severely beaten and Mara subjected to appalling sexual abuse in detention camps during the Mau Mau rebellion.
A fourth claimant, Susan Ngondi, has died since legal proceedings began.
The British government
accepted that detainees had been tortured, but initially claimed that
all liabilities were transferred to the new rulers of Kenya when the
east African country was granted independence.
It also warned of "potentially significant and far-reaching legal implications". But judge Richard McCombe ruled last October that a fair trial was possible, citing the "voluminous documentation".
At least 10,000 people died during the 1952-1960 uprising, with some sources giving far higher estimates.
The guerrilla fighters - often with dread-locked hair and wearing animal skins as clothes - terrorized colonial communities.
Tens of thousands were detained, including US President Barack Obama's grandfather.
It was only when the Kenya Human Rights Commission contacted the
victims in 2006 that they realized they could take legal action.
Their case was boosted when the government admitted it had a secret archive of more than 8,000 files from 37 former colonies.
Despite playing a key part in Kenya's path to independence, the
rebellion also created bitter divisions within communities, with some
joining the fighters and others serving the colonial power.
Jallianwala Bagh (Punjabi: ਜਲ੍ਹਿਆਂਵਾਲਾ ਬਾਗ਼, Hindi: जलियांवाला बाग़) is a public garden in Amritsar in the Punjab state of India,
and houses a memorial of national importance, established in 1951 to
commemorate the massacre of peaceful celebrators on the occasion of the
Punjabi New Year on April 13, 1919 in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. Official British Raj sources placed the fatalities at 379, and with 1100 wounded.[1] Civil Surgeon Dr. Smith indicated that there were 1,526 casualties.[2] The true figures of fatalities are unknown, but are likely to be higher than the official figure of 379. The 6.5-acre (26,000 m2) garden site of the massacre is located in the vicinity of Golden Temple complex, the holiest shrine of Sikhism. The memorial is managed by the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust, which was established as per the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Act passed by the Government of India in 1951.
(As described by M.S. Randhawa on 30 January 1974) World War I was about to conclude, and India was in ferment. In August 1917, E.S. Montagu, the Secretary of State for India,
had declared on behalf of the British Government to grant responsible
government to India within the British Empire. The war came to an end on
11 November 1918. On 6 February 1919 Rowlatt Bills were introduced by the British Government in the Imperial Legislative Council,
and one of the bills was passed into an Act in March 1919. Under this
Act, people suspected of so-called sedition could be imprisoned without
trial. This resulted in frustration among Indians and there was great
unrest. While people were expecting freedom, they suddenly discovered
that chains were being strengthened. At that time, Punjab was governed by Lieutenant Governor Michael O'Dwyer,
who had contempt for educated Indians. During the war he had adopted
unscrupulous methods for collecting war funds, press-gang techniques for
raising recruits and had gagged the press. He truly ruled Punjab with
an iron hand. At this juncture, Mahatma Gandhi decided to launch a Satyagraha
campaign. This unique form of political struggle eschewed violence, was
open, and relied on truth and righteousness. It emphasized that means
were as important as the ends. The city of Amritsar responded to
Mahatma's call by observing a strike on 6 April 1919. On the 9th April
on Ram Naumi
festival, a procession was taken out, in which Hindus and Muslims had
participated, giving proof of their unity, and the government ordered
the arrest of Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr. Satyapal, popular leaders of the people of Amritsar. They were deported to Dharamshala where they were interned. On the 10 April, as people wanted to meet the Deputy Commissioner to
demand the release of the two arrested leaders, they were fired upon.
This event angered people and disorder broke out in Amritsar. Some bank
buildings were sacked, telegraph and railway communications were
snapped, three Britishers were murdered and one woman injured. Chaudhari Bugga Mal, a leader was arrested on 12 April, and Mahasha Rattan Chand, a piece-goods broker, and a popular leader a few days later. This created great resentment among the people of Amritsar. On 11 April, Brigadier GeneralR.E.H. Dyer[3][4]
arrived from Jalandhar Cantonment, and virtually occupied the town as
civil administration under Miles Irving, the Deputy Commissioner, had
come to standstill. On 13 April 1919, the Baisakhi Day,
a public meeting was announced to be held in Jallianwala Bagh in the
evening. Dyer came to Jallianwala Bagh with a force of 150 troops. They
took up their positions on an elevated ground towards the main entrance,
a narrow lane in which hardly two men can walk abreast.
The narrow lane used for entering the park premises.
At six minutes to sunset they opened fire on a crowd of about 20,000 people without giving any warning. Arthur Swinson thus describes the massacre: "Towards the exits on the either flank, the crowds converged in their
frantic effort to get away, jostling, clambering, elbowing and
trampling over each other. Seeing this movement, Brigs drew Dyer's
attention to it, and Dyer mistakenly imagining that these sections of
the crowd were getting ready to rush him, directed the fire of the
troops straight at them. The result was horrifying. Men screamed and
went down, to be trampled by those coming after. Some were hit again and
again. In places the dead and wounded lay in heaps; men would go down
wounded, to find themselves immediately buried beneath a dozen others.
From here 1600 rounds of bullets were fired by troops on 20,000 innocent people.
The firing still went on. Hundreds abandoning all hope of getting
away through the exits, tried the walls which in places were five feet
high and at others seven or ten. Fighting for a position, they ran at
them, clutching at the smooth surfaces, trying frantically to get a
hold. some people almost reached the top to be pulled down by those
fighting behind them. Some more agile than the rest, succeeded in
getting away, but many more were shot as they clambered up, and some sat
poised on the top before leaping down on the further side. 20,000 people were caught beneath the hail of bullets: all of them
frantically trying to escape from the quiet meeting place which had
suddenly become a screaming hell.
Bullet marks on the walls of the park premises
Some of those who endured it gave their guess as a quarter of an
hour. Dyer thought probably 10 minutes; but from the number of rounds
fired it may not have been longer than six. In that time an estimated
1000 people were killed, and 1,500 men and boys wounded. The whole Bagh was filled with the sound of sobbing and moaning and the voices of people calling for help." The flame lighted at Jallianwala Bagh ultimately set the whole of
India aflame. It is a landmark in India's struggle for freedom. It gave
great impetus to Satyagrah movement, which ultimately won freedom for India on 15 August 1947. Though Dyer claimed that he had nipped a revolution by his drastic
action, he never had sound sleep after the Massacre. He died on July 23,
1927 and was buried at the Church of St. Martin in the Fields in
London. Sir Michael O'Dwyer survived him by 13 years. On March 13, 1940
he was shot dead by Sardar Udham Singh of Sunam, at the Caxton Hall, London. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No Apology, Just Regret! Cameron Calls Jallianwala Bagh 'A Shameful Incident'
By IndiaTimes |
February 20, 2013, But
the trip to the scene of a massacre that is still taught in Indian
school books, saw him tackle one of the enduring scars from British
rule, which ended in 1947. The number of casualties at
Jallianwala Bagh is a matter of dispute, with colonial era records
showing it as several hundred while Indian figures put it at between
1,000 and 2,000.Bhusan Behl, who heads a trust for the families of
victims of the massacre, has campaigned for decades on behalf of his
grandfather who was killed at the entrance to the enclosed area.Before
Cameron's visit, he had said he was hoping that Cameron would say sorry
for the slaughter ordered by General Reginald Dyer, which was
immortalised in Richard Attenborough's film "Gandhi" and features in
Salman Rushdie's epic book "Midnight's Children". The incident in which soldiers opened fire on men, women and
children in Jallianwala Bagh garden, which was surrounded by buildings
and had few exits, making escape difficult, is one of the most infamous
of Britain's Indian rule."A sorry from a top leader would change the
historical narrative and Indians will also feel that in some way they
can forget the past and move on," Behl told news agency AFP. The
move is seen as a gamble by Cameron, who is travelling with
British-Indian parliamentarians, and could lead to calls for similar
treatment from other former colonies or even other victims in India.A
source close to the delegation said some advisors had voiced serious
reservations in advance about the trip. In India, the move is
likely to be broadly welcomed as an acknowledgement of previous crimes,
but it also risks focusing attention on the past at a time when Cameron
has been keen to stress the future potential of Indo-British
ties.Expressing regret, while stopping short of saying sorry, can also
invite debate about why Britain is unable to make a full apology. Cameron is not the only senior British public figure to visit Amritsar in recent memory. In
1997, Prince Philip accompanied the Queen but stole the headlines when
he reportedly commented that the Indian estimates for the death count
during the massacre had been "vastly exaggerated". Cameron has
made several official apologies since becoming prime minister, saying
sorry for the official handling of a football disaster at Hillsborough
stadium in 1989 and 1972 killings in Northern Ireland known as "Bloody
Sunday." ================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT ABOUT BRITAIN’S SLAVE TRADE VICTIMS OF AFRICA 17TH CENTURY?
Captive: An illustration shows slave traders preparing to unload human cargo at a seemingly wealthy port
Migration: A map shows the primary trans-Atlantic routes out of Africa during the slave trade between 1500-1900
With ongoing protests against the Townshend
Duties, waterfront jobs scarce due to nonimportation, and poorly-paid,
off-duty British troops competing for jobs, clashes between American
laborers and British troops became frequent after 1768. In Boston,
tensions mounted rapidly in 1770 until a confrontation left five Boston
workers dead when panicky troops fired into a crowd. This print issued
by Paul Revere three weeks after the incident and widely reproduced
depicted his version of what was quickly dubbed the “Boston Massacre.”
Showing the incident as a deliberate act of murder by the British army,
the print (which Revere plagiarized from a fellow Boston engraver) was
the official Patriot version of the incident. In reality, British
soldiers did not fire a well-disciplined volley; white men were not the
sole actors in the incident; and the Bostonians provoked the soldiers
with taunts and thrown objects.
Source: Paul Revere, The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th, 1770 . . ., etching (handcolored), 1770, 7 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches—Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
Britain's Colonial Wars from 1945
‘Ah, British Mother, had you a boy there?
No blame to him for the evil done
Or that a sorrowing Cypriot couple
Lost that day a beloved son
When at eighteen years, in the cause of freedom
Petrakis Yiallouris met his eclipse
Shot through the heart, by a conscript soldier,
“Cyprus, Cyprus!” upon his lips.’
From Cypriot Question by Helen Fullerton
In 1914-18
Britain, to protect its world interests and prevent Germany dominating
Europe, had thrown all the resources of the country and empire into the
1st World War. Emerging triumphant, but weaker financially and
militarily, Britain found itself losing markets and influence to the US –
who gradually supplanted Britain as the dominant western power.
Britain’s armed forces spent the time between the two world wars mainly
in their traditional role of policing the Empire. New forms of warfare
were used to keep British rule in place and aircraft were found to be
cheap and effective weapons for machine-gunning and gassing rebel bands
and dropping bombs on towns and hamlets ‘to teach the natives a lesson’.
Just over two
decades after the end of the ‘Great War’, Britain and the Empire were
embroiled in another global conflict against German Nazi expansionism
and its Japanese ally in the far east. In the 2nd World War, imperialist
countries again used their modern technology of warfare against each
other with devastating effect, as this conflict became the first
conventional modern war in which more civilians than combatants were
killed.
Before the 2nd World
War many members of the British ruling class had been virulently
anti-communist and pro-fascist, even turning a blind eye to the
overthrow of the elected republican government in Spain. However,
establishment opinions began to change - and war became certain - when
it became clear that unchecked fascism threatened parts of the empire
and even the old order in Europe itself. To win support for the ‘war
against fascism’ Britain then indicated that it stood for the equality
and self-determination of all nations and from all parts of the Empire
volunteers and/or recruits came to join Britain’s armed forces.
Consequently, many of these soldiers, sailors and airmen returned
determined to put these democratic principles into practice at home.
During the 2nd World
War many areas of the British Empire were threatened and some occupied
by enemy troops and the indigenous fight against the invader was
undertaken by the native peoples - often led by nationalists or
communists, or a combination of both. Afterwards, it was clear that the
war had helped create an attitude of mind that was conducive to throwing
off the chains of colonial rule. There was now also an availability of
arms, with an ability to use them. As independence movements emerged it
became clear that many people in far off lands were no longer willing to
live under the Union Jack. Britain’s leaders, on the other hand, were
determined to hang on to the Empire and moved swiftly to re-establish
their control.
The Fall of Singapore
In early 1942 General
Arthur Ernest Percival, under pressure from Japanese attackers, ordered
the retreat of his troops from Malaya to make a last stand on Singapore
Island. Percival was a seasoned soldier and British imperialist prestige
would rest on whether or not he could defend this ‘crown jewel’ of the
Empire. Twenty years earlier, on 16th April 1921 during the Anglo /
Irish war, the then Major Percival had led a unit of his Essex Regiment
soldiers to Woodfield, the home of the Collins family in West Cork.
Michael Collins was then the most wanted IRA ‘terrorist’ in Ireland,
before he became a ‘statesman’ by meeting the British PM Lloyd George at
Downing Street and signing the treaty.
The soldiers had come
to carry out the official ‘punishment policy’ of destroying the family
homes of rebels in martial law areas. This was supposed to include
giving notification to the residents to allow them to remove valuables,
but no warning was given to the Collins family. The two women and eight
children were roughly forced from their home and could only watch in
horror as Woodfield was set alight and destroyed. A few soldiers did not
like their task and rescued some family possessions from the flames
while their officer’s back was turned.
In another incident two
IRA men, Tom Hales and Pat Harte, were captured by Major Percival and
his troops. The prisoners were stripped and severely beaten by the
soldiers with their rifle butts. Later, back at the barracks, Hales and
Harte were taken to an upstairs room where six officers, including
Percival, were waiting to interrogate them:
Two of the
other officers ... beat him [Hales] with canes, which they did, one
standing on either side, till they ‘drove the blood out through him’.
Then pliers were used on his lower body and to extract his finger nails,
so that Hales says, ‘My fingers were so bruised that I got
unconscious.’
On regaining
consciousness he was questioned about prominent figures including
Michael Collins. He gave no information and two officers took off their
tunics and punched him until he fell on the floor with several teeth
knocked out or loosened. Finally he was pulled by the hair to the top of
the stairs and thrown to the bottom, where he was again beaten before
being dragged to a cell. Hales recovered. Harte, however, suffered brain
damage and died in hospital, insane.[1]
Twenty-one years later,
Percival, now a Lt.-General, commanded the British and Commonwealth
forces fighting the Japanese in Malaya and Singapore. Britain’s war
leader, Winston Churchill, sent this cable to his military commanders:
BATTLE MUST BE FOUGHT TO THE BITTER END.
COMMANDER AND SENIOR OFFICERS SHOULD DIE WITH THEIR TROOPS.
THE HONOUR OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IS AT STAKE.
The RAF, especially,
were badly under strength and the Japanese quickly acquired decisive air
superiority. With the city about to fall, Churchill was forced to allow
the troops to cease resistance and on 15th February 1942, Percival
surrendered to General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who commanded the Japanese
attackers. Churchill described the fall of Singapore as ‘the biggest
disaster and capitulation in our history’:
In a
brilliantly conceived, whirlwind campaign, at the cost of a few thousand
casualties, Yamashita defeated a force superior in all aspects but
aircraft and competence. Percival surrendered not only 130,000 men and
the Crown Jewel of the Empire but also British prestige in Asia. The
fortress had been “impregnable”, the British garrison keen, the outcome
certain - and no one believed that more than the British. But Yamashita
had cut away the bland face of British superiority and revealed the
tired muscles and frail tissues of a decaying empire. Later victories
never made up for the debacle at Singapore, and prestige was never
regained.[2]
While senior officers
were treated relatively well by the Japanese, many of Percival’s British
and Imperial rank and file troops were to suffer and perish on Japanese
slave labour projects like the Burma railway.
1: Michael Collins,
by Tim Pat Coogan,
Arrow Books 1991.
2: On Revolt - Strategies of National Liberation,
by J Bowyer Bell,
Harvard University Press 1976.
Vietnam
Even as the 2nd World
War was ending British troops were being used to reassert the pre-war
status quo in places as wide apart as Greece and Vietnam. In Greece,
after the Germans were forced out, there occurred civil strife between
right-wing royalist forces and the left-wing National Popular Liberation
Army (ELAS) which had borne the brunt of the fight against the Germans.
British troops were ordered to intervene on the royalist side,
prolonging the conflict and sparking an all-out civil war. With the odds
now stacked against them, the ELAS forces were eventually defeated.
While the victorious
Allies moved to build a new world order open to their manipulation and
control, tensions often surfaced between them. In the Far East, Britain
was suspicious of US intentions towards the old areas of European
dominance. These issues were discussed among the Allies at Yalta in
early 1945. Afterwards US President Roosevelt stated: ‘I suggested ...
that Indo-China be set up under a trusteeship ... Stalin liked the idea,
China liked the idea. The British didn’t like it. It might bust up
their Empire, because if the Indo-Chinese were to work together and
eventually get their independence the Burmese might do the same thing.’ [3]
Other European
countries, like France and Holland, faced the loss of parts of their
empires, because of the time it would take them to get their military
forces back to the area. Britain, to stabilize its own colonial
interests in the area, was determined to ensure Holland could return to
dominate Indonesia and France to control Vietnam (Indo-China):
Throughout
the war Churchill did his best to ensure the restoration of the pre-war
Imperial status quo in Asia, American ideas of political emancipation
for former French colonies were not to his liking. He knew well that
independence is a contagious force, and that if allowed in Vietnam it
might well spread to Burma and to India itself. Using every weapon in
his formidable armoury, Churchill worked to scupper Roosevelt’s liberal
policies, particularly over French Indo-China.[4]
In both Vietnam and
Indonesia nationalist movements, who in conjunction with the Allies had
fought the Japanese, were about to come to power. In early September
1945, the Vietnamese made their Declaration of Independence: ‘We are
convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco
have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of
nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.’
The Vietnamese went on to explain that they were ‘a people who have
fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these
last years, such a people must be free and independent ... We, members
of the Provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free
and independent country...’ [5]
Ho Chi Minh was one of
the leaders of the Vietnamese independence struggle. Twenty-five years
earlier he had stayed in London for a short period:
On October
25 [1920], the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney - a
teacher, poet, dramatist and scholar - died on the seventy-fourth day of
a hunger strike while in Brixton Prison, London. A young Vietnamese
dishwasher in the Carlton Hotel, London, broke down and cried when he
heard the news. “A nation which has such citizens will never surrender.”
His name was Nguyen Ai Quoc who, in 1941, adopted the name of Ho Chi
Minh and took the lessons of the Irish anti-imperialist fight to his own
country.[6]
In 1945, as British
troops first entered Saigon, they were welcomed by the people. They had
arrived at a time when Ho Chi Minh and the Viet-Minh had widespread
support throughout the country. The British commander, General Gracey,
later wrote: ‘I was welcomed on arrival by the Viet-Minh ... I promptly
kicked them out.’ [7]
3: The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy 1941-1946,
by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr,
Houghton, Mifflin,
New York 1967.
4: The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began,
by George Rosie,
Panther Books 1970.
5: Ibid - The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began.
6: A History of the Irish Working Class,
by Peter Berresford Ellis,
Pluto Press 1985.
7: Journal of the Royal Asian Society,
July-Oct. 1953.
The Japanese Rearmed
Twenty years later, one
of Gracey’s officers, Robert Denton-Williams, told how he had arrived
with the advance party of British troops: ‘As an officer of the Indian
Army, I was part of the first allied unit to reach Indo-China in 1945.
The 20th Indian Division was stationed in Burma. The greater part of it
embarked by sea, but an advance battalion of Gurkhas (900 men with
British officers) flew to Saigon via Bangkok. I was with the advance
groups as ammunition and transport officer ...’ Denton-Williams then
gave his account of what happened:
The British
troops were made most welcome ... and posters from the airport to the
rue Catinat (the centre of Saigon) bore the legend “Welcome to the
allies, to the British and to the Americans - but we have no room for
the French”. Everything seemed to be going well. The government of the
country was in the hands of the Committee of the South, a united front
organisation of the Viet Minh and various Buddhist and other groups.
Ho’s picture was all over Saigon.
... Then an
appalling thing happened. Some eighty Free French (not the discredited
Vichy French) resolved to restore French power in Indo-China ... they
occupied a number of key public buildings in Saigon, hoisted the
tricoleur, and declared the return of Indo-China to French sovereignty.
Then they called upon the British to arm them and join them against ‘les
jaunes’ (the yellow people).[8]
Back home people were
deliberately misled as to what was happening. As Robert Denton-Williams
explained: ‘In a command paper (R 2817; 25 March 1954), and also in
other papers before and since, the Central Office of Information has
given it out that because of “unrest and terrorism”, General Gracey had
given orders to arm the French. Both parts of the statement were wholly
untrue. There was at this time no unrest and no terrorism, and General
Gracey did not give the order to arm the French. The order came from the
Foreign Office through an F.O. official in Saigon, and it was delivered
to the local British Commander, Brigadier-General Taunton.’ [9]
To stem the increasing
tide of nationalist hostility, the British sought help from their
defeated enemy. Ironically, as the Allies tried and executed some
Japanese soldiers as war criminals, others were rearmed and prepared for
front line duty. George Rosie, in his book The British in Vietnam,
said: ‘A further element of irony was contained in the unenviable role
of the Japanese, who, defeated and humiliated, were obliged to pick up
their arms for their former enemy and to bear the brunt of the “Allied”
casualties.’ [10]
Robert Denton-Williams,
who took part in this process, later recalled: ‘As there were less than
a thousand allied troops and some 79,000 Japanese concentrated round
Saigon, the Japanese units (previously under the command of Field
Marshal Count Terauchi) were now taken under British command to defend
Saigon.’ Denton-Williams also helped rearm the Japanese: ‘ They were
even issued with 3-inch mortars and bombs which they had themselves
captured from the British at Singapore in 1942. I myself was responsible
for issuing arms and deploying transport with the help of Colonel Endo
and Lieut.-Colonel Murata of the Japanese army.’ [11]
Alongside British
soldiers, these Japanese troops were used to police Vietnam until French
forces could return and take over. Military force was used to quell
dissent, as Vietnam became a colonial battleground for British, then
French and finally US troops:
We are used
to the idea that wars in Vietnam have been exclusively the concern of
first the French, and later the Americans. But, in late 1945, it was
British bullets which were whining across the paddy-fields around
Saigon, British mortars which were pounding the frail villages of the
Mekong Delta (and British soldiers who were being brutally ambushed by
the forerunners of the Vietcong). The history of the British occupation
of South Vietnam does not form a happy narrative. Like most post-war
colonial interludes, it is a tale fraught with political complexity and
intrigue, with internecine struggle, with terrorism and repressive
counter-measures...[12]
8: Statement by Robert Denton-Williams,
in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam,
by William Warbey,
Merlin Press 1972.
9: Ibid - Statement by Robert Denton-Williams.
10: The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began,
by George Rosie,
Panther Books 1970.
11: Statement by Robert Denton-Williams,
in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam,
by William Warbey,
Merlin Press 1972.
12: The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began,
by George Rosie,
Panther Books 1970.
Critical Voices
The British, with the
Japanese now fighting alongside them, were as harsh and inflexible in
suppressing Vietnamese independence as the French and Americans who
followed them. George Rosie stated: ‘It is quite clear the war was no
trifling affair, and that some of the operational instructions issued to
the British division were implicitly ruthless. There was an alarming
directness about the way in which the British troops operated, a
directness which cost the lives of thousands of Vietnamese.’ Rosie went
on to give as examples ‘two operational orders [which] stand out as
indicative of the way in which the war was waged. Both are disturbing in
their implications. They were issued to 100 Indian Infantry Brigade,
operating to the north of Saigon (the worst area) under the command of
Brigadier Rodham.’ Rosie continued:
The first is
Operational Instruction No. 220, dated 27 October, 1945, which states
that, ‘We may find it difficult to distinguish friend from foe ...
always use maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostiles we
may meet. If one uses too much no harm is done.’ Thus, while admitting
that it was often impossible to tell combatants from civilians, the
British units are exhorted to use ‘maximum force’, which means that in
this thickly peopled territory any hostile act could have brought down
fire from mortars, 25-pounders and the guns of the 16th Light Cavalry’s
armoured cars. With such firepower, in these conditions, how could
civilians (who were ‘difficult to distinguish’) have avoided high
casualties? Similarly, the second order, Instruction No. 63, dated 31
December 1945, states quite categorically that it was ‘perfectly
legitimate to look upon all locals anywhere near where a shot has been
fired as enemies - and treacherous ones at that - and treat them
accordingly...’[13]
By October 1945 British
forces in Vietnam numbered nearly 26,000 men, backed by RAF Spitfire
and Mosquito warplanes. Many of the troops were from India, where
critical voices were raised. This dissent was given expression by Indian
independence leaders like Pandit Nehru: ‘We have watched British
intervention there [Vietnam] with growing anger, shame and helplessness,
that Indian troops should be used for doing Britain’s dirty work
against our friends who are fighting the same fight as we.’ [14]
Back home in Britain
the wartime coalition government, led by Churchill, had resigned and, at
the end of July, Labour won a ‘landslide’ victory in the 1945 general
election. With its programme of ‘radical reforms’, many expected changes
in overseas affairs from Attlee’s new government. Instead, it gradually
became clear that Labour was continuing Churchill’s colonial policy. On
11th December in the House of Commons, Labour MP Tom Driberg questioned
the use of British troops in Vietnam:
Claiming
that the British people had ‘learned with dismay that four months after
the end of the war in the Far East, British and Indian troops were
engaged and were suffering heavy casualties in a war in ... French
Indo-China ... the object of which appeared to be the restoration of the
... French Empire.’ He made use of the fact that Terauchi’s soldiers
were being used against the Vietnamese: ‘... their [the British
people’s] dismay was not lessened when they learned that we were also
employing Japanese troops...’
As late as
the end of January, Driberg was still pressing for information on the
activities of the British forces of occupation. On 28 January he
demanded a statement on British withdrawal, details of casualties, and
an assurance that guarantees of future independence would be given by
the French. He was told that, ‘Allied casualties during the period from
mid-October up to 13 January were 126 killed and 424 wounded. Of the
killed, three were British and thirty-seven were Indian.’ The government
also estimated that the Vietnamese dead numbered 2,700. No figure was
given for Vietnamese wounded.[15]
In the end, military
might won the day and the Vietnamese were forced back. As Robert
Denton-Williams explained: ‘October and November 1945 saw some fierce
fighting, and the Viet-Minh suffered severe casualties. Finally the
Saigon bridgehead was made secure, pending the arrival of General
Leclerc and his Foreign Legion troops from Madagascar.’ Britain’s
actions in denying Vietnamese self-determination and restoring French
rule led to three decades of bloody colonial warfare, before the
Vietnamese finally achieved their independence.
Many of the British
forces fighting in Indo-China believed their government’s policy was the
result of a ‘secret deal’ between the French and the Labour government:
As many
British and Indian officers in Saigon understood it, a deal had been
done between Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary, and Massigli of
France. Under this secret agreement, the French were to be allowed to
re-establish themselves in Indo-China on the understanding that they
would not attempt to return to Syria and the Lebanon. The Committee of
the South, in the face of Western perfidy, resolved to fight; and
nightly attacks on Saigon began.[16]
13: The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began,
by George Rosie,
Panther Books 1970.
14: New York Times,
1st Jan. 1946.
15: The British In Vietnam - How the twenty-five year war began,
by George Rosie,
Panther Books 1970.
16: Statement by Robert Denton-Williams,
in Ho Chi Minh and the Struggle for an Independent Vietnam,
by William Warbey,
Merlin Press 1972.
Indonesia
In Indonesia, British
forces were also used to occupy the country, allowing the Dutch to
return and take control. Here the fighting was even fiercer as British
and Indian troops suffered nearly a thousand dead and many more injured.
The Japanese troops, who fought alongside them, also had some 1,000
soldiers killed. The 23rd Indian Division, which took heavier casualties
in just over a year in Indonesia than in four years fighting the
Japanese in Burma, recorded in its official history their feelings about
fighting with their former enemy: ‘As remarkable as it was unwelcome
... we had for a time to order the Japs to fight with us, an event
hushed up at home.’ [17]
Tens of thousands of
Indonesians died as towns and villages were bombed by aircraft and
shelled by artillery and Navy ships. With the population overwhelmingly
on their side, the nationalists would not give in. The British
Commander, Mountbatten, despairingly informed London that Indonesia
threatened to become a ‘situation analogous to Ireland after the last
war, but on a much larger scale.’ [18] Many
British soldiers, who had expected a quick return home as the 2nd World
War ended, became resentful about ‘saving’ Indonesia for the Dutch:
When the
Seaforth Highlanders set off for Jakarta docks in November, 1946, after
months of coping with the Indonesian liberation movement on behalf of
the absent Dutch, they passed contingents of troops just in from
Holland. With one accord, the British soldiers raised clenched fists and
shouted “Merdeka!”(“Freedom!”). Liberation salute and slogan were more
than just a joke at Dutch expense. They were a recognition by men of
what was still an imperial army that empire was not going to long
survive in the Indies - something which the young Dutchmen in the
lorries going the other way did not yet understand.[19]
Britain’s holding-role
in Vietnam and Indonesia directly led to large scale colonial wars,
which saw the Dutch forced from Indonesia and the French from Vietnam.
Over 3,000,000 US troops were ultimately involved in Vietnam after the
French withdrawal. The Americans lost 58,000 soldiers killed in the
conflict, but the Vietnamese estimated their dead at over 3 million.
17: A forgotten war: British intervention in Indonesia 1945-46,
by John Newsinger,
in Race and Class, vol.30, no.4, Apr./Jun. 1989,
18: Troubled Days of Peace,
by Peter Dennis,
Manchester 1969.
19: Guardian,
10th Sept. 1999.
Article by Martin Woollacott about Indonesia and East Timor.
Malaya
Just three years after
the defeat of the Japanese, British troops were engaged in a bitter
‘Emergency’ in Malaya. During the 2nd World War, the people of Malaya
had been promised self-government because of their fight against the
occupying Japanese troops. That promise was renewed in October 1945 by
the Labour government and the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army laid
down their arms. For the next three years a Malayan independence
movement strove by peaceful means to achieve their freedom. Britain’s
establishment, however, wanted to retain control of the country’s rubber
and tin: ‘In 1950, Malaya produced 37% of the world’s natural rubber
(and 25% of total world rubber production, including synthetics). In the
same year, rubber (61%) and tin (12%) accounted for 73% by value of all
exports from the colony .[20]
The British colonial
elite had done very well in Malaya, exploiting the country’s resources
and using the native people as cheap labour. In its May 1926 edition, British Malaya
expounded on the white role in the Far East: ‘The function of the white
man in a tropical country is not to labour with his hands, but to
direct and control a plentiful and efficient supply of native labour, to
assist in the Government of the country, or to engage in opportunities
offered for trade and commerce, from an office desk in a bank or
mercantile firm.’
Ironically, while
workers at home, through trade union struggles, gradually managed to win
concessions of better wages and working conditions, the ruling class,
to maintain their profit margins, ruthlessly increased the exploitations
of native workers abroad. In Malaya, while great wealth was made from
rubber, the native labourers lived poverty-stricken lives. In 1948,
Patrick O’Donovan wrote about their living conditions in the Observer:
Several
times I have been shown with pride coolie lines on plantations that a
kennelman in England would not tolerate for his hounds ... There is
little consciousness [among the plantation owners] of the poverty and
illiteracy that exists in this country. And, too often, it is a foul,
degrading, urine-tainted poverty, a thing of old grey rags and scraps of
rice, made tolerable only by the sun.[21]
Across the country
trade unions started to demand wage increases and better living
conditions. Bitter disputes occurred in which detained Japanese troops
were often released and used to take the places of striking workers. The
whites in Malaya, who controlled the production of rubber and tin,
demanded that the British administration stay in control and that the
trade unions and independence movement be suppressed. The Labour
government complied and an ‘Emergency’ was declared in mid-1948.
20: Malaya - The Making of a Neo-Colony,
edited by Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell,
Spokesman Books 1977.
21: Observer,
10th Oct. 1948.
The ‘Emergency’
One of the first
measures was to declare the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions
illegal and force it to be disbanded. All forms of constitutional
protest or reforms were effectively blocked off and the situation soon
escalated into violence. British military and counter-insurgency experts
now took control - setting in motion an all-out conflict. The Malayan
Races Liberation Army (MRLA) led by Chin Peng, a communist who had been
awarded an OBE while fighting for the Allies against the Japanese,
launched guerrilla actions against the government.
A scenario, that was to
become familiar, began to unfold as local ‘loyal’ forces were greatly
increased and reinforcements of British troops were rushed to the area.
General Sir Harold Briggs took charge of military operations and
‘suspect’ members of the native population were ‘resettled’ into
fortified hamlets that were little more than mass prison camps, with
guards, barbed wire and searchlights at night. The idea was to deprive
the guerrillas of their source of food, shelter and recruits:
The war
could not have been won without ruthless government control over the
totality of the population. The most conservative and pro-British
observers are agreed upon this. ... the whole operation formed one
whole, dedicated to physically separating the non-combatants from the
combatants among the Malayan masses - or, in the terminology of the
administration, separating “the people” from the “communist
terrorists”.[22]
Over 500,000 natives
were ‘resettled’ in the camps, euphemistically called ‘new villages’,
where they were forced to labour on plantations for barely subsistence
wages. They were also often ‘punished’ by detentions and food reductions
and were subjected to constant controls, including curfews and
searches.
The build up of the security forces was on such a large scale that the British Survey
of June 1952 stated that ‘in some areas there is an armed man to police
every two of his fellows, and more than 65 for every known terrorist
...’ The British High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald Templer, stated
in his report for 1953 that a ‘main weapon in the past four years has
been ... the sevenfold expansion of the Police and the raising of
240,000 Home Guards and of four more battalions of the Malay Regiment.’
Between 1948 and 1957
some 34,000 people out of a population of 5 million were
imprisoned without trial, with another 20,000 being deported.
The police were a typical colonial style force, based on the Royal Irish
Constabulary, who operated mainly through fear and intimidation. Victor
Purcell, a former colonial civil servant, observed:
There was no
human activity from the cradle to the grave that the police did not
superintend. The real rulers of Malaya were not General Templer or his
troops but the Special Branch of the Malayan Police. What General
Templer had ordered was virtually a levy en masse, in which there were
no longer any civilians and the entire population were either soldiers
or bandits. The means had become superior to the ends. Force was
enthroned, embattled and triumphant.[23]
Despite this
overwhelming concentration of security forces, the British
administration was not secure. Templer’s predecessor as High
Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, had been killed in an ambush in 1951,
and few areas were safe for colonial administrators or agents.
22: Malaya - The Making of a Neo-Colony,
edited by Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell,
Spokesman Books 1977.
23: Malaya - Communist or Free?,
by V Purcell,
Gollancz 1954.
‘A Handful of Bandits’
Concerned voices about Malaya were raised in Britain, including The Times
which stated in its editorial columns: ‘The cost in human life has been
considerable; in money it is counted in millions ... Several able and
resourceful men have tried their hands at solving the problem, but none
of the recent news has appeared to hold out better hope for the future.’
[24]
A few weeks later, The Times
reported on the trip to Malaya of Oliver Lyttelton, the Colonial
Secretary just appointed by Churchill’s newly elected Conservative
Government: ‘At no time were there fewer than 1,000 troops and police on
guard, and when Penang was visited about 2,000 were directly involved.
Outside Kuala Lumpur, Mr Lyttelton was compelled to travel in an
enclosed armoured car and one observer remarked that his progress was
rather like that of a Nazi leader travelling through occupied Europe.’ [25]
Lyttelton had been educated at Eton and Cambridge and served in the
Brigade of Guards. In 1937 he had been chairman of the London Tin
Company, which had extensive mining interest in Malaya.
In contrast, communists
in Britain, like Harry Pollitt, campaigned in support of Malayan
independence. Pollitt wrote the pamphlet, Malaya - Stop the War!,
in which he set out his forthright views. He outlined the size of the
security forces and their repressive use against the Malayan people by
the administration. Then Pollitt went on to state: ‘And all this, we are
told, “against a handful of bandits”! This must surely be the biggest
and most persistent handful that has ever existed in human history.’
Pollitt continued:
The British
lads who are being sent thousands of miles away to Malaya are not
defending Britain or safeguarding democracy. They are there to defend
the corrupt colonial system under which two-thirds of the children
receive no schooling, the workers’ own trade unions have been
suppressed, and real wages are only a third of their pre-war starvation
level. Despite all the official propaganda about Malaya being the most
prosperous British colony, for the Malayan people conditions are
appalling.
... This is
the degraded Police State for which the Tories want to sacrifice more
British lives. Already hundreds of British lads have lost their lives in
Malaya. It is time for the British people to put an end to this cruel
and ghastly war. ... For the Tory rubber and tin profiteers there is
plenty to gain, but for the British people the only dividends are death,
more taxation, cuts in social services, and attacks on wages and
working conditions.
Mr Churchill
has already confessed that the British Government is spending £50
million a year on the Malayan war ... Now fresh burdens are to be added.
It was no coincidence that Lyttelton’s tour of Malaya and the
announcement of his six-point plan for an intensified war came at the
same time as the employers’ rejection of the claims put forward by the
dockers, miners and other British workers ... the Government’s
announcements of £15 million cuts in education, and further cuts in
rations and rises in prices.
The British Defence
Secretary then issued a directive stating that those called ‘bandits’
should now be referred to as ‘communist terrorists’ (CTs). But Pollitt’s
Stop the War campaign had more positive effects, with even the
establishment paper, The Times, in its edition of 30th November
1951, stating that: ‘Together with the usual colonial suspicions is a
growing belief, hastened by the statements of rubber producers, that
Malaya is regarded first as an investment area to be made safe for
British capital.’ As Pollitt had indicated, guarding that capital were
young British soldiers, often doing their national service, who fought a
bitter war in the jungle areas.
24: The Times,
Nov. 13th 1951.
25: The Times,
Dec. 9th 1951.
Massacre at Batang Kali
In 1960, Anthony Short,
who had completed his national service in Malaya, was commissioned by
the Malayan government to write the official history of the Emergency.
They sat on his work for three years, then rejected it. Short omitted
various contentious parts, but the book was continually turned down.
Eventually, seven years after its completion, the book was published in
London. As the writer Malcolm Caldwell stated, in the book Short had
tried to come to terms with ‘the problems of waging a
“counter-insurgency” war against a hostile population, deemed to be
“friendly”’:
In the early
stages of the campaign, and indeed wherever contact took place ...,
how, in the few seconds of confusion when figures are running from huts
into jungle does one decide to open fire or not? ... unless they are
uniformed or obviously armed, there is no guarantee that the people who
are running are guerrillas or wanted criminals rather than very
frightened men and women who may or may not be willing or unwilling
guerrilla supporters.
Almost every
other situation report at the beginning of the emergency recorded the
shootings of men who ran out of huts, were challenged and failed to
stop. Too often, no weapons, ammunition or anything else in the least
way incriminating, either materially or oral evidence, was ever found
... the CPO (Chief Police Officer) Johore was particularly concerned
with the situation in which suspects were shot while attempting to
escape: ‘I can find no legal justification for the shootings, whether
under the normal laws or the emergency regulations, unless the incident
occurs in a protected place or during curfew hours.’ So far it seemed
that the magistrates had brought in verdicts of justifiable homicide;
but the CPO thought that would not always be the case and that some
major scandal might occur.[26]
Short also recorded
that it was seriously suggested in the British parliament that a force
of ‘Black and Tans’ be recruited to send to Malaya, but British troops
were soon to prove that they did not require a new force to carry out
terrorism on behalf of the state. On 11th December 1948, a unit of the
2nd Battalion of the Scots Guards entered Batang Kali, a small hamlet in
the Selangor area of Malaya. The soldiers then rounded up and massacred
25 Chinese villagers and burnt many of the dwellings. When word leaked
out, the authorities attempted to justify the killings by saying that
the victims had been detainees who had tried to escape:
There matters rested until, 20 years later, The People,
a London newspaper, challenged a statement by George Brown, a leading
Labour Party politician, discussing revelations of the My Lai massacre
[by Americans in Vietnam], that ... “there are an awful lot of spectres
in our cupboard too...”
... Among
those who read this challenge was a Scots Guardsman who had been a
member of the patrol. Eventually, he and three other members of the
patrol swore statements on oath to the effect that the 25 Chinese had
been massacred and that they were not trying to escape. The victims,
moreover, were all civilians, and “this is just one of the many British
My Lai’s in Malaya”.[27]
The soldiers’
statements provoked new public interest and, under pressure, the
government instructed Scotland Yard to undertake an ‘Official Inquiry’.
But this was quietly shelved later after interest faded, so the details
of this colonial atrocity have still to be fully revealed.
In 1952, soon after
being appointed High Commissioner, General Templer had said ‘the hard
core of communists in this country are fanatics and must be, and will
be, exterminated.’ That same year the Daily Worker carried a
photo of a smiling Royal Marine commando in Malaya, holding the severed
head of a dead guerrilla. Shortly after, a second photo was shown, with
another marine holding two severed heads. The authorities claimed that
heads and hands were taken from the bodies of ‘terrorists’ for
identification purposes. But many soldiers regarded them as trophies,
which showed their unit’s effectiveness: ‘Other photos reproduced in
British papers showed severed hands propped next to severed heads in
mock salute and dead guerrillas stretched out like tiger skins in front
of the units that had “bagged” them.’ [28] This
was eerily reminiscent of the way English soldiers had displayed Irish
heads, during the Elizabethan conquests 400 years previously.
The ‘Emergency’ did not
officially end until 1960, but by the mid 50s guerrilla numbers had
dwindled and those who were still active could only operate from the
deepest jungle. The MPLA had launched their campaign from the Chinese
community, who, while being the main labour force, were a 45 per cent
minority of the Malayan population. This proved a fatal flaw for
although the guerrillas tried to broaden their appeal, Britain used
ethnic and religious divide and rule tactics against them to keep them
separated from the Malay and Muslim majority.
For years the
authorities had also been cultivating the native political and
commercial elites, especially the United Malay National Organisation and
the Malayan Chinese Association - and convincing British businessmen
that it was safer to exert economic control over a neo-colony, than
continue with direct rule. ‘Independence’ was declared in August 1957
and British companies had good reasons to be happy at the outcome: ‘At
independence 75 per-cent of all rubber plantation acreage was in
European (mostly British) hands, along with 61 per-cent of all tin
production, and 75 per-cent of all services and trade.’ [29] For them the expense and the ferocity of the ‘Emergency’ had paid off.
26: The Communist Insurrection in Malaya - 1948-60,
by A Short,
Frederick Muller, London 1975.
27: Malaya - The Making of a Neo-Colony,
edited by Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell,
Spokesman Books 1977.
28: British Counterinsurgency, 1919-60,
by Thomas R Mockaitis,
Macmillan Press Ltd 1990.
29: Malaya - The Making of a Neo-Colony,
edited by Mohamed Amin and Malcolm Caldwell,
Spokesman Books 1977.
Cyprus
While British soldiers
were still fighting ‘terrorists’ in Malaya a new colonial war was
starting in Kenya (this will be discussed in detail in the next chapter -
The Myth of Mau Mau). At the height of the conflict in Kenya,
another ‘Emergency’ was declared on the island of Cyprus, a British
colony in the Mediterranean. Britain’s interests in Cyprus were mainly
strategic, during the ‘Emergency’ the Suez invasion was launched from
the island and afterwards it became a base area for missiles trained on
Russia. The population, a volatile five to one ratio of Greeks to Turks,
was ripe for British divide and rule tactics.
The Greeks’ political
leader was Archbishop Makarios who was demanding ‘Enosis’ (union with
Greece). They also formed an underground military organisation, known as
EOKA (the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters), led by a
right-wing ex-Greek army colonel called George Grivas, who had colluded
with British forces in Greece at the end of the 2nd World War to crush
the left-wing ELAS forces.
On 25th September 1955, Sir Robert Armitage was replaced as Governor by Field-Marshal Sir John Harding KCB, DSO and MC:
Harding
launched at once into a campaign against EOKA, and at the same time
began talks with Archbishop Makarios. The strategy was obvious: as EOKA
was gradually subdued, Makarios would lose his bargaining power and
would have to meet the Government’s terms. Harding took personal charge
of Security and welded together the police, whose ranks were being
filled with Turkish Cypriots, and the Army, which had now grown to
twelve thousand men. The offspring of the marriage was called the
‘Security Forces’, a title which covered everyone from ice-cream
peddlers enlisted into the auxiliary police to subalterns from
Sandhurst.
It was an
old routine, pioneered in other colonies. A State of Emergency would be
declared: villages and towns curfewed by day, and by night; collective
fines would be levied; the public finger-printed, identity cards issued
... Already a Detention of Persons law had been introduced, permitting
people to be held without trial, and there was evidence that it was
being abused.[30]
The situation quickly
escalated into open conflict, with EOKA using guerrilla warfare against
the British forces. The propaganda war also went into overdrive, with
the British media vilifying the Greek leader, Makarios. In 1956, Peter
Benenson, who afterwards was to initiate Amnesty International, visited
Cyprus and later wrote: ‘Although frequently invited, Archbishop
Makarios refused to condemn the methods used by EOKA ... the British
Government seized on his refusal to make him a figure of execration
throughout Britain, to scoff at his cloth, to mock his crozier and to
“singe his beard”.’ Benenson continued:
In repeated
statements in Parliament, Government spokesmen emphasised the particular
wickedness of the Archbishop, and the bestial behaviour of EOKA. The
same story was retold to every journalist or visitor who visited Cyprus.
Within one year this systematic vilification brought forth its harvest.
By the summer of 1956 the first protests against violence and torture
were to be heard in Cyprus. The Army, 30,000 strong under a
Field-Marshal, had been hunting unsuccessfully for a year for an
elusive, small-statured, large-moustached guerrilla colonel. All the
while they were being told by their Ministers back home and by their
commanders in the field, that they were fighting a barbarous enemy under
a villainous cleric, painted in the colours of the Anti-Christ. Not
unnaturally some of the men came to regard the Cypriots, or the ‘Cyps’,
as they were by then called, with contempt.[31]
30: Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war,
by Charles Foley,
A Penguin Special 1964.
31: Gangrene,
John Calder Ltd. 1959.
Detainees and Torture
As more and more
detainees were rounded up, reports of ill treatment began to circulate.
Most concerned the interrogation methods that all prisoners were
subjected to. In his book, Legacy of Strife, Charles Foley
outlined the beginning of the process: ‘The start was usually quiet. A
man might be shown a photograph and asked if he recognised it; he might
be asked if he knew a certain person or had some information about EOKA
which was common knowledge. Later questions would take a threatening
turn, or a bundle of folded money might appear from a drawer. If you
refused to answer you might then be taken across the corridor to another
room containing an iron bedstead, to which you would be strapped by the
wrists and ankles.’ Foley then described what could happen next:
Methods of
treatment varied widely, depending on the imagination of the operators,
who were jocularly known by the foreign Press as ‘HMTs’ [Her Majesty’s
Torturers], and there was apparently no time-limit. You might be
alternatively maltreated and questioned by relays of men for one hour or
four or twenty-four. You might be beaten on the stomach with a flat
board, you might have your testicles twisted, you might be
half-suffocated with a wet cloth which forced you to drink with every
breath you took, you might have a steel band tightened round your head.
Techniques were backward for the twentieth century; there were, for
instance, no proven reports of treatment by electric shock. No more than six people died under interrogation during the whole Emergency [my emphasis].[32]
The protests by
concerned Cypriots expanded in volume and grew louder, as Peter Benenson
stated: ‘When I first arrived in Cyprus, in October 1956, the entire
Greek Cypriot Bar was inundated with complaints against the authorities.
I have seen a queue of anxious parents at the chambers of the present
Minister of Justice so long that it stretched outside the front door.’
Benenson explained how the British administration ignored their
complaints, or took evasive action:
The
authorities insisted that the Greek lawyers were mischievously inventing
allegations of violence. To prevent them talking to their arrested
clients, they were refused information as to their whereabouts.
Independent Greek doctors were denied access to prisons or prison
hospitals. Regulations were passed permitting the Government to hold
arrested persons administratively in close confinement for 16 days
without charge. Letters of enquiry, complaints and protests from Greek
barristers went without answer. Another regulation was passed making it
impossible for any lawyer to start criminal proceedings against any
member of the Security Forces without permission from the
Attorney-General.[33]
By 1957, Britain stood
accused before the Council of Europe of 49 specified cases of torture in
Cyprus. But a political deal was struck between Britain and Greece, who
then dropped the charges.
32: Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war,
by Charles Foley,
A Penguin Special 1964.
33: Gangrene,
John Calder Ltd. 1959.
Conscript Soldiers Die and Kill
As the conflict
continued, British troops found themselves in an increasingly hostile
environment. Many members of the security forces were killed or injured,
often in street ambushes. Charles Foley describes how the soldiers were
isolated from the Cypriot people and crowded together in bad living
conditions: ‘Most of the troops were living under canvas, plagued by
flies and dust. When it rained, the tents were often found to leak;
bedding was soaked, the electricity system broke down, the fuel for the
stove gave out, and the groundbecame a swamp. The men were confined to
barracks more or less permanently; if they were allowed out they had to
move in groups of four, armed and in uniform, and they could visit only
the handful of bars officially declared “in bounds”. This frustration
and discomfort sought an outlet. As the troops’ frustrations built up,
soldiers were fed on hate propaganda and the security chiefs excused
anything that smacked of reprisals on the grounds of “intolerable
provocation” ...’ Many of these young soldiers became angry and
aggressive and ‘incidents’ started to occur:
A typical
incident occurred at Kathykas, one of three villages which had been
searched by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders after one of their men
had been killed and another wounded in an ambush. The authorities spoke
of ‘slight injuries’ and the Greek mayor of men beaten and bayoneted
and a nineteen-year-old wife raped. One Cypriot had been shot dead after
stabbing two soldiers who burst into his home in the darkness. A
village priest was said to have had his beard set on fire and his head
rubbed with mud.[34]
The authorities set up
an ‘Official Investigation’ which was clearly not impartial, because it
justified the ill treatment by reporting that: ‘Not only were the
soldiers searching for the killers of one of their comrades, but the
villagers were uncooperative to the point of serious resistance in one
case.’
Barbara Castle, then
Vice-Chair of the Labour Party, visited Cyprus and went to Kathykas. She
met a number of the people injured by the Argylls and when Castle
returned to Britain she stated that she believed the troops were being
permitted to use unnecessarily rough measures after a shooting, on the
grounds that they were engaged in ‘hot pursuit’:
At once a
storm of execration broke over Mrs Castle’s head in the British press,
despite a statement from the Governor that ‘when their comrades are
killed, troops are naturally angry and roughness can and does take
place’. Mr Gaitskell [Labour leader] hurriedly disowned Mrs Castle,
remarking on the intolerable provocations to which our forces had been
subjected by brutal murders which horrified and disgusted him. With a
General Election alarmingly close the Labour leaders could not risk
offending public opinion by seeming to take sides against the
troops.[35]
Gaitskell’s attack on Castle was in vain, as Labour lost the election anyway.
34: Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war,
by Charles Foley,
A Penguin Special 1964.
35: Ibid - Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war.
The Cypriot Question
In July 1958 the Prime
Minster, Harold Macmillan, who had succeed Sir Anthony Eden as the Tory
leader after the Suez debacle, visited Cyprus. His trip included several
meetings with the troops:
One of the
Premier’s calls was to Lyssi village, which lay under a ten-day curfew,
but he spoke to no one there except soldiers and police, departing with
ten copies of The Grenadier, a Guards magazine for Guards. Breaking into verse at one point, the cyclostyled magazine declared:
Sergeant Clerk is the Acorn’s clerk
But is prone to get in rages.
If the Wogs give any trouble
He puts them into cages.
The cages
were the barbed-wire pens where men waited their turn for questioning -
another name for them was ‘play-pens’; the Wogs, of course, were the
Cypriots. The visitor wrote across a souvenir copy: ‘With best wishes
from an old Grenadier - Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister’.[36]
Helen Fullerton gave an alternative view of British soldiers’ actions in her poem Cypriot Question.
On February 1956, in Famagusta, troops had opened fire on a
demonstration of students and school children and 18-year-old Petrakis
Yiallouris was killed by a bullet from a soldiers’ sten-gun. In the poem
a Cypriot mother has an imaginary conversation with the mother of a
British conscript soldier:
In Famagusta, one February morning
The market place and the streets were full
When crowds of children marched protesting
That General Harding had closed their school:
Then the British Army went into action
With baton charges and tear gas drill
And the children’s stones were met with bullets
For the troops had orders to ‘shoot to kill’.
Ah, British Mother, had you a boy there?
No blame to him for the evil done
Or that a sorrowing Cypriot couple
Lost that day a beloved son
When at eighteen years, in the cause of freedom
Petrakis Yiallouris met his eclipse
Shot through the heart, by a conscript soldier,
‘Cyprus, Cyprus!’ upon his lips.
When the dockers heard it, they struck in anger
And our shops were closed and our streets were still
And we drew around us our little children
Your troops had orders to ‘shoot to kill’;
But they feared Petrakis more dead than living
And they made us bury him out of sight
Fifty miles from the scene of the murder
In lashing rain and by lantern light.
Scotland’s hero, brave William Wallace
They slew for the love he bore his land
And they shot James Connolly as he was dying
And made a mighty crown of the felon’s brand;
They make the widow, they make the orphan,
They shoot the children - it’s come to this:
But ah, British Mother, had they a quarrel
Your conscript laddie and our Petrakis?
The military conflict
ended in stalemate, but this was really a victory for EOKA – because a
few hundred guerrillas, with popular support, had remained undefeated
while facing British troops who numbered over 40,000 at the height of
the conflict. However, the bitter course of the struggle - coupled with
the divide and rule tactics used by the British authorities – meant
there was little chance of unity between Greeks and Turks. This left an
‘independent’ Cyprus in a political mess, that became worse after the
Turkish invasion and illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus. Britain’s
rulers, on the other hand, were well satisfied with the outcome, because
they retained two strategic ‘sovereign bases’ on the island - which
during the ‘cold war’ contained nuclear missiles aimed at the Soviet
Union.
36: Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war,
by Charles Foley,
A Penguin Special 1964.
Aden
In 1963, Aden became
the new ‘trouble spot’, carrying on from Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. The
area had first come under British rule when the port had been seized by
the British East India Company in 1838, to protect shipping routes to
the East. As troops were rushed to Aden, National Service had ended and
the army was returned to a fully ‘professional’ force. Even now, some
soldiers became disturbed by the actions they were ordered to carry out
and came to question their role. Like this Para, who later wrote about
his tour of duty:
Towards the
end of Britain’s corrupt rule in Aden, a colony in the Persian Gulf, I
got off the aircraft at RAF Khormaxer. A miner’s son, an ex-miner
myself, I had crossed a gulf to become an NCO in one of Britain’s crack
units. The previous weeks had been taken up in a propaganda blitz on us,
as we were indoctrinated into a racist frame of mind in order to be
able to put down a nation of ‘ungrateful wogs’ who were biting the hand
that fed them. I am ashamed that the lot of us fell for it.
... As an
NCO I was given a section of men, a landrover for patrol and a 007
licence. Arabs were to be roughed up when searched at roadblocks so they
could be shown who was boss. ‘It’s the only method they understand’, we
were told. The natives naturally enough resented this and demonstrated.
The ‘bloody wogs’ actually had a trade union and started a dock strike.
So we now became strike-breakers, protecting the troops and scab Arabs
who were drafted in to break the strike.
After the
people had been starved and threatened, after the leaders had been
arrested and lodged at Al Mansura, the political prison, the workers
reluctantly returned to work. Our unit was praised for the tough
no-nonsense stand it had taken. This included the arrest of one of the
instigators, who must have been an ‘extremist’ as he was a militant
trade union leader. We took him at a reasonable time - about two in the
morning - as I kicked the door down and dashed into the hovel to be met
with the sight of about 12 people sleeping in a room that measured about
12 feet by 20.
Oh, you
could see by this luxury that he was financed by ‘Chinese Gold’. After
all, he had an orange box for a bedside locker. He actually had the gall
to draw himself up to his full height of 5 feet 2 inches and demand to
know what right I as a British soldier had to break his door down.
However, dragging him downstairs so that his head bounced on every step
soon quietened him.
After these
heroic deeds we were posted up-country for a rest, which consisted of
keeping the Arabs there in line. There were two camps at Dhala. One was
the British camp, about a mile from the town on the slopes of Jebel
Jihaff, and about 400 yards away was the Arab camp, manned by the
Federal Army. There was a permanent curfew from dusk to dawn. After 6pm
there was a fireworks display from the machine guns, mortars and cannon
in the British camp and the artillery in the Arab camp. This was
supposedly to register the bearings for recorded night targets but was
more in fact to ‘show the flag’. Quite a number of shots strayed into
the town in order to reinforce this. However all this never seemed to
deter the ‘terrorists’. In fact most nights, even though we sent out
ambush patrols, they usually reminded us that they were still around by
firing Swedish rockets and British 84mm mortars at us. The armaments
firms recognise both sides when the price is right.
Our tactics
was to send sweep patrols up the wadis (valleys) to flush out the
‘terrorists’ during daylight hours. This was not very successful, since
most of the population were anti-British. It was on one of these patrols
that the truth of what we were doing started to come through. We had
marched through the night to occupy a high Jebel ready for a sweep the
next morning. As we were a small party of around six men, being
unobserved was the main task.
Just before
daylight we turned a corner and came face to face with an early rising
local Arab camel dealer out to check his herd. We grabbed him and then
debated what to do with him. I was the most adamant of the party,
wanting to cut his throat. My men agreed with me and I volunteered to do
it. The one voice against, fortunately, was a young officer, just out
from Britain who was along for the ride. But new or not, he had a pip on
his shoulder that made him superior to me. The lucky camel dealer had a
day’s outing with the British Raj instead.
Back at base
with the pressure off me, I started to think about the incident. I, an
ex-miner, the son of a miner, had actually had a knife out and was going
to cut an innocent man’s throat just because he had seen us. I had shot
men in ambush, but this was different. I was becoming as corrupt as the
fat Emir we were keeping in power. Just around the corner the artillery
were firing white phosphorus shells. In normal circumstances these are
used to provide smoke for cover, but phosphorus burns when exposed to
air and when any gets onto human flesh it continues to burn unless the
flesh is kept under running water. These shells were fired as an
airburst so that it descended like rain on anybody below. And there is
not much water in a desert.
... I wasn’t
sorry to leave Aden as my attitude was coming to question with the
ruling caste of the Army. Nor was I alone, for when the BBC came round
and asked the soldiers, ‘If you were killed while serving in Aden what
would you have died for?’, only the few bucking for promotion said, ‘We
were protecting the locals from terrorists’. The great majority had a
simple but honest answer: ‘£10 a week’.[37]
37: Socialist Worker,
17th Dec. 1977.
Failure and Withdrawal
The decisive battle
took place in Aden town, where the soldiers faced a totally hostile
population. The Army was desperate for information, especially after the
Arab Special Branch had been decimated by assassinations, and the use
of torture was systematised at the Fort Morbut Interrogation Centre.
Along with vicious beatings, various other forms of humiliating and
disorientating treatment were used. Detainees were interrogated naked,
were refused toilet visits so they had to soil their cells, were kept
awake and deprived of food. The International Red Cross was refused
permission to visit detainees and the same fate met an Amnesty
International emissary.
George Lennox, a
corporal in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, who was stationed in Aden in
the country’s last years under the Union Jack, later explained how the
soldiers were used:
Most of the
soldiers who went into the Adenis’ houses, who arrested them, shot them,
who even tortured them, never asked the question, ‘Why am I doing it?’
This is not part of your thinking while you’re in the Army. You haven’t
got the experience to think for yourself which is one of the reasons why
you join the Army, and if you did you’d probably come up with a lot of
unsatisfactory answers and I think you would question your role.
So it’s very
easy for the politicians to use a military force, those in uniform, to
perform tasks such as the Army was doing inside Aden and that was to
crush any political opposition. Because the people who are performing
that task, who themselves are the people who are being killed and
injured, don’t ever question why they’re doing it. That’s always been a
fact.
I know that
when I was in Aden we never talked about the political situation there.
Our level of consciousness or our level of conversation of talking about
Adenis was, ‘Oh these fucking wogs’, etc. which was essentially I think
to be expected of any army or military personnel under active service.
We were conditioned to think in terms of, ‘That is the enemy, this is
who we’re fighting’, and never question it.[38]
Despite the level of
repression, Aden proved a failure for the Army’s counter-insurgency
methods, and Britain was finally forced to withdraw in 1967. However, by
then Britain was already strongly entrenched in neighbouring Oman,
where oil had been found: ‘Oil, which had been the subject of much
exploration throughout the 1950s, was finally discovered in commercial
quantities in the early 1960s and the first exports began in 1967...
Shell ... had an 85 per cent interest in Omani oil.’ [39]
38: British Soldiers Speak Out on Ireland,
edited by Aly Renwick,
Information on Ireland 1978.
39: The Ambiguities of Power,
by Mark Curtis,
Zed Books 1995.
ADEN
Oman
In Oman, British troops
found themselves upholding the rule of a despotic Sultan: ‘The Omani
regime was highly repressive and existed for the benefit of the Sultan -
in power with British support since 1932 - his immediate entourage and
Britain. The infant mortality rate in 1970 was 75 per cent, torture was
commonplace in Omani prisons and the population was kept in a state of
utterly impoverished subservience to the Sultan.’ [40]
There were periodic
revolts against the absolute rule of the Sultan, but the British forces
were always on hand to crush dissent. In 1957-59 the RAF bombed rebel
villages while the SAS fought a counter-guerrilla war on the ground. At
the end of 1965 the United Nations General Assembly called for British
forces to be withdrawn and recognised Oman’s right to
self-determination. But British forces were now well entrenched and
Westminster was determined that they should remain.
Because of the dubious
legality of using British forces in this way, in a country that was not
even a colony, the tactic of secondment - the temporary transfer of
units to the Omani defence forces, which were commanded by British
ex-officers - was undertaken. Oman became full of British ‘advisers’,
mercenaries and troops on secondment.
By the late
1960s Britain had around 700 troops, including an SAS contingent, RAF
personnel and private mercenaries, in the country. Customary methods
were used in countering rebels. A British army officer stated that ‘we
... burnt down rebel villages and shot their goats and cows. Any enemy
corpses that we recovered were propped up in a corner of the [main
city’s market] as a salutary lesson to any would-be freedom
fighters.’[41]
In 1970, Britain’s grip
on the Omani state machine enabled them to mastermind the overthrow of
the old Sultan in favour of his son, Qaboos, a Sandhurst graduate.
Supposedly more ‘liberal’, the new Sultan is not any more democratic and
British forces continue to ensure his rule.
40: The Ambiguities of Power,
by Mark Curtis,
Zed Books 1995.
41: Ibid - The Ambiguities of Power.
Disaffection and Monotony
In the post 2nd World
War years the British Army was made up of regulars and conscripts. The
writer Alan Sillitoe joined up at the end of the 2nd World War and in
the RAF he recalled the type of conscripts he met: ‘It was a rule that
one never talked about politics or religion, a sure sign that nothing
else was worth discussing. I met IRA supporters and communists,
anarchists and rebels and nihilists. I was torn between hatred of the
life, of those blinkered barbaric swine who tried to make everything
unnecessarily difficult and whom we generally regarded as the scum of
the earth, and what I found of interest in talking to youths from all
over the country...’ [42]
Sillitoe, who before
his call-up had been a factory worker and trade unionist, described his
politics as ‘extremely left-wing’. Later, he found himself at
Butterworth in Malaya working as a skilled radio operator:
My abilities
in this direction were called upon when the so-called State of
Emergency was declared in June 1948. A squadron of heavy Lincoln bombers
was sent from England to try and hunt out the communist guerrillas in
the jungle. This increased my work to a hectic degree, work indeed that
now went strongly against my political beliefs.
The bombers
roamed around the jungle dropping their loads, and when they asked me
for bearings in order to check their positions the angles I sent back
began to lack their accustomed accuracy. Even as much as half a degree
out - something which could not be proved one way or the other - meant
that they missed their targets (which often could not be seen under the
massively thick coating of forest) by many miles.[43]
Some soldiers caught up
in colonial wars became so frustrated that they attempted to bring some
retribution down on their officers. Charles Foley described an incident
which occurred in Cyprus: ‘Four privates of the Highland Light Infantry
were court-martialled for the novel offence of throwing grenades at
their officers’ mess. Their defending counsel said they resented the
officers’ privileges and were “upset about women coming in”. They had
drawn lots to see who would throw the grenades.’
Most National
Servicemen often complained about their lot, but usually did not contest
the views put out by the authorities. They often served in exotic
locations, but found themselves cut off from the native people and
outside attractions by the situation. As Foley stated:
Cyprus, to
the British Army, meant little more than a long spell of boredom from
which the commonest escapes were the NAAFI and sudden death. The Army,
after all, was largely made up of civilians in uniform - boys doing
their National Service and spending two years of their lives on duties
which often seemed pointless. Everything inside the walls of Nicosia was
‘out of bounds’ - the Just-a-Minute Milk Bar, the Magic Palace Cinema,
the Frolics Cabaret. The troops could not even walk down Ledra Street
and buy some small souvenir to take home. Officers might be able to join
the English Club or take the Company Commander’s daughter to Kyrenia.
But the Other Ranks had nothing to do but sit in draughty tents and tin
huts writing letters home. The monotony was broken only by patrols and
operations, which were not only boring but dangerous. Few soldiers came
in contact with a Cypriot, apart from the man who cleaned the
bath-houses; fewer still ever met a girl, except the kind who threw
stones.[44]
42: All Bull: The National Servicemen,
edited by B S Johnson,
Quartet Books Ltd. 1973.
43: Ibid - All Bull: The National Servicemen.
44: Legacy of Strife - Cyprus from rebellion to civil war,
by Charles Foley,
A Penguin Special 1964.
The Empire Guard
Throughout the 2nd
World War Britain’s armed forces had continued with their hierarchies
intact, but many militant anti-fascists had joined up to fight Hitler.
They did their best to subvert officer class views, circulating books
like Jack London’s People Of The Abyss and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Later,
informal discussion groups were organised, which, when successful,
often progressed into more formal structures based on Westminster to
allay their commander’s fears. In Egypt the ‘Cairo Parliament’, which
regularly attracted hundreds of troops to debates, became so radical
that officers eventually suppressed it. It was activity of this sort
that secured the huge ex-services vote for Labour after the war had
ended.
In the Far East, at the
end of the war, there occurred a series of ‘strikes’ by British
servicemen. Mainly brought on by the slow rate of demob, but some men
also protested against the colonial role some of these 2nd World War
veterans were now being ordered to fulfil. From 1939 to 1945 Britain’s
armed forces had been filled with valiant combatants who had fought
Nazism because they found it repugnant, and to stop a foreign power from
occupying their country. The British Army had emerged from the war
highly mechanised with a formidable array of weaponry. Ironically, it
was then returned to its role as the Empire guard - in other peoples’
countries.
As the red of Empire
gradually shrank in school atlases, back home, the British people took
little notice - except when new ‘trouble spots’ sprang to their
attention. 1968, ironically called the year of revolution, was the first
year since the end of the 2nd World War that a British soldier had not
died in action somewhere in the world. Up to that date, conflicts of
varying intensity had included:
Greece, 1944-47.
Palestine, 1945-48.
Vietnam, 1945.
Indonesia (Java), 1945-46.
India/Pakistan, 1945-47.
Aden, 1947.
Ethiopia (Eritrea), 1948-51.
British Honduras, 1948.
Malaya, 1948-60.
Korea, 1950-53.
Kenya, 1952-56.
Cyprus, 1954-59.
Aden (border), 1955-60.
Hong Kong, 1956, 1962, 1966 and 1967.
Suez, 1956.
Oman, 1957-59, 1965-present (Advisers, secondment of troops and mercenaries).
Jamaica, 1960.
Cameroons, 1960-61.
Kuwait, 1961.
Brunei, 1962.
Malaysia (North Borneo and Sarawak), 1962-66.
British Guiana (Guyana), 1962-66.
Aden, 1963-68.
Swaziland, 1963.
Uganda, 1964.
Tanganyika, 1964.
Mauritius, 1965-68.
Bermuda, 1968.
Just one year later, in
1969, British troops were ordered to make ready for possible duty in
Northern Ireland - some were told a spot of ‘paddy bashing’ might be
required. Many soldiers, especially the veterans of previous colonial
wars, could not believe they would experience much opposition or
resistance so close to home. But in a part of Britain’s oldest colony,
Ireland, the scene was being set for the longest small war in the
run-down of Empire.
The late James Cameron
was a journalist who covered many of Britain’s colonial conflicts. His
reporting was an honourable exception to the usual jingoistic type of
coverage. In an article about Northern Ireland, published in The Guardian in 1975, he made these comments about the previous small wars:
I have spent
the greater part of my working life watching British troops being
pulled out of places they were never going to leave. The process started
in the 1940’s, when Mr. Churchill insisted that the British could never
leave India, and of course they did. A wide variety of Colonial
Secretaries in the years to come made it abundantly clear that their
forces would never leave Malaya, or Kenya, or Cyprus, or Aden. All these
places were integrally part of an imperial system that could not be
undermined and must be protected, and one by one all these places were
abandoned, generally with the blessing of some minor royalty and much
champagne.
In most
cases some rebellious nationalist was released from gaol, or its
equivalent - Nehru, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Makarios - given the ritual cup
of tea at Windsor and turned into a President. The thing in the end
became a formula, though the process wasted a great many lives and much
time and money, and as far as I know on every occasion the formula
followed the one before it: We shall not leave; we have to leave; we
have left. At no time in our colonial history did one occasion leave any
precedent for the next one, except for the statement that we would
never pull out, which was always one thing before the last.[45]
From 1945
British governments, confronted with freedom demands from national
movements in British colonies, used armed force in attempts to crush
them. These happenings were often hidden from view and/or had their
events distorted by biased reporting and therefore constitute a hidden
history for most British people. Just as the Victorian wars to build the
Empire had been accompanied with waves of jingoism and propaganda, so
the run-down followed a similar pattern. During these conflicts cinema
news (later TV) took over from the music-halls, and with the press took
up the task of imperial cheer leaders with a relish.
Cocooned in a
media web - of ‘Our boys doing a jolly good job in trying
circumstances’, ‘peace keepers’ amid ‘bandits’, ‘extremists’ and
‘terrorists’ - the folks back home rarely asked any questions. The truth
was quite different as these ‘small wars’ were about power, hegemony,
natural resources, cheap labour and profits - where intimidation,
internment, torture and mass murder was systematically used to protect
‘British interests’.
Secret documents released today reveal the full extent to which Whitehall systematically destroyed files relating to colonial crimes committed in the final years of the British empire.
Files published by the National Archives at Kew tell how administration staff in Kenya, Uganda and Malaya ‘cleansed’ so-called dirty documents.
Material which could ‘embarrass Her Majesty’s Government’ was burnt, dumped in rivers or discreetly flown to Britain to stop it falling into the hands of post-independence regimes.
Inmates: Mau Mau's, prisoners captured by the British sitting with hands on top of their heads
Today’s declassified documents are the eighth and final batch of 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held in a secret Foreign Office archive at Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire. They should have been made available to the public, but were kept hidden.
The existence of the archive only emerged last year, when a group of Kenyans who were detained and tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s sued the British government, which finally agreed to release the files.
The latest batch contains scant detail of any atrocities committed – implying that the majority of the damning papers have been destroyed.
Among them are thought to be records of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents detained by British colonial authorities, the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaya by soldiers of the Scots Guards in 1948 and sensitive documents kept by colonial authorities in Aden, where the army’s Intelligence Corps operated a secret torture centre in the 1960s.
Crimes: Mau Mau suspects being led away for questioning by police in 1952
The destruction of this material was a huge undertaking, and in Uganda was codenamed Operation Legacy. The documents make reference to ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ files – presumably a reference to the information included in them.
Officials were told that ‘emphasis is placed upon destruction’, and no trace of either the documents or their incineration should remain.
Colonial officials in Kenya were told: ‘It is permissible, as an alternative to destruction by fire, for documents to be packed in weighted crates and dumped in very deep and current-free water at maximum practicable distance from the coast.’
And in Uganda, an official effectively excluded anyone who was not white from being involved in the destruction of certain documents. He wrote: ‘Steps are being taken to ensure that such papers are only seen and handled by Civil Service Officers who are British subjects of European descent.’
The files are available to the public from today in the reading rooms at The National Archives.
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To talk about British atrocities in Kenya during the Mau Mau era is nonsense
It was the Mau Mau, not colonial officers like me, who terrorised ordinary Kenyans. We were looked on as protectors
George Monbiot asserts that in Kenya's colonial era, the British detained almost the entire Kikuyu population in camps where thousands were beaten and abused (Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them, 24 April). It is a pity he did not seek out any of those who worked in Kenya in the years leading up to full independence.
I first visited east Africa in 1951, finding a carefree and happy community where nobody needed to bolt their doors or lock their windows. I travelled on foot and by train, bus, lorry and boat from Nairobi to Khartoum, spending considerable time with the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Nuer in southern Sudan and the Baggara Arabs in Kordofan and Darfur. I saw with my own eyes how a handful of colonial officers could keep the peace between bitter enemies, rivals for scarce resources.
In 1954 I returned as a British army soldier, and played a small part in ending the civil war among the Kikuyu, which is what the Mau Mau rebellion was. Those who took the various Mau Mau oaths, mostly under duress, were always a minority of the million-strong Kikuyu, themselves never more than 22% of the population.
It is significant that no other ethnic group chose to join the Mau Mau. Our primary task, as members of the security forces, was to protect the majority from terrorists. At night the Mau Mau would look for food, recruits and women to enjoy. The horrors Monbiot describes, and worse, were perpetrated not by security forces but by Mau Mau themselves on innocent citizens who resisted their demands.
Monbiot says: "The British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million, in camps and fortified villages." In fact, it proved impossible to protect individual scattered homesteads, so villages were constructed where proper security could be provided. At the same time better facilities such as water supplies, health centres, sports grounds, markets and schools were developed. Monbiot is quite wrong to identify the villages, many of which continue to this day, with the work camps for ex-terrorists where they could be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society.
He then claims: "Thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died." This is nonsense. I and the men I served with were greeted with great friendliness by folk who appreciated the facilities provided for them. In 1956 I returned to the UK and applied for a post in the Colonial Service. At my interview with the secretary of state's appointment board, I was told in the clearest possible terms that I should measure my success by the speed with which I worked myself out of a job. We all knew, as the whole service had known for years, that independence was not a question of "whether'"but "when". Together with every other district officer I met during the next seven years, I worked my heart out to help the people – Kikuyu, Luhya, Luo and Kalenjin – prepare economically, socially and educationally for life in a world that was going to becomeincreasingly competitive.
Of course, no one will deny that there were instances of unacceptable behaviour by people in authority during colonial times, any more than there are today. But, given the fact that Kenya is five times the size of England, and Africa three times the size of Europe, Monbiot has surely lost all sense of proportion in supposing that those examples that have been verified can be extrapolated to incriminate the whole service. It is as if the scandals of President Ceausescu of Romania were representative of all European governments.
Monbiot is fully entitled to argue that the whole colonial and imperial venture was wrong in principle; but he should at least recognise that many thousands of young British men and women served in the colonial territories from a sense of mission, and were fully dedicated to the wellbeing and advancement of the people they served. As a footnote, I might add that when my wife and I returned to Africa thirty years after we had left, we travelled through seven different countries, covering three thousand miles by local transport, local busses and cars, and found that as soon as we revealed that we had worked in the colonial service, we were welcomed with open arms and shown the greatest hospitality. Partly, of course, that was because we had taken the trouble to learn to speak the lingua franca, Swahili, fluently. We also used as much as we could of whatever was the local language of the place where we were. Few of today's visitors to Africa can say the same.
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But judge Richard McCombe ruled last October that a fair trial was possible, citing the "voluminous documentation". 
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