As Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill
declared himself “determined to see that justice was done to
humble individuals throughout the empire”. The Times reveals
today the discovery of documents which may confirm a different
picture of Britain’s colonial past, of injustice compounded with
brutality, with the consequences excised from the documentary
record. The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s was
suppressed not only with the suspension of due process but with
sadism. British government officials then hid the evidence. This
saga of violence and deceit may turn out to have counterparts in
the closing years