Warwick Professor transforms historic Kenyan court case

Warwick History Professor David Anderson played a significant role in providing evidence at the historic Kenyan Mau Mau rebellion High Court Case.

The High Court ruled that Britain must offer a total of £14 million compensation to over 5,000 victims who suffered torture and brutality when detained during the Mau Mau uprising. Professor Anderson has written a number of books on Kenya’s history and teaches a module on the Mau Mau rebellion in Warwick’s History department.

It was his research at Kenyan archives in Nairobi and the publication of his book, Histories of the Hanged, in 2005 that caused a stir within Kenya and greatly aided victims already putting a case together for compensation, begun by the Kenyan Human Rights Commission in 2000.

Prof. Anderson used legal records to write about how Britain had treated those they detained. His knowledge of the existence of such documentation, which would serve as legal proof of Britain’s involvement in torture and brutality, had a key impact on the Kenyans’ pursuit for justice.

Speaking to the Boar, Prof. Anderson said: “Academically it’s very interesting because [my research] had an impact, and from 2005 onwards a case began to be arranged by lawyers.”

The Warwick History professor was contacted by Leighday Solicitors, who had taken on the case of victims seeking to sue the British government, asking him to give evidence.

Rebekah Read, a trainee solicitor at Leighday, has spent over two years working on the case. She told the Boar: “Since [2009], there’s been two strike out hearings with the Government trying to ‘strike out’ the case based on liability arguments, for instance suggesting that liability passed to the Kenyan Government upon independence.

“As well as limitation arguments, [they are] arguing that it happened too long ago for a fair trial to be possible.”

The Government lost both these arguments and the Kenyans were preparing for trial when the Government contacted them to arrange a settlement last week.

Prof. Anderson was very pleased that they chose to settle: “I was very gratified that we managed to get a settlement in the first place. The claimants were elderly Kenyans in their eighties. When we started the case initially, there were five claimants: two of them died. The very purpose of delaying it was causing problems.

“The trauma of going into court where three surviving claimants would have had to give evidence would have been traumatising. That wouldn’t have been dignified. Simply on a human level, I’m relieved and delighted that we didn’t have to go to court.”

Prof. Anderson also praised the foreign secretary William Hague: “He did come as close as possible to a full apology as it was possible to get. I know from talking to people in Kenya that they thought it was a day that would never come, Kenyans feel they have now got their history back.”

However, the professor felt less positive about the sum of money involved: “In fact, what most of the people received is not a lot of money. It’s disappointing. I would have wished it was more. I certainly think when you look at the injuries people have had it’s not a lot of money.

“All along claimants have argued that they wanted acknowledgment, they have often said it’s not the sum of money but acknowledgment – I think we’ve had a victory, but not as much as we’d have liked.”

Prof. Anderson also felt that too few people had been compensated. Out of 15,000 victims whom the Kenyan Rights Commission believed had legitimate claims, just 5,228 were compensated around £2,600 each.

Only those who could demonstrate that they had been tortured during the Emergency and could prove that this had been while in British custody were compensated.

“You can see why the Government might take that view, because they have to be put some legal limit on it. But on the other hand, a woman raped in a British camp and one raped at a road block don’t get the same compensation”.

The Government has for many years denied any systematic wrongdoing or knowledge of evidence that proved its culpability. It was not until Prof. Anderson gave evidence at court and the judge ordered the government to produce it that they found documents.

Within a matter of days the Government released the documents to lawyers.

The judge gave permission to Prof. Anderson and two other academics to work on them for the case between February and April 2011 and again before a second hearing in June 2012.

The work of Prof. Anderson and his postgraduate students assisting him was invaluable to the case. In October 2012, the judge produced a report citing historical papers presented by Anderson on almost each of its 78 pages.

“As a historian it warms you that for me, when we did all this work, the judge used all this work intensively in the judgement.

“The judge would not convict without legal concrete evidence. What we had to show was that it was part of government policy. What we managed to find were documents that showed the government was well aware of what was taking place, that they’d actually discussed it and passed it. That they were fully aware of what happened and signed off on the agreement,” said Prof. Anderson.

The Mau Mau rebellion, which began in 1947, was against the continued theft of land and the vicious white-supremacist rule. The ‘Emergency’ was declared in response in 1952, as both rebellion and state brutality increased. A brutal counterinsurgency campaign was waged against not just Mau Mau fighters but local civilians.

Thousands of civilians were arrested for Mau Mau allegiances through the routine use of violence and torture. Concentration camps were used by the British to control the ‘Emergency’ and several massacres were carried out. Thousands also starved to death through disease and famine.

This represents a historic turn, marking the British authorities’ first official acknowledgement of the ferocious violence British forces carried out, including castration, rape and beatings.

The impact of Anderson’s findings on Warwick students is also significant. He has said that it will hugely feed in to his teaching on a special history module on the Mau Mau rebellion.

Himself and Prof. Daniel Branch intend to use all of these documents  as aspects of the course. “Students who take that course will be at the cutting edge of that research.”

The module is already heavily oversubscribed for next year, and the department has had to turn away as many students as they could take. Prof. Anderson was “delighted that students show so much interest.”

He is currently writing another book on the Mau Mau period, due to be published early next year.