Every empire claims to be a civilizing force. However, perhaps because of telling it for so long, only the British seem to have really believed it. For Britain to hold up its colonial policy in Kenya as proof of its humanist impulse against the Axis in World War Two might be satire, or a press release from its Ministry of Information.

‘The British Goebbels on Kenya: Churchill’s Ministry of Propaganda Tells a Whopper’ by J. Ingram from The Militant. Vol. 5 No. 6. February 8, 1941.

In all the British daily papers we find articles subtitled “A Commonwealth in Arms” which are turned out under the direction of the Ministry of Information and Propaganda. These articles attempt to prove the unity and comradeship of all the peoples who live under the flag of England. In the Daily Telegraph of Nov. 29, 1940, for example, we find a choice bit of propaganda telling how the people of Kenya Colony in Africa are ready to give their all for the Empire, and of the fatherly attitude of the Government to these and other colonial peoples. A brief examination of a few of the statements of the Daily Telegraph article and a glimpse at the facts are more than enough to expose the monstrous hypocrisy and the shameless lying of British “Democracy.”

“We are ready, our sons are ready, each of us is ready to give all that he can to be one with the Empire and to defend our country.” These words are attributed by the Daily Telegraph article to the Senior Chief of Central Kavirondo in Kenya colony. The Chief and presumably everybody else talks like this in Kenya because, the article explains, of the utter selflessness of British rule over Kenya. “Here is the keynote of British colonial policy. Its aim is to foster natural growth–economic, social and political.” A very touching picture. Let us compare it, however, with some easily obtainable FACTS. Let us compare it with the facts presented by George Padmore, himself a native of a British colony, in his revealing book, “How Britain Rules Africa.”

In Kenya we see that the white plantation owners, a landed aristocracy, with the connivance of the government, have driven the Africans off their lands and herded them onto Reserves, onto the most barren, unfertile and unproductive lands; here the Africans lose all title to their ancestral lands and become mere tenants of the Crown. Meanwhile the white planters have taken over the best lands in the Colony, the Highlands, which are the most fertile, healthful and productive. In this area, by white man’s law, no colored person may live, and furthermore, no native African can even acquire a legal right to any land within the Colony. On the Reserves, the natives, an agricultural and pastoral people, are crowded together, 136 to the mile, while there is reserved a square mile of land for each white.

THEIR LAND STOLEN THEN FORCED LABOR

This enforced overcrowding drives these landless people off the Reserves and onto the plantations of the white where, by law, the natives must work a minimum of 180 days a year; in actual practice the big plantations exact 270 days out of the 365. This system of enforced land impoverishment for the natives insures an adequate supply of labor for the white plantations. No native can get away from this forced labor because no native can wander about the country at will or be unemployed, as he will immediately be arrested and imprisoned for vagrancy. Every native off the Reserves must wear a Kipandi, a kind of wallet which must be worn around the neck and which contains the fingerprints of the bearer and a labor certificate signed by the master showing how many days he has worked.

What unashamed insolence–as brazen as Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda–to make it appear that the people of Kenya Colony eagerly pledge allegiance to a government that has broken its promises to them and refuses redress. In 1930 the Government passed a law promising these natives that there would be no further slicing up of their remaining lands, and then, in 1932, when gold was found on the native Reserves, the government rushed in, drove over 10,000 of these natives off their lands, and forced them to sign six month labor contracts at a pay of 10 shillings ($2.50) per month of 30 working days of nine hours each. Chronic social diseases were brought in by the gold diggers, the agricultural economy disrupted, the family life disintegrated. This insult was added, that if a man or a cow fell into a mining pit and died, 5 shillings compensation was given to the relatives of the man or the owner of the cow. When the Kavirondo-Native Ass’n sent a delegation to the Colonial Secretary in London, protesting these conditions and abuses, he did not find it convenient to receive it, let alone do anything about these wrongs.

OUTDOING HITLER’S PROPAGANDA MINISTRY

“No part of the British Empire pays taxes or tribute in any form to Britain.” This incredible assertion is made in the British Propaganda Ministry’s article! In Kenya alone, in 1929 the Natives paid £531,016 in hut and poll taxes; in 1930, £591,424; in 1931, £530,877.

The best equipped hospitals are reserved for white patients. There are three hospitals for Africans containing 1500 beds for a native population of 3,000,000. Due to improper medical care, the native mortality in some of the Reserves is as high as 500 deaths per 1,000. The native children are hungry and disease-ridden, 95-to 100% of African children under the age of 10 carry traces of chronic malarial infection; in some districts over 70% suffer from hookworm.

The natives ask for schools to teach them scientific farming, the whites answer, “It will spoil the Blacks.” When the natives open their own schools to teach their children, of all things, the English language, the authorities close them down and declare them illegal.

The government is looking after the native economic interests? So says the British Ministry of Propaganda! A breach of contract is considered desertion and is punishable by fine and imprisonment; in one year over 3,000 natives were punished under this law. Trade unions and collective bargaining are prohibited by law; workmen’s compensation, unemployment benefits, old-age pensions: are unheard of in East Africa.

IF THIS ISN’T SLAVERY, WHAT IS?

The native peasants are not allowed to grow coffee, because it is the principal export crop and so it is the monopoly of the white planters. As for the crops which the natives are allowed to grow, they have great difficulty in marketing, because the transportation facilities were built for the benefit of the European Communities.

The British, says the Ministry of Propaganda, are interested in the native’s political development. A strange manner in which to show it: No native has the right to vote; there is no representation on the Legislative Council except a missionary who is appointed by the Governor and who is supposed to represent the native interest. The natives cannot even petition the government to protest their grievances because their organizations are illegal. More than five persons cannot meet together without permission of the authorities.

Perhaps the most cynical statement in this article of the Propaganda Ministry, is: “Today we are fighting to save this work (in Kenya) from the hands of the Destroyer, whose only idea for colonial peoples is permanent slavery.” Presumably the emphasis is on the word permanent! As distinguished from a few centuries or so under British rule!

There have been a number of periodicals named Socialist Appeal in our history, this Socialist Appeal was edited in New York City by the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party”. After the Workers Party (International Left Opposition) entered the Socialist Party in 1936, the Trotskyists did not have an independent publication. However, Albert Goldman began publishing a monthly Socialist Appeal in Chicago in February 1935 before the bulk of Trotskyist entered the SP. When there, they began publishing Socialist Appeal in August 1937 as the weekly paper of the “Left Wing Branches of the Socialist Party” but in reality edited by Cannon and other leaders. Goldman’s Chicago Socialist Appeal would fold into the New York paper and this Socialist Appeal would replace New Militant as the main voice of Fourth Internationalist in the US. After the expulsion of the Trotskyists from the the Socialist Party, Socialist Appeal became the weekly organ of the newly constituted Socialist Workers Party in early 1938. Edited by James Cannon and Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, and Albert Goldman. In 1941 Socialist Appeal became The Militant again.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1941/v5n06-feb-08-1941.pdf