Having demonised, subdued and defeated the Mau Mau insurgents in the field by 1956, the British forces and propaganda machinery gave fresh hope to right wing white settlers in Kenya of a multi-racial democracy dominated by themselves. Two events, however, demonstrated that the British government held a different and, altogether, more realistic view that independence and black majority rule were inevitable in the very near future.
The first was what came to be known as “The Hola Massacre”. The death of 11 prisoners on 3 March 1959 at Hola Detention Camp would probably have gone unnoticed just like many other gruesome atrocities meted out on Africans at the hands of British colonial forces and their agents.
