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Defense & Security Analysis

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The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army's Post-War CounterInsurgency Experience
Huw Bennett a a Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Ceredigion, UK

To cite this Article Bennett, Huw(2007) 'The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Army's Post-War Counter-

Insurgency Experience', Defense & Security Analysis, 23: 2, 143 163 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14751790701424705 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14751790701424705

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Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 143163, June 2007

The Mau Mau Emergency as Part of the British Armys Post-War CounterInsurgency Experience
Huw Bennett
Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3FE, UK
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INTRODUCTION
This article1 aims to re-evaluate the orthodox understanding of the British Armys postwar counter-insurgency experience. This will be achieved by analysing the four key components to the Armys counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine in this period found in the secondary literature and then investigating the extent to which these concepts applied in the specic example of the Kenya Emergency, 195260. The article is presented in two main sections: the rst section outlines the main elements of the doctrine as represented in the secondary literature, namely: the legal underpinnings of all operations, the related concept of minimum force, command and control dimensions, and the winning of popular support, commonly known as hearts and minds. These factors operated holistically to produce British Armys enviable reputation for restrained and civilized conduct. The second section questions the validity of these assertions. On a general level, it is argued that the orthodox understanding is based on a number of methodological aws, relating to both sources and interpretation. Furthermore, the specics of the orthodoxy require revisiting. On the legal dimension of British COIN, the framework commonly adopted actually created a permissive environment for atrocities, replicating faults in international law. The signicance of the minimum force concept has been vastly overstated, and did not apply in insurrections or in the colonies. Civil oversight proved ineffective in practice, and the much-vaunted regimental system could present as many problems as solutions in ensuring a disciplined soldiery. Finally, the article argues that the hearts and minds efforts pursued by the British Army have been seen in a far too rosy perspective, and that measures such as villagization were usually unpleasant. In fact, civilian support was gained as often through applying exemplary force, in the form of collective punishment, atrocity and torture, as it was through social reforms. Newsinger observed in 1992 that atrocities in Kenya were marginalized and excused by the government as isolated and unofcial.2 This article argues that atrocities in Kenya
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stemmed from policy, not individual disciplinary failings, policies with a long history and similar to those pursued in other COIN campaigns in the same period and since.

THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF BRITISH COUNTERINSURGENCY

The legal context Most studies (though Townshends 1986 book above all) discuss the ways in which the government introduced legal measures to deal with insurgencies.3 However, the general impression from these studies is that a government-legislated policy is automatically legitimate. Consequently, little attention is paid to the experiences of those at the receiving end of government policies, whether violence or the supposedly benign hearts and minds policies. The assumption remains in large part that laws were created for the good of the people and that they served this function, with limited detailed empirical analysis of what happened in practice. Clearly, the idea about a legal framework was well in place before the post-war period, though Thompsons 1966 formulation in his second of ve principles, that the government must function in accordance with law, is noticeably inuential in the secondary literature, for example in Bulloch, Jeffery, Kitson, Mockaitis, Nagl and Pimlott.4 The legalist framework originated in the English common law tradition which allowed the executive the right to restore the peace with no more force than absolutely necessary.5 According to Mockaitis, the concept, at rst limited to civil unrest in Britain, evolved to incorporate all forms of unrest, from riots to full-scale revolution.6 The common law obliged every citizen, including soldiers who were technically nothing less than citizens in uniform, to assist the civil power in enforcing law and order when required.7 During civil disturbances, it was a commanders duty to open re if he could not otherwise stop the violence before him. In doing nothing the commander would nd that he . . . certainly will be wrong, and, by extension, he legally had to use enough force to be effective.8 During insurrections, the duty to stop violence with violence applied most strongly, which meant troops had to . . . be prepared to live and ght hard.9 Thornton moves beyond Townshend and Mockaitiss emphasis on the common law in arguing that the concept derived from the national culture. In his view two sources were paramount: pragmatism and Victorian values.10 These values were translated via a quartet of socializing media: the ideal of empire, the class and public school systems, and popular culture.11 Furthermore, the British national character emphasizes free will and individuality, leading to pragmatism within organizations. Rather than developing a complicated counter-insurgency doctrine, the Army extolled individual decision-making with minimum force as a simple guideline to be followed in all situations.12 Therefore, when countering revolt, the aim was always to contain rather than extirpate resistance through minimal rather than exemplary force.13 From long experience, the Army learnt that exemplary, excessive force provoked the population and was thus counter-productive to the main objective of restoring the peace.14

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Minimum force Virtually all writers on the Army since 1945 identify minimum force as a key characteristic of British counter-insurgency.15 Indeed, McInnes thinks the principle lies . . . at the heart of the British style in counter-insurgency warfare.16 The principle was clearly understood and taught throughout the Army, which stressed the practical imperatives for ghting with restraint. For example, although reprisals were sometimes effective in the short term, in the long run they were unsound, producing hate, fear and mistrust. The Staff College course declared reprisals . . . patently unjust and uncivilised.17 Instead of employing maximum repower in a bid to kill as many people as possible, taking prisoners provided a large pool from which to gather intelligence, helpful for defeating elusive opponents.18 When suspects were interrogated, the need for trustworthy intelligence ruled out torture, which was thought to provide unreliable information.19 Respect . . . is necessary: respect is achieved by law and order applied fairly and promptly; keeping to this policy meant that the . . . inhabitants will gradually drift apart from guerrillas.20 The Staff College course recognized the difculty in assessing the degree of force to use: Generally speaking, success in battle depends upon the use of overwhelming force at the correct time and place. For internal security operations the reverse applies, since the most important single principle is that of minimum force.21 This position is also reected in a key 1949 booklet Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power: There is . . . one principle that must be observed in all types of action taken by the troops: no more force shall be applied than the situation demands.22 At the Staff College the principle was often repeated; for example, in 1947: To enforce law and order no one is allowed to use more force than is necessary.23 Of course, this should be no problem for the British soldier, whose friendly attitude made inevitable his instinctive kindness and decency.24 A January 1949 article in the British Army Review encouraged discipline and behaviour [that was] absolutely correct, fair play, not doing any avoidable damage, and the minimum force necessary to achieve your object during internal security operations.25 Another article a year later emphasized the importance of restraint in low-intensity operations.26 In one view, reprisals against a community for acts committed by its inhabitants who could not be identied were sometimes justied, given the proviso of proportionality combined with an absolute prohibition on killing people. Rather, incarceration, nes and the seizure or destruction of property were options at the commanders disposal. Nonetheless, they remained measures only to be resorted to in extreme circumstances, expert legal opinion deeming them generally illegal.27 In riots the use of repower was the last resort, for example, in self-defense. When used, a specied number of single shots were directed at individual ringleaders and intended to wound instead of kill.28 The Staff Course enjoined rigid discipline when conducting searches, with civility.29 There is solid evidence that the concept was clearly laid down, taught at the Staff College and discussed in the professional journals. Furthermore, an added incentive came from the ofcial position not only recommending minimum force, but actively criminalizing excessive force:

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. . . a soldier is guilty of an offence if he uses that excess, even under the direction of the civil authority, provided he has no such excuse as that he is bound in the particular circumstances of the case to take the facts, as distinguished from the law, from the civil authority.30 In his prominent study, Mockaitis is keen to conrm the expanding role of minimum force in British counter-insurgency doctrine. Initially, the Manual of Military Law distinguished between riots, where the concept applied, and insurrections, where it did not, but the distinction became increasingly blurred.31 Moreman concurs by pointing out how colonial warfare transformed into imperial policing after the First World War.32 Raghaven places the change in the revised 1929 Manual.33 However, in Mockaitiss view a more substantial change arose in the 1934 publication Notes on Imperial Policing. At this point, the War Ofce stipulated that when ghting rebels away from civilian areas the principle did not come into effect, but when dealing with a riot or other situations where the innocent were not clearly separable from the guilty, minimum force applied.34 Arguably complete consolidation between riots and insurrections occurred in 1949 with the publication of Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power.35 The impetus for this evolving extension came from changing attitudes in Britain towards violence, evidenced in the public reactions to the Boer War, the Irish War of Independence and the Amritsar massacre.36 As a result, the Army on the whole avoided retaliatory measures and the indiscriminate use of force.37

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Command and control The Army, according to most accounts, conducted itself in a restrained manner because its major operational concept in counter-insurgencies, minimum force, derived from a civilian source. In connection with this is the close working relationship seen between the military and civilian organizations during operations. McInnes, Jeffery and Kitson accord civilian control a prime position in their analyses, and consider it highly effective.38 Pimlott and Joes concur in asserting political, and therefore police, primacy.39 Command by committee was the normal system; the opposite approach, where Templer reigned as Supremo in Malaya, was an exception. The command system was normally imperfect when a campaign started and required modication. For example, in Kenya there was a lack of central direction until General Erskine took over.40 Townshend not only agrees that police primacy occurred, but further implicitly assumes that the separation of powers, based on pluralism, is a safeguard in COIN as it is in peaceful domestic politics.41 This argument is lent credibility considering CIGS-elect Montgomerys support in 1946 for hard-line repression in Palestine, which was opposed by the Cabinet.42 Mockaitis argues that British civilmilitary co-operation arose from the basic appreciation that insurgencies were fundamentally political in nature, and could not be solved by military means alone.43 The fact that police reform has been a priority in all British counter-insurgency shows it is not always perfect.44 Even when things went wrong with minimum force, the civilmilitary relationship ensured that justice would be done. Enforcement came

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through the ordinary courts, which could scrutinize the legality of the use of force after the event.45 This legal situation was taught at the Staff College, where it was also stressed that self-discipline and the soldiers high code safeguarded him from prosecution.46 Raghaven argues that mechanisms such as supervision by the civil power and fear of punishment ensured that the abstract concept became a practical reality.47 The other much-vaunted command and control system in British COIN was the Armys ability to conduct decentralized operations thanks to the regimental system. The system is variously credited with independence, creativity and exibility.48 The organizational structure is connected to a military culture notoriously averse to theory and models.49 The orthodox view holds that, in contrast with armies restricted by complicated doctrinal formulations, British soldiers freely reacted to circumstances with improvised solutions. In these so-called Subalterns wars the low-level commander really did exercise a great deal of autonomy, and could invent tactics in a exible and innovative manner.
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Hearts and minds The final component in orthodox accounts of British counter-insurgency was the attempt to take the populations support away from the enemy. Responsibility for carrying out the so-called winning hearts and minds approach, coined by General Templer, largely fell upon the civil administration. There is therefore a limited discussion of it in the British COIN literature.50 This is especially true where propaganda is concerned, where only the excellent survey by Carruthers covers the entire period.51 Nevertheless, the original theorists agreed with Templer. Thompson stressed the importance of countering subversion by information policies, while Kitson argued . . . it is in mens minds that wars of subversion have to be fought and decided.52 In the next generation, Charters argues that the concept of winning hearts and minds underlay all post-Malaya operations, and was most signicant in providing intelligence.53 The other method for winning the populations support consisted of a myriad of possible social measures, including villagization, improved welfare services and food control. Kitson considers such social measures vital in persuading the population to support the government, without which the counter-insurgency effort will fail.54 The success of these measures is due to the recognition that the uprising may well stem from legitimate grievances.55 Pimlott provides a rosy view of hearts and minds, which he also considers a British priority. Key measures include propaganda, protection of civilians by resettlement in secure villages, and removing the social causes, again partly through the wonderful new villages.56 McInnes similarly takes a benign view, arguing that the resettled squatters in Malaya beneted from the policy, where he cites improved health provision to support his case.57 Nagl afrms the widely held view that villagization was intrinsic to success.58 On Kenya, Kitson thinks that the administration pushed through many progressive measures.59 Page argues that the villages had social and agricultural benefits as well as improving security.60 Throup views villagization as a success, although the early decision to detain so many people without evidence was a mistake.61 Even the generally critical Maloba sees the villages as benecial; although they started as a punitive measure, the villages did help win people over.62 Villagization can also be

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seen as successful in proving that the government would win and providing physical protection.63 This section has analysed the four central components of British counter-insurgency doctrine in the post-war period as presented in the academic literature. Operations were conducted within a framework originating in the English common law tradition. This resulted in both an operational doctrine requiring the minimum use of force necessary, and the basis for civilian oversight and close co-operation with the Army during counter-insurgencies. The other major characteristic of the command and control structure, decentralized command through the regimental system, produced innovative and exible decision-making at all levels. Finally, the hearts and minds approach played a signicant role, whether in the form of propaganda, improved social welfare conditions, or political reforms. This often resulted in increasingly effective intelligence-gathering capabilities as the population moved to help the government. Ultimately, these factors combined to achieve a successful and restrained way in counter-insurgency.

REVISITING BRITISH COIN: QUESTIONING THE MINIMALIST CONSENSUS

Before analysing the specic problems with the four elements of the orthodox understanding of British COIN, it should be noted that some methodological flaws compromise their overall validity. First, the literature exhibits a triumphalist tendency, based on a perception of national success in comparison with other countries, such as France in Algeria and the United States in Vietnam. This national pride impedes the critical spirit; for example, John Pimlott proudly notes the British Armys enviable reputation for success in the notoriously difcult art of counter-insurgency.64 A similar trend is the assertion that the British forces were not as bad as the enemy. As Charters puts it, minimum force . . . was respected more in the breach than in the observance, particularly by those whom the British were ghting.65 This tendency to blame the other side is also blatant in the Kenya literature, and while the Mau Mau did indeed commit horric acts, this is used to detract from excesses by the security forces. For example, Majdalany argues that while the security forces may sometimes have been less disciplined than strictly desirable, Mau Mau actions were the usual demented hacking, severing, and mutilation.66 These elements in the secondary literature resemble the governments delegitimizing propaganda during the Emergency, and should thus be treated with caution.67 Second, numerous writers glorify the great British victory in Malaya to the point where the characteristics seen in that campaign are over-generalized onto all the others; and ideals, or principles as Mockaitis calls them, are mistaken for actual empirical reality. For example, Kitson, Thompson and Mockaitiss emphatic insistence that the security forces act within the law should be taken as an ideal worth aspiring to rather than something that historically always (or even mostly) took place.68 Exacerbating the proclivity for theoretical models of counter-insurgency rather than detailed empirical analyses is the general archival paucity of most of the literature, partly resulting from ofcial secrecy.

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The dominance of the minimalist schools interpretation is not surprising given the inept argumentation and imsy evidential base from which attacks have been launched. This pedigree originated during the Emergency itself, as found in books by Blakeslee and Evans, for example. Dr Virginia Blakeslee, a missionary in Kikuyuland, included in her 1956 book an account of a massacre on Mununga Ridge where the local Home Guard and some Kings African Riemen killed all the men in the area. Without mentioning the exact date, the unit involved or individual names, the accounts credibility is mortally weakened.69 Peter Evans, a human rights lawyer in todays terms, wrote a book on government excesses; but other than open court cases, he limited the information given in order to protect witnesses from reprisals.70 Recent critical commentators have performed no better. Although Curtis should be applauded for challenging the assumption that British foreign policy is basically benevolent, his conspiracy theory-style exaggerations and all-round sensationalism undermine his books impact.71 Unfortunately, a major revisionist publication on the Kenya Emergencys detention system similarly goes down the hyperbolic path, assigning genocidal intent in the governments policy without producing any evidence for a systematic plan to eliminate the entire Kikuyu tribe.72 Indeed, evidence is a major defect in most critical analyses. Newsingers work is a case in point, repeatedly making unsupported statements and iterating a view obviously based on an ideological opposition to imperialism itself. The assertion that the Kenya Emergency was a revolt against oppression and exploitation is a seriously one-sided view in what was in reality a highly complex civil war involving multiple factions.73 The ideologically induced myopia leads to other misinterpretations, such as: The beatings and the torture, the summary executions and the judicial massacre were only possible because the victims were black. This conclusion is inescapable.74 It is also mono-causal, completely ignoring not only other equally signicant causal mechanisms but the fact that many of the perpetrators were also black. But then again, such people were probably merely collaborationist in Newsingers questionable logic.75 Turning to the empirical weaknesses, a preliminary observation is that his work is based entirely upon the secondary literature. This leads to trouble; for example, when citing Edgertons inconsistent and sometimes poorly referenced work.76 One claim made without evidence is that the shooting of suspects . . . soon became commonplace.77 In another case, the major assertion that beatings, torture, mutilation and murdering prisoners were everyday occurrences relies upon a single memoir published nine years after the Emergency ended.78 This is all utterly self-defeating for Newsinger, as seen in Mockaitiss response to his 1992 article on the lack of minimum force in Kenya, where he presents the devastating criticism that there is no detailed, corroborated empirical evidence supporting these sensational claims.79 With the release of important new information through the Freedom of Information Act, covering events such as the Chuka massacre and the McLean Inquiry into Army misconduct, this empirical shortfall can be somewhat rectied.80 The remainder of this article will therefore reinterpret the four main components of British counterinsurgency in Kenya.

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The legal framework as an enabler of atrocities On the legal dimension, although most studies mention that a framework existed, they do not systematically investigate how it worked in practice. This is partly because of the dominance of the rationalistinstrumentalist approach within strategic studies which assumes that law and ethics are irrelevant when explaining the behavior of armed forces. At the highest level, asserting that the British operated within the law is in itself rather meaningless. After all, the Nazis persecuted the Jews within a complex legal structure based on the 1934 Nuremberg laws.81 The British Emergency Regulations were passed without democratic approval and were in several instances undoubtedly draconian and contrary to international legal requirements then in place. For example, the Governors Detention Orders, essentially giving the Governor the right to detain persons without trial, for an unlimited period and without the right to appeal, hardly constitutes an admirable law. The regulations generally suspended any incompatible laws, including basic liberties such as habeas corpus, so the impression that minimum force worked within a cosy liberal framework is certainly disingenuous.82 Carruthers has even described the rule of law under Emergency legislation in Kenya as sham legalism, and in this respect Kenya was no different from the many other emergencies that Britain engaged in.83 In common with some other governments after the Second World War, the British deliberately adopted an interpretation of international law aimed at preserving sovereignty to the maximum extent possible. Changes such as the duty to refuse illegal orders established by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and the attempted extension of the laws of war to internal conicts through Geneva Convention Common Article 3, were purposefully marginalized. As a result, the government could introduce extremely draconian measures to combat insurgencies and still claim they were legal and, therefore, just.

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The limits of minimum force Entirely rejecting the centrality of law in determining how soldiers behaved towards non-combatants is impossible if historical accuracy is a paramount concern. However, it is imperative to argue for a more nuanced and qualied understanding, especially with reference to minimum force. In the Kenya context, the Prohibited Areas policy raises some problems. Mockaitis incorrectly argues that here the rules of conventional engagement applied.84 If the conventional rules, i.e. the laws of war, applied, then the security forces would have taken prisoners in the Prohibited Areas. Although there are instances where this happened, the ofcial policy was not to do so and to kill anyone in them on sight; clearly against the laws of war. In the Special Areas, troops were authorized to shoot and kill anyone who refused an order to halt. Arguably, a truly minimum force policy would have instructed troops to try and capture those eeing rst, and to re only as a last resort. These two examples illustrate the more general point that just because a policy avoids advocating genocide does not automatically make it a minimum force policy. Indeed, those on the receiving end might well question how minimum an impact the conict had on their lives. A related question perhaps an unanswerable one is how many exceptions must

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one gather before jettisoning McInnes argument that minimum force prevailed most of the time? Even if it did, apart from Thorntons study into the philosophical origins and Townshends into the legal dimension, there is little sense in the literature of how this principle came to operate in practice, largely because it is understood in doctrinal rather than cultural terms. The focus on minimum force as a long-term principle has somewhat distracted attention from how soldiers viewed the use of force against certain enemies in particular conflicts. Ideologically, official propaganda imaginings dehumanized the Mau Mau enemy in a way inconsistent with minimum force, leading soldiers to consider the population as a whole a brutal race anyway.85 The case made by Mockaitis for the ubiquity of the concept, further supported here by the Staff College syllabi, cannot be entirely refuted. However, he does exaggerate the extent to which minimum force applied in all situations. Official thinking still supported much greater latitude in the use of force in dealing with insurrections than riots, and this matters because insurgencies were insurrections and not riots. For example, even by 1958 the Manual of Military Law stated that The existence of an armed insurrection would justify the use of any degree of force necessary effectually to meet and cope with the insurrection.86 Both ofcial doctrine and actual practice allowed a far greater degree of force to be used in the colonies than in the United Kingdom. For example, the key 1949 publication noted how The degree of force necessary and the methods of applying it will obviously differ very greatly as between the United Kingdom and places overseas.87 As Mockaitis himself admits, in contradiction of his own argument, two standard textbooks taught at Sandhurst and the Staff College advocated harsh early action to nip trouble in the bud, in contrast to the minimum force concept.88 In addition, the Colonial Ofce admitted that the concept clashed with British practices in the colonies: . . . a number of Colonies (notably in Africa) have on their Statute Book collective punishment Ordinances which provide that this form of punishment may be used to deal with offences such as cattle stealing and the like . . . There are, however, the more difcult cases of the present disturbances in Malaya, and (to quote the most obvious example) the use of punitive bombing in the Aden Protectorate . . . what might be described as collective punishment has been used [in Malaya] e.g., the burning of villages, and so on and may well be used again.89 This last remark proved prescient, as the destruction of traditional dwellings accompanied by the forced movement of the population into villages was a major government policy in Kenya. The 1949 pamphlet recognized that collective punishment contravened minimum force and also the Hague Convention, but regarded the consequent hardships as inevitable and a necessity.90 Another weakness with the concept reected the problem with military necessity in international law. The concept was always limited by the question of who decided exactly what the term meant: the military commander present at the time. As only a soldier was in a position to know the power of his weapons and the commander was present at the critical moment, he alone could decide upon the degree of force to be used.91 In this sense, what minimum force meant

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was uncertain, and therefore arbitrary. This was partially inevitable as the circumstances of each particular case obviously varied.92 But this qualification has not previously been sufciently acknowledged. As a result, deviations from minimum force patently happened, as several authors acknowledge, but their frequency and signicance is diminished in several ways. First, atrocities are mentioned briey in passing without explanation or elaboration.93 This is related to the tactic of downplaying the frequency of atrocities. For example, in 1960 Kitson asserted that security force personnel only very rarely took the law into their own hands, further softening this concessionary statement with vague, euphemistic references, such as these practices, rather than using words such as torture, beatings or murder.94 Mockaitis states that Examination of the campaigns between 1919 and 1960 reveals that relatively few cases of documented abuse occurred.95 The precise wording here is telling. What exactly is the alleged British restraint relative to? Also, Mockaitis undermines his own argument later on with the admission that many sensitive government les were still closed when he conducted his research, so the lack of evidence in 1990 does not automatically equate with a lack of atrocities 40 years earlier.96 Mockaitis and Newsinger reach a rare agreement, however, in delineating the Kenya Emergencys exceptional brutality compared with other post-war counterinsurgencies.97 The notion that atrocities were infrequent needs modication for two reasons: the rst reason relates to how military discipline is interpreted. As Major Clemas, with the 23rd Kings African Ries noted, there was: . . . a distinction between the formal and the real . . . it was necessary to ignore three out of four infringements of discipline and then jump on the fourth.98 Most analyses base their conclusions on the number of court martials held, but if Clemas observation were to apply to the whole Army, the frequency of atrocities has been underestimated. The second reason relates to evidence. There is now evidence of ofcial recognition that in the rst eight months at least, and probably for some time afterwards, widespread shootings, torture and beatings took place. After this time, General Erskine took command and instigated a disciplinary clampdown. Claytons inuential argument that the troops obeyed and atrocities stopped immediately is not supported by any evidence, but merely an assumption that orders would be followed.99 Another aspect here is whether or not there was any atrocity policy. Although Elkins almost certainly overstates the case for a genocide having taken place, the Army participated in the early indiscriminate shootings, when the Lancashire Fusiliers were in-theater in addition to several KAR battalions and the locally raised forces. Army co-operation with ruthless vigilante groups, the Home Guard, Kenya Police Reserve not to mention the Kenya Regiment shows how complacent it was about protecting non-combatants. Furthermore, the at least 430 persons shot whilst trying to escape up to 24th April 1953 surely constitutes a pattern incompatible with the no policy assertion.100 Simply because the archives do not contain a policy statement saying Shoot all civilians hardly means that government forces did not systematically target them. What seems increasingly likely is that at the beginning, indiscriminate shootings were perpetrated deliberately in a manner directly denied by Townshend as

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exemplary violence, aimed at intimidating the Kikuyu population from which the Mau Mau insurgency arose. Murder, torture and beatings were deployed not only to generally dissuade Kikuyu civilians from joining or passively supporting the Mau Mau, but also to encourage population movement into the Reserves (today called ethnic cleansing).101 For example, one estimation puts the number of people forcibly evicted or leaving voluntarily from November 1952 to April 1953 at between 70,000 to 100,000 from the Rift Valley and Central Provinces.102 The policy was reversed in mid1953 when it became clear that the brutality with which the movements were achieved and the resultant horric over-crowding in the Reserves actually aided Mau Mau recruitment.103 In the disciplinary sphere, the Armys complacency over prosecuting rape cases shows how thin is the line between actively encouraging mistreatment by policy, and allowing mistreatment to happen unofcially by doing nothing to prevent it. The Armys McLean Court of Inquiry into allegations of misconduct, held in December 1953, considered rape . . . not the sort of thing we are concerned with.104 The ofcer responsible for Army prosecutions considered rape a crime in the same category as theft.105 Furthermore, in a letter to the Secretary of State for War in December 1953, General Erskine hoped that an independent inquiry investigating everything from the beginning of the Emergency would not happen as . . . the revelation would be shattering. The letter continued: There is no doubt that in the early days, i.e. from Oct 1952 until last June there was a great deal of indiscriminate shooting by Army and Police. I am quite certain prisoners were beaten to extract information.106 This constitutes the rst ofcial admission that the security forces, including the Army, participated in widespread murder and torture for an eight-month period during the Kenya Emergency. As there were plans in place beforehand and the military conducted operations during this period, it cannot be argued that any crimes committed by the Army were one-offs. There is not enough direct evidence to prove a policy of war crimes, but given the clear awareness of how certain settlers were evicting people namely by intimidation and murder it is probable that the Army were involved as an informal policy.

Command and control as a problem as well as a solution The orthodox conception of command and control also requires some modication. In relation to civilmilitary relations, the assumption here is that civil supremacy acts to restrain the use of force and make for a benevolent policy. In Kenya, the police were far from innocent of atrocities and more centralized control may have prevented them committing more. Indeed, in several other cases, such as Palestine and Malaya, the police dominated the security apparatus during the conicts early stages also the period when most atrocities seem to have taken place. In Kenya, where the settler population exercised considerable inuence over the civil administration and police (especially through joining the Kenya Police Reserve), the Army struggled to control those elements who should in theory have been restraining the Army. As a matter of counterfactual speculation, General Erskine may well have found his disciplinary wrestling match far easier if he had enjoyed the same dictatorial powers as those vested in Templer in Malaya. In addition, although advocates have stressed how soldiers

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remained answerable to the civil courts, in practice commanders and soldiers were never called to account after putting down insurrections.107 The 1947 Staff College course taught its students that so long as commanders believed their action to be right, they should not fear an enquiry into their conduct.108 In order to protect soldiers who had used force, it was usual for the government to pass an Act of Indemnity. This was . . . a statute intended to make transactions legal which were illegal when they took place, and to free the individuals concerned from legal liability.109 Therefore the idea that the military were subject to rigorous civilian oversight and dreaded prosecution is quite misleading. The emphasis placed upon the regimental system in explaining success and restraint is in contradiction with the existence of other elements in the orthodoxy. If the Army were so informal in its modus operandi then legalism, civilmilitary co-operation and pursuing political measures would never have emerged as distinctive patterns. While the argument that the Army disavowed an exhaustive codied doctrine in this period is generally valid, long-established traditions within the organizational culture replaced doctrine functionally. Doctrine is a system of principles that sets parameters for acceptable action; and as for the Army, the traditions taught formally through various institutions and through informal transmission from one generation to the next, soldiers possessed a coherent view of how to respond to insurgency. In this sense, then, the signicance of the regimental system is exaggerated in the literature, because knowledge could still be passed on informally. A related question is whether the system was necessarily a good thing, as is ordinarily assumed. There is reason to think not; for example, it proved detrimental to all-arms co-operation.110 In Kenya the perils inherent in decentralized command made themselves abundantly obvious as General Erskine gradually discovered how his orders, for example banning soldiers from chopping hands off corpses, were often ignored.111 As already mentioned, both Malaya and Kenya saw a period of trial and error at the beginning of each insurgency, including atrocities which were widespread in Kenya and possibly elsewhere although the other conicts require extensive research into these aspects. Nagl and Mockaitis blame these on failures in command and control.112 This would logically include the very regimental system that they and others later credit with such success. By far the most convincing damage-limitation approach in the secondary literature shifts the blame away from the Army by pointing the nger at other elements in the command system. It is plausible because denying that atrocities took place or marginalizing them as exceptions less malign than the enemys misdemeanors simply cannot resist empirical scrutiny, especially regarding Kenya. In this school the argument goes that atrocities were committed but seldom by the Army. The secondary literature on Kenya is littered with references to atrocities carried out by the African militia Home Guard,113 the rapidly-expanded Police (especially the Kenya Police Reserve),114 and the territorial Kenya Regiment.115 Mockaitis succinctly sums up this popular view that most of the excesses seem to have been committed by units hastily recruited from the local population, white and African, or by inadequately trained police recruits thrown into a difcult situation.116

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In common with distinctions between ofcial and unofcial policies, attempts to place the blame on other security forces have gone too far. There is certainly value in differentiating between the divergent social origins, cultural attributes, organizational structures and role taskings embodied in the various units. However, an obsession with narrow typologies only distorts the way in which the security forces, and the conict itself, should be holistically understood. The orthodoxy as it stands adequately explains uniqueness, difference and discontinuity. In the interests of a balanced perspective, this article addresses the spheres of connections, similarities and continuities between the Army and the local forces shouldered with the blame for most atrocities during the Emergency. Fortunately the logical reasoning for adopting such a stance is strongly supported by the empirical evidence. Without even considering the moral situation, under British law the soldiers in Kenya were simultaneously citizens obliged to prevent felonies if they noticed any taking place. Indeed, some soldiers did intervene and halt atrocities in the ofng. In his order issued on 23 June 1953 and repeated on 30 November, General Erskine declared this duty.117 Furthermore, we know that British Army units committed atrocities: especially various platoons in the Kings African Ries. There is an unspoken categorization at work placing these units into the local forces box, which is inappropriate. Although African Askaris formed the vast majority of the KAR, they were not all raised in Kenya; for example, the 4th KAR came from Uganda, and the 6th KAR and 26th KAR from Tanganyika. Even in the Kenyan battalions, many would have come from areas not affected by the Emergency.118 Modelled on the British Army battalion, the training staff, permanent senior NCOs and ofcers were all seconded from the Army. For disciplinary, logistical and operational purposes they fell directly within the British Army chain of command throughout the entire Emergency period. Thus, concluding that atrocities committed by its members were the work of local forces is disingenuous. Despite their obviously closer afliation with Kenya than the British and KAR battalions, the genuinely local units also bore some similarities. The Kenya Regiment, despite being a territorial unit composed of settlers, was constructed in the Armys image, trained by NCOs from the Brigade of Guards, and headed by seconded ofcers. Though depending upon the Kenya Government for logistical support, it still came under the regular chain of command for discipline and operations. In addition, the Regiments men were increasingly seconded to work with British and KAR battalions as guides and trackers, and platoon commanders with the KAR.119 While deploring the units reputation for brutality, the Army relied upon its unparalleled local knowledge and thus perhaps gave its members more leeway than would have otherwise been the case. The notorious Home Guard were deployed in many joint operations with the Army, a number of Kenya Regiment men commanded them, and some British regiments trained them. The last apparently locally raised force, the Kenya Police Reserve, included many former policemen from Palestine, Malaya and even Britain. As with the Home Guard, the Army went on numerous joint operations with the KPR and liaised with them closely in the intelligence eld.120 Even if most atrocities were the work of other security forces, the point stands that in considering the campaigns functionality, the Army was closely associated with these forces. At the lowest level, not all units performed their legal duty to restrain the local

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forces. Up at the high command level, the Army not only failed to control the other security forces but actively beneted from their (mis)behavior. For example, the Home Guard played a major part in Erskines campaign plan, and actually continued its expansion in the midst of plausible atrocity allegations being made against it. The whole contention that the Army committed no atrocities is in any case awed, given the KARs position and increasing new evidence coming to light which indicates that the British battalions may simply have been more adept at concealment and denial.121

Hearts and minds, or the punitive use of force? There are some qualications in the secondary literature to the generally optimistic view of winning hearts and minds. Mockaitis admits that many squatters in Malaya were initially physically forced to relocate, the amenities took years to install and several hundred aborigines died in the process.122 Stubbs points out how the initial response was so coercive as to increase popular support for the Malayan Communist Party. In other words, there was no attempt to win the population over until Templer took command.123 Popplewell also points out the lack of any propaganda campaign in Palestine.124 Early villagization in Kenya suffered from similar problems to Malaya, for example, with deaths from starvation and disease in the unsanitary settlements. But Mockaitis considers it nonetheless worthwhile because it defeated Mau Mau, and that is what really matters.125 The hearts and minds elements, however, should always be seen alongside the illiberal collective punishment policy. Mockaitis provides an unconvincing excuse for the policy: Suspension of civil liberties is one of the thorniest problems of counterinsurgency, and . . . can only be justied by a successful end to the emergency. In the case of Malaya . . . the Chinese squatters had not enjoyed such liberties in the rst place and . . . they were subject to intimidation and fear at the hands of the Communists. This returns us to the logic of blaming the enemy for ones own atrocity behavior.126 Mockaitis argues that the British applied collective punishment because they thought colonial peoples too uncivilized to understand notions of individual responsibility. Practised in most campaigns, collective punishment consistently failed to produce positive results.127 In Kenya, Governor Baring repeatedly used collective punishments such as nes, relocation, or property conscation, despite opposition in Britain and evidence in Kenya and Malaya that it was counter-productive.128 Another element of collective punishment in Kenya, at least in the early stages, were the mass evictions of Kikuyu from areas where an incident had occurred. This soon proved a highly counter-productive course.129 On the whole, collective punishment, by its very nature thoroughly indiscriminate, stands in contradiction to the minimum force principle. Regarding social reforms, Percox argues that the intention was to end the Emergency and then put the development plans into practice afterwards.130 As Percox says, What

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mattered most was winning not hearts and minds. The Kikuyu only got the stick, while the carrot went to other tribes to buy their non-involvement.131 He argues that while villages introduced some social improvements, their primary purpose was to make it easier to implement the law including collective punishments.132 But collective punishment was essentially an Administration policy rather than an Army one.133 Heather argues that hearts and minds was not really implemented in Kenya and did not work. The government decided that the population could not be won over, and adopted instead a punitive approach, with punitive villages. It was coercion rather than persuasion that beat Mau Mau.134 Anderson contributes signicantly to the fear rather than persuasion thesis by arguing that through collective punishment, detention without trial, seizure of property and vastly extending the death penalty, the Emergency areas effectively became a draconian police state.135 Clearly the COIN literature presents an overly benign view of villagization. As Elkins amply demonstrates, around 800 Emergency villages were in reality more akin to prison facilities than the ideal habitations the Administration portrayed them as.136 Villagization represented a fundamental reconstruction of Kikuyu society, traditionally based in dispersed hamlets rather than enclosed, densely populated villages.137 Although successful in isolating insurgents from their supply base, the policy was conducted with considerably more brutality than in Malaya.138 Some peoples huts were burned down to instil urgency into the moving, though on what scale this happened and how deeply the Army was involved remains under-explored.139 Arguably, a substantial explanation for the encouragement of negative enemy stereotypes and mistreatment of non-combatants, or at least indifference towards it, were related to the half-hearted attitude within the Army towards its vaunted winning hearts and minds strategy. The major political concessions came after military success, not in tandem with military measures during the conict, as is supposed to happen in British counter-insurgencies.140 Popplewell similarly argues that rather than hearts and minds, the decisions to grant independence were the real reason for success in UK COIN.141 Paget recognized in 1967 that the government won the populations support without offering any political solution. While support for the insurgents is explained by reference to the intimidation policy, it is assumed that people automatically reverted to supporting the government when Mau Mau lost the military ascendancy.142 From the evidence now available, this argument seems implausible and it increasingly appears that as the Mau Mau won support through intimidation, so the government won it back. The new literature on Kenya presents a strong case for jettisoning the orthodox persuasion thesis and instead emphasizing how government forces employed fear and intimidation through a range of ofcial and pseudo-policies, from mass evictions encouraged by murders to forced incarceration in punitive villages. Townshends view mentioned above that the British eschewed exemplary force is now seriously open to question, and more research is needed on Army involvement in assisting with largely administration-run policies.

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CONCLUSION
This article has analysed the four central components of British Army counterinsurgency in the context of its operations in Kenya from 1952 to 1960. First, although operations were conducted within a legal framework deriving from the common law tradition, the extent of the powers granted to the government under emergency regulations seriously compromised the laws integrity. The regulations resulted in a sham legalism whereby basic rights and international law were easily sidelined. Second, there is no doubt that the related minimum force concept was important in the British Army and widely understood. In Kenya, however, policies such as Prohibited Areas, collective punishment and nipping trouble in the bud plainly contradicted the concept. This is because the concept was in fact more arbitrary and subjectively interpreted than normally allowed for. The doctrine allowed for a greater degree of force in the colonies and almost any degree of force during insurrections. Minimum force did not prevail as often as is claimed; intimidation of the population, summary executions, torture and unrestrained violence were prevalent for at least eight months. Third, the close relationship with the civil power sometimes encouraged indiscriminate violence rather than restraining the military. This was especially the case in Kenya, where an angry settler population agitated for draconian policies, and organized vigilante groups. Even ofcial organizations, such as the Kenya Police Reserve, engaged in widespread abuses of the civilian population. The civil authorities failed to rein in the security forces and the justice system was seriously compromised, as Anderson has recently shown.143 The regimental system sometimes impeded co-operation and disrupted General Erskines efforts to tighten discipline after June 1953. In relation to the other security forces, the orthodox view has not acknowledged the similarities with forces such as the KPR, Kenya Regiment and Home Guard, and the very close cooperation in place during many operations. The atrocities conducted by non-Army forces should be seen as part of the overall campaign which played a critical function in its outcome. For example, the Army often worked from intelligence gathered by the Home Guard using torture. Finally, in Kenya the population were persuaded to support the government by a combination of increasing military success and violent coercion, rather than by winning hearts and minds. Villagization was largely punitive, painful in practice and a major reconguration of society against the will of its people. In sum, this article has challenged the COIN orthodoxy on a number of grounds and calls for a similar questioning of conventional understandings in relation to other post-war British counter-insurgencies.

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NOTES
1 This article was rst written for the Britons at War: New Perspectives conference held at the University of Northampton, 2122 April 2006. Many thanks to Professor I. F. W. Beckett for organizing this conference and to the participants for their helpful remarks. My thanks also go to Professors Colin McInnes and Martin Alexander for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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John Newsinger, Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau Rebellion, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1992, p. 50. Charles Townshend, Britains Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1986. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, London: Chatto and Windus, 1966, p. 52; G. Bulloch, The Application of Military Doctrine to Counter Insurgency (COIN) Operations A British Perspective, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1996, p. 166; Keith Jeffery, Intelligence and CounterInsurgency Operations: Some Reflections on the British Experience, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 2 No. 1, 1987, p. 119; Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five, London: Faber and Faber, 1987, p. xii; Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 191960, New York: St. Martins Press, 1990, p. 186; John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, London: Praeger, 2002, p. 63; John Pimlott, The British Army: The Dhofar Campaign, 19701975, in Ian F. W. Beckett and John Pimlott (eds), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985, p. 20. Townshend, op. cit., p. 19; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 18. Mockaitis, op. cit., British Counterinsurgency, p. 13. Joint Services Command and Staff College Archive (hereafter JSCSC), Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. Ibid.; this point is also made in Townshend, op. cit., p. 19. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945. Rod Thornton, Understanding the Cultural Bias of a Military Organization and its Effect on the Process of Change: A Comparative Analysis of the Reaction of the British and United States Armies to the Demands of Post-Cold War Peace Support Operations in the Period, 19891999, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2001, p. 128. Ibid., pp. 74, 83, 89. Ibid., p. 75. Townshend, op. cit., p. 18. Thomas R. Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conict: the British Experience, Conict Quarterly, Vol. XIII No. 1, 1993, p. 10. See also Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 1762. David A. Charters, From Palestine to Northern Ireland: British Adaptation to LowIntensity Operations, in David Charters and Maurice Tugwell (eds), Armies in Low-Intensity Conict: A Comparative Analysis, London: Brasseys, 1989, p. 194; Pimlott, op. cit., p. 23; Anthony James Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004, p. 221; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 119; Richard Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence: Some Reections on Recent Approaches to British Counter-Insurgency, 19001960, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 10 No. 2, 1995, p. 337. Colin McInnes, Hot War, Cold War: The British Armys Way in Warfare 194595, London: Brasseys, 1996, p. 117. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. Charters, op. cit., p. 172. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 2527, 5457. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1948. Public Record Ofce (hereafter PRO), WO 279/391. Booklet Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, War Ofce Code No. 8439, issued by the Army Council 13 June 1949, superseding Notes on Imperial Policing, 1934, and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, 1937 (and 1945 amendment), p. 5. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947, and also for 1948. JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1945.

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25 Hints on Internal Security, British Army Review, Vol. 1, 1949, pp. 5461. 26 C. J. Gittings, The Bertrand Stewart Prize Essay, 1949, Army Quarterly and Defence Journal, 1950, pp. 161177. 27 D. A. L. Wade, A Survey of the Trials of War Criminals, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute, Vol. XCVI No. 581, 1951, p. 67. 28 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1948. 29 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. 30 War Ofce, Manual of Military Law, London: HMSO, 1929, p. 246. The 1958 edition altered the wording of this paragraph only for clarications sake. War Ofce, Manual of Military Law, Part II, London: HMSO, 1958, p. 1, Section V. 31 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 18, 24. 32 T. R. Moreman, The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 18491947, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998, p. xvii. 33 Srinath Raghaven, Protecting the Raj: The Army in India and Internal Security, c. 191939, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 16 No. 3, 2005, p. 260. 34 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 24. 35 Ibid., p. 25. 36 Ibid., p. 18. 37 Ibid., p. 27. 38 McInnes, op. cit., pp. 117, 125; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 119; Kitson, op. cit., p. 300. 39 Pimlott, op. cit., p. 21; Joes, op. cit., p. 222. 40 Charters, op. cit., pp. 196197. 41 Townshend, op. cit., pp. 2627. 42 Tim Jones, The British Army and Counter-Guerrilla Warfare in Transition, 19441952, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7 No. 3, 1996, p. 270. 43 Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conict, op. cit., p. 8. 44 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., pp. 341, 346. 45 Townshend, op. cit., p. 19. 46 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. 47 Raghaven, op. cit., pp. 259260. 48 Charters, op. cit., p. 178; Beckett and Pimlott, Introduction, op. cit., p. 6; Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conict, op. cit., p. 11. 49 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., p. 19; Townshend, op. cit., p. 19; Jeffery, op. cit., p. 118. 50 Charters, op. cit., p. 223. 51 Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-insurgency, 19441960, London: Leicester University Press, 1995. 52 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 186; Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1971, p. 31. 53 Charters, op. cit., p. 195. 54 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, op. cit., p. 50. 55 Joes, op. cit., p. 222. 56 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., pp. 2122. 57 McInnes, op. cit., p. 123. 58 Nagl, op. cit., p. 75. 59 Kitson, Bunch of Five, op. cit., p. 58. 60 Malcolm Page, A History of the Kings African Ries and East African Forces, London: Leo Cooper, 1998, p. 204. 61 David Throup, Crime, Politics and the Police in Colonial Kenya, 193963, in David M. Anderson and David Killingray (eds) Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 191765, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, p. 148. 62 Wunyabari Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 17, 90.

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63 Randall W. Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, 195256, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 5 No. 3, 1990, p. 76. 64 Pimlott, The British Army, op. cit., p. 16. 65 Charters, op. cit., p. 172. 66 Fred Majdalany, State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau, Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1963, p. 117. 67 Bruce Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya. The Dialectic of Domination, London: James Currey, 1990, p. 353. 68 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, op. cit., p. 49; Thompson, op. cit., p. 52; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 13. 69 H. Virginia Blakeslee, Beyond the Kikuyu Curtain, Chicago: Moody Press, 1956, p. 255. 70 Peter Evans, Law and Disorder, or Scenes of Life in Kenya, London: Secker and Warburg, 1956. 71 Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit. Britains Real Role in the World, London: Vintage, 2003. 72 Caroline Elkins, Britains Gulag. The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya, London: Jonathan Cape, 2005, p. xiv. 73 John Newsinger, Revolt and Repression in Kenya: the Mau Mau rebellion, 19521960, Science and Society, Vol. 45 No. 2, 1981, p. 159; David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged. Britains Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005, pp. 954 on the factions in the civil war. 74 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, p. 80. 75 John Newsinger, English Atrocities, New Left Review, 32, 2005, p. 156. 76 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 78; for example, Edgerton claims a calculated settler policy of brutality and murder without offering supporting evidence, see, Robert Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London: Collier Macmillan, 1989, p. 142. 77 Newsinger, Revolt and Repression, op. cit., p. 171. 78 Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 77. 79 Thomas R. Mockaitis, Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau Rebellion: A Reply, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 3 No. 1, 1992, pp. 8789. 80 For an analysis of disciplinary breakdowns in Kenya see Huw Bennett, The British Army and Controlling Barbarisation During the Kenya Emergency, in George Kassimeris (ed.), The Warriors Dishonour: Barbarity and Morality in Modern Warfare, London: Ashgate, 2006; David Anderson, Huw Bennett and Daniel Branch, Covering up a Colonial Atrocity: the British Army and the Chuka Massacre, Kenya 1953, History Workshop Journal, forthcoming 2007. 81 Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich. A New History, London: Pan Books, 2001, pp. 294298. 82 A. W. Brian Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire. Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 78, 84. 83 Susan Carruthers, Being Beastly to the Mau Mau, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 16 No. 4, 2005, p. 494. 84 Mockaitis, A Reply, op. cit., p. 88. 85 PRO WO 32/21720: McLean Court of Inquiry proceedings, p. 315 (Lt.-Col. D. H. Nott, 4th KAR). On the government propaganda campaign see Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds, op. cit., pp. 128193. 86 War Ofce, Manual Part II, 1958, Section V, p. 10. 87 War Ofce, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 5. 88 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 26. 89 PRO LCO 2/4309. Letter from Trafford Smith, Colonial Ofce to C. G. Kemball, Foreign Ofce, 25 June 1949. 90 War Ofce, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, op. cit., p. 35. 91 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. Commander denotes anyone in command of other soldiers, potentially anyone from a Field Marshal to a Lance-Corporal.

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JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, op. cit., p 68. Frank Kitson, Gangs and Counter-gangs, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960, p. 46. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 37. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 44; Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 1; Newsinger, English Atrocities, op. cit., p. 158. 98 Anthony Clayton and David Killingray, Khaki and Blue: Military and Police in British Colonial Africa, Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1989, p. 239242. 99 Anthony Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya. A Study of Military Operations Against Mau Mau, Nairobi: Transafrica Publishers, 1976, p. 40. 100 According to a statement made by Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton to the Commons. See Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, op. cit., p. 159. 101 Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, op. cit., p. 76; Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspective, London: James Currey, 1989, pp. 116, 119. 102 David A. Percox, British Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, 195256: Extension of Internal Security Policy or Prelude to Decolonisation?, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 9 No. 3, 1998, p. 69. 103 Furedi, Mau Mau War in Perspective, op. cit., p. 8; Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 349. 104 PRO WO 32/21720: McLean Court of Inquiry Proceedings, p. 316. 105 PRO WO 32/21720: McLean Court of Inquiry Proceedings, p. 350 (Major C. J. Dawson, DAPM). 106 PRO WO 32/15834: Letter from Erskine to Secretary of State for War, 10 December 1953. 107 Simpson, op. cit., p. 61. 108 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1947. 109 JSCSC, Army Staff College syllabus, 1949. 110 David French, Military Identities. The Regimental System, the British Army, and the British people, c. 18702000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 3. 111 See Bennett, British Army and Controlling Barbarisation, op. cit. 112 Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons, op. cit., p. 68; Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conict, op. cit., p. 14. 113 For example, Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 358; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 255; Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency, op. cit., p. 79; Elkins, Britains Gulag, op. cit., p. 244. 114 For example, Berman, Control and Crisis, op. cit., p. 357; Edgerton, Mau Mau, op. cit., p. 155; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 45. 115 For example, Edgerton, Mau Mau, op. cit., pp. 155156; Elkins, Britains Gulag, op. cit., p. 253; Evans, op. cit., p. 205. 116 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 50; Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, op. cit., p. 93; Charles Douglas-Home, Evelyn Baring: The Last Proconsul, London: Collins, 1978, p. 250; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 37; McInnes, Hot War, Cold War, op. cit., p. 133. 117 PRO WO 32/21721: Exhibit 5, Message to be Distributed to all Ofcers of the Army, Police and the Security Forces, GHQ Nairobi, 23 June 1953; PRO WO 32/21721: Exhibit 6: Message to be Distributed to all Members of the Army, Police and the Security Forces, GHQ, 30 November 1953 118 See the excellent social history of the KAR by Timothy H. Parsons, The African Rank-andle. Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the Kings African Ries, 19021964, Oxford: James Currey, 1999. 119 On the Kenya Regiment see Len Weaver, The Kenya Regiment, in Malcolm Page (ed.), A History of the Kings African Ries and East African Forces, London: Leo Cooper 1998, pp. 239249; Guy Campbell, The Charging Buffalo. A History of the Kenya Regiment, London: Leo Cooper, 1986.

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120 Heather, Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency, op. cit., pp. 6768; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 45. 121 See Anderson, Bennett and Branch, Covering up a Colonial Atrocity, op. cit. 122 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., pp. 115119. 123 Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 19481960, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds 19481958, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2002. 124 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., p. 347. 125 Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, op. cit., p. 130. 126 Ibid., p. 122. 127 Mockaitis, Low-Intensity Conict, op. cit., p. 13. 128 Percox, British COIN in Kenya, op. cit., p. 64. 129 Ibid., p. 69. 130 Ibid., p. 64. 131 Ibid., p. 83, emphasis in the original. 132 Ibid., p. 85. 133 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 46. 134 Randall W. Heather, Of Men and Plans: the Kenya Campaign as Part of the British Counterinsurgency Experience, Conict Quarterly, Vol. XIII No. 1, 1993, p. 21. 135 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 5. 136 Elkins, Britains Gulag, op. cit., especially pp. 244253. 137 Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conict in Kenya and Africa. Book Two: Violence and Ethnicity, London: James Currey, 1992, p. 254. 138 Newsinger, Minimum Force, op. cit., p. 49. 139 Percox, British COIN, op. cit., p. 85; Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya, op. cit., p. 13. 140 Ibid., p. 65. 141 Popplewell, Lacking Intelligence, op. cit., p. 351. 142 Julian Paget, Counter-insurgency Campaigning, London: Faber and Faber, 1967, p. 111. 143 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, op. cit., p. 7.

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