“I am sure all this Gestapo stuff never got anyone anywhere”:
Control and command: the imposition of discipline and the fight against Mau Mau, 1953-4.
ABSTRACT – An important part of a successful counter-insurgency campaign is the conduct of the security forces. It is essential that a strict observation of the rule of law is maintained; it is the responsibility of senior officers and politicians to ensure that this is the case. Strong leadership – both morally, and practically, must be provided on the ground, both by leading through example and making examples of those who refuse to follow this leadership. Any failure to do this effectively gives carte blanche to those soldiers and police who consistently overstep the mark and practise acts of repression and brutality against a civilian population. By reference primarily to the Colonial Office and War Office Archives at the Public Record Offices in Kew, this paper will compare the different approaches taken to maintaining discipline by the military and civil authorities in Kenya in 1953, the first full year of the Mau Mau Emergency, and compare their relative success.
ABBREVIATIONS
BnBattalion
CIGS Chief of the Imperial General Staff
COColonial Office
CoyCompany
EACEast Africa Command
GHQGeneral Headquarters
KARKing’s African Rifles
KGKikuyu Guard
KPRKenya Police Reserve
KRKenya Regiment
LegCoKenya Legislative Council
PROPublic Record Office, Kew, London
2ICSecond-in-command
SBSpecial Branch
VCIGS Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff
WO War Office
CONTENTS
Introduction
Counter-insurgency and the rule of law
The maintenance of discipline
“There may be a tendency to cry “Don’t be too beastly to the MAU MAU” which we must resist”
The Administration’s failure: Keats, Ruben and the KPR
Neglecting to investigate allegations: Keats, Ruben and Tony Cross
Different approaches: Baring`s and Erskine`s directives
The Army’s Success: Griffiths
The Administration’s Failure (2): Hayward
Conclusion
Bibliography
“I am sure all this Gestapo stuff never got anyone anywhere”[1]:
Control and Command: the imposition of discipline and the fight against Mau Mau, 1953-4[2]
INTRODUCTION
General Erskine’s assessment on his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of East African Command in June 1953 was that the continued presence of 5 (Kenya) Battalion, King’s African Rifles (KAR), due to leave for Malaya, was necessary to “hold the line”. It seems his forces were spread dangerously thin.[3] His counterpart in Malaya, Templer, agreed. B Company, 5 KAR remained in Kenya at Nanyuki as Brigade Reserve for 70 East African Brigade, forming the backbone of an anti-Mau Mau strike force. 5 Battalion’s war diary is somewhat reticent as to the company’s activities during this period; it ends on March 27th, 1953, and resumes only in April 1954.[4] This twelve month gap is unfortunate, although in many ways understandable; it allows the Battalion to avoid mention of two serious court-martials and a court of Inquiry which cast an extremely unflattering light on some of its members` actions.
In the morning of June 11th 1953, on the road between Nyeri and Mweiga, three African forestry workers on their way to work in the forest were detained by a stop-barrier manned by two askari from 7 KAR. The soldiers had been temporarily put under the command of (acting) Major G.S.L.Griffiths, B Coy’s commander, on a sweep in a Prohibited Area. Shortly after Griffith’s arrival at the checkpoint, the oldest of the three had been dismissed and sent home, apparently told that he was too old to be killed. The other two were either dead or dying, shot in the back at close range by Griffiths with three to four bursts of Bren gun fire.[5] Three days later, Griffiths was active once again, now commanding two B Coy platoons at the start of another sweep. Having made camp at the forest edge, the first of two detained Mau Mau suspects handed over to him by the police to act as guides was tortured. His left ear was cut off, and he was then shot – the well practised mantra – “trying to escape”. The next day, on June 15th, the second of the detainees was also tortured. A hole was bored in his ear with a bayonet, and a length of signal wire threaded through the hole to allow soldiers to lead him through the forest. Three days later, he, too, attempted and failed to escape.[6] Court-martialled for murder for his actions on June 11th, Griffiths was acquitted. Tried a second time in regard to his third and fourth victims, he was found guilty of disgraceful conduct on five charges of a cruel kind and inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent.
To be court-martialled once may be a misfortune; to be the subject of two, on such charges, smacks of something rather more than carelessness. In the register of court-martials Griffiths stands out as the only soldier prosecuted for anything other than the usual litany of military misdemeanours – rape, theft, fraud, insubordination and the like – throughout the whole of the Emergency period.[7] Clearly Griffiths was no ordinary soldier. And his treatment was, by contemporary Kenyan standards, unduly harsh. Jenkin`s ear once precipitated Britain into war; the ears of Njeru and Kavenji got Griffiths cashiered, and five years in Wormwood Scrubs.
In contrast, the crime and punishment of Sgt. Ruben and Patrol Officer Keates of the KPR was far more typical. On a patrol five days after the Ruck murders in January 1953, Elijah Njeru was identified to them by an informer as a Mau Mau supporter with knowledge of both an arms cache and a gang hideout. Njeru died shortly after a severe beating, conducted by Keates, probably by Rubens, and askari under their command. Their case only came to trial after an attempted cover-up by the examining magistrate who had conducted the inquest into the death, and months of prevarication by the Kenyan Administration. Neither man received a custodial sentence.[8]
Tony Cross, the British policeman serving in Kenya whose letter to his colleagues in Streatham CID provides the title for this dissertation, was not himself found guilty of any crime. The story of the Kenya Administration’s enquiry into what was originally nothing more than a number of indiscreet comments which were noticed by a stringer for a local paper in London is noteworthy through its demonstration of a failure to seriously investigate extremely worrying allegations.[9] Brian Hayward`s torture of a number of Kikuyu he was screening in Northern Tanganyika marked him in turn as representative of many of the more proactive settlers to be found in the KR. His prison sentence of three months was served helping a cartographer in a hotel, his fine of £100 paid by a Tanganyikan lady settler.[10] More energy seems to have been expended in this particular case by the Kenyan government in trying to shift the blame on to the Tanganyikan authorities than in addressing the worrying issues, which, like Hayward, floated to the surface.
Simple, uncritical tales of individual excess, and the general leniency with which they were treated were hardly revelatory forty years ago. Griffith’s case in particular has become somewhat notorious. It received wide press coverage at the time in Britain and Kenya, and has subsequently been cited in a number of works.[11] European accounts of the Emergency throw up numerous examples that point towards abuses of power as being prevalent in Kenya in the early 1950s.[12] It is hard to avoid them. The substantial body of African literature on the Emergency understandably places great emphasis on alleged brutalities; there is clearly more than a grain of truth in the repeated assertions.[13] Some early European accounts of the Emergency issued blanket denials of any sort of wrongdoing by settlers or the security forces.[14] This evolved over time into a slightly more sophisticated apologia seeking generally to justify, explain and excuse such events by resorting to a standard formula – common to a number of wars – which amounted to a collective denial: “I didn’t know what was going on. These things happen in war. `I was only following orders . . . our leaders were wrong. The victims were members of an inferior race.`[15]
In Kenya, beyond certain sensationalised accounts most members of the security forces were understandably coy about such events, denying any personal knowledge of, let alone involvement in beating up or torturing prisoners.[16] Where such `rare` occurrences could no longer be denied, particularly convenient conventions were followed. An excess of patriotism was not enough reason; it was also the rapidity of expansion of the police force in the early Emergency period and the pressure to prevent further atrocities. The KPR nearly tripled in size, from just under three thousand members, between October 1952 and December 1953.[17] While many of its African recruits came originally from the regular police or from the armed forces, most of the Europeans had little or no experience of police work, and received almost no training. Even the regular forces’ training was cut in half, to only 12 weeks.[18] There was little time for an ethos of community policing to be built up, and the police assumed a largely paramilitary role. Muller, Inspector-General of Colonial Police had suggested rather optimistically that the police should be referred to separately from the army in the Directive for Erskine as incoming CinC due to the need to preserve and foster the civil character of the police role.[19] At this stage of the Emergency this was little more than wishful thinking.
The police’s assumption of such an overtly militarised role was perhaps unfortunate in view of the fact that professional soldiers generally appear to be more interested in observing the rules of law than temporary citizen soldiers or police reservists, self-restraint in armed forces being facilitated by both training and a culture of disciplined behaviour.[20] Such a lack of training may help to explain individual acts of brutality, but it does not go far towards explaining how they become endemic. Perhaps most important in this regard was the ‘myth’ of the Mau Mau “other” that was created, with its focus on the movement’s savagery and barbarity.[21] Such a presentation of Mau Mau may indeed have failed to take account of the largely controlled nature of its violence, but it helped to justify the use of an excessive state response in fighting the insurgency.[22]
Counter-insurgency and the rule of law
It was in a nineteenth century colonial context that armies initially began to evolve coherent conter-insurgency doctrines. There was, at first, little attempt to accompany this with well-defined rules of law relating to the treatment of insurgents, and the German schutztruppe in South West Africa and the US Army in the Philippines were both particularly brutal in their repression of popular uprisings.[23] It is, of course, impossible to avoid some flagrant excesses committed by units or individuals who temporarily leave the command (and disciplinary) structure. In societies where the use of violence has become commonplace it should come as no surprise that the response of the state’s agents occasionally breaches accepted rules and guidelines. Clearly the use of some force to defeat an insurgency is unavoidable but there was a developing awareness that the response of the state must necessarily be constrained by a strict observation of the rule of law.[24] Insurgents can only become truly isolated from their supporters if there is a popular acceptance of the validity of the government’s (and security force’s) case. This acceptance will not come when the security forces themselves are responsible for much, or even the majority of the violence occurring. Repression can temporarily succeed in cowing a civilian population into a resentful, `cringing submission`. [25] As a long-term solution to defeating a popularly supported insurgency, however, it is entirely ineffective.
The phenomenon of a counter-insurgency campaign spiralling out of control – when brutality, torture and murder become commonplace, even officially sanctioned – is not restricted to 1950s Kenya. Amirror image is to be found in contemporary Indochina, French North Africa and British colonies in Asia and Southern Africa in the following two decades. In all of these examples the harshest repression has tended to come from petit blanc European settlers with ties to the land and lifestyle they enjoy. A strong emotional response was not just restricted to members of the KR and KPR, however. On their arrival in Kenya, British troops were given handouts that described some of the more extreme oathing ceremonies to explain the nature of Mau Mau to them. In the aftermath of the Lari massacre Government pamphlets containing graphic photographs of many of the victims were circulated to British and African soldiers.[26] Members of Mau Mau were progressively dehumanised and depoliticised, turned from freedom fighters, with a cause that might possibly have been able to gain some sympathy, into mere criminals and bandits. Officials` social interests were reflected in a sporting terminology where their opponents were “flushed” and “bagged” in sweeps. Units kept scoreboards of these “bags”, recording numbers of killed and wounded. And officers gave their men cash rewards for kills. When a recruiting drive was started in Britain to enlarge the police force, advertisements placed in newspapers made no mention of Mau Mau at all, although they stressed the “excellent social and sporting opportunities amenities” to be fond in Kenya. The closest reference to Mau Mau was the note that “excellent shooting is obtainable in many parts of the territory”.[27]
THE MAINTENANCE OF DISCIPLINE
Any developing tendency by British troops to run amok was quickly stamped down on with Erskine’s arrival in June 1953. Senior administrative, police and military figures knew that discipline had in many cases broken down in Kenya in early 1953 despite numerous protestations of a lack of solid evidence of wrongdoing. Erskine was well aware of these soon after his arrival, explicitly linking them to the aftermath of the Lari massacre[28]. He was quick to issue a despatch to the security forces that succinctly and explicitly stated the high standards he expected – demanded – from them, condemning previous failures.[29] He also wrote a separate letter to CIGS specifically on the disciplinary problems of the security forces.[30]
Erskine had both reason and precedent for issuing such a despatch. In February 1953, Governor Baring had found himself forced to respond to widespread allegations of police brutality, although the directive he issued was weak, and full o qualifications. While the armed forces were implicated in a small number of excesses, it seemed apparent that he police force was riddled with those who regularly breached guidelines. There is a vast difference between isolated events that are generally unavoidable, and a situation where the use of extra-legal violence is tolerated and accepted. The regularity and magnitude of such occasions is directly related to the regularity of the security forces` conduct, and central to this conduct is the successful maintenance of discipline. Expecting security forces to obey the laws of war (and civil law, if they are operating in support of the civil power), or to obey the rules of engagement imposed upon them, presumes both a willingness and ability of superior officers to enforce their observation, and an acceptance by lower ranks of their validity. At a tactical level it is the task of junior officers present on the ground to ensure that regulations are upheld; this, however, is unlikely to occur if senior officers are believed to be aware o f and conniving, actively or passively, in brutality.[31] The Government not only has to claim to obey the rule of law – it has to be seen to obey it. The security forces in Malaya before Templer’s arrival were largely out of control, and the Malayan Government were well aware of this.[32] Rather than attempt to address the situation, (which had a number of similarities to be found in Kenya – poorly trained police, many of whom had come with experience from Palestine, and settlers calling for stronger government responses) High Commissioner Gurney was not worried by the fact that at `the present time the police and army are breaking the law every day`. There was a need to fight fear with fear. Above all, it was `most important that the police and soldiers, who are not saints, should not get the impression that every small mistake is going to be the subject of a public enquiry or that it is better to do nothing at all than to do the wrong thing quickly.`[33] This could perhaps be compared with Cooke`s statement in LegCo that there it was “Better a speedy denial of justice than justice long delayed.”[34]
Such a statement is unacceptable. It is the duty of senior officers and politicians to stamp out such events if they are aware of them. To fail to do so makes them equally guilty. A victim of assault or torture would probably, and rightly, fail to see any difference between sins of commission and sins of omission. Perhaps the most brutal counter-insurgency campaign in modern history was that fought by the French in Algeria during the 1950s. Even before 1954 the French authorities were aware that some torture of detainees was occurring, although it was not at the scale it later reached. In 1949 Governor General Naegelen issued an official circulation prohibiting its use, and Mendés-France issued a similar pronouncement in 1955, demonstrating the level to which awareness of these practices had risen. Such declarations had little force when it was apparent that no action would be taken against perpetrators. In 1957 the distinguished soldier General Bollardière and Paul Teitgre, secretary-general to Governor-General Lacoste resigned over Lacoste’s failure to address the problem of torture which by then had become endemic. Although Lacoste claimed to have punished 480 officers, it was noted that none of their careers had suffered.[35] Their statements of intent were rightly treated with contempt as there was clearly no willingness to back them up with realistic actions.