1959 And All That

Let us have one thing clear in our minds. The Mau Mau were a thoroughly obnoxious lot. The huge majority of their victims was drawn from their own Kikuyu people.

However, they have nothing to do with why Barack Obama is anti-British. All Presidents of the United States are anti-British by definition. It is part of the job description.

The presence of not a few Anglican clergymen and laymen in the Mau Mau’s ranks was also an important example of how worldwide Anglicanism is in no sense the club of politically pro-British cultural Anglophiles sometimes fondly imagined in England.

And there are lessons to be learned here about counter-insurrgency generally, although the most obvious lessons in relation to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and doubtless Syria soon enough, are drawn from those interventions themselves: stay out of them.

But at least when it comes to the Hola atrocities, Kenya is an important example of where Enoch Powell was right. He was, of course, wrong about an awful lot. But he was right about that one.