Claimants Jane Muthoni Mara, Wambugu Wa Nyingi
and Paulo Muoka Nzili celebrate in Nairobi after the 2012 high court ruling
allowing them to proceed with compensation claims against the UK
government. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP
King Charles, Britain already admitted to torture in Kenya, no need for
you to choke on an apology
The monarch will talk vaguely about ‘wrongs’ on his first official visit
as head of state to a Commonwealth country. This blindness about the violence
of empire must stop
Sun 29 Oct 2023 08.02 GMT
THE OBSERVER
King Charles III will travel this
week to Kenya, his first visit to a Commonwealth country as
Britain’s monarch. There, according to Buckingham Palace, he will “acknowledge the more painful aspects of the UK and Kenya’s shared
history, including the Emergency (1952-60) … [taking] time during
the visit to deepen his understanding of the wrongs suffered in this period by
the people of Kenya”.
It appears the British monarch is in need of a history lesson. A little
over a decade ago William Hague, who was foreign secretary, delivered a speech to
the House of Commons, heralding a rupture in Britain’s narrative of imperial
exceptionalism.
“I
would like to make clear now and for the first time on behalf of Her Majesty’s
government that we understand the pain and grievance felt by those who were
involved in the events of the emergency in Kenya,” Hague said. “The British
government recognise that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of
ill treatment at the hands of the colonial administration,” he continued. “The
British government sincerely regret that these abuses took place and that they
marred Kenya’s progress towards independence. Torture and ill treatment are abhorrent violations
of human dignity, which we unreservedly condemn.”
Hague’s admissions were the first of their kind, foisted upon Her
Majesty’s government by five elderly Kenyans. In the spring of 2009 they had
filed a suit against the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), alleging
systematic torture and abuse at the hands of British colonial agents in the
detention camps and villages built during the Mau Mau emergency. Based upon revisionist history,
including my own book, Britain’s Gulag, and
the legal ingenuity of the law firm Leigh Day and the Kenya Human Rights
Commission, the case was filed in London’s high court.
Media coverage was widespread. Headlines splashed daily revelations,
including, after the claimants’ repeated demands for document disclosure, the
British government’s “discovery” of 300 boxes of previously undisclosed files
at Hanslope Park, the fortress-like warehouse for top-secret government files.
Efforts to cover up British crimes did not end there. Colonial officials,
taking orders from London, had destroyed three-and-a-half tons of documents on
the eve of Britain’s exit from Kenya in 1963.
British police hold men from the village of
Kariobangi at gunpoint while their huts are searched for evidence that they
participated in the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
Still, the forensic work of the claimants’ legal and historical team
yielded a mountain of damning evidence. The FCO, which initially vowed to fight the
case to the bitter end, settled in June 2013, admitting for the first time in
British history to the use of torture in its empire, paying out nearly £20m in
damages and legal costs to 5,228 individuals who joined in the class action
negotiation, and committing to build a memorial in Nairobi to commemorate “the
victims of torture and ill treatment during the colonial era”.
For King Charles III to
speak of the “painful aspects” of Kenya and Britain’s shared history is
antediluvian relative to the decade-old admission of “torture” and the
government’s “regret” for the “abuses” that “marred Kenya’s progress towards
independence”.
Since Buckingham Palace is framing the monarch’s visit as one that “will
celebrate the close links between the British and Kenyan people”, the king
needs a rescripting of his position on Kenya’s past, and his role in
present-day repair. Some informed advice could be useful.
First, King Charles III, you need to stop choking on those two words, “I
apologise”. Just cough them up. They will probably trigger all sorts of
liability issues for you and your government, but at last count, the monarchy
is worth over £20bn, so you could give several quid – some of which were stolen
from, or earned on the backs of, colonised peoples – to the British taxpayer to
cover this.
Given the monarchy’s close attachment to symbolism, there’s no better
place for your first formal apology for colonial crimes than Kenya. It’s there
that your mother acceded to the throne in February 1952, and where, just a year
later, her picture, in full regalia, hung in the detention camps where
thousands of Africans were tortured, often while being forced to sing God Save the Queen.
Next, there’s the issue of the modern honours system introduced by your
great-grandfather, King George V, celebrating civilian and military service.
Today, as in yesteryear, these medals bear the motto “For God and the Empire”,
the two wellsprings of your monarchical power.
It’s a hard habit to break, but
the time is long past for you to speak of Britain’s ‘unique history’ of empire
In the case of Kenya, your mother bestowed honours upon war criminals.
Among them was Terence Gavaghan, the architect of the “dilution technique”, or
systematised violence used to “break” detainees. He was made an MBE, as was
John Cowan, his lieutenant, for his role in crafting the “Cowan plan”, which
led to the beating to death of 11 detainees. What better time than your
upcoming visit to Kenya to announce that you are rescinding these medals?
While royal affirmations of empire’s nefarious agents were long part of
Britain’s modus operandi so, too, was developmentalist language masquerading as
benign reform. Your forebears referred to colonial subjects as “children”,
toddling behind Britain. Successive monarchs obscured, through decades of
reassuring rituals, acts of omission and moth-eaten familial fictions, the
systemic racism and extreme violence upon which Britain’s imperial power, and
their own, depended. At the time of decolonisation, it was said empire’s
“children”, thanks to Britain’s benevolent civilising hand, had “grown up”,
taking their place in the Commonwealth of Nations.
The language of fictive kinship needs to stop. It’s a hard habit to
break, but the time is long past for you to speak of Britain’s “unique history”
of empire, which has now transformed into a “family of nations”.
Global demands for a British colonial reckoning suggest you need to
abandon your paternalistic ways, apologise, and offer repair for the colonial
crimes committed in your family’s name. The alternative will only hasten the
monarchy’s demise.
Caroline Elkins is a professor at Harvard University and the
author of Legacy of Violence: A History of the British
Empire
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