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Britain sued for millions
by Mau Mau terrorists
By Daniel
Foggo and Christian Steenberg
(Filed: 10/11/2002)
The families of soldiers who fought the Mau Mau uprising in
Kenya reacted with fury last night to news that former terrorists are
planning to sue the British Government over their treatment after being
taken captive.
British lawyers representing former Mau Mau fighters claim
that they were tortured by the colonial authorities and are therefore
entitled to millions of pounds in compensation. They plan to launch a High
Court action to demand reparations.
The move has prompted anger among those who remember the
viciousness of the Mau Mau campaign, which began in 1952 and lasted for
more than four years.
Julian Hastings, whose father Martin was an Army colonel
wounded fighting the Mau Mau and was later awarded the campaign's only
Distinguished Service Order, said the claim was "completely idiotic".
"The Mau Mau caused such a great deal of trouble that for
them to suggest they were the victims is preposterous," said Mr Hastings.
"The Mau Mau were a small group who caused a lot of disruption, not only
to the British but also to their own people."
Mr Hastings's father, who died in 1999, was decorated for
charging a Mau Mau position and continuing to direct the battle despite
being shot below the heart. His son added: "I know if my father were still
alive he would feel exactly the same way and so does my godfather, who
also fought the Mau Mau."
The Mau Mau veterans have employed a lawyer, Martyn Day, to
fight their claim in the British courts. Mr Day, the senior partner at the
London-based firm Leigh Day and Co, has previously won compensation for
British prisoners of war abused by the Germans and the Japanese during the
Second World War.
He said that several thousand former Mau Mau fighters might
have legal claims against the British Government. He claimed that they had
been tortured while they were being held during the uprising.
Historians have documented atrocities on both sides in the
Mau Mau conflict, which developed into a civil war as the colonialists
recruited local people to help them fight insurgents from the Kikuyu
tribe. Veterans of the struggle are demanding compensation not only for
injuries suffered in captivity but for the confiscation of land, livestock
and property.
Mr Day told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday: "There
appear to be hundreds if not thousands of people who were very severely
injured through torture during the course of the Mau Mau uprising and the
regime operated to try to put them down. For that group, one would be
talking very heavy levels of compensation - certainly into six-figure sums
- so overall one could be talking many millions of pounds."
The Mau Mau movement began as a rebellion against the
exclusive use of Kenyan lands by whites but later came to be identified,
wrongly in the opinion of some historians, as a nationalist movement
purely intent on ending colonialism. Members of the Kikuyu tribe carried
out massacres of white settlers, including women and children, and then
against many of their own people who refused to join them. In addition to
the 37 white settlers murdered by the Mau Mau, more than 11,000 Africans
on both sides died.
British Army troops sent to quell the uprising were forced
to fight a counter-insurgency campaign, together with loyal African
regiments, against the guerrillas.
Dr David Anderson, the Oxford historian, said: "There was a
great deal of atrocity in this war on both sides. More than 70,000 Kikuyu
were detained without trial for periods of two to six years in detention
camps. Some 1,048 Mau Mau convicts were hanged by the British. As the
struggle went on, their property, cattle, farmland and food was
confiscated on the government's authority by other Kikuyu.
"If the case goes to court, I see the British Government
having to pay something."
The veterans' claims for compensation have been gathering
support in Kenya for several years. In 1999, former fighters were in the
headlines when they tried to hand a petition into the British High
Commission in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, demanding money.
Terence Gavaghan, who was the British authorities' officer
in charge of rehabilitating 20,000 African prisoners between 1957 and
1958, said: "It is a pity that most people who try to remake history tend
to approach it from a denigratory manner.
"I was employed to make sure that unnecessary violence and
intimidation did not take place and the only compelling violence that did
happen was in the way of a policeman having to take someone in an armlock
when they refuse to co-operate.
"To make the tribes talk with each other, some of them had
to be compelled to do so. If they had not been, there would never had been
peace. This claim is in terms of hundreds of millions of pounds and the
people are old now and may not be who they say they are, but there will be
little way of checking.
"This is the name of the game now - everyone in this
country now claims compensation."
Bridget Scurfield, whose great- grandmother was killed by
the Mau Mau, said: "I feel about this the same way most people would feel
if the IRA started suing the Government. The British did some things they
should not have but the Mau Mau killed many. It was nasty, and I'm not
talking about the odd beating or shooting."
Brig John Randle, who fought the Mau Mau, said: "We took
people prisoner and certainly did not torture them: we then handed them
over to the colonial authorities.
"The Mau Mau's atrocities are well documented. As well as
killing whites they murdered men, women and children from their own race
too." | 
