Kenya (Emergency Regulations)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 April 1957.

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Photo of Mr John Profumo Mr John Profumo , Stratford-on-Avon 12:00, 16 April 1957

I very much welcome hearing the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) speaking, so far as I am concerned, for the first time. I do not think he could have been doing me the honour of making his maiden speech, but I shall be interested to study with considerable interest what he said.

I hope that he will acquit me of any discourtesy if I do not follow him into the realms of some of his arguments, which were rather more about the existing detainees than about the arguments of the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), and who concentrated primarily on the Regulations which have caused what I readily agree appears at first sight to be a very large number of arrests in a short period of time.

I am indeed glad of the chance to give a fuller explanation to the House of this matter, and to show why the Regulations must continue for at any rate the time being. In this country, thousands of miles away from the recent horrors of Mau Mau, we are inclined sometimes to regard Kenya as a territory which has by now gone back to a normal state of existence. It is no longer constantly in the headlines and, thank goodness, murder, arson and even the power of the oath are now things of the past.

Yet even today, there are nearly 300 terrorists, including a handful of known leaders, who are still unaccounted for. A major security problem is presented by those whose secret sympathies have been and perhaps still are with Mau Mau. There may still be some, even among the 40,000 released detainees. The hon. Member for Wednesbury will wish to know that figure; 40,000 have already been released. These are people who could form rallying points with these missing terrorists for a further violent outburst.

The threat to security does not end there. Unofficial estimates have placed the number of those who took the oath and whose allegiance was shaken as high as 90 per cent. of the Kikuyu tribe. That is not counting the Embu and the Meru. No responsible Government can ignore those facts. Those Kikuyu who are loyal are openly recognised as such, and many of the restrictions apply to their fellows do not apply to them. It is those whose loyalty has swerved whom the Kenya Government must take primarily into account, and it is for these that the Regulations are primarily necessary.