Editing Mau Mau rebellion (section)

===British reaction to the uprising===
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| quote = Between 1952 and 1956, when the fighting was at its worst, the Kikuyu districts of Kenya became a police state in the very fullest sense of that term.{{sfn|Anderson|2005|p=5}}
| source = —David Anderson
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| sstyle = text-align: right;}}[[Philip Euen Mitchell|Philip Mitchell]] retired as Kenya's governor in summer 1952, having turned a blind eye to Mau Mau's increasing activity.<ref name="Edgerton 1989 31_32">{{Harvnb|Edgerton|1989|pp=31–32}}.</ref> Through the summer of 1952, however, Colonial Secretary [[Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos|Oliver Lyttelton]] in London received a steady flow of reports from Acting Governor Henry Potter about the escalating seriousness of Mau Mau violence,<ref name="Elkins 2005 32">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=32}}.</ref> but it was not until the later part of 1953 that British politicians began to accept that the rebellion was going to take some time to deal with.<ref name="Nissimi 2006 4">{{Harvnb|Nissimi|2006|p=4}}.</ref> At first, the British discounted the Mau Mau rebellion<ref name="French 2011 29">{{Harvnb|French|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cd6VtsGltmAC&dq=%22in+both+kenya+and+cyprus+officials+at+least+initially+refused+to+accept+that+the+mau+mau+and+eoka+constituted+the+same+kind+of+serious+threat+that+the+mcp+posed+in+malaya%22&pg=PA29 29]}}.</ref> because of their own technical and military superiority, which encouraged hopes for a quick victory.<ref name="Nissimi 2006 4"/>

The British army accepted the gravity of the uprising months before the politicians, but its appeals to London and Nairobi were ignored.<ref name="Nissimi 2006 4"/> On 30 September 1952, [[Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale|Evelyn Baring]] arrived in Kenya to permanently take over from Potter; Baring was given no warning by Mitchell or the Colonial Office about the gathering maelstrom into which he was stepping.<ref name="Elkins 2005 32"/>

Aside from military operations against Mau Mau fighters in the forests, the British attempt to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages: the first, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolt; the second came afterwards. During the first stage, the British tried to decapitate the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting 180 alleged Mau Mau leaders in [[Operation Jock Scott]] and subjecting six of them (the [[Kapenguria Six]]) to a [[show trial]]; the second stage began in earnest in 1954, when they undertook a series of major economic, military and penal initiatives.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}

The second stage had three main planks: a large military-sweep of Nairobi leading to the internment of tens of thousands of the city's suspected Mau Mau members and sympathisers ( Operation Anvil); the enacting of major agrarian reform (the [[Swynnerton Plan]]); and the institution of a vast [[villagisation]] programme for more than a million rural Kikuyu. In 2012, the UK government accepted that prisoners had suffered "[[torture]] and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration".<ref name="bbc-20120717">{{cite news | url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18874040 | publisher=BBC News | title=Mau Mau case: UK government accepts abuse took place | date=17 July 2012 | access-date=20 June 2018 | archive-date=11 August 2018 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180811065408/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18874040 | url-status=live }}</ref>

The harshness of the British response was inflated by two factors. First, the settler government in Kenya was, even before the insurgency, probably the most openly racist one in the British empire, with the settlers' violent prejudice attended by an uncompromising determination to retain their grip on power<ref name="French 2011 72">{{Harvnb|French|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cd6VtsGltmAC&pg=PA72 72]}}.</ref> and half-submerged fears that, as a tiny minority, they could be overwhelmed by the indigenous population.<ref name="French 2011 55">{{Harvnb|French|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=cd6VtsGltmAC&pg=PA55 55]}}.</ref> Its representatives were so keen on aggressive action that [[George Erskine]] referred to them as "the White Mau Mau".<ref name="French 2011 55"/> Second, the brutality of Mau Mau attacks on civilians made it easy for the movement's opponents—including native Kenyan and loyalist security forces—to adopt a totally dehumanised view of Mau Mau adherents.<ref name="French 2011 72"/>

Resistance to both the Mau Mau and the British response was illustrated by [[Ciokaraine M'Barungu]] who famously asked that the British colonial forces not destroy the food used by her villagers, since its destruction could potentially starve the entire region. Instead, she urged the colonial forces to guard the yams and bananas and stop the Mau Mau from killing any more residents.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=Ciokaraine: The Story of the Female Meru Diviner|url=https://artsandculture.google.com/story/ciokaraine-the-story-of-the-female-meru-diviner/TwLCrIdWF1WDJg|access-date=8 August 2020|website=Google Arts & Culture|language=en|archive-date=13 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200813052356/https://artsandculture.google.com/story/ciokaraine-the-story-of-the-female-meru-diviner/TwLCrIdWF1WDJg|url-status=live}}</ref>

A variety of coercive techniques were initiated by the colonial authorities to punish and break Mau Mau's support: Baring ordered punitive communal-labour, collective fines and other collective punishments, and further confiscation of land and property.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wright |first1=Thomas J. |date=4 July 2022 |title='Constituencies of Control' – Collective Punishments in Kenya's Mau Mau Emergency, 1952–55 |journal=The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=323–350 |doi=10.1080/03086534.2022.2093475|s2cid=250321705 |doi-access=free }}</ref> By early 1954, tens of thousands of head of livestock had been taken, and were allegedly never returned.<ref name="Elkins 2005 75">{{Harvnb|Elkins|2005|p=75}}: "According to Emergency regulations, the governor could issue Native Land Rights Confiscation Orders, whereby '[e]ach of the persons named in the schedule ... participated or aided in violent resistance against the forces of law and order' and therefore had his land confiscated".</ref> Detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels were finally released in April 2012.<ref name="BBC 2012 docs">{{cite news |url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17734735 |last= Wallis |first= Holly |date= 18 April 2012 |title= British colonial files released following legal challenge |publisher= BBC News |access-date= 29 May 2012 |archive-date= 14 June 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120614083715/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17734735 |url-status= live }}</ref>