Hanslope Park, where the Foreign Office kept a secret archive of colonial papers. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
From the Guardian: Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts
and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were
systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of
post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.
Those
papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where
they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond
the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of
legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.
The archive came to light last year when a group of Kenyans detained and allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion
won the right to sue the British government. The Foreign Office
promised to release
the 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held at the highly-secure
government communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire.
The
historian appointed to oversee the review and transfer, Tony Badger,
master of Clare College, Cambridge, says the discovery of the archive
put the Foreign Office in an "embarrassing, scandalous" position. "These
documents should have been in the public archives in the 1980s," he
said. "It's long overdue." The first of them are made available to the
public on Wednesday at the National Archive at Kew, Surrey.
The
papers at Hanslope Park include monthly intelligence reports on the
"elimination" of the colonial authority's enemies in 1950s Malaya;
records showing ministers in London were aware of the torture and murder
of Mau Mau insurgents in
Kenya,
including a case of aman said to have been "roasted alive"; and papers
detailing the lengths to which the UK went to forcibly remove islanders
from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
However, among the
documents are a handful which show that many of the most sensitive
papers from Britain's late colonial era were not hidden away, but simply
destroyed. These papers give the instructions for systematic
destruction issued in 1961 after Iain Macleod, secretary of state for
the colonies, directed that post-independence governments should not get
any material that "might embarrass Her Majesty's government", that
could "embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants
or others eg police informers", that might compromise intelligence
sources, or that might "be used unethically by ministers in the
successor government".
Among the documents that appear to have
been destroyed were: records of the abuse of Mau Mau insurgents detained
by British colonial authorities, who were tortured and sometimes
murdered; reports that may have detailed the alleged massacre of 24
unarmed villagers in Malaya by soldiers of the Scots Guards in 1948;
most of the sensitive documents kept by colonial authorities in Aden,
where the army's Intelligence Corps operated a secret torture centre for
several years in the 1960s; and every sensitive document kept by the
authorities in British Guiana, a colony whose policies were heavily
influenced by successive US governments and whose post-independence
leader was
toppled in a coup orchestrated by the CIA.
The
documents that were not destroyed appear to have been kept secret not
only to protect the UK's reputation, but to shield the government from
litigation. If the small group of Mau Mau detainees are successful in
their legal action, thousands more veterans are expected to follow.
It
is a case that is being closely watched by former Eoka guerillas who
were detained by the British in 1950s Cyprus, and possibly by many
others who were imprisoned and interrogated between 1946 and 1967, as
Britain fought a series of rearguard actions across its rapidly
dimishing empire.
The documents show that colonial officials were
instructed to separate those papers to be left in place after
independence – usually known as "Legacy files" – from those that were to
be selected for destruction or removal to the UK. In many colonies,
these were described as watch files, and stamped with a red letter W.
The
papers at Kew depict a period of mounting anxiety amid fears that some
of the incriminating watch files might be leaked. Officials were warned
that they would be prosecuted if they took any any paperwork home – and
some were. As independence grew closer, large caches of files were
removed from colonial ministries to governors' offices, where new safes
were installed.
In
Uganda,
the process was codenamed Operation Legacy. In Kenya, a vetting
process, described as "a thorough purge", was overseen by colonial
Special Branch officers.
Painstaking measures were taken to prevent post-independence
governments from learning that the watch files had ever existed. One
instruction states: "The legacy files must leave no reference to watch
material. Indeed, the very existence of the watch series, though it may
be guessed at, should never be revealed."
When a single watch file
was to be removed from a group of legacy files, a "twin file" – or
dummy – was to be created to insert in its place. If this was not
practicable, the documents were to be removed en masse. There was
concern that Macleod's directions should not be divulged – "there is of
course the risk of embarrassment should the circular be compromised" –
and officials taking part in the purge were even warned to keep their W
stamps in a safe place.
Many of the watch files ended up at
Hanslope Park. They came from 37 different former colonies, and filled
200 metres of shelving. But it is becoming clear that much of the most
damning material was probably destroyed. Officials in some colonies,
such as Kenya, were told that there should be a presumption in favour of
disposal of documents rather than removal to the UK – "emphasis is
placed upon destruction" – and that no trace of either the documents or
their incineration should remain. When documents were burned, "the waste
should be reduced to ash and the ashes broken up".
Some idea of
the scale of the operation and the amount of documents that were erased
from history can be gleaned from a handful of instruction documents that
survived the purge. In certain circumstances, colonial officials in
Kenya were informed, "it is permissible, as an alternative to
destruction by fire, for documents to be packed in weighted crates and
dumped in very deep and current-free water at maximum practicable
distance from the coast".
