Henley u3a

ANTHONY Benn, a Cotswolds u3a member, spoke to Henley u3a this month about his childhood in Fities Kenya and how in later life he educated himself about the Mau Mau uprising by reading many definitive texts.

His family worked a 4,000-acre arable, cattle and sheep farm granted to his grandfather by the British government in recognition of his First World War service.

Mr Benn was returned to Britain as a child when the Mau Mau atrocities began in the Fifties. His parents stayed on to run the farm and he only saw them in school holidays.

Mr Benn revealed that in 2008, when Barack Obama started to talk about having a Kenyan father, he decided to learn about Kenya’s struggle for independence.

He read several renowned books on the subject, including Facing Mount Kenya by Jomo Kenyatta, Imperial Reckoning by Carolyn Elkins by and Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson.

He finally came to understand why the Kikuyu and Masai peoples began to rise up against the British colonialists after 60 years of rule.

Using maps from previous centuries, Mr Benn showed the audience what led to the British colonisation of Kenya. During the 1800s many factors, including diplomatic successes, greater local knowledge and the demand for resources such as gold, timber, rubber and ivory dramatically increased European involvement on the continent of Africa.

The Berlin Conference of 1884, organised by Otto Von Bismarck on behalf of King Leopold of Belgium, formalised the Scramble for Africa.

The British were awarded most of the African tracts down the east coast, plus Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. It was said that someone could travel from Cairo to Cape Town without leaving a British protectorate.

From 1884 onwards the British farmed the majority of the land in Kenya’s fertile central highlands, while native Kenyans had access to only a small percentage of land.

By the early Fifties, faced with the Mau Mau insurgency, the British adopted a divide and rule strategy.

Much of the struggle tore through the African Kikuyu and Masai communities and a war waged between the rebels and those who remained loyal to the British.

The colonial government turned increasingly to mass detentions and harsh treatment of the hardcore Mau Mau. The low point was the Hola massacre. Then in 1960 Harold Macmillan made the Wind of Change speech in Cape Town. This led to Kenya’s independence in 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta as the first prime minister, and the subsequent independence of other British colonies in Africa.

Henley u3a holds a programme of talks for its members and the public at 2pm on the second Wednesday of each month. The venue is Sacred Heart Church hall in Walton Avenue, off Vicarage Road, with parking available.

u3a is a UK-wide organisation and open to anyone no longer working full-time who wishes to learn for fun and stay active.

Henley u3a offers more than 20 interest groups and new members are always welcome. For more information, call 07879 580736 or visit u3asites.org.uk/henley-on-thames

Lin Taylor