A letter to the Times which was published on 12th April 2011.

Professor G S Solt (letter, April 9th) draws a parallel between the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in Austria, which he experienced in the 1930s, and British government policy in Kenya towards the Africans in the 1940s and 1950s.

When Allied troops entered Austria as liberators in May 1945 there were estimated to be barely 10,000 Jews left of the 200,000 at the time of the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.

British policy towards Kenya was set out in the White Paper of 1923.  This stated that “where the interests of the African conflict with those of the European settlers” those of the Africans were “paramount”.  This and similar declarations caused consternation among the settlers, resulting in several protest marches on Government House in Nairobi.

As custodians of the African interests as well as the Asian and European settlers, it was also Britain’s responsibility to maintain law and order.  The Mau Mau insurrection, overwhelmingly recruited from the Kikuyu tribe, was a serious disruption to life and limb causing Europeans to go in fear of their lives over several years and costing the lives of many thousands of those other tribes as well as Kikuyu themselves.

Successive Kenyan governments have shown little disposition to rake over the coals of the Mau Mau emergency, but to move on to build a viable future for all their nearly 40 million people.  Britain and its courts should do the same.