Mau Mau Claims (Settlement)

David Winnick Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will try also to give brief answers. I described in my statement how the legal cases were proceeding. There had been a series of hearings in 2011 and 2012. The Government had contested all of the cases, but the High Court had decided that three out of five of them could proceed, on grounds that were quite specific to this particular case and to the Mau Mau insurgency. It does not therefore set a precedent for other cases. Given that it had decided that, the Government came to the view that it was in the interests of the British taxpayer, and also of the claimants, to come to a settlement on this particular matter.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Terrible things were undoubtedly done on both sides, but may I tell the Foreign Secretary that many of us opposed from the start what we considered to be a totally unnecessary colonial war, as, indeed, we opposed what happened in Cyprus at around 1960? Although I would not normally quote Enoch Powell, because of the outburst in 1968 and other matters, in the debate on 27 July 1959 on the murder of 11 African detainees, he said:

“We cannot say, ‘We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home’…We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.”—[Official Report, 27 July 1959; Vol. 610, c. 237.]

For once, Enoch Powell was right.

[Mr Speaker]

I think the Foreign Secretary will remember that Denis Healey described the speech in his autobiography as the greatest parliamentary speech he ever heard, carrying all the moral force of Demosthenes.