In 2011, the world realized of the key British coverage known as Operation Legacy that was carried out within the Nineteen Fifties. The aim of this coverage was to take away incriminating paperwork from former colonies within the months earlier than every one grew to become politically unbiased.
Documents which may embarrass or injury the British authorities, police and army had been both secretly eliminated or destroyed. This coverage had an influence far and broad, and was carried out in British colonies all through the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
In an age the place misinformation is in every single place, Operation Legacy offers us with an instructive instance of the repercussions confronted when folks with energy decide what data is offered to interpret occasions of the previous.
A TED-Ed explainer on Operation Legacy and the way British officers destroyed embarrassing paperwork or despatched them to the U.Ok.
Kenya: the unravelling of a British lie
We learn about Operation Legacy due to a case introduced earlier than the British High Court. Five aged Kenyans accused the British colonial authorities of imposing a coverage of torture and human rights abuses throughout a state of emergency from 1952-1960 instituted in response to a insurrection in opposition to colonial rule.
The case revealed the worth many Kenyans paid as they fought in opposition to colonialism. At the core of the battle was entry to land. From the start of colonial rule in 1895, the British had been aggressive of their efforts to displace Africans from their lands. The aim was to order essentially the most fertile land for white settlement and farms.
By the Nineteen Fifties, African resistance grew to become extra organized and intense. When the colonial authorities declared a state of emergency, Kenyans suspected of difficult British colonial rule confronted even higher dangers. The state of emergency gave colonial authorities a large ranging set of powers — which included torture and different human rights abuses — to take care of the anti-colonialists.
The propaganda from the interval is telling.
A 1955 British information report casting Kenyan anti-colonial rebels as fanatics and bandits.
Privileging the colonizer’s narrative
Many historians of twentieth century Kenya — however not all — neglected or downplayed this colonial coverage of violence. Some may argue they need to be forgiven as there have been no official colonial paperwork that exposed a British coverage of human rights violations in Kenya.
But what occurs when the absence of proof is basically as a result of deliberate removing of proof?
Others could be inclined to suppose these historians didn’t look laborious sufficient. They had been solely keen to consider the official colonial data though there have been Kenyans alive who might give oral testimony.
For the 5 aged Kenyans, the irrefutable proof was the scars they bore on their our bodies. Make no mistake, the human rights violations had been excessive. They even included castration. The Kenyans additionally had their reminiscences. Yet, this mattered little for these historians who privileged official colonial paperwork above all else.
However, it was the work of historians David Anderson, Huw Bennett and Caroline Elkins that helped flip the court docket case round. Their analysis challenged the historic silence on colonial violence throughout this era.
In court docket, proof was introduced that colonial paperwork had been intentionally eliminated and that the testimony of the aged Kenyans was, in reality, credible. In December 2010, the presiding decide dominated that the British Foreign and Commonwealth workplace needed to launch all paperwork associated to the case.
Once these paperwork had been launched and analyzed, the proof was clear. The British colonial authorities sanctioned excessive abuses. We now know that over 80,000 folks had been imprisoned with out trial and greater than 1,000 folks had been convicted as “terrorists” and put to dying by hanging.
Only eight white officers had been accused of utmost abuse, and so they had been all granted amnesty. This consists of the officer accused of “roasting alive” one Kenyan.
Shortly after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was required to launch paperwork in regards to the case, an announcement was made within the House of Lords that recordsdata had been additionally being held regarding 37 former British colonies. An unbiased audit revealed there have been greater than 20,000 recordsdata taken from former colonies.
Some recordsdata had been additionally slated for destruction, and there’s no method to know what number of had been destroyed.
Instructions given to colonial officers for the destruction of paperwork discovered within the U.Ok.’s nationwide archives.
(The National Archives)
Guyana: destroyed paperwork and a coup
The recordsdata that did survive had been ultimately transferred to The National Archives in London. They at the moment are formally known as the “Migrated Archive,” a fastidiously chosen misnomer. Now that they’re within the public area, we’ve a greater thought in regards to the paperwork accessible for different former British colonies.
I’m at the moment engaged on a mission, Chained in Paradise, that explores the influence of Operation Legacy on the Caribbean. When the general public was knowledgeable in regards to the particular paperwork within the Migrated Archive, historian Richard Drayton was the primary to level on the market had been no paperwork for British Guiana, present-day Guyana.
In different phrases, in contrast to in Kenya the place some paperwork had been hidden, in British Guiana they had been all destroyed. Did Britain have issues to cover regarding its colonial insurance policies in British Guiana? The quick reply is sure.
The Personal web
Approximately one yr after Britain declared a State of Emergency in Kenya, it declared one other in British Guiana in October 1953; six months after the colony’s first democratic election.
British troops had been deployed to take away the elected Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan. The structure of British Guiana was suspended and the British governor dominated for 3 extra years. The space previously referred to as British Guiana grew to become the unbiased nation of Guyana in 1966.
Jagan was accused of being a communist and went to England to protest his removing. However, he and his allies had been ultimately positioned beneath home arrest.
A British information report on the deposition of Guyana’s Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan.
According to 1 doc I’ve reviewed from the Migrated Archives, lower than one month after Prime Minister Jagan was elected, data in British Guiana had been included right into a secret system for hiding official correspondence. It was known as the “Personal” web.
There are three issues we are able to be taught from these data:
1) As quickly as British Guiana had its democratically held elections, plans had been put in place for top ranges of British secrecy. Not solely was there to be no transparency, there was additionally to be excessive ranges of duplicity.
2) Before political independence — in different phrases, when Britain was on the cusp of shedding its political management — paperwork had been to be destroyed so the incoming authorities can be left at the hours of darkness in regards to the ways of its former British colonizers.
3) The doc beneath means that sure colonial data could possibly be destroyed as a result of there have been copies in England. To date, no such paperwork have been launched as a part of the Migrated Archives. This raises questions on the place these paperwork at the moment are and in the event that they nonetheless exist.
History is in regards to the future
In his e-book, The History Thieves, journalist Ian Cobain argues that Operation Legacy was carried out in order that British colonialism can be remembered with “fondness and respect.” He is correct, however there may be extra to historical past than what we keep in mind.
The long-term goal of Operation Legacy was to undermine future criticism of colonialism by sanitizing the previous. That would make the transition from colonialism to neocolonialism simpler as future financial relations with their former colonies can be negotiated and not using a correct historic understanding of Britain’s motives.
History was a robust software of the British empire, and it has been used to take care of unequal relations with its former colonies lengthy after they attained political independence.
Audra Diptée receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.