Wars and Conflicts permalink
Kenyan Atrocities
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Message 1.Â
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Wednesday, 12th May 2010
The atrocities committed by the British during the "Emergency" of the fifties are well documented an undeniable
How, so soon after fighting against the Nazi horrors of the previous decade could we have abused, tortured and killed thousands of people?
I find it terribly sad as well as horrific -
Message 2
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
It's history, I'm afraid....
Look at the terrible atrocities endured by the Jews in Europe, especially during WWII, and now look at home Israel treats the Palestinians. -
Message 3
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
Perhaps this extract I have found goes some way to explaining why this episode of history isn't well known to most people:
<>
Of course, it's easy to take a view from our comfortable armchairs today, but those who were there at the time had to react to the uprising in a firm way, and who are we, who weren't even there, to try and judge and criticise their reactions? Kenyatta evidently had a realistic outlook because he helped the British to destroy incriminating records after he had taken power. -
Message 4
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
History is it?
About four years ago in the radio programme The Moral Maze learned people were advocating the legitimacy of torture in the so called 'War on Terror' and using the time honoured emotional blackmail to support their claims. And not so long ago there were contributors to these message boards supporting exactly the same. In their view torture of suspects was an acceptable part in the defence of democracy.
I know the real reason why justice wears a blindfold and inhumanity will continue whatever guise or excuse you wish to employ in its defence. -
Message 5
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
"...and who are we, who weren't even there, to try and judge and criticise their reactions?..."
I wasn't at Auschwitz either.
I rather suspect that, if Kenyatta did destroy records, he did it for his own local reasons, not out of any desire to protect Britain's reputation.
The OP asked how we got away with it. Simple. They were black and African. -
Message 6
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
Should we also be asking by what legality did the British have the right to be in that country in the first place? Right of occupation based on what laws?
As somebody has mentioned WW2: was it same set of rules that gave Germany the right to occupy Europe?
When the population of those countries rose up in revolt against the oppressors did that then give the Germans the right to imprison without trail and torture them?
Did this revolt in Europe leave the indigenous population without legality; to be labeled as the Mau Mau were, as terrorists?
If so then the whole War Cabinet including Churchill and the SOE were guilty of supporting terrorism.
Last question- Is any man in his own country entitled to aspire to autonomous government that the majority wish, without fear of foreign intervention? -
Message 7
Posted by ambi (U13776277) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
"How, so soon after fighting against the Nazi horrors of the previous decade could we have abused, tortured and killed thousands of people?"
I'd partly blame the Nuremberg Trials. The (entirely justified) prosecution of the Nazis' crimes while ignoring those of Stalin and leaving all the actions of the Allies unquestioned probably gave us a tremendous sense of righteousness on top of the certainties of colonial rule. -
Message 8
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
I think you tend to make yourselves faintly ridiculous to be attempting to re-run history and second-guess old intentions in this way. Why, only this evening I have been hearing a friendly conversation between a Zulu lady and an Englishwoman (Julia Bradbury) breezily recalling what a warrior race the Zulus were, and how they suddenly invaded the area known as Loshuto and ousted the tribes that had been living there peacably for ages. No trace of denigration of the Zulu nation, no criticism, no regrets!
Things happened in history. Accept the fact and move on instead of beating your nation up. I have little doubt that the situation in Kenya was seen at the time as a law and order issue. -
Message 9
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 13th May 2010
Who are the 'we' being referred to in the opening post?
Speak for yourself. And if 'you' abused, tortured and killed thousands of people then, of course, you should surrender yourself for trial. -
Message 10
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Friday, 14th May 2010
The Hola Camp Massacre of March 1959 where 11 prisoners were beaten to death by black Kenyan guards aroused great indignation in this country at the time and were used by George Wigg and Barbara Castle from the Labour backbenches to mount an attack on the Government's whole colonial policy in Africa.
This attack was joined by a Conservative backbencher, Enoch Powell, when the massacre was debated in the Commons in July 1959. Powell argued, in his typically forensic style, that if the same standards in the treatment of prisoners did not apply in Kenya as applied in Britain there was no point to British colonial rule (this speech is as equally significant in Powell's career as his later "rivers of blood" address but is now largely forgotten).
As a result of these attacks, after the Conservative government was re-elected the following October, Macmillan replaced Lennox-Boyd as Colonial Secretary by the more liberal Iain Macleod and accelerated decolonisation not only in Kenya but throughout the rest of British Colonial Africa.
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Message 11
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Friday, 14th May 2010
"...Should we also be asking by what legality did the British have the right to be in that country in the first place?..."
This is a good question. And a complicated one to answer. Not simplified at all by the changing mores of international law. Given the details of how the occupation takes place, I doubt it is possible to prove the occupation illegal.
However, by the end of the war, it is certainly not morally sustainable. What a pre-democratic imperial Britain could do with impugnity is not possible in a democratic nation still congratulating itself on saving Europe from barbarity.
The problem with revolts is often the morality and legality of the techniques used by those in rebellion. In African cases these are usually aggravated by racial or tribal tensions. One side commits an atrocity, the other retaliates. The government takes sides and joins in. Usually none of it is legally defencible. -
Message 12
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Friday, 14th May 2010
LairigGhru,
So you appear to believe that all history should be sanitized by time do you? Does that include events that are still within human memory? Perhaps you would be kind enough to provide us with a sliding time scale of responsibility so that criminals need only observe the requisite time to avoid capture or punishment. Would that be seven days, a month, certainly no longer than a few years?
Since when does the recognition of an international crime become, to use your phrase 'beating your country up'?
I do not claim responsibility for any Zulu infringement of morality but then again I do not accept that theirs excuses mine. -
Message 13
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 14th May 2010
Should we also be asking by what legality did the British have the right to be in that country in the first place? Right of occupation based on what laws?
As somebody has mentioned WW2: was it same set of rules that gave Germany the right to occupy Europe?Â
Seems to be a bit of a contradiction here. Is it being said that the UK had no right to occupy Germany in 1945 because there was no law sanctioning such an occupation. -
Message 14
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Saturday, 15th May 2010
Spruggles (msg 12),
I couldn't agree more that criminals should be pursued for their crimes in their lifetime. I confess that I am totally ignorant of details of what took place in Kenya in the 1950s, and neither do I know anything about law, so I am not in a position to judge whether anyone alive needs to face justice, but I suspect that you are one of those who outright condemns the colonialist phase of our history and looks only for baseness in our motives generally. This seems to me both unjust and disloyal.
The way history unfolded, it would have been surprising if we had not used our technology to advance ourselves abroad. -
Message 15
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Saturday, 15th May 2010
Vizzer,
Even supposing that that Nazi Germany did not break any international laws in invading declared neutral states knowing full well that would involve war with those that guaranteed that neutrality, they must have been well aware of the consequences of loosing that subsequent conflict.
Even supposing that the part occupation of Germany in 1945 by the Western Allies was not to deny as much territory to the Soviet Union as possible and an honest attempt to re-stabilize a defeated enemy, there is no confusion or ambiguity in that occupation. The reason being is that we did not seek to meet out to the population what we did to the rightful occupants of Kenya. We were not seeking in Germany to protect white farmers nor to strengthen colonial rule. In fact we treated our defeated foe with more respect and compassion we did the black people who were 'protected' under the guise of Democracy. -
Message 16
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Saturday, 15th May 2010
LairigGhru,
I would not agree with your assessment that I seek to condemn out of hand the achievements of the British. That would be biased indeed. All that I seek is a balance in the history of our Empire.
Our original motives can only be assessed accurately in the context and understanding of the then contemporaneous world politics. However, when trying to obtain a comprehensive overview of colonialism should we only celebrate the good bits and ignore the bad? Why pontificate on the failings of other nations but not consider with the same jaundiced eye the failings of the British?
Should we not acknowledge the failings as well as the successes? After all, we can apply the same rules not just to Africa but the treatment of all the indigenous populations that made up the Empire. There are many questionable and some obnoxious episodes swept under the carpet in the Foreign and Colonial Offices ... so much sometimes that I wonder that they could eventually get the doors open: does the truthful examination of history diminish or strengthen our society?
I believe that if a subject of this country feels upset at incidents in our past then they also have the right to express themselves(re' the original post)and I'm sorry if you think that any such expression condemns anyone as disloyal and unjust. -
Message 17
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 16th May 2010
Even supposing that that Nazi Germany did not break any international laws in invading declared neutral states knowing full well that would involve war with those that guaranteed that neutrality, they must have been well aware of the consequences of loosing that subsequent conflict.Â
Does this mean that it's okay to invade neutral countries as long as you win the war in question? I suppose that's true. The UK did indeed invade neutral countries during the Second World War and with impunity. Ask the Icelanders and the Iranians about that one.
Even supposing that the part occupation of Germany in 1945 by the Western Allies was not to deny as much territory to the Soviet Union as possible and an honest attempt to re-stabilize a defeated enemy, there is no confusion or ambiguity in that occupation.Â
Agreed. The UK's occupation of Lower Saxony, Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia, Carinthia and Charlottenburg etc following the Berlin Conference and Potsdam Agreement of 1945 was unambiguous and no different to the UK's occupation of Kenya etc following the Berlin Conference and Treaty of 1885.
We were not seeking in Germany to protect white farmersÂ
Who are the 'we' being referred to here?
nor to strengthen colonial rule.Â
The UK Military Commandant presiding over the UK Military Goverment exercised supreme authority and the power of veto over and above the 4 elected civilian borough councils (Tiergarten, Wilmersdorf, Spandau and Charlottenburg) in the UK Sector of West Berlin for 45 years up until 1990.
In fact we treated our defeated foe with more respect and compassion we did the black people who were 'protected' under the guise of Democracy.Â
Again - who is being referred to by the first person plural? Also the term 'respect and compassion' is a relative one. Ask the UK civilians in Derry, Northern Ireland for example if they think that the UK army is respectful and compassionate. -
Message 18
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Sunday, 16th May 2010
Vizzer,
'We' = generic - British.
Yes, history always sides with the winner. I very much doubt if I would still be alive to argue if Germany has conducted a successful invasion of Britain.
You seem to misunderstand my last point. I was referring to the British treatment of the DEFEATED enemy the Germans. I thought that was obvious but I apologize for any misunderstanding.
No mention intended to Ireland. That's a whole different episode('blood on the ancestral stairs' and all that). -
Message 19
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 18th May 2010
... when in Cyprus, in a place they went as tourists too, the British would hang 17 years old boys merely for posssesion of old and empty weapons and would jail for several years teenagers for stone-throwing... what makes you for a moment think that they would refrain from just killing indecrmiminately poor Kenyans?
WWII or no WWII everything is relative. It is not about British-bashing... it is just about saying that British were no morally better (or worse) than any other. What kept British apart is their usual sneaky way of most often letting someone else do the massacre or genocide for their account. However, the great famine in India in late 19th century was caused by them and not so inadvertedly since they did absolutely nothing about it but kept hoarding stocks to sell them more expensive (but also control a bit the local population...). 20 million people died. The numbers rate queen Victoria at the same level with Stalin, Hitler, Mao and all the company. -
Message 20
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
"... when in Cyprus, in a place they went as tourists too, the British would hang 17 years old boys merely for posssesion of old and empty weapons and would jail for several years teenagers for stone-throwing..."
Such punishments may be draconian, but they are not indiscriminate. Possession of weapons during an insurgency is always likely to attract punishment, as is taking part in riots, aka, stone throwing.
"... it is just about saying that British were no morally better (or worse) than any other..."
Well, actually, the British were,on the whole, better as imperial masters than some other countries. Not many native peoples would swap the British for the Japanese, the Germans or the Belgians.
"...However, the great famine in India in late 19th century was caused by them and not so inadvertedly since they did absolutely nothing about it but kept hoarding stocks to sell them more expensive..."
Simply un-true. Famines were common in the nineteenth century. Even Belgium had one. -
Message 21
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
All that I seek is a balance in the history of our Empire.Â
Who said 'Once you can fake sincerity, you've made it'? -
Message 22
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
Hello baz,
And you assume that an opposing viewpoint to your own is always insincerity do you? You realize that says much about you? I assume that it was directed at me but kindly do direct you comment to the person whom you wish to address in future.
Regards, Spruggles. -
Message 23
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
TimTrack,
Quite true. The British were probably the best of the bunch but that does not excuse the nasty bits nor should we allow ourselves the luxury of indulging in selective amnesia, well not in my opinion anyway.
Famine comments are valid too, except it's how we handled the situation that bears scrutiny perhaps? i. e. the Irish famine.
I read once too in the 'New Scientist' that part of the problem of the periodical flooding in Bangladesh was due to the interference of British engineers who designed a 'better' method of draining the Delta. I'm not sure of the accuracy of that.
'The Road to Hell ...' and all that?
Regards,
Spruggles. -
Message 24
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
I think the balanced view would be that "our Empire" was of great benefit to Great Britain but absolutely disastrous for the majority of those who were colonised
Whether it is Kenya, Australia or South Africa the British were there there purely for their own gain and the welfare of the indigenous peoples was the last thing on their mind -
Message 25
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
Glencairn99,
It's a very emotive subject(as you might have noticed)and you are certainly correct that initially the only real motive behind colonisation was profit.
If we isolate India as a classic example then trade was indeed the motive. Later when the British administration replaced the commercial enterprise the stabilization(segregating the waring tribes etc)started under the East India Company continued and perhaps then our intentions were for a more honorable and benign occupation. Trouble was that just as other nations has discovered, the natives did not always share the same viewpoint that we British did. Under colonial government the British were faced with many difficulties, some that forced a clash between the indigenous culture and that of our Christian mores.
A careful balance had to be maintained, one with British justice and its administration and with customs that have been practiced for thousands of years(well before Britain was a nation state)and included in that mix was religious tolerance - a somewhat complex problem if you look at the racism that was endemic in the British ruling classes at the time. What customs could the British ignore and which could they positively discourage without causing rifts?
Mistakes were made but the biggest mistake of all was the blinkered view that we British would control India for eternity and that force of arms would always maintain the status quo.
Colonization also comes in other guises though. Rather than the direct invasion there's the creeping insidious kind that uses finance and corruption. And another that uses influence to deliberately destabilize a country with the object of the placement of puppet leadership.
All are objectionable in my view, especially if those countries that practice the above claim to be 'democratic'.
Regards,
Spruggles. -
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 19th May 2010
I think that the question of the Kenyan atrocities, though people can use it to make general comments, must also be seen in its very particular context..As with the Amritsar Massacre and the atrocities that followed the Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence there does seem to be an additional element of viciousness, anger and use of outright terror when women and children are the chosen targets. Whether this is sexism or not the slaughter of women and children is much more likely to evince a vicious response thatn the slaughter of men.. We know that we are "fair game".
Peter Ustinov tells in "Dear Me" how he was given a special responsibility in 1945 to look at film coming back from the war and decide on what might be used publicly. He recounts the experience of watching silent film as a British unit prepared to march into Belsen. The sergeant major put them into full dress order and discipline, and took them through the gates. The men entered Hell with dying and dead, including women and children. Battle hardened men who had fought their way from the beaches of Normandy, were overcome, and fell out. Finally they saw a German guard. They lost all discipline and rushed to beat him up. Ustinov had of course grown up in London because his father was a German representative over here. What he saw in the eyes of the German guard was gratitude at being punished.
The Kenya situation was intimately connected with the whole question of "the White Highlands". This was a region that seemed perfect for European settlement and inward investment. Among major economic initiatives was the "great ground-nut scheme" which turned what appeared to be uninhabited "virgin land" into a rich farming area offering work and prosperity to Africans who came to work in the "money economy".
But these lands were lands that the Kikuyu tribe had been in accustomed to using in that African way of life that was based upon regularly irregular patterns of migration. Africans had well-established customs and practices by which gifts and tokens were given when one tribe had to cross another's territory, or even was compelled by Africa's wild nature to settle temporarily in lands associated with the ancestors of another tribe.
But this European idea of permament settlement and the building up of commercial infrastructure was very alien.
But with the Europeans developing the "Out Of Africa" (Meryl Streepe/Robert Redford) kind of society the European homesteads where isolated families were cut off left women and children very much at the mercy of the Mau Mau terrorism luanched by The Kikuyu.
It was partly for this reason that the Boer women and children had been brought into concentration camps during the Boer War. In the "People's Century" series some black African soldiers who chose to fight on the British side recounted how they had come across a Boer woman alone on the Veldt and had gange raped her as an act of war. They re-enacted how each man had slapped a pound note in the woman's hand for each rape, to show that they were treating her as a whore.
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
Perhaps if the Ground Nut Scheme had worked as people had hoped things might have been different.
But in view of the overall "Wars and Conflicts" theme it is interesting to note that, apart from its internal weaknesses, it suffered from global phenomena that were linked with many atrocities.
The horrors of industrialised warfare between 1914 and 1918 strengthened the appeal for many people of country life away from the "Bright Lights Big City" of the booming metropolises in the global economic competition before 1914.
This seems to have happened after the French Wars of 1793-1815 as well, both in France and in the United Kingdom. France and Ireland in particular saw a great preference for quiet rural life based upon small plotholdings and smallholdings, where people could aspire to a greater freedom than caught up in the urban "cash nexus". But like many cities these farming economie were tied into what I call "potato-patch economics".
The warning signs were there in the great potato famines of the 1840's, and also in the terrible plight of the Indigo growers of India during the First World War, when the great British textile industry was largely shut down- at least for commercial rather than war production.
Nevertheless after 1918 there was a desire to return to the land and return to what was regarded as an historical normality- in fact improved because in many ways it was more possible for "the common man" to aspire to a little place of his own than before. And this applied to the USSR with its New Economic Policy of small business and smallholdings, as it did to the great "Western Empires" including the British global one and the American internal one.
As in the Ground Nut Scheme, however, personal ignorance was compounded by general misconceptions. Some of these were finally exposed by Pierre Gourou's book "The Tropical Soil". The luxuriant growth and vastness of tropical rainforest and vast plains had created an illusion of great fertility in "Virgin Soils", so that expectations of yields and quick profits were wildly excessive. And in many, if not most cases, people setting off on this "life adventure" did so on the basis of borrowed money.
By the late Twenties, however, there were global problems related to the intense struggle to make this 'back to the garden' strategy work. Commodities markets are notoriously fickle. When the global economy was still depressed there was very little Demand so prices were low. But as the economy picked up so many people in so many places in the world were trying to grow the same things that prices got worse rather than better. By the end of the Twenties many of these smallholders were working themselves and their land too intensively, producing the evils of over-cultivation- the diseases and blights of mono-culture and soil exhaustion that created terrible dust-bowls in which a farmer's soil just blew away in the wind.
It seems quite likely that the commercial smallholders of the USSR- referred to as "The Kulaks"- would have had a different fate had the value of their produce on the world market been greater. They would not have needed to keep so much of the produce to keep themselves alive, and would have created a reasonable revenue for the State, as Russian peasants had done before 1914. As it was in 1929 the Soviet authorities launched the extermination of the kulaks.
Elsewhere, in Germany, the rural region bordering Schleswig Holstein, a place of struggling smallholders, was the first non-urban region to be targetted by the Nazi Party. It had been an urban based party trying to tap into the horror of the Metropolis life. But here in the rural North West the Nazis discovered their ideal kind of rural clean-living Aryan struggling and failing because of the heavy degree of indebtedness. It was a situation in which within the Capitalist world there was a great hostility towards and suspicion of banks and bankers, and the Nazis found a simple solution for the problems of their smallholding farmers. They were in the claws of Jewish bankers who cared nothing for the German people etc.
It was a key moment in the evolution of Nazism for when the Nazis took power they tried to promote their idea of an kind of advanced Medievalism in which the best aspects of the modern world would be blended with the old folk traditions of Medieval Germany in small towns and thriving village communities.
But by this time the World economy was in the throes of its great depression and there was a general return to ideas of self-sufficiency and national interest.. Out in India Mahatma Gandhi dedicated himself to building ashram's- self-sufficient villages as part of a general return to handicrafts and ways of life that had endured for millennia. The world has enough for human need but not for human greed.
The trouble is that wars and conflicts, and all the paraphernalia of the State and Society, have a great deal to do with trying to handle the dynamics of human need and greed.
Cass -
Message 28
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
<>
This reminds me of a poignant interview I saw in a documentary many years ago (possible one of the 'People's Century' episodes). A woman was recalling a conversation she had with a German officer during a train journey. He was heading back to his unit because of the D-Day landings, and he was hoping to be killed in the fighting.
The reason for his feelings seemed to be that he was haunted by the memory of a wonderful little boy aged about five who, naked and about to be murdered along with his father in the death camp, used his last breath to ask his father for confirmation that he was standing correctly and proudly as a Jew should. -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
LairigGhru
A very moving story...
On the History Hub recently I have been having some exchanges about the limitations of book knowledge, and I can not think of that terrible period without a sense of humiliation that one day c1971 someone in the staff room started asking questions about the Nazi death camps.. As "The graduate historian" present I passed on some information... and a quiet voice came from the corner. "Actually I was at Auschwitz". My Italian teacher colleague and her younger brother had been the only two to survive: and after liberation they had walked all the way to Italy.
But, having seen such Hell, one could not imagine a more gentle person. She had seen the monsters within too close up to flirt with them.
I thought that The People's Century was a really good series.
By the way going back to Ustinov, his own perception might not have been everyone's. He was very fond of his "Abysinnian" grannie. His grandfather had been a Swiss missionary who had gone to "Abysinnia" and had built the cannon that helped the Ethiopians to defeat the Italians at the battle of Adowa. But the Emperor did not trust him entirely and chained him to his cannons during the battle- just in case. After the famous victory he gave his daughter in marriage to the missionary who had helped to win the day.
A case of 'Fight the good fight'?.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
Thanks, Cass. I must confess that retelling the story nearly overcame me at one point. You don't forget a tale like that.
As you will know, Peter Ustinov's father inadvertently inspired Peter Wright to write 'Spycatcher'. Wright was incensed that the elder Ustinov had been refused a pension following his contributions to our espionage efforts in WW2 and he wrote the book in a spirit of protest. -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
LairigGhuru
Well, I can not recall that Auschwitz incident without the tears welling... But empathy is one of the most valuable human talents.
I think, however, that this raises another theme to add to the escape to the simple country smallholding one that I have already suggested.
I get the impression,perhaps eroniously, that within the Irish Republican movement there have been moments and individuals who have become so disillusioned with what the process of struggle has done to their humanity that they have sought to "hide their talent" for violence under a bushel.
Perhaps this merely seems an obvious example because rural Ireland was famous for its remoteness and placidity. I recall a pupil from here in South London who said that for the sake of her sanity she needed to go back to the family roots in the West Coast of Ireland at least every six weeks: and hoped to go on to Dublin University.
The sad details of sexual abuse within the Adams family are, I suspect, quite typical of some of the trauma and disorientation produced by armed struggle. And, having mentioned one source of instability during the inter-war period, the more obvious one was the influence all over the place of the marching ex-soldier, either for or against the government establishment.
This theme can be traced through "the Bonus Marchers" in the USA, the "Black and Tans" in the UK, and their adeversaries, the Blackshirts of D'Annuncio and then Mussolini, the Freikorps, Spartakists and Nazis in Germany, and even the Sikhs in the Punjab.
Neville Chamberlain was right "war is a terrible thing".
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
but back on topic, the British forces tortured, raped, mutilated and murdered thousands of Kenyans
We also threw them in concentration camps
Can anyone explain how our actions differed from the Nazis treatment of the Jews?
As other posters have alluded to it can only be put down to racism as we didn't treat captured nazis in this fashion
They were black and they didn't count
We hear more about the 32 European settlers that were killed than the possibly tens of thousands of Kenyans
That to me is the bitter truth of our great Empire -
Message 33
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
It's remarkable how some people use the first person plural ('we', 'our') when discussing the history of states. It's also significant that those who use the first person plural then do not then take personal responsibility for the events in question.
Glemcairn99 - will you return to Kenya and submit yourself for trial for the crimes which (in Message 1 and in Message 32) you claim to have committed? -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
Glencairn
Perhaps we did not treat "captured Nazis" that way, but by and large soldiers were treated according to the Geneva Convention. The Mau Mau were not soldiers, in fact I remember a member of a Kenyan government post-independence saying that the Mau Mau did not exist at all. But there is another feasible explanation for the difference to which you have alluded.
In 1918 the British had been mercilless towards Germany. In accordance with normal British military tactics the Germans were starved into surrender by blockade.. It had proved a very effective "hands off" strategy for many years: and, in spite of the suggeestion of Winston Churchill that the honourable thing to do once the enemy had ceased-fire was to lift the blockade, the blockade was kept in place and Germany was condemned to a starvation winter. It was a weakened German population that subsequently, like much of Europe, then suffered more deaths from Spanish Flu than it had suffered during the war.
The situation did not improve within Germany in the post-war years and Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby went as League of Nations Observers to inspect and report on the de-militarised zone. There they were horrified by the insensitivity and brutality of the British and French occupying forces to the plight of the German population.
These points were made most vociferously by the Peace Pledge Union led by Dick Sheppard in the Thirties, and, though he died before the Second World War, his biographer wrote in 1939 asking whether there would be a new war had the victors acted towards their defeated enemy with Christian Charity.
As the Second World War progressed planning for the post-war situation both at home and abroad sought to learn the lessons from the last war.
But by the Fifties the world was a very different place with wars and the risks of wars all over the place.
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
"Can anyone explain how our actions differed from the Nazis treatment of the Jews?"
Well, unless British actions in Kenya were a state sponsored, systematic and deliberate ethnic cleansing and extermination of an entire people based purely on religious and ethnic hate then their actions do indeed differ from the Nazis.
Whilst I agree with your msg 24, imo it is an exaggeration to compare British actions with the Nazis and does your argument no good. -
Message 36
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
it is an exaggeration to compare British actions with the Nazis and does your argument no good. Â
It's not merely exaggeration: it's political posturing of the most infantile kind. -
Message 37
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
for the Kenyans who dug their own graves and then were battered to death and buried in them i'm sure it didn't seem too different
or those castrated or hanged from trees
i'm not a polemicist I am just genuinely appalled by the actions of my country not so very long ago and wondering if others feel the same or are happy to carry on the age old British custom of brushing uncomfortable truths under the carpet -
Message 38
Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
...the age old British custom of brushing uncomfortable truths under the carpetÂ
It's not a "British custom" at all. We beat ourselves up over our past far more than any other nation AFAIK. Just look at what Jack Straw said about many of the world's problems being "Britain's fault" when he was Foreign Secretary. Nowadays the facts we brush under the carpet are things like the huge number of Indians who signed up to serve as sepoys in HEIC regiments and conquered and garrisoned India for "us". -
Message 39
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 20th May 2010
Glencairn
I really do not know on what basis you can talk of a BRITISH custom of brushing uncomfortable truths under the carpet..
Most treatments of Scottish history or parts of it that I have encountered so far make a very strong case that uncomfortable truths that underpin ancient hatreds, conflicts and feuds must be kept alive in a very strong and powerful tradition that has helped to keep the spirit of conflict going in a never ending spiral of atrocity and counter-atrocity.
If this tradition did not exist in Ireland before the Scottish plantations under James VI/I it certainly has been a feature of the unhappy history of that island ever since.. And I will not go to General Macarthur and "thank god we still have soldiers who know how to deal with a rabble".
Niall Ferguson in his "Empire. How Britain Made the Modern World" made a very powerful and convincing argument that the Empire was really a rather a disproportionately Scottish affair. Highland regiments distinguished themselves on many a battlefield, being credited especially for their valour in some of the key battles in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny. Though it was Governor O'Dwyer who said of Mahatma Gandhi's "soul force" that he intended to mobilise in the Punjab in 1919, "Well we will crush it with our fist force"-- leading to Indian conspiracy theories that the Amritsar Massacre was deliberately contrived by O'Dwyer as a direct punishement for the killing of 4-5 British bank and other officials, and the gang assault on the British missionary Miss Sherwood.
But long before this time T.B. Macaulay, English born of Scottish stock, was explaining to Parliament c1843 that almost everywhere throughout British domestic or foreign affairs you would find a Scotsman in the top job, or the second place. And, of course, he had followed his Scots father , who was in charge of a colony in Sierra Leone, in holding a tremendously important position in the East India Company. And no-one told the Glencoe Massacre story more powerfully than Macaulay, or the dramas Derry/Londonderry and the Irish troubles in 1689-90.
Gordon Brown had probably been in Downing Street too long before the election, which is why he only remembered in the last week the need to call up the hateful spirits of "the uncomfortable truths" of the history that was used to underpin the Labour movement.
The English, in my experience, do not brush things under the carpet... as in the current government coalition, they just refuse to allow the present and future to be totally mortgaged to past unpleasantness and just try to move forward in a posiitive and progressive direction leaving others stuck in the past.. Some of us would like to pass on a happier inheritance to our children than feelings of guilt, shame, retribution, reparations etc.
As I wrote in a song :
Don't go and waste your breath
Worrying bout the angel of death
Someday she'll make a rendezvous
But in the meantime, life has business with you.
Cass -
Message 40
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Friday, 21st May 2010
Niall Ferguson in his "Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World" made a very powerful and convincing argument that the Empire was really rather a disproportionately Scottish affairÂ
Cass, Ferguson erred in looking at the background of folk employed by the Empire. He did not emphasise the primacy of the 'corporate culture'
The Empire was run like a mutinational corporation with headquarters in London. Its employees came from all over the British Isles, including Scotland, Ireland and even some of the colonies, but to succeed and gain promotion these employees had to abide by London's 'corporate culture'
An example here in NSW was Lachlan Macquarie, regarded as the most visionary and successful of the early governors. There's currently a celebration year to mark the bicentenary of his appointment as governor. Yet, at the time, Macquarie was seen by London as a failed governor. He was far too ambitious in building public works, did not abide by the standards of fiscal restraint and was far too humane in his treatment of convicts expected by his masters in London. He was therefore marked as a 'corporate failure'
Some of us would like to pass onto our children a happier inheritance...Â
The problem Cass is that there's still an unhappy inheritance elsewhere in the old Empire, -
Message 41
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 21st May 2010
London's 'corporate culture'Â
What were the characteristics of this London corporate culture and how did it differ, say, from the Paris corporate culture or the Amsterdam corporate culture etc?
Lachlan Macquarie, regarded as the most visionary and successful of the early governorsÂ
Another 'visionary' was Adolf Hitler and wanted to see the mass settlement of German people in Poland and the Ukraine at the expense of the Poles and the Ukraineans. However, Hitler failed in his 'vision' whereas Macquarie (as you say) was 'successful' and did indeed disposess the Australians of their homelands by denying them civil rights, swamping them with immigrant setters or else forcibly driving them out by means of military violence.
there's still an unhappy inheritance elsewhere in the old EmpireÂ
And that is the UK's problem how exactly? -
Message 42
Posted by baz (U14258304) on Friday, 21st May 2010
Hello baz,
And you assume that an opposing viewpoint to your own is always insincerity do you? You realize that says much about you? I assume that it was directed at me but kindly do direct you comment to the person whom you wish to address in future.
Regards, Spruggles.Â
Keep your hair on! -
Message 43
This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.
-
Message 44
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 21st May 2010
Depends who you mean by the 'British'.
Some of my English ancestors were incarcerated in workhouses in England by the British for the crime of being English and being poor. This was at a time when the British Empire was supposedly the richest and most powerful on earth.
I also note that Irish schools fail to teach Irish children about the appalling crimes committed by the Irish against native Americans and aboriginal Australians etc in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and ongoing today. -
Message 45
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Friday, 21st May 2010
#41
.... dispossess Australians of their homelands by denying them civil rights.......Â
That's the one area that Macquarie did follow London's corporate cuilture,and regarded here as the blemish on his governership -
Message 46
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 21st May 2010
I admire you for raising the topic and the way you presented it.Â
a bit like this perhaps Matt?
and there was also another thread on the same topic started around the same time:
Save the deer. Don't skin it. -
Message 47
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Friday, 21st May 2010
garryowensir (msg 43),
I find your POV rather an odd one - going through life denigrating your own country instead of extolling its good points as you ought to be. Have you not noticed as you go through life that people of other nations are puzzled when they meet someone like you who has no pride in their place of origin and behaves like that? In their eyes you just look silly.
I have doubts about the veracity of your claim regarding German children for Miep Gies, Anne Frank's helper who died only a few months ago, reported that she (an Austrian by birth) had to educate the German children who came to see the hiding place in Amsterdam because they hadn't been told anything about what was done to the Jews in the war. -
Message 48
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Saturday, 22nd May 2010
" To do so would acknowledge the British Empire for what it was. The systematic looting of the third world by the British has well and truly been awash in spin and smoke." "The biggest crime of all is for the British to continue whitewashing what they did. I admire you for raising the topic and the way you presented it." Â
You say that like its a bad thing? Looting the third world.? For a start, its not like they were doing anything with it and I'm sure that in the end they were all very grateful for having civilisation volley fired into them and being being forced down mines and packed for export so their great grand sons can be president of the United States.
In fact given the state of the world economy. I think we should start doing it again. I've got the legs to pull off the knee length kahki shorts and Sam Browne look, not sure about a solar topee? they always look like your smuggling bedpans out of the hospital, but I dare say I can manage. We can al be district officers and sip our gin and its on the verandah while potting rebellious natives with our Webleys as they try to storm the compound waving petitions and sharpened mangos.
The British Empire 2.0 coming to you in 2010. -
Message 49
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Saturday, 22nd May 2010
Hellllllllo baz
My hair still where it is supposed to be. How's yours? -
Message 50
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Saturday, 22nd May 2010
backtothedarkplace,
Could I settle for the evening choutapeg of the old Brandy and Soda? Pausing only to kick the punkah whaler when he little devil dozes off.
Incidentally, don't forget to book up for World War Three, I'd hate for you to miss it!
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