Blundell's Kenya
By LAIN NIACLEOD
rr ins is a magnificent book.* It isn't and I doesn't purport to be a full history of Kenya over the last forty years, nor of the tangled story of her march towards independence. It is the story of one man's Kenya. But it is also a story of courage, of the political journey of a very brave man. Courage is the most admired and least understood of the political virtues. 'Who would true valour sec, let him come hither.' It takes no political courage to belt the debating daylights out of one's political opponents while one's own side cheers. Nor does it require courage to stand with the full approval of your community against Colonial Office rule or the British Government or the local civil servants. But, at whatever cost to yourself and especially to your family, to go flatly against the fierce and violent desires of your own people because you arc convinced that they are wrong and that time will prove you right, this is courage.
I remember Michael Blundell most clearly just before he returned to Kenya at the end of the seemingly interminable and frequently dead- locked Lancaster House Conference of 1960. A great deal of the Conference in fact took place in my London flat, and at least as many effective decisions were reached there after private talks with the representatives of all races as in the stately halls of Lancaster House. Of my personal relations with Blundell I do not wish to speak. I like to think that they were in fact and have since remained better than he admits in his book. He was under no illusions about what he had to face on his return, and although under deep strain and in a very emotional state he never wavered in his conviction (often re- affirmed in his book) that although abhorrent to the great majority of the European community in Kenya, the decisions of myself in particular and the Macmillan Government as a whole were necessary and right. So he returned. To the thirty pieces of silver spilled out in front of him at Nairobi Airport; to the insults and the ostracism offered not only to Blundell, but to his wife and daughter; to the pelting with eggs and tomatoes at an election meeting; to the European woman who spat in his face when a crowd of Africans cheered him, and her rasping snarl, `Why don't you let them kiss you, Judas Iscariot?' Torment for anyone. Hell for a man as sensitive as Michael Blundell.
There is much that is fascinating in the book. The portrait of Kenya seen through the eyes of a young man of eighteen straight from the classrooms of Wellington, the struggles and hardships, the joys and rewards of farming in a pioneering age, the coming of Mau Mau, the long agony of the Emergency, the years of re- covery. But inevitably to me the most absorbing chapters are those that touch on the development and blossoming, followed by the decline and fall, of the multi-racial theory. Was it always doomed to failure? Was it worth while or would it have been wiser to have recognised earlier the reality of African strength? Probably the answer of history to the first question will be 'Yes.' I think in time, although it is now disputed, it will also be agreed that in its day it was well worth while. It is easier now to see the fallacy than the value of the concept. The true watershed for African independence in every country in Africa came with the decision of the British Government to * SO ROUGH A WIND, By Sir Michael Blundell. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 40s.)
move towards independence for the Gold Coast. Given that decision, independence for the terri- tories in both East and Central Africa was recognised to be only a matter of time. Practi- cally no one, even the most liberal-minded politicians here or in Africa, realised how quickly the wind of change would reach gale force. We tried to draw a distinction between West Africa on the one hand and East and Central Africa on the other, based on the presence in the latter territories of a small percentage of Europeans who were at once the mainstay of the economic strength of their countries and its political leaders. A few long-sighted men like Sir Charles Arden-Clarke warned that this artificial distinc- tion could not work. And now with hindsight one can see that it could not. For if the vote of the peasant in West Africa was to be counted, for how long could his brother in the East be ignored? Yet the multi-racial concept was neither a foolish nor an ignoble creed. It was the creed of liberals, not of diehards. If it bought a little time, even a few months, it was worth while, for time is the most precious and the rarest com- modity in modern Africa. We should have learnt the lesson from West Africa earlier. We should have moved quicker after 1955 when Africanisa- tion still went forward at a snail's pace, and the advance of Africans to responsible posts in government limped along. These were the locust years.
I succeeded Alan Lennox-Boyd as Secretary of State in October, 1959. Some six months earlier I had had my first meeting with Blundell, who recalls that I was deeply moved by the tragedy of Hola and questioned him closely about it. He is right in thinking that Hola helped to convince me that swift change was needed in Kenya, but wrong in assuming that I approached the Lancaster House Conference with a preconceived plan, much less one based on universal suffrage. Indeed, I do not think I introduced `one man one vote' into any of the African constitutions for which I was respon- sible. I recognised that it was inevitable in due time, but did not think it particularly relevant to the stage for which I was responsible. It is often forgotten that whereas in a country like Britain governments are elected or re- jected at the polls, in countries moving towards their independence the shape of the government to come is in practice nearly always (Zanzibar was an unhappy exception) de- cided at the conference table. For example, in the Northern Rhodesian Constitution the British Government wanted to see a period of increased African participation in a government in which the Governor held the final say, prior to the inevitable movement towards self-government and so to independence. Anything less would have provoked an African uprising, anything more an explosion from the Europeans. This at least was my judgment and I am sure it was also that of my successor, Reggie Maudling. So with Kenya in 1960. Blundell makes it clear that I pressed him very hard. Of course I did. He was the key to the New Kenya Group and the Group was the key to the success of the Con- ference. In the end, all except the representatives of the right-wing Europeans signed, and I read with delight the last sentence in Blundell's chapter on this Conference: 'I returned to Kenya no longer thinking sectionally as a European, but nationally for the country as a whole.' Michael Blundell is a man I admire. True, there are passages in his book of orthodox denunciation of the British Government which conform exactly to settler mythology and might be extracts from 'Roy-boy's' forthcoming memoirs. There is a strange inconsistency here in Blundell's writing. It takes him to the penulti- mate page of his book to realise that his thoughts on AfriCa were far apart from those of Lord Salisbury. He talks with Welensky on African Summit level without seeming to understand that his true counterparts in Central Africa were Sir Robert Tredgold and Sir John Moffat. He couples my name with his as the objects of the wrath and contempt of the European community after Lancaster House. True enough, but in that case we may as well also share the credit. In fact, although I expect he would be reluctant to admit it, the Lancaster House decisions were the logical outcome of Blundell's policies.
Michael Blundell was only one, although the leader, of a company of men who in Kenya saw farther than their fellows and began to think as Kenyans. Men of other races, such as Musa Amalemba, the first African Elected Minister, joined them, but the inspiration came from those of British stock. Blundell, Havelock, Vasey, Mackenzie, Marrian, Alexander, Slade and many others. And I am proud to be able to add the name of my youngest brother, Rhoddy Macleod, to that roll of honour. They were men of courage.
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