Terence Gavaghan, who died on August 10 aged 88, was awarded an MBE after helping to quell the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya; earlier this year – more than half a century after the uprising – he was accused in the High Court in London of presiding over a regime of systematic brutality and human rights abuses.
Terence Gavaghan with Samburu tribesman in Maralal
Four elderly Kenyan men are currently suing the British government for acts of torture – including castrations, sexual abuse, forced labour, and starvation – allegedly carried out during the anti-Mau Mau campaign; one of the four, Wambugu We Nyingi, claims that he suffered ill-treatment under Gavaghan’s direct supervision.
Gavaghan, who at the end of his life suffered from Alzheimer’s, was unable to answer the charges against him. Previously, however, he had explained that the British had used “compelling force” because it was necessary in the situation. But, he insisted, “we never used punitive force. We were Her Majesty’s Overseas Civil Servants and the very suggestion of it is degrading.”
Terence Gavaghan was born in Allahabad on October 1 1922 to Irish parents. His father was Comptroller General in the Indian Civil Service but died when Terence was a boy.
Terence was educated at Stonyhurst, then as a Harkness scholar at St Andrews University. After graduation he took a commission in the Royal Ulster Rifles, but was soon offered a post as a district officer in the Kenyan administration. Seen as an effective colonial servant who got results, he remained in Kenya for 18 years, becoming the youngest man to be promoted to district commissioner.
The Mau Mau rebellion broke out in 1952 as members of the Kikuyu tribe launched a campaign against the exclusive use of Kenyan land by white settlers; it later came to be identified (wrongly, in the opinion of many historians) as a nationalist movement intent on ending colonialism. The rebels, who became known as Mau Mau (possibly after a military code word they used) carried out massacres of white settlers, including women and children, and then against many of their own people who refused to join them. There was widespread fear and intimidation.
The British colonial authorities struggled to impose themselves against the guerrillas. There were atrocities on both sides, and more than 80,000 Kikuyu — a third of all adult males in the tribe — were detained without trial for long periods. Nyingi, for example, claims he was held for nine years without being charged.
Gavaghan was a colonial district officer when he was recruited in 1957, after the uprising had effectively been crushed, to oversee the “rehabilitation” of Mau Mau prisoners at six camps in the Mwea area of central Kenya. Tens of thousands had been released, but further progress had been held back by the continued detention of around 20,000 Kikuyu considered to be the most fanatical.
In 2002 a Harvard history professor, Caroline Elkins, discovered a “secret and personal” memo – headed Use of Force in Enforcing Discipline – from Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, to the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox Boyd. Baring revealed that Gavaghan had established a regime of “dilution”, involving physical beatings, as a means to break the prisoners; the government needed to give this legal cover, as violence was “in fact the only way of dealing with the more dyed-in-the-wool Mau Mau men”.
In an attached memorandum, Eric Griffiths-Jones, Kenya’s senior law officer during the Emergency, reported on a visit he had made to watch the arrival of a group of 80 prisoners at a camp under Gavaghan’s supervision. The men, he wrote, were ordered to change into camp clothes and have their heads shorn: “Any who showed any reluctance or hesitation to do so were hit with fists and/or slapped with the open hand. In some cases, however, defiance was more obstinate, and on the first indication of such obstinacy, three or four of the European officers immediately converged on the man and 'rough housed’ him, stripping his clothes off him, hitting him, on occasion kicking him and, if necessary, putting him on the ground. Blows struck were solid, hard ones, mostly with closed fists and about the head, stomach, sides and back.” There was, however “no attempt to strike at the testicles or any other manifestations of sadistic brutality.” Gavaghan, he said, had maintained “direct personal control over the proceedings”.
Gavaghan explained to him, Griffiths-Jones went on, that in previous instances a persistent resister had “ a foot placed on his throat and mud stuffed in his mouth. In the last resort, a man whose resistance could not be broken down was knocked unconscious.”
It has been pointed out in Gavaghan’s defence that during his year at Mwea there were no reported deaths or serious injuries, while 20,000 prisoners were released. But the last 200 “hard cases” were transferred to Hola, in south-eastern Kenya, where 11 were beaten to death in 1959 by guards — a tragedy which severely rattled the Conservative government and which Gavaghan condemned.
In Of Lions and Dung Beetles, the first volume of his memoirs, Gavaghan noted that during his time at Mwea he had lost control with a prisoner only once: “I hit him back-handed across the face, ripping my knuckles on his teeth.” Gavaghan was appointed MBE in 1958, and he received a congratulatory letter from Baring describing his work as “one of the outstanding successes of the emergency”.
Yet at the end of Gavaghan’s tenure at Mwea, a young district officer, John Nottingham (described by Gavaghan as encumbered by “confused pretensions and attitudes”), was assigned to take over, only to refuse. “I went to see Gavaghan in his office,” he recalled later. “He said that people were just roughed up, it wasn’t anything very violent. He described it as being like a good rugger scrum. I went back to Nairobi and wrote possibly the most pompous note of my life. I said I myself think I know the difference between right and wrong, and I also realise it’s not my job to teach the government the difference between right and wrong. But what you’re doing is wrong and I can’t accept this job.”
Gavaghan’s final postings in Kenya were at Government House where, in the run-up to Independence, he led the process of Africanising the top 10,000 civil service jobs.
In 1962 he was recruited by the United Nations for a mission in Somalia and for the next three decades he worked on humanitarian missions for UN, Irish and voluntary agencies in developing countries, including Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Tanzania. He advised Zimbabwe’s African leaders in the years before Independence, and also worked for Texaco and Pfizer International.
Terence Gavaghan married first, in 1948, Cecily Tofte, with whom he had two sons. The marriage was dissolved, and in 1958 he married Nicole Goldstein, with whom he had a son and a daughte
Gavaghan was a colonial district officer when he was recruited in 1957, after the uprising had effectively been crushed, to oversee the “rehabilitation” of Mau Mau prisoners at six camps in the Mwea area of central Kenya. Tens of thousands had been released, but further progress had been held back by the continued detention of around 20,000 Kikuyu considered to be the most fanatical.
In 2002 a Harvard history professor, Caroline Elkins, discovered a “secret and personal” memo – headed Use of Force in Enforcing Discipline – from Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, to the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox Boyd. Baring revealed that Gavaghan had established a regime of “dilution”, involving physical beatings, as a means to break the prisoners; the government needed to give this legal cover, as violence was “in fact the only way of dealing with the more dyed-in-the-wool Mau Mau men”.
In an attached memorandum, Eric Griffiths-Jones, Kenya’s senior law officer during the Emergency, reported on a visit he had made to watch the arrival of a group of 80 prisoners at a camp under Gavaghan’s supervision. The men, he wrote, were ordered to change into camp clothes and have their heads shorn: “Any who showed any reluctance or hesitation to do so were hit with fists and/or slapped with the open hand. In some cases, however, defiance was more obstinate, and on the first indication of such obstinacy, three or four of the European officers immediately converged on the man and 'rough housed’ him, stripping his clothes off him, hitting him, on occasion kicking him and, if necessary, putting him on the ground. Blows struck were solid, hard ones, mostly with closed fists and about the head, stomach, sides and back.” There was, however “no attempt to strike at the testicles or any other manifestations of sadistic brutality.” Gavaghan, he said, had maintained “direct personal control over the proceedings”.
Gavaghan explained to him, Griffiths-Jones went on, that in previous instances a persistent resister had “ a foot placed on his throat and mud stuffed in his mouth. In the last resort, a man whose resistance could not be broken down was knocked unconscious.”
It has been pointed out in Gavaghan’s defence that during his year at Mwea there were no reported deaths or serious injuries, while 20,000 prisoners were released. But the last 200 “hard cases” were transferred to Hola, in south-eastern Kenya, where 11 were beaten to death in 1959 by guards — a tragedy which severely rattled the Conservative government and which Gavaghan condemned.
In Of Lions and Dung Beetles, the first volume of his memoirs, Gavaghan noted that during his time at Mwea he had lost control with a prisoner only once: “I hit him back-handed across the face, ripping my knuckles on his teeth.” Gavaghan was appointed MBE in 1958, and he received a congratulatory letter from Baring describing his work as “one of the outstanding successes of the emergency”.
Yet at the end of Gavaghan’s tenure at Mwea, a young district officer, John Nottingham (described by Gavaghan as encumbered by “confused pretensions and attitudes”), was assigned to take over, only to refuse. “I went to see Gavaghan in his office,” he recalled later. “He said that people were just roughed up, it wasn’t anything very violent. He described it as being like a good rugger scrum. I went back to Nairobi and wrote possibly the most pompous note of my life. I said I myself think I know the difference between right and wrong, and I also realise it’s not my job to teach the government the difference between right and wrong. But what you’re doing is wrong and I can’t accept this job.”
Gavaghan’s final postings in Kenya were at Government House where, in the run-up to Independence, he led the process of Africanising the top 10,000 civil service jobs.
In 1962 he was recruited by the United Nations for a mission in Somalia and for the next three decades he worked on humanitarian missions for UN, Irish and voluntary agencies in developing countries, including Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Tanzania. He advised Zimbabwe’s African leaders in the years before Independence, and also worked for Texaco and Pfizer International.
Terence Gavaghan married first, in 1948, Cecily Tofte, with whom he had two sons. The marriage was dissolved, and in 1958 he married Nicole Goldstein, with whom he had a son and a daughte
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