The Development of Political Organizations in Kenya

AuthorGeorge Bennett
Published date01 June 1957
Date01 June 1957
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9248.1957.tb00959.x
Subject MatterArticle
THE DEVELOPMENT
OF
POLITICAL
ORGANIZATIONS
IN
KENYA
GEORGE
BENNETT
Oxford University Institute of Commonwealth Studies
I.
Examples
#or
the
African
KENYA,
it may be said, is a political creation.
If
its frontiers have been
drawn
by
administrators, the idea of the Colony arose in the minds of poli-
ticians; their actions have thrown an image
of
Kenya on the world-screen.
The British immigrants, whether coming from the British Isles, or from
South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand, took to East Africa the tradi-
tional aspirations of British settlers. They began to arrive in numbers in
1903 in what was then the British East Africa Protectorate; within the year
they had formed their first organization, the Planters’ and Farmers’ Asso-
ciation. Its first aim concerned the export
of
potatoes, but it was not long
before it was voicing political demands. Renamed the Colonists’ Associa-
tion in 1904, it pressed, under the leadership
of
Lord Delamere, for the
establishment of a Legislative Council and raised the usual cry of ‘No
taxation without representation’. The real interest
of
politics then, as
so
often later with all racial groups, was land: the Association demanded the
exclusion of the Indians from land ownership in the Highlands. It was not
long before it began to split; Delamere’s leadership never rode easily in
Kenya. At Nakuru, ‘the capital
of
the Highlands’, some of his opponents
broke away to form the Pastoralists’ Association, and this was followed by
the formation of local groups in other centres. In 1907 the then Mr. Winston
Churchill, Under-Secretary
of
State for the Colonies, visited East Africa.
He was entertained by the Colonists’ Association, and subsequently noted
in
a
phrase the individualism of the frontier,
so
characteristic of Kenya’s
political history: ‘Every white man in Nairobi is
a
politician; and most of
them are leaders of parties.”
Various attempts were made in 1907 and the following years to bring the
European district associations together in some form of federal organiza-
tion. In 191
1
Delamere succeeded finally in achieving this in the Conven-
tion of Associations; the first word of its title being intended to have, it
W.
S.
Churchill,
My African Journey
(1908),
p.
21.
I
Political
Studles
,Vol.
V
,No.
2 (1957,
113-130)
5540.5.2
114
DEVELOPMENT
OF
POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
IN
KENYA
would seem, a literal and not
a
revolutionary connotation, though it was
not long before
it
was known as ‘The Settlers’ Parliament’. The claim had
some meaning when the only unofficials on the Legislative Council, which
first met in 1907, were nominated, and these, from 1913, were maintaining
a boycott as part
of
the campaign to secure electoral representation. Yet
even after this had been conceded to the Europeans, who returned their
first members in 1920, the Convention continued for some years to play an
anomalous part in the life of the Colony. It was spoken of as ‘what might
be
termed
a
second chamber’,’ and in the Legislative Council
a
Govern-
ment official could refer to it in the Parliamentary periphrasis as ‘another
place’.2
For
some time it continued to act like a Parliamentary body, taking
published bills and discussing them clause by clause before they received
similar treatment in the Legislative Council. For many years its meetings
were opened by the Governor, who might make important pronouncements
to
it on the state of the Colony which would have been more appropriate
in
the Council.
‘A
moral if not legal right’3 was effectively asserted to call
Government officials before it to be cross-examined on their policies, to sit
through its meetings, and answer its debates. These strange relations of the
political organization
of
one racial group in the Colony with the Govern-
ment, and the manifest influence of that group, caused questions to be
raised in the House
of
Commons. After 1927 the Governor and officials
ceased to attend. The Convention began to decline as the focus of political
expression thus passed to the Legislative Council; and the decline was
hastened by the effects of the slump when many
of
the district associations
no longer maintained their subscriptions. It met as a body for the last time
in 1938, after its President, Lord Erroll, had suggested that it might have
a
future if it divorced itself from politics and confined itself to discussing
agricul tural and technical
matter^.^
The suggestion was not taken up, but
certainly the Convention had grown weaker as other platforms were set up
for
the expression
of
European needs and opinions.
Among
these the
Legislative Council was pre-eminent, but there were also District Councils
and Road Boards, and Boards concerned with all the main agricultural
products: on all of these European officials,
if
not always in
a
majority, had
a
large and important say.
In the heyday of the Convention its leaders regarded their position as
Ea~t African Standard
(hereafter
E.A.S.),
leading article 31 Jan. 1920.
Legislative Council
Debates
(hereafter Leg. Co.
Debates),
Mr.
Holm,
17 Apr. 1925,
p. 284, and 18 Mar. 1926, p. 39.
Phrase of Capt. Schwartze, a Nairobi lawyer and later member of the Legislative
Council
(M.L.C.),
in the Convention
(E.A.S.
1 Jan. 1921). The legality
of
this proceeding
was questioned by one former official, Mr. McGregor
Ross,
who maintained that this was
‘about as flagrant a breach as could be imagined of Colonial Regulation
No.
45’
which
forbade a public official from allowing himself ‘to be interviewed
on
questions of public
policy’
(W.
McGregor
Ross,
Kenya
from
Within
(1927),
p.
172).
E.A.S.
13
May
1938.

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