The Ruling Compassions of the Late Colonial State: Welfare versus Force, Kenya, 1945-1952

Abstract

The Ruling Compassions of the Late Colonial State: Welfare versus Force, Kenya, 1945–1952 J. E. Lewis Introduction It is fashionable these days to downplay the effect of the Second World War upon governance in Britain. The case against the war’s influence includes the arguments that war merely sped up administrative changes already in place and, in certain instances, even put a brake upon institutional reform. And more generally, if wartime affected neither social change nor cultural adjustment as much as was once believed, the climate surrounding governance — a medium rigidly bound in hierarchy and upper-middle-class traditions — was hardly demanding of deep-seated reforms.1 Indeed, the experience of women in professional employment highlights the conservatism of change at this time.2 Such revisionism might seem initially less plausible in relation to the British Empire, the very dismantling of which within two decades after the end of war has been tightly linked to the fallout of global conflict. To maintain such a line for colonial administration surely smacks of academic pedantry at its worst, futility if predisposed to charity, for war cast a huge shadow over colonial governance, as is well known. The Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1940 signaled a more interventionist stance from London, promising a state-centric solution to perceived colonial inadequacies. The “Second Colonial Occupation” offered to ease the restrictions of the Depression by thickening the “thin white line.” 3 Meanwhile a Labor Government — enthusiastically voted into power in 1945 for the first time in its short history — married the new state developmentalism to a proud tradition of activism in local government and vowed to uphold a lack of squeamishness toward replacing the so-called traditional systems of native rule. 4 Thus, colonial governments such as Kenya’s found themselves bedding down with a new generation of modernizers who saw their postwar colonial mission in terms of bread-and-butter trusteeship with a sell-by date: according to their methodology, improving standards of living would sustain systems of self-government that must come sooner rather than later. Yet closer examination suggests that, even for colonial administration, the reality was closer to continuity rather than marked by cleavage. This article reexamines the influence of war on colonial governance in relation to the politics of welfare imperialism in the colony of Kenya. Therefore, this is a case study of the rhetoric of more compassionate administration. The period covered are the years between the end of one conflict — the Second World War — and the beginning of another — the Mau Mau civil war (officially recognized as an emergency situation in October 1952). I argue that the war did lead to significant changes in official intent and bureaucratic initiatives. However, in terms of administrative practice and outcomes, the dominant feature is that of continuity. And this continuity tells of a much deeper connection between war and governance in Kenya — both in terms of the conflict that had passed and the one that was soon to descend — and may indeed reflect white collar public service experience in twentieth-century Britain. At first glance, one could easily be forgiven for believing that war had produced unprecedented administrative change in Kenya. The spirit of welfare imperialism seemed to have touched this white-settler colony in eastern Africa. In 1945, as the world was finally shaking off the misery of mass conflict, Sir Charles Mortimer, commissioner for local government, lands, and settlement, complained to his colleagues in Nairobi that they had more or less committed themselves, for the time being, to an adviser on social welfare. Dr. Philip, a senior medical officer (MO), would return from Witwatersrand University, where he was attending a course in social science, and take charge of an organization that consisted of himself, an assistant (Fortie Ross), and a social worker in Nairobi, Mary Kenny. Additionally, Philip had eight former civil reabsorption officers in the field and could look forward to the prospect of not-yet-trained African social welfare workers to be stationed at not-yet-built community centers. Efforts made by the Colonial Office to dispatch an expert to help were firmly rebuffed. Although London and the Uganda government queried this decision, senior officials in...