Front page of today's Guardian reports that the Foreign Office is to pay off Kenyans for alleged "imperial rule crimes".
Let us remind ourselves about the Mau Mau uprising: faced with unrestricted immigration that was taking over large areas of their traditional lands and disrupting out of all recognition their traditional way of life the Kikuyu people rebelled in what became a frenzy of violence against the white immigrants and what they considered to be black African collaborators.
Despite the justice of the Kikuyu cause, the violence they used was widely (and rightly) condemned.
No-one can justify the Mau Mau terror.
However, if there is to be a reopening of "imperial rule crimes" can we please look at the issue of post-war immigration by Commonwealth people into the United Kingdom against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the United Kingdom population.
Elsewhere in the same newspaper former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Roy Hattersley admits that Commonwealth immigration was against the wishes of the majority.
No-one in their right mind would want a Mau Mau style uprising in the United Kingdom.
But if there is to be a righting of imperial wrongs can we at least have an acknowledgement that post war immigration into the United Kingdom is an injustice that needs to be addressed by the immigrant communities and apologised for by their leaders.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/05/mau-mau-victims-kenya-settlement
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