Enoch Powell and His 1959 Speech in UK Parliament On the Mistreatment of Mau Mau Prisoners

A sensitive young, middle-aged man criticizes the colonial treatment of rebellious prisoners, arguing that it's not English to do what was done in the UK's name

I’ve been on a bit of an Enoch Powell kick lately, and I’m not exactly sure as to why. Best known for his “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he warned the UK about the dangers of mass migration, Powell was both an iconoclast and an eccentric, something that the British used to produce in spades.

Think about it; as a boy of the age of six, he would finish books and then collect his parents and give them a presentation on what he learned. His teen years were focused on the Classics, and translating(!) them into English. So adept was he at this that by the time he got to Trinity College at Cambridge, he entered into every Classics competition that existed at the time, and won each and every single one during his first year. When the University’s Dean and his wife invited him for a private supper, he had the temerity to politely refuse their offer, insisting that he had work to do (more translations). He became a Professor of Greek at the ripe old age of 25.

A devoted Nietzschean, Powell dreamed of becoming Viceroy of India, and he took the first opportunity to volunteer to serve his country in the war. His rise through the ranks was nothing short of incredible: Lieutenant-Colonel by 1942, and Brigadier (One-Star General) by the end of WW2. The man was the living embodiment of a 19th century German Romantic, albeit an English one at that. So thoroughly English was he that he could barely conceal his anti-Americanism, a trait that would surface from time to time over the course of decades. And yes, English, not British. Although today feted by immigration-restrictionists across the UK, his nationalism was what is known as “Little Englander”. Adding to the eccentricity, the turn away from Empire by the UK shortly after WW2 saw Powell do much the same: from golden dreams of being appointed Viceroy of India, to transforming into a Little Englander, adamant that it protect and retain all of what he felt were its best traits and characteristics, rejecting that which did not conform to this modus operandi.

It’s this overnight transformation that most piques my interest in his character because it is somewhat unique for a person of a very conservative nature to immediately accept such a dramatic shift in conditions and insist that the best must be made of it. “Empire is over. Let’s put it to bed, and let’s get on with it”, are words that are far, far beneath Powell’s level of erudition, but they do accurately describe his course correction.

Nowhere is this made more clear than in a speech that he delivered in UK Parliament in the Summer of 1959, when a debate arose in the chamber arising from a scandal in Kenya. Earlier that year, 11 Kenyan rebel remnants of what were known as the “Mau Mau” had been tortured and killed at a prison camp run by British colonial forces. The Mau Mau Rebellion against colonial rule that began in 1952 was effectively put down by British forces by 1956, but stragglers remained and continued to pose a threat to administration officials, and local rivals too. This rebellion is somewhat complex and might deserve a fuller treatment at some point in the future. Suffice it to say that certain tribes rebelled against the British Empire, which employed their own forces on the ground to put it down, and were aided by other Kenyan tribes, some of whom had rebelled against them in the past.

The Hola Massacre became a scandal, and Parliament had to address it. This camp, located in the east of the country (towards the Indian Ocean), was erected to detain and “rehabilitate” those that were considered “hardcore remnants of the Mau Mau rebels”. Rehabilitation often consisted of manual labour, but even them some of the detainees refused to participate. Almost 100 were adamant refuseniks, so the camp commandant decided to apply physical pressure to this cohort, leading to 11 of them being beaten to death on March 3rd of that same year¹:

This would definitely fall under the ICC’s definition of a war crime today, but we are not here to re-try the matter. Instead, I want to focus on Wolverhampton MP Enoch Powell of the UK Conservative Party, and a question that he posed to Parliament, a critical position that he publicly took that ran counter to his own party (which was accused in engaging in a cover up of the killings), and that won him accolades from Labour Members of Parliament, including the far left Michael Foot and Anthony “Tony” Benn.

You can find his speech at this link (on a page in which all the speeches on the subject delivered by all MPs are provided). However, I will zoom in on this portion that appears at the end of Enoch’s oratory:

Finally it is argued that this is Africa, that things are different there. Of course they are. The question is whether the difference between things there and here is such that the taking of responsibility there and here should be upon different principles. We claim that it is our object—and this is something which unites both sides of the House—to leave representative institutions behind us wherever we give up our rule. I cannot imagine that it is a way to plant representative institutions to be seen to shirk the acceptance and the assignment of responsibility, which is the very essence of responsible Government.

Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, “We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home.” We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere. All Government, all influence of man upon man, rests upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.

These words won him the scorn of the party leadership, as it was felt that he was grandstanding and not being a team player. This is a fair set of accusations, as not only was he engaging in both, but he always had a flair for the dramatic. He was a world-leading expert in Ancient Greece, after all.

One can also argue that Powell was speaking in defense of universal human rights by demanding only the highest standard of treatment from British officials and soldiers, and that this treatment must be consistent across the entire globe, wherever the UK was present. I, however, think that this is an error, albeit an easy one to make. When looking back on his idiosyncratic nature, I am convinced that he was arguing in favour of a noble English behaviour, one that really did not exist except in his own mind and in the minds of those that have always believed in “English fair play”. He was a romantic, after all.

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A friend clued me into the existence of an interview with Enoch Powell conducted by one of the greatest interviewers of all-time, the American Dick Cavett. For those interested, check out this two excerpts:

1. Maloba, Wunyabari O. Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt.(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN: 1993) p.142-143.