Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue

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An Army of One's Own: The Politics of the Kenya

Defence Force

C.J.D. Duder

To cite this article: C.J.D. Duder (1991) An Army of One's Own: The Politics of the Kenya Defence
Force, Canadian Journal of African Studies/La Revue canadienne des études africaines, 25:2,
207-225, DOI: 10.1080/00083968.1991.10803889

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.1991.10803889

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An Army of One's Own:
The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

C.]. D. Duder

Resume
En cream /'Unite de Defense du Kenya, les colons du Kenya ont essaye decreer une unite
milicaire encieremem composee de blarzcs. Elle ecaic conscicuee d'une milice de soldacs
en roles ec represemaicla force anmie pour /es plans europeens de gouvernement autonome
dans les annees 20. La comroverse soulevee par Ia co1zscripcion obligacoire a cependam
revete une forre opposition interne gouvernemem politique bien etabli dans le Kenya blanc,
et /'Unite n 'a eu qu 'une courre vie, bien ilzefficace, a /aquelle /'invasion ita/ienne de
l'Echiopie a en fait mis fin e11 1935. L'hiscoire de /'Unite reve/e a Ia fois les divisions
internes de Ia communauce blanche eela nature fragile du pouvoir de ceue communauce a
I'interieur du systbne colonial.

Introduction
In the 1920s the white settlers of Kenya made a serious, sustained, and ultimately
successful attempt to establish an all-European military body in the Colony. This
organization, called the Kenya Defence Force (KDF), was designed to provide the
white settlers with an armed force, under effective settler control, as the ultimate
safeguard for their position in Kenya. The KDF was thus both the culmination of a
longstanding settler ambition for a security force against the Africans of Kenya and
the military arm of settler ambitions for self-government in the 1920s.
The KDF, however, had only a short and troubled existence. Planned as a uni-
versal conscript settler army, it degenerated into a series of grossly mismanaged
volunteer rifle clubs which were chiefly remarkable for their ability to "lose" arms
and ammunition. Perhaps fortunately, it never saw active service, and when in
1936 Kenya was faced with a real military threat in the form of the Italian conquest
of Ethiopia, it was quickly, if noisily, disbanded.
The KDF itself was thus only a footnote to the larger footnote of white settle-
ment in the history of Kenya. Its real importance lies in the politics which sur-
rounded the Force and in particular on the light which the KDF sheds on two
important questions in Kenya's history. How much power did the settlers exercise
within the Colonial system? How much power did they wish to exercise within the
system?
The settlers have long been seen as the most dynamic factor in the Colonial
political scene (Bennett 1965). They set the agenda; they attempted to order

207
208 CJAS I RCEA 25:2 1991

priorities; and they certainly created most of the trouble. Recent historical writing
has especially tended to emphasize settler success in manipulating the colonial
economy for their own benefit in such areas as land policy (Sorrenson 1968), crop
marketing (Brett 1973) and labour supply (van Zwanenberg 1975). Examination
of the history of the KDF, however, indicates that in non-economic areas of con-
ventional politics the settlers operated within a fairly circumscribed set of bounda-
ries which limited both their freedom of action and their actual power.
The KDF's history also raises the question of whether the Europeans of Kenya
were as united in the search for ultimate political power as both historians and con-
temporary opponents of the settlers have assumed (for example, Gregory 1962).
The KDF, because it directly touched the lives of every adult white male in Kenya,
sparked a vigourous debate among the settlers as to its necessity and ultimately led
to the largest single attempt in Inter-War Kenya to overthrow the established
settler political elite. The debates over the KDF illustrate that a large section of
white Kenya, concentrated among the colony's urban population, wanted nothing
to do with the elite's plans for settler rule, ifthose plans meant a significant imposi-
tion on their own lives.

The Players
It is impossible to understand the KDF without some description of the political
universe in which it was created. Kenya's constitutional status during the KDF
controversies was that of Crown colony. This meant that ultimate control over
Kenya rested with the British Government in London and specifically with the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, assisted by the permanent officials of the East
Africa Section of the Colonial Office. Actual administrative functions within
Kenya were the responsibility of a Governor and the local civil service, both
appointed by and answerable to London for their actions. The Governor was
assisted in his functions by two local law-making bodies: an Executive Council to
provide legal backing for administrative decisions; and a Legislative Council to
make permanent laws. All decisions of the Executive Council and all laws passed
by the Legislative Council, however, were subject to the approval of the Secretary
of State in London.
This administrative arrangement differed little from that of other British Afri-
can possessions, but Kenya was unique in that it was the only African Crown Col-
ony with a significant community of white settlement. This community was not
large- only about twelve thousand Europeans resided in Kenya in 1926 (Kenya,
Non-Native Census 1927)- but it had a very high social tone, with an abundance
of aristocrats, Brigadiers, and big game hunters in its ranks, and it possessed all the
traditional greed and ambition of white settler communities everywhere. Kenya's
white settlers wanted, or appeared to want, control of the Colony in order to make
Kenya into what was, in the robust terminology of the early twentieth century, a
"white man's country" (Huxley 1935) on the lines of Rhodesia and South Africa.
209 Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

To this end, the settlers had constructed elaborate political machinery to make
their voice heard by the Colonial authorities. The basic foundation stones of white
politics in Kenya were the local Associations. There was one for virtually every
area in the Colony with any white population. The local Associations assembled
every year in the Convention of Associations, popularly known as "the Settler's
Parliament" and an organization with real authority, particularly in the years
before 1926 when heads ofthe Colonial Government Departments, such as Agri-
culture and Forestry, would appear before it to answer questions about and criti-
cisms of their actions (Bennett 1965, 301).
The most formal arena of white political action, however, was Kenya's Legisla-
tive Council. A long settler campaign for electoral representation had resulted in
the gram of eleven seats, elected by universal adult suffrage, in 1919. The settler
representatives were still a minority in the Council, but their political skills and
white skins gave them power beyond their numbers. The leader of the elected rep-
resentatives in the 1920s was Lord Delamere. He had been one of the earliest
settlers in Kenya; and his title, his commitment to Kenya and, not least, his
extremely large landholdings made him a "natural" leader. The remainder of the
settler Council members were "big men" in their districts. The majority of these
individuals, like Delamere, were rural landowners. Electoral representation in
Kenya reflected the contemporary sentiment that ohly farmers, people tied to the
land, possessed a permanent "interest" in the Colony. Nairobi and Mombasa,
which contained forty percent of Kenya's white population, had only three repre-
sentatives in the Council (Bennett 1965, 290). It was largely rural Kenya which led
the drive to make the Colony a "white man's country."
There were two important obstacles in the path of the settler leadership. The
first was the inherent numerical weakness of the settler population. Twelve thou-
sand people could hardly support a functioning party system and, as a result, per-
sonality and personal rivalries played a major part in settler political life. Lord
Delamere, in particular, acquired a spectacular range of personal enemies (Nas-
toulas 1972), and his attempt to found a political party, the Reform Party, in 1921
to present a unified settler voice foundered on envy and resentment. If, as Colin
Leys (1959) has asserted, white Rhodesia was a one-party state (with periodic
change in party), white Kenya was a no-party state. Added to the lack of numbers
was the fact that the settlers controlled nothing. They could influence, but they
could not command. This tended to make settler politicians highly irresponsible
and, equally, induced high levels of apathy among the general white population.
What was the point of contesting or voting in elections when there was no real
authority involved? As a result, in the r 92 7 general elections, for example, six of the
eleven white representatives were returned unopposed to the Legislative Council.
The second great obstacle to settler political advance was the presence in
Kenya of other racial communities. During the period between the World Wars,
the chief settler rivals were Kenya's Indian population. By themselves, Kenya's
210 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

23 ooo Indians counted for little, but as a test case of the treatment of Indians
within the British Empire, at a time of rising nationalism in India itself, they
counted for a great deal. The "Indian question," as the rivalry between the two
groups of immigrants was known, had reached crisis proportions after World War
I, when the white settlers had reacted to British proposals to concede at least the
appearance of equal rights to Indians by forming a "Vigilance Committee" to plan
and, if necessary, to carry out a rebellion against the Imperial Government's pro-
posals. At the height of the crisis, in 1923, the settlers had even planned to kidnap
the Governor. This threat of force had been effective in preserving the settler posi-
tion, but only at the cost of the Imperial Government invoking the primacy of Afri-
can interests in Kenya (Hancock 1939).
There were an estimated 2.5 million Africans in Kenya in the 1920s. They were
still largely voiceless, but the conflicting claims of whites and Indians to political
supremacy in Kenya had caused the Colonial Office to, in effect, checkmate the
whites and Indians with African pawns. The British Government issued one of the
most famous White Papers in Colonial history Cmd. 1922, Indians in Kenya, in
response to the Indian Question. It stated, in brief, that Kenya was primarily an
African country, in which African interests must predominate and that the British
Government acted, and must continue to act, as "trustee" for those interests. This
appeared to block any further settler advances in the direction of controlling
Kenya, and the fact that Cmd. 1922 was supported by all three British political par-
ties and the large humanitarian and missionary lobby in London concerned with
Kenya was especially worrying (Gregory 1962).
The settler political position in Kenya at the start of the KDF controversy was
exemplified in the makeup of Kenya's Legislative Council after Cmd. 1922. The
official majority in the Council, voting on the Governor's direction, was main-
tained. The settlers still retained their eleven scats, the largest number of any local
community, but there were now also five scats reserved for Kenya's Indians
(although only one was usually occupied as most ofthe Indian community boycot-
ted the body), and a missionary, Canon Burns, was appointed by the Colonial
Government to represent African interests in the Council. In the political equation
that was Colonial Kenya, the settlers carried more weight than any other group,
but their power and influence still depended on a sympathetic Colonial adminis-
tration or a sympathetic Secretary of State in London. The settlers were essentially
supplicants at the Imperial table.

The Issue
There were few more acute examples of the uncertainty of settler Kenya's position
in the Colonial universe than the military garrison of Kenya. This was normally
composed of two battalions of the King's African Rifles (KAR), a "native" unit
typical of many the British raised throughout their Empire on the model of the
Indian Army. The enlisted men were long service volunteers recruited from those
2II Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

Kenyan tribes thought to be the local equivalent of the "wily Pathan." The officers
and NCOs were British regulars serving on contract with the Colonial Office. The
KAR's main function before and after World War I was "internal security," or
more bluntly, keeping the Africans of Kenya in line. 1
This conferred one overwhelming advantage, typical of many provided by the
Colonial system, on the settlers. The killing necessary to extract African accep-
tance of the settlers' presence in Kenya was done by others. The disadvantage of
the KAR, again typical of the Colonial system, was that the settlers did not control
it. The officers, the key element in any military organization, were responsible to
the Governor and through him to the Colonial Office. The settlers could influence
the KAR through personal contacts and through Legislative Council debates on
the KAR estimates (like all British colonies, Kenya paid for its own garrison), but
they did not have authority. Apart from the contradiction of having white settle-
ment guaranteed by black soldiers, which bothered few, the settlers of Kenya
could not but be aware that in true "white man's countries" like Rhodesia and
South Africa, military power was exclusively in white hands.
Long before Chairman Mao and academics made the phrase a cliche, the
settlers were aware that political power comes out ofthe barrel of a gun. One of the
first "political" meetings of settler Kenya in 1905 had passed resolutions request-
ing both electoral representation and a "Burgher Force" on South African lines for
the white community (Buell 1928, 378). World War I, however, moved the idea of
an all-settler military body to the front of the settler political agenda. Apart from
the obvious inspiration of the campaign against German East Africa, the War pro-
voked significant upheavals among Kenya's Africans, and although little of this
was specifically directed at the settlers, whites were still worried. In 1914, for
example, the Railway Institute in Nairobi was requisitioned as a possible refuge for
white women and children in the event of an African uprising (Strange 1934, 23 7).
In classic British Colonial fashion, it was after the War's end that the idea of a
settler military body gained wide currency. InN airobi, both the annual reunions of
the main settler war-time unit, the East African Mounted Rifles, and the first
ex-servicemen's organization in Kenya, the Ex-War Service Federation, had been
started after the War with at least a partial view to providing a nucleus for a
Defence Force (East Ajn"can Standard [EAS] II January 1919). In addition, the
Convention of Associations passed a unanimous resolution in favour of a Defence
Force in July 1919 and appointed a three-man committee to examine South Afri-
can law on the subject. The committee reported in February 1920 and recom-
mended that a force be established with the compulsory enlistment of all Euro-
pean males between sixteen and sixty years of age (EAS 19 July 1919; The Leader 14
February 1920).
In Kenya at this time, under the Governorship of General Sir Edward Northey,
settler wishes soon became Colonial Government measures, to the extent that
before the final publication of the Defence Force Bill in the Official Gazelle in July
212 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

1921, the Officer Commanding Troops (OCT) in Kenya toured most of the rural
districts of the Colony to explain the force to local settlers (EAS 26 June 1921).
The Second Reading of the Defence Force Bill in the Legislative Council in
August 1921, however, ran into a wall of opposition from precisely the elected rep-
resentatives of settler opinion who were asking for it. The basic problem for the
settlers, which was to bedevil their attitude towards the Defence Force until 1924,
was the post-war Indian Crisis.
The settlers wanted a Defence Force; but under the official Bill, its members
would be subject to the Army Act, and hence liable to court martial for disobedi-
ence of an order. This was hardly an appealing prospect when the Colonial Office
was considering a policy of granting equal rights to Kenya's Indian population.
Lord Delamere and other settlers were fond of reminding London of the "sacred
right of resistance" against tyrannical government possessed by all British colo-
nists. This sacred right would mean little if those attempting to exercise it were
under the constraints of military discipline.
Thus, during periods when the Indian Question seemed to be reaching crisis
point, as in August 1921 and January 1923, settler Members in the Legislative
Council stoutly resisted any attempts to introduce a Defence Force Bill. When as
at the end of1922, the Indian question appeared quiet, the same Members pushed
for the introduction of a Defence Force Bill. 2 Not until 1924, when the Indian
question had been resolved in a manner that did not favour the Indians, was a
slightly modified Defence Force Bill enacted by the Legislative Council and sent
to London for approval. There it ran into further problems. The permanent offi-
cials in the Colonial Office remembered settler threats of violence during the
Indian question and were reluctant to provide those who had made the threats
with Government arms and ammunition. These hesitations were shared by j. H.
Thomas, Secretary of State for the Colonies in Ramsay MacDonald's first Labour
Government.
This was a completely new threat to the settler position in Kenya. The Labour
Party had been no more than a small cloud on the settler horizon, fifty-nine scats
large, when the Defence Force had first been seriously discussed in 1919. By 1924,
the Labour Party had formed a minority government and possessed leaders
unsympathetic to white settlers and deeply imbued with pacifism in general and
opposition to conscription in particular. Thomas, citing his dislike of compulsory
enlistment for the Defence Force, refused to give his assent to the Bill. 3
The political leadership of settler Kenya did not take the Secretary of State's
decision well. Protests were made in the Legislative Council in the form of a
motion by Lord Delamere to reduce the OCT's salary by fifty pounds. The motion
failed against the Official Majority in the Council, but the current governor, Sir
Robert Coryndon, usually an ally of the settlers in their relations with London,
agreed to urge Thomas to accept the Defence Force. 4 The despatch in which
Coryndon "strongly" recommended a Defence Force received a distinctly cool
213 Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

reception from the Colonial Office's permanent officials. W. C. Bottomley, for

example, considered: "An arrangement by which native malcontents are liable to
be shot down ... is undesirable"; while C. S. Strachey thought it all part of a settler
grab for political power. 5
By this point, however, there had been a change in the Colonial Office's elected
leadership. L. S. Amery was now Secretary of State in Stanley Baldwin's Conser-
vative Government, and he was to prove the most sympathetic Secretary that the
settlers of Kenya ever enjoyed. Amery, one of the few active Imperialists in British
politics, had plans for East Africa. He wanted to unify Kenya, Uganda, and Tan-
ganyika into one great British East African Dominion. The settlers of Kenya had a
vital role to play in this future Dominion. They were to be the economic yeast to
activate the economically inert African millions. Specifically, their consent was
viewed as vital to the achievement of Close Union in East Africa. Their support
was to be enlisted by giving them greater political power (Gregory 1962). This ran
up against Cmd. 1922, but Amery got around it by issuing another White Paper,
Future Policy in Regard to East Africa, which while retaining London's position as
Trustee for the Africans of Kenya, proposed to "associate more closely" the
settlers with that Trusteeship (Cmd. 2904).
There was also a favourable change in the domestic political climate of Kenya
for the settlers at this time. After Coryndon's death in office, a new Governor, Sir
Edward Grigg, arrived in Nairobi in 1925. Grigg shared Amery's hopes for using
the settlers as allies in creating a new Dominion of East Africa, and popular
rumour soon credited Grigg, able and ambitious, with the desire to be the new
Dominion's first Governor-General. Grigg's main innovation in settler political
life was the creation of"government by agreement" between the Colonial authori-
ties and the European Elected Members in the Legislative Council. Grigg, an
ex-MP, was appalled by the opposition the settlers habitually mounted against
Government measures. He sought to replace it with quiet discussion with elected
settler politicians. The Convention of Associations was downplayed by forbidding
Government officials from attending its discussions. The Legislative Council was
to be the centre of political life and the European Elected Members became virtual
partners in government (Bennett 1965, 301).
The Defence Force benefitted from developments in both London and
Nairobi. Amery agreed to the principle of a European Defence Force in February
1925. 6 In April 1925 a European Elected Member, Conway Harvey, taking advan-
tage of what he called "a more enlightened Government in England," introduced a
motion in the Legislative Council supporting the principle of a Defence Force.
The motion passed unanimously. 7 There were still further delays, imposed by the
need to consult with various bureaucratic bodies in Britain concerned with
Imperial defence, but the new Defence Force Bill was finally published in
November 1926.
The Bill provided for the compulsory enlistment of every European male
214 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

British subject in Kenya between sixteen and sixty years of age in a Defence Force.
They were liable for service in any part of East Africa without time limit. The Force
could be called out by the Governor or, in an emergency, by District Commis-
sioners. Officers would be appointed by the Governor and the Force was to be
mustered and administered by local districts. The Bill also contained an oath of
allegiance to the King and the laws of Kenya to be sworn by all enlistees (Official
Gazette 30 November 1926, 1423-1430).
There can be little doubt that the main motive behind the Defence Force was
political. It was to be the military expression of Amery's and Grigg's policy of more
closely associating the settlers with the government of Kenya. As Grigg put it at a
public dinner in Nairobi in 1926, "our dependence on the African in this Colony at
the present time is too great. Friendly critics want to see a firmer basis than that for
a self-governing European community" (EAS 4 December 1926). No such com-
munity could be dependent for its armed forces on the very people it was engaged
in subjugating, or as Grigg expressed it more diplomatically, "Peace is a common
interest of both races; it should not be left to the guardianship of the more back-
ward alone." 8 One of the two KAR Battalions in Kenya had been disbanded as an
economy move in 1925, and Grigg hoped to disband two companies ofthe remain-
ing battalion when the Defence Force was created (Moyse-Bartlett 1956, 457). In
short, Africans were being eased out of the Colony's military system and, via the
Defence Force, the settlers were being eased in.
Until the publication of the Defence Force Bill, the Defence Force had fol-
lowed the course of"normal" settler political history. A p~rceived settler need had
been articulated by the settler political leadership. Influence had been brought to
bear on the Colonial Government which had responded with an appropriate mea-
sure. With the exceptional circumstances bound to surround the creation of an all-
white armed body in an African Colony, the measure then had to run an unusually
long gauntlet through the Imperial political system. The gauntlet had finally been
passed by November 1926 and it appeared that the settlers were another step
closer to making Kenya a white man's country. This made the subsequent out-
burst of European opposition to the Defence force a matter of considerable sur-
prise to the Colonial Government and the established settler leadership. The con-
troversy was to reveal that a large number of the European residents of Kenya
rejected this leadership altogether.

Controversy
Popular discussion of the Defence Force really began in September 1926 when an
editorial in the East African Standard, white Kenya's leading newspaper, while
admitting the need for a Force, objected to the "obnoxious principle of compul-
sion" and suggested a volunteer Force instead (EAS 4 September 1926). The pub-
lication of the actual Defence Force Bill in November made it the major issue of
European political life. Nairobi's annual Caledonian Dinner that month passed a
215 Duder: The Politics ofthe Kenya Defence Force

resolution condemning the Force, despite Grigg's presence at the function, and a
deluge of hostile letters descended on the editor of the East Afn·can Standard (EAS
4 December 1926).
Objections to the Defence Force were initially based on particular sections of
the Bill such as the provision for service anywhere in East Africa. Other worries
concerned the amount of time the Force would absorb and whether training
would include parade ground drilling, an unhappy memory of military service for
Kenya's abundant population of ex-soldiers. A good deal of concern was also
expressed over the oath of allegiance the enlisted men would swear: "our hands
should be left free to deal with such trouble as that of a year or two back," said W.
Edgley in a letter to EAS (II December 1926), an unsubtle reference to settler
threats of violence during the Indian Question. Most of these objectors accepted
the need for something like a Defence force, but wanted either a volunteer unit, or
some form of defence on the cheap in the form of aircraft, armoured cars or even a
broadcasting system (for example, letters in EAS 4 December 1926, I I December
1926, r8 December 1926, 25 December 1926).
Increasingly, however, the opposition focused on the issue of conscription.
Conscription was not a part of the military tradition of the British Empire, which
had long looked to volunteers to provide recruits. Even in World War I, Britain had
waited until 1916 to impose conscription, and many in Kenya who supported the
concept of the Defence Force resented being forced into its ranks. There was also a
steadily rising note of class resentment in the opposition; as one opponent wrote,
"those of us who need all our time to make a living by working have no time to play
at soldier" (EAS, letter of"Skee," r6 October 1926). This quickly expanded into a
general attack against the control of Kenya by the "feudal barons and the Wan-
derobo of the Reform Party" (EAS, letter of "Pro Bono Publico," 18 December
1926).
The opposition came to a head at a mass meeting held in the Theatre Royal in
Nairobi in December 1926. The meeting had been called by Nairobi's representa-
tives in the Legislative Council, H. E. Schwartze and H. F. Ward, to explain their
support for the Defence Force, but it was quickly taken over by the Force's oppo-
nents. The attacks on the Force were led by Charles Udall, a former Mayor of
Nairobi, and]. A. Cable, a journalist and solicitor. Cable, especially, was a distinct
radical in terms of settler politics, with ties to both the British Labour Party and the
humanitarian lobby in London. Most of the meeting was taken up with criticism of
the Defence Force and a motion by Cable that the Defence Force was "a scandal-
ous infringement of the liberties of the Kenya settlers," was passed by a large
majority (EAS 18 December 1926).
The Legislative Council met for its last session before the scheduled 1927 elec-
tions on 17 December, a few days after the Nairobi meeting. Grigg, in his address
to the Council, expressed the surprise of the political establishment at the opposi-
tion to the Force, "the business of ascertaining public opinion in this Colony
216 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

resembles the bewildering and costly game known to sharpers as 'spotting the
lady,"' 9 but he also recognized its strength. The Defence Force Bill was sent to a
Select Committee with a majority of Elected Members for revision and Grigg
promised the Government would only proceed with the Bill if the forthcoming
elections endorsed it. 10
The Select Committee reported on 12 January 1927, with recommendations
for an extensively reorganized Defence Force. The oath of loyalty was omitted;
service was to be restricted to Kenya; training would be restricted to a musketry
course; and it was explicitly stated that no ceremonial parades would be held.
Beyond these specific answers to settler concerns, the Force's conscripts were now
divided into four groups. Class I conscripts comprised those from eighteen to
thirty of age. They were to train a hundred hours a year. Class II conscripts, those
from thirty to forty years of age, and Class III conscripts, those from forty to fifty,
would both do thirty hours of training a year. Class IV, those fifty and over, were
not to be conscripted but only given the option of enlisting. No Class was to be
called out for service before the younger classes had been called (Kenya, Official
Gazette 12]anuary 1927, 26-29).
In an attempt to meet specific objections to the Force, the Select Committee
had amended the Bill to a considerable degree, but the principle of a conscript
settler force still stood, and the Force was to be the major issue in the 1927 election
campaign. It proved Jess an election than a contest between the "Town" and
"Country" clements of settler Kenya. This was already an old conflict within
European Kenya. The "Town" was Nairobi and its urban economy. The "Coun-
try" was the rural settled districts. Rivalry between the two was partly economic.
The "Town" wanted low-cost produce to consume, high prices for the imported
goods sold to rural districts, and high interest rates as a reward for advancing
money to Kenya's farmers. The "Country," by contrast, was interested in high
prices for its produce, low prices for imported goods, and cheap money.
These economic conflicts were increased by social divisions. The image, if not
the reality, of white agriculture in Kenya was of aristocrats and retired officers
enjoying a leisured life on their broad acres. But much of Nairobi's urban commu-
nity had originated in South Africa. Few could match the wealth of a Delamere,
and they often resented the distinctly upper class tone of the settler political leader-
ship. Moreover, as previously mentioned, Kenya's urban whites formed forty per-
cent of the Colony's European population but had only three representatives in the
Legislative Council. Political supremacy was thus institutionally monopolized by
the "Country" which was seldom hesitant about using it to extract economic
advantage.
A matter of particular concern to the "Town" during the Defence Force con-
troversy was the high protective duties the "Country" had managed to place on
European foodstuffs such as butter, cheese, bacon, and wheat. These duties made
the price of a loaf of bread in Nairobi twice that of London and were a direct
217 Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

subsidy to the "Country" (Ross 1927, 293) By 1926, "Town" irritation was
mounting as the "Country" was unable to supply all ofNairobi's needs even at the
prevailing high prices. Shortages of meat and butter were reported through 1926
and the East African Standard ran housewives' letters concerning the high price of
food in Nairobi (for example, EAS 29 May 1926). The town's two Legislative
Council Members moved for an inquiry into the protective duties in March 1927.
The motion failed against "Country" opposition. 11 This was not without its effect
on the European elections held in 1927.
The existing Elected Members of the Legislative Council all stood for re-elec-
tion, and all signed the manifesto of the Elected Members' Organization, the loose
grouping which had replaced the Reform Party. The manifesto contained both
broad policy objectives such as a European elected majority in the Legislative
Council and traditional nostrums of settler politics, such as lower expenditure.
Among specific measures, the manifesto contained a pledge "to constitute a Euro-
pean Defence Force for the Colony" (EAS r January 1927). The only contested
elections in rural areas occurred in the constituencies of Kikuyu, where all three of
the candidates backed the Defence Force; Kenya, where both candidates declared
support for the Force; and Plateau North, where both candidates also supported
the Force (EAS 22 January I927, 5 February 1927, 5 March 1927). Even unop-
posed candidates, such as Conway Harvey in the Lake constituency and Lord
Francis Scott in Makuyu, took care to secure resolutions of support for Force from
district associations in their areas. In addition, R. E. Robertson-Eustace and Dr.
G. C. Atkinson, standing unopposed in the Coast and Mombasa constituencies,
declared their support for a compulsory Defence Force (EAS I January 1927, IS
January 1927, 22 January 1927, 29 January 1927).
The Force's opponents were unable to make much headway in rural areas. J. A.
Cable attended a number of election meetings and asked pointed questions about
the Force, only to be rewarded in Kikuyu by the comment of the eventual victor,
Lieutenant-Colonel C. G. Durham: "In his view, Nairobi did not care tuppence
what happened in the country outside the capital" (EAS I January 1927). A similar
intervention by Cable at a meeting at Nakuru for Lord Delamere, calling the
Defence Force Bill a "fiasco" and the natural result of "government by agree-
ment," was shouted down with cries of "We don't want to hear anyone from
Nairobi." (EAS 22 January 1927). A motion that the Defence Force should be a
purely voluntary body failed to find a seconder.
Balked in the country, the anti-conscriptionists turned their attention to
Nairobi's two seats. Charles Udall contested Nairobi North against H. F. Ward,
and Olga Florence Watkins, wife of the Deputy Native Commissioner, challenged
H. E. Schwartze in Nairobi South. Udall was the only candidate totally opposed to
the Defence Force, but the other three, recognizing the strength of opposition in
Nairobi, agreed to be ultimately guided by a referendum of their constituents.
Both Udall and Watkins, however, declared themselves opposed to protective
218 CJAS/RCEA25:21991

duties and the existing settler political leadership; as Watkins said, "The Reform
Party is in fact a Country Party" (EAS 29 January 1927). Both Watkins and Udall
were also opposed to a European elected majority in the Legislative Council, cor-
rectly predicting that the demand would merely reopen the Indian Question.
The scope of the attack on the Force had considerably widened from the initial
concern with conscription. A debate between T. J. O'Shea, an Elected Member,
and J.D. Riddell, the Mayor of Nairobi, held in the town in March 1927 was only
partly concerned with the Force. Riddell instead concentrated his attack on the
Reform Party and its feudal aristocrats, afraid of an income tax or an undeveloped
land tax and bleeding Nairobi white with protective duties. "The biggest asset to
the country from a defence point of view was close settlement but the land was not
available. The whole thing was a ramp [fraud] from beginning to end" (EAS 19
March 1927).
Udall and Watkins, however, were beaten in the election and the subsequent
referendum of Ward and Schwartze showed substantial majorities in favour of a
compulsory Force. Few of the Force's vocal opponents were in fact registered
voters (EAS 19 February 1927). They had either never bothered with registering,
or they lacked the minimum of a year's residence in Kenya necessary to vote. The
anti-conscriptionists, faced with Elected Members whom J. A. Cable termed
"Lord Delamere multiplied by eleven" turned to a new tactic, a petition to the
King. 12
The petition's prime movers were J. A. Cable, Riddell, P. C. Green, a former
South African labour organizer and now a Nairobi Town Councillor, and Lieuten-
ant-Colonel D.P. Driscoll, an old soldier whose objection to the Force was less the
fact that it was the result of "government by agreement" than that it violated the
principle of voluntary service. The petition was launched at the end of March and
within a week had gained some two hundred signatures (EAS 2 April 1927).
Door-to-door canvassing in Nairobi and Mombasa continued through April and
May, until finally some r 397 signatures were collected, more than a tenth of the
total white population of Kenya. Two-thirds of the signatures were from Nairobi
and Mombasa. Only 218 of the signatories, however, were registered voters. ' 3
The petition also began to attract attention in Britain. Labour MPs asked a
number of Questions about it in the House of Commons 14 and branches of the No
More War Movement in York, Rochdale, Guilford and Aberdeen sent protests
about the Defence Force to the Colonial Office. •s In addition, the 1926 Annual
Meeting of the Aborigines Protection and Anti-Slavery Society condemned the
Force. Settler opponents in Britain even expressed the hope that the petition sig-
nalled the arrival of a new force in Kenya which could overthrow the established
settler political leadership (Ross 1927, 447). The Colonial Office itself decided
that in view of the widespread opposition to the Force, the Legislative Council
should pass the revised Bill, which would then be reserved for the Secretary of
State's consideration in conjunction with the petition. ' 6
219 Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

The Defence Force Bill came before the Kenya Legislative Council for Second
Reading in the midst of the petition campaign. It passed on a vote of thirty-three to
one. Only H. H. Malik, the solitary Indian in the Council, voted against it on the
grounds that Indians were excluded from the Force. Otherwise, all the Elected
Members, the Chief Native Commissioner and Canon Bums all supported it. ' 7
The Force also attracted support outside the Legislative Council. Several rural
associations passed unanimous resolutions against the petition and individual
settlers especially condemned Driscoll's adherence to "the miserable cause of the
conscientious objectors" (EAS 9 April 1927). The very interest that Labour MPs
were taking in the matter also caused misgivings even among opponents of the
Force. The East African Standard editorialized that, "Such disputes as we have
should be settled in the Colony" (EAS 14 May 1927).
The petition was finally sent off to the Colonial Office in May 1927. It was
accompanied by two memoranda by Cable. One outlined his objections to the
present form of European politics in Kenya and the other contained his own plan
for the defence of white Kenya, based on a volunteer police reserve and the visit of
a regular British regiment once a year. This last item would have been prohibitively
expensive and a large exclamation mark resides beside it on the Colonial Office's
copy of the memorandum. This was typical of the permanent officials' cool
response to Cable and the petition. Almost the only minute entered on the file was
C. S. Strachey's comment, "The actual petition, of which we have heard so much,
is very feeble." The Colonial Government's opinion was contained in a covering
dispatch on the petition from the Acting Governor, A. G. Denham. He dismissed
it as "the disaffection, distrust and ignorance of a small minority" more concerned
with attacking Lord Delamere than the Defence Force. ' 8
The arrival of the petition and Cable's subsequent appearance in Britain in
July, however, meant that the fight against the Force switched from Nairobi to
London. A deputation of the National Council for the Prevention of War came to
the Colonial Office in July to present objections to the Force. L. S. Amery replied
by noting that both the Chief Native Commissioner and Canon Burns had sup-
ported the Bill. ' 9 In addition, the petition featured prominently in the 1927 Colo-
nial Office debate in the House of Commons when Rennie Smith, a Labour MP,
read parts of Cable's memorandum into the record. >o This did not, however, pre-
vent Amery from approving the Defence Force Bill. There were, however, worries
in London that Cable would be able to provide ammunition for a concerted
Labour Party attack on the Force as part of a general assault on the defence policy
of Baldwin's Government.
Grigg, however, in response to a Colonial Office telegram asking if opposition
still continued in Kenya, was able to report: "There is at present no sign of any
opposition whatever.... "" The agitation over the Force had died down almost
completely after the dispatch of the petition to London. The objectors had, in
fact, expended all of the political means at their disposal. Electoral action, mass
220 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

meetings and a petition had all proved fruitless and while J. A. Cable might have
been willing to enlist the Labour Party as an ally against Lord Delamere, it is
unlikely that many other Europeans in Kenya were anxious for a partnership with a
body whose whole Imperial policy was hostile to white settlement in Africa.
Registration for the KDF started in July 1928, and the reaction to the actual
imposition of conscription formed a stark contrast to the controversy over the
principle. Nairobi Town Council held a long discussion on the subject but, in the
end, decided to do nothing (EAS 14]uly 1928). By the end of October, 4 518 of the
5 229 Europeans in the Colony liable to service had signified their voluntary wil-
lingness to serve. 22 Eventually, the Colony's Executive Council allowed seven
exemptions for medical reasons and two on grounds of conscientious objections.
Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. Phillips, a settler, was appointed as first Commandant
of the Forces in November 1928 (b'AS 24 November 1928.

Result
In fact, the mountain of controversy surrounding the KDF produced a molehill of
a military unit. While pictures of smiling Class I conscripts attending weekend
camps enlivened the pages of the East African Standard, the KDF was never called
on for active service. There were no African uprisings during its brief existence and
the Colonial Administration's response to reports of African unrest, such as those
which disturbed the settlers of the Lumbwa region in 1929, was the traditional one
of a KAR patrol (Moyse-Bartlett 1956, 44 7). Indeed, only the most foolhardy Dis-
trict Commissioner or Governor would have called out an armed body of men
with, at most, a couple of weekends of training to deal with an emergency, and in
an atmosphere of racial tension it might have been disastrous.
In addition, the Force was always starved for funds. Initially, this was caused by
misgivings in London. Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour Government took
office in 1929 and the new Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, Lord Passfield,
formerly Sidney Webb, disliked conscription on principle and found the KDF a
great embarrassment with British peace groups and his own backbenchers.
Although advised that there were no constitutional grounds for disbanding the
Force, he cut appropriations for it in the Colonial Government's budget, over
Grigg's protests, and directed that the clement of compulsion in the Force should
become a "dead letter." 23 Passfield's political moves were reinforced by the effects
of the Depression on Kenya's revenues and expenditures.
Without funds and the compulsion to enlist, the KDF essentially became a vol-
unteer rifle club, which depended on the force of white public opinion to fill its
ranks. Where this opinion was weak, as it was in Mombasa, the Force had virtually
ceased to exist by the mid-1930s. Even in those areas where the Force was a going
concern it was anything but an advertisement for settler military or administrative
skills. A Colonial Government Committee was established in 1935 to investigate
losses of military stores by the Force. It found that the Force's Staff Officer
221 Duder: The Politics ofthe Kenya Defence Force

Colonel Fitzgerald, who was in charge of its actual administration, "failed sig-
nally" in his duties. As of 1930, arms and ammunition were issued directly to Force
members. Few of the District Commandants of the Force kept satisfactory or
indeed any records. The Government Committee reported that 228 rifles and
86 467 rounds of ammunition were unaccounted for, no doubt to the detriment of
Kenya's fast disappearing fauna. 24
There was also a change in the strategic military situation confronting white
Kenya by 1935. The Colonial Government had become acutely aware that Italian
intervention in Ethiopia placed what was thought to be a first class military power,
equipped with all the panoply of modem warfare, on Kenya's northern border. It
was now possible that a volunteer militia with a hundred hours of musketry train-
ing might have to face tanks, aircraft and poison gas. The Governor of Kenya in
1935, Sir Joseph Byrne, took the opportunity presented by the 1935 Government
Committee Report to suggest to the Colonial Office that the KDF be disbanded
and a new system of European defence be established.
There was, as usual in Kenya, more to it than this. The 1930s were an extremely
rough decade for white Kenya. Drought, locusts and Depression had delivered
hammer blows to the settler economy and with the loss of prosperity had gone
much of settler political influence. This was typified by Sir Joseph Byrne. He was
an ex-policeman, not an ex-MP, and he believed in ruling the settlers, not in con-
sulting them. In particular, his relations with the settler political leaders in 1935,
Lord Francis Scott and F. W. Cavendish-Bcntinck, were abysmal. Byrne consid-
ered Scott to be a "spoilt child," and Cavendish-Bentinck in tum characterized
Byrne as "weak, stupid and dishonest." 25 In proposing to disband the KDF, Byrne
could not have been unaware of the fact that he was destroying the settler military
body.
Moreover, he had a solid reason to do so. The Convention of Associations had
established a Colonists' Vigilance Committee to "enforce the just rights of the
European settler community" in September 1935. 26 Desperate economic straits
and an unsympathetic government had driven the settler political elite to the very
dangerous game of using threats to try to influence the Colonial authorities. The
very name, Vigilance Committee, had last been used during the Indian Crisis of
1923 to denote the organization of a planned settler rebellion. The image was rein-
forced by the oaths of secrecy that the Vigilance Committee demanded from its
members. This was mainly bluff, as the most violent activities the Committee con-
sidered were picketing of foreclosed settler farms. 27 The image, however, was of a
hostile settler community playing with words of rebellion. There could have been
few reasons for Byrne to wish to retain the KDF.
The political explosion over the Force came in March 1936 when Byrne pub-
lished a dispatch from the Secretary of State agreeing to disband the Force and
suggesting a new defence system in Kenya. Lord Francis Scott and Cavendish-
Bentinck resigned their seats on the Executive Council, citing Byrne's lack of
222 CJAS / RCEA 25:2 1991

consultation on a matter of vital settler interest. The Force's Commandant, Briga-

dier A. C. Lewin, soon followed suit. 18 This should have been the start of yet
another political crisis over the KDF, but this time there was no crisis.
There had been grave disquiet within settler ranks over the Vigilance Commit-
tee and especially its oath of secrecy. The settlers liked to think that they operated
within the British political tradition where oaths of secrecy had little part. As well,
there could be little doubt that the KDF was inefficient and, as the East African
Standard pointed out, some new arrangement was needed to meet new threats. ' 9
Perhaps most importantly, there was little sympathy in the Colonial Office for the
settlers and much for Byrne. The officials in London had long grown weary of the
interminable crises of Kenya's settlers: "To read some of the articles in the East
African papers one would think that the Cabinet lies awake at night worrying
about Kenya .... "3° They also liked Byrne's non-nonsense attitude: "Kenya, for the
first time in its history, has a Governor." In these circumstances, the Colonial
Office was unimpressed by the protests of "these noisy and unimportant
people."3' Backed up by this support, Byrne rode out the minor political storm
and the KDF passed unlamented from the history of Kenya.
Its replacement was the Kenya Regiment (Territorial), organized along the
lines of British Territorial units. It was under the ultimate control of the OCT
Kenya, although in a gesture to settler opinion, its first commander was a titled
Guards officer, Captain Lord Stratheden, as "a Guardee, plus a title, appeals to
the Settler community here," 31 and the Kenya Regiment always drew upon
Guards' NCOs for its training element (Killingray 1989, 213). The Regiment's
main purpose was to train European residents of Kenya to supply officers and
NCOs for an expanded KARin the event of war. It was obviously a more rational
use of Kenya's European manpower than the KDF, but there can be little doubt
that it was also symbolic of the political defeats which the settlers endured in the
1930s. A military force which had been peculiarly their own had been taken from
them and replaced by a unit under the command of their political masters in Lon-
don.33

Conclusion
By itself, the KDF was not an important part of the history of Colonial Kenya. Its
real importance lay in what it illustrated about the political universe of settler
Kenya. The first point to note is how the KDF emphasized the limitations of settler
power. The KDF was a necessary step in any settler advance to self-government,
yet to get it the settlers had to jump an amazing number of hurdles, ranging from
the Colonial Government of Kenya to the National Council for the Prevention of
War in Britain. It was only in the exceptional circumstances of the 1920s, with both
a thriving settler economy and an unusually favourable government in London,
that the KDF was able to get through at all. With the arrival of Lord Passfield, Sir
223 Duder: The Politics ofthe Kenya Defence Force

Joseph Byrne and the Italians in Ethiopia, the KDF collapsed and the settlers were
not able to prevent it.
Recent historical writing has often concentrated its attention on settler success
in manipulating the colonial world to their own advantage. This success, however,
was chiefly in the realm of economic policy and involved such esoteric issues as hut
tax rates and maize marketing arrangements. These were topics which were only
accessible, as one historian has pointed out, to the "most sophisticated of contem-
porary observers" at the time and to modern scholars deeply influenced by under-
development theory (Brett 1973, 173). The KDF, by contrast, was part of conven-
tional political life, easily understood by outsiders and bound to draw public atten-
tion in a Britain dominated by the shadow of the Unknown Soldier. The history of
the KDF indicates that in what might be called "mainline" politics, the settlers
were much more constricted in their power than in economic affairs.
The second aspect of settler life touched by the KDF is the dynamics of the
"domestic" politics of European Kenya. The debates over the establishment of the
KDF illustrated that a large section of white Kenya, concentrated in the urban
areas of Nairobi and Mombasa, rejected the political leadership of rural Kenya.
This "Town" versus "Country" split, heightened by class differentiation, has long
been recognized as a part of settler Kenya's political history (for example, Nastou-
las 1972). What the KDF controversy emphasized was the presence in Kenya of a
basically "expatriate" white population. The fact that so many of the signatures on
the petition against the KDF were from individuals who were not registered voters
points to the existence of a large "floating" white population. This population was
either new to Kenya or lacked the commitment to the Colony's political life that
registering to vote implied.
This "expatriate" population had little or no interest in the political goals of the
settler elite. It was more than satisfied with the peace, order and good government
provided by Kenya's colonial administration and actively opposed any innovation,
such as the KDF, which would directly impinge on their own lives. Established
urban politicians like J. A. Cable, who were long-time opponents of rural leader-
ship, were able to articulate the expatriates' resentment and attempted to channel
it into political action. They were ultimately unsuccessful because the very nature
of the expatriates disinclined them to sustained political action, but the KDF con-
troversy reinforces the general impression of the isolation of political leaders like
Lord Delamere and Lord Francis Scott. They were leaders without followers,
except in rural districts, and hence vulnerable to outside pressure, as the speedy
dispatch of the KDF in 1935 shows.
Finally, the KDF provides an illuminating glimpse into the futility of white set-
tlement in Kenya. Total war, even on the fringes of Empire, is the ultimate test of
any society. Settler Kenya, faced with only the prospect of war with Fascist Italy,
failed that test. A part-time, semi-trained settler militia could not hope to defend
 224 CJAS I RCEA 25:2 1991

Kenya and it was promptly dumped in favour of a military structure which recog-
nized Africans under Imperial control as the main resource of the country. The
contrast with South Africa, which did not allow Africans to carry guns in World
War II, or even with settler Rhodesia, which created and commanded its own
"native" unit, the Rhodesian African Rifles, is obvious. The KD F was thus, like all
of settler political life, a tempest in a doomed white teapot.

Notes
1 The standard "regimental" history of the KARis Moyse-Bartlett (1956). Clayton and Kil-
lingray (1989) contains more social insights on the KAR, but most of them are drawn from
the memories of the unit's officers.
z Kenya, Legislative Council Debates (LCD) 30 August 1921, 15-17; 27 December 1922, 65; 8
January 1923, 29.
C0533/309, Coryndon to Thomas, 7 April 1924, and minutes thereon; Thomas to Coryn-
don, 19 July 1924. C0533 is the official designation for all surviving records of the Colonial
Office concerning Kenya. These records are currently held by the Public Record Office,
London.
4 LCD 15 September 1924, 169-183.
C0533/314, Coryndon to Amery, 5 November 1924, and minutes.
6 C0533/314, Amery to Coryndon, 4 February 1925.
7 LCD 15 April 1925, 304-308.
8 LCD 17 December 1926,697.
9 LCD 17 December 1926, 698.
ro LCD r8 December 1926, 710-7II.
u LCD 12 February 1927 91.
1:1. C0533/69o, Memo by Cable, Denham to Amery 21 May 1927.
13 C0533/690, Denham to Amery 21 May 1927.
14 For example, Carlton, 205 House of Commons Debates. Fifth Series 6r, 1254,2 May 1927.
15 Registers of Correspondence. C06281I8, f.roor8.
16 C0533/690, Amery to Denham, 9 May 1927.
17 LCD 10 May 1927, r6o-r83.
18 C0533/690, Denham to Amery, 21 May 1927, and minutes.
19 C0533/690, N.C. P. W. to Amery, 8 July 1927.
zo Smith, 209 House of Commons Debates 5, 279-281, 19 July 1927.
:1.1 C0533/691, Grigg to Amery, 5 December 1927.
:1.:1. Amery, 222 House of Commons Debates 5, 28 January 1929, 583.
:1.3 C0533/385, Passfield to Grigg, II December 1929.
:1.4 C0533I458/38o9olr/35·
zs C0533/466, Byrne to Bottomley, 8 March 1936; Cavendish-Bentinck to F. E. Guest, 19
March 1936.
z6 C0533/461, Wade to MacDonald, 10 October 1935.
:1.7 For example, Police Report C0533/461, Byrne to Bottomley, 22 October 1935.
z8 C0533f466/380901l.
:1.9 C0533/466/38090!I contains clippings from the local press.
30 C0533f456/38039, minute by Flood, 7 February 1936.
31 C0533f461, 3 8220, minute by Flood, 8 April 1936.
3:1. C0533f474, Byrne to Bottomley, 16 April 1936.
 225 Duder: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force

33 John Lonsdale's suggestion in "The Depression and the Second World War in the Transfor-
mation of Kenya" that the abolition of the KDF was part of an attempt to stamp a "corpora-
tist" image on Colonial Kenya may be a valid interpretation of Kenya's history, but it appears
to have played no part in the thinking of any of the direct participants in the event (quoted in
Killingray and Rathbone I986, II5-II6.

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