The records the British Empire didn't want you to see - Audra A. Diptée
In 2009, five Kenyan people
took a petition
to the British Prime Minister’s office.
They claimed they endured
human rights abuses in the 1950s,
while Kenya was under British colonial
rule and demanded reparations.
They had vivid accounts and physical scars
from their experiences—
but their testimonies were undermined.
They had no documentary evidence that
Britain sanctioned systems of torture
against Kenyans—
at least, not yet.
Thousands of secret files were
waiting to be discovered.
In 2010, a historian joined
the trial as an expert witness
and attested to having seen references
to missing documents.
They noted that Kenya had repeatedly
requested the return of stolen papers,
which the British government had refused.
In fact, many historians suspected
there were gaps in the archives.
As a result, the court ordered the release
of any relevant documents.
And, days later, British officials
acknowledged that 1,500 pertinent files
were being held
in a high-security archive.
It soon became clear that these
were just a small sample
of documents Britain hid
between the 1950s and 70s,
while former colonies
declared independence,
as part of a widespread colonial British
policy called Operation Legacy.
The policy was for British colonial
officers to destroy or remove
documentation that
might incriminate Britain
and be of strategic value
to the new governments.
They were instructed to destroy, alter,
or secretly transport
these papers to the UK.
Documents slated for destruction
were to be burnt to ashes
or sunk in weighted crates far from shore.
During the trial, between 2010 and 2013,
an independent historian revealed
they had located
more than 20,000 previously hidden
Operation Legacy files
from 37 former colonies.
Finally, an estimated 1.2 million
colonial files,
sprawling kilometers in the archive’s
so-called “Special Collections,”
were also exposed.
And these were only the documents
that British forces kept.
How many were destroyed—
and what information they contained—
remains unknown.
About 3.5 tons of colonial documents
were slated for incineration in Kenya.
Ultimately, Operation Legacy’s objective
was to obscure critical aspects
of the truth.
In the words of Britain’s
attorney-general in Kenya,
“If we are going to sin,
we must sin quietly.”
So, what really happened in Kenya?
Beginning in 1895, the British
administration forcibly removed people
from their traditional lands,
giving the most fertile areas to European
settlers to establish large-scale farms.
They mandated forced labor systems,
implemented reservations
for Indigenous African peoples,
and restricted their movement.
Kenyan people resisted
these incursions from the start
and grew increasingly organized over time.
One movement,
the Kenya Land and Freedom Army,
aimed to forcibly remove white settlers
and overthrow the colonial government.
When the British declared
a state of emergency in 1952,
they were giving themselves permission
to take otherwise illegal special measures
to regain control.
The newly revealed
Operation Legacy documents
confirmed that people suspected
of participating in the resistance
were subjected to horrible abuses.
Between 1952 and 1959,
the British imprisoned
over 80,000 people without trial,
sentenced over 1,000 people convicted
as terrorists to death,
and imposed extreme surveillance
and interrogation tactics.
Some people were beaten to death.
Others were raped or castrated.
Many were shackled at the wrist for years.
Children were killed.
One person was burnt alive.
Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua testified
to being castrated while handcuffed
and blindfolded.
Wambugu Wa Nyingi said he was
suspended upside-down, beaten,
and had water thrown on his face
until he could barely breathe.
Jane Muthoni Mara said she was
sexually violated with a hot bottle,
and imprisoned for years without cause.
In response to the new evidence,
the British government issued
a formal apology,
and made an out-of-court
financial settlement
with the 5,228 Kenyan claimants
ultimately involved in the case.
The original five claimants
had made history—
and paved the way for it
to be rightfully rewritten.
The uncovered files challenge fundamental
myths about British colonialism
as a benevolent institution that brought
freedom and democracy to its subjects,
then graciously gave them independence.
Instead, the newly exposed evidence
confirms what many people knew to be true,
because they lived it—
and survived to rescue history
from the ashes.
