Spying on Political Activism

Abstract

A description and analysis of the spying on Kenyatta while he was resident in Britain by the British intelligence services, sanctioned by the legendary founder of MI5 (the British domestic intelligence service that also had the power to spy in the colonies). New material shows how extensive the spying was: sanctioning the opening and reading of his mail by MI5 agents; spying on his friends and colleagues; working to deny him employment in the UK; and generally shadowing him everywhere that he went. This is the period of Kenyatta as the “burning spear.” This chapter also considers Kenyatta’s enrolment and study at KUTV in the Soviet Union and its political consequences; the rise of the myth of Kenyatta as a Communist or Communist agent.

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

During his prolonged stay in Britain from 1931 to 1946, surveillance on Kenyatta by the British intelligence services centered on three main areas: determining his ideological orientation; monitoring his political activities; and identifying his social and political contacts in Britain and Kenya, both groups and individuals. By 1931 these intelligence services already had a large file on him, “chiefly containing police reports on his activities, contacts, and associates, etc.”¹ Part of the rationale for this constant surveillance on Kenyatta was succinctly stated by the Manchester Police in February 1945: “he has a good deal of influence in his own country and for that reason is the subject of permanent interest to the Kenya authorities.”² He had come to be identified as an “anti-British agitator.”

Most of the surveillance on Kenyatta was coordinated by MI5 —“the principal service concerned with maintaining British security … answerable to the Prime Minster.”³ Indeed, most reports (and instructions) concerning surveillance on Kenyatta were, until 1940, signed by Major General Sir Vernon Kell , the long-serving founding Director of MI5. Kell had not only founded the MI5 in 1909 but also “more than any one else” was “responsible for the pattern of security in Britain.” He relied on other security agencies for some raw data. Thus, for example, “The facts were supplied to him by the Scotland Yard.” But “the importance of his work was in collating them and presenting them to the people who mattered, then through the strength of his own personality, ensuring that action was taken.”⁴

Surveillance on Kenyatta was within the wide scope of MI5’s responsibilities. Its charge from the beginning was to “perform counter-intelligence in the United Kingdom, the possessions and colonial territories.”⁵ In 1909 the agency’s principal task was “tracking down and exposing the German spies.” By the 1930s there were “new enemies for Britain”: ideological ones, chiefly identified as Communists, and then radical nationalist agitators in the colonies. A combination of these two was deemed to be catastrophic for Britain and therefore absolutely unacceptable.

In 1931, at the start of his second trip to Britain, Kenyatta found it strategically necessary to clarify his political affiliations, specifically his views on Communism . Was he a Communist? Strongly prompted by McGregor Ross, one of his influential white friends in London, Kenyatta agreed to be interviewed by East Africa, a “fortnightly organ of the Kenya settlers.” He denied ever being a Communist. As for his visit to Moscow in 1929, there was nothing about it to raise any fears since this had been for “sightseeing purposes” only. Many of his white influential and well-placed friends in Britain believed him, and “Kenyatta was too anxious to appear moderate” to them.⁶

Throughout his stay in Britain, Kenyatta had several white liberal and politically moderate friends. These included: Mr. Leys of the Quaker College in Woodbrooke, Birmingham; Lady Cynthia Asquith; many members of the Quaker Council for International Service; and Labour Party leaders, for example, Ramsay MacDonald.⁷ Kenyatta soon found that these and similar friendships, well intentioned and probably quite genuine, had their own drawbacks. George Delf’s view is that, “owing to a disparity of personal backgrounds, these early friendships had necessarily to remain at finger tip distance.”⁸ The issue at hand was more than “disparity of social backgrounds.” There was also the crucial matter of political activism; radical political activism. For this purpose and engagement, Kenyatta needed a different set of friends with connections to the radical and activist sections of British (and European) politics.

There can be little doubt that Kenyatta’s gravitation toward radical activism in Britain was in part prompted by the refusal of the Colonial Office, after 1932, to have any dealings with him. To the Colonial Office, “he no longer had any standing.” His requests for interviews with senior officials at the Colonial Office were never granted. “These officials instructed the Kenya Government to deal directly with KCA in Nairobi and so short circuit their man in London.”⁹

It became evident that in order to keep his political mission in Britain alive Kenyatta needed to form new political alliances with groups and individuals that embraced political activism and national liberation of the colonized. He needed to expand his political charge to go well beyond what was contained in the two petitions that he had carried on behalf of the KCA to the Colonial Office. To be an effective advocate of his people in the multiplicity of political alliances that he formed, he had to be more than a “tribal spokesman” representing the KCA. And indeed, after 1932, in most of his political activism, Kenyatta was identified as a spokesman/leader of Kenya African nationalism; a credible African critic of British imperialism in Kenya (sometimes, East Africa). His activities and contacts in the radical organizations that he belonged to were closely watched and recorded by MI5 and other British intelligence services. These intelligence services also monitored the nature and purposes of the radical political alliances that he formed during his lengthy stay in Britain.

Most of the political alliances that Kenyatta formed were with Marxist and/or radical Pan Africanist organizations. One such organization was the International African Service Bureau (IASB) . This organization was “founded by London based African and West Indian radicals in 1937. It operated until 1944 when it merged with other black organizations to form the Pan African Federation.”¹⁰ Kenyatta was one of its vice chairs. IASB’s other leaders were: “Gorge Padmore , chair; Amy Ashwood Garvey, vice chair; Robert Broadhust, treasurer; T.R. Makonnen , executive and publicity secretary; and Wallace Johnson, general secretary.”¹¹ Under Padmore’s guiding hand, IASB’s aims “may be summarized as agitational, educational, and administrative.” The organization “demanded abolition of onerous pass laws and taxes, insisted upon the right of Africans to organize pressure and interest groups, to receive equal pay for equal work, to publish, assemble and move freely: in short, to possess ‘democratic rights, civil liberties and self-determination’.”¹² It is important to mention that the IASB was “opposed to Communism ,” although the intricacies of its ever evolving “political philosophy integrated Marxism and Pan Africanism.”

The membership of the IASB “was restricted to Africans and people of African descent.” Nonetheless, non-Africans or people not of African descent, with a demonstrable sympathy for the aims of the IASB, could be accorded associate membership. The organization also formed useful political alliances with the “British Left, especially the Labour Party and Independent Labour party.” Many of the white leaders of these organizations and movements were incorporated as patrons of the IASB. These included “Arthur Creech-Jones , later Secretary of State for the Colonies; Independent Party Chairman, Fenner Brockway; Sylvia Pankhurst; Nancy Cunard ; and Victor Gollancz.”¹³ In a bid to make some inroads into British society, the IASB pushed for questions concerning colonial issues to be “asked in Parliament.”

IASB’s members, especially its leaders, readily accepted invitations to speak at mass rallies or meetings called to debate colonial issues. Sometimes members sought to be invited to speak at such events if invitations were not readily forthcoming. Above all, there were the “weekly rallies in Hyde Park,” organized to publicize specific “colonial crimes” and thus educate the “common man in the street” about the consequences of British imperialism on both the colonized and the British working class. The IASB also published pamphlets for mass distribution, and journals, specifically: “the African Sentinel, of which only a few issues were published, and International African Opinion, published from July 1938 to June 1939.”¹⁴ A report by the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police , later communicated to the Colonial Office, observed that the IASB’s office holders “have followed the method adopted by the League Against Imperialism in transforming that organization into a colonial information Bureau.”¹⁵

Kenyatta made several speeches under the auspices of the IASB. MI5 and the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police filed reports on these speeches to the Colonial Office. One of the first significant speeches reported on was delivered on August 8, 1937. The details of the speech, as filed by MI5, indicate that Kenyatta spoke as part of the IASB’s solidarity with workers in Trinidad who were on a general strike.¹⁶ According to the report, Kenyatta “gave a few instances of oppression by white rulers in Kenya.” The crucial part of this speech touched on his strong advocacy for activism and agitation, pointing out that in his case this had produced positive results. He “said he had caused questions to be asked in the House concerning certain flagrant cases of injustice to blacks in Kenya and the Colonial Secretary had replied that he had no information on the subject. He said the natives of the colonies received only injustice from British administration.”¹⁷

The language and tone of Kenyatta’s speeches had clearly become more strident by the time he addressed the conference/education seminar organized by the Workers Education Association at Albion Hall, Horsham, on “Colour Problems in Africa,” in February 1938. The speech was also covered in the West Sussex Times on February 11, 1938. According to the newspaper Kenyatta had, in his speech, “maintained that the rule which governed his people was more feared than that of either Italy or Germany, and alleged that Hitler had copied his methods from the British in East Africa, where each year thousands of people were sent to concentration camps.” But had colonialism brought any progress to Kenya since 1895? In response, Kenyatta “said that if progress was measured in terms of happiness, then there had been none. ‘In 1895 when I was in my own country, I was a man; now I am no longer a man; I am a slave’.”¹⁸ And so what did he want? He wanted some Africans in the Legislative Council and the establishment of the freedom of speech to cover Africans. “Give us some measure of justice … Realise we are people and we must live.” The Commissioner for Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar (London), thought that this speech constituted a “libelous statement” and sought for action against Kenyatta and sponsoring organizations. He wrote to the Colonial Office wondering whether “anything could be done in the matter.”

On May 8, 1938 Kenyatta addressed a meeting organized by the IASB in Trafalgar Square. He spoke on conditions of workers in Kenya. As reported by the police, Kenyatta stated, “thousands of innocent natives were thrown into concentration camps without a finger raised in their defence.” He reminded the audience that while workers in Britain were “fighting fascism directly and indirectly all over the world … they did not realize that it was from methods employed by the British Government in her colonies that Hitler and Mussolini had learnt their tyrannical form of dictatorship.”¹⁹

Kenyatta continued to undertake political tasks on behalf of the IASB, especially public speaking on issues deemed crucial for the struggle for freedom of the black people. On June 26, 1938 the IASB organized another rally in Trafalgar Square to draw attention to the poor working conditions of the black workers in the West Indies. Kenyatta acted as chair of this public rally that had been called “to explain to those present the poverty and starvation existing in the West Indies, which state of affairs led up to the recent rioting in those unhappy islands.”²⁰ Other speakers included C.L.R. James , L. Sankoh, and George Padmore . In its report of the proceedings Special Branch noted that Sankoh had stated, “that because of accident of birth caused some to be born black and others white was no reason for keeping the black man under the heel of the white man. All men should be equal and given equality, it would be found that the black man was as loyal and patriotic as the white man.”

Surveillance by the British intelligence services on IASB was not confined to meetings and rallies organized by the organization. Information was also sought on its publications, what they stated, and to whom they were distributed. On September 28, 1938 Special Branch obtained cyclostyled circulars issued by the IASB that covered several key issues relevant to the Pan African world at that time: Manifesto Against the War and An Open letter to the workers of the West Indies and British Guiana. The police report, filed to the Colonial Office, identified officials of the IASB who had signed these documents: George Padmore (Trinidad), T.R. Makonnen (British Guiana), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), C.L.R. James (Trinidad), Babalola Wilkey (Nigeria), William Harrison (Jamaica), Chris Jones (Barbados), and Laminah Sankoh (Sierra Leone).²¹

In Manifesto Against the War the IASB implored “Africans, people of African descent and colonial peoples all over the world,” to resist and then reject aiding imperial war efforts. The IASB urged all colonized people, but especially people of African descent, not to believe what was seen as an imperial propaganda offensive to sell the coming war as a fight in defense of democracy. “Brothers of Africa and of African descent,” the IASB wrote, “what democracy, what liberties, what rights have we got in this ‘glorious’ British Empire that calls upon us to shed our blood in its defence? Our greedy and merciless oppressors have robbed you of your land, broken up your civilisation and substituted instead a regime worse than slavery. They segregate you in your own country, pen you in the reserves and locations like cattle, make you carry passes like common criminals, and then pay you starvation wages of 4d. a day … The conditions under which you live are those of colonial fascism … We denounce the whole gang of European robbers and enslavers of the colonial peoples. German Nazis, Italian Fascists, British, French, Belgian democracies—all are the same, IMPERIAL EXPLOITERS.”²²

The IASB of course knew that the coming war would, as all wars do, lead to death and destruction. Nonetheless, it was important for Africans and people of African descent to seize the moment and realize that “Europe’s difficulty is Africa’s opportunity”; an opportunity to accelerate the agitation for political independence. Africans were urged not to be “caught by the lying promises the Imperialists will make,” but instead to “organise … and be ready to seize the opportunity when it comes.”

In this struggle for African freedom, the IASB continued to appeal for the support of European white workers. “Though you have neglected us in the past,” the IASB addressed the white workers in Britain, “today in this hour of common crisis, we want you to know that we Blacks bear you no ill-will. The Imperialists are our common enemy, and the present crisis offers us a common opportunity to throw them off our backs. Let us be united against the warmongers and all misleaders of the workers who would send us to be slaughtered under the slogan: ‘Defend Democracy.’ White brothers, do not be misled. Our freedom is a step towards your freedom.”²³

Within IASB discussions continued on the best strategy to adopt in agitating for the strengthening of trade unionism and then political reforms “in the British West Indies.” All speakers at the IASB rally in Trafalgar Square in June 1938, called for an end to racial discrimination in wages among workers in the West Indies. C.L.R. James demanded the “same rights and privileges for the coloured workers as were enjoyed by the white people,” while George Padmore introduced a “resolution pledging the support and solidarity of the coloured people resident in London with their brethren in the West Indies.” In sum, the IASB proposed the “granting of universal adult suffrage, substituting elected representatives for nominated members to the legislative and municipal councils.”²⁴ Political discussions within the IASB would continue to have a definite influence on Kenyatta’s growth as a Pan African activist in Britain during this period.

Kenyatta addressed several meetings not organized by the IASB. On November 13, 1932 he spoke at a meeting organized by the Council of Action Against the War. The police described him as an “African negro, aged 30, 5 feet 8 inches in height, slim build, well dressed, clean shaven, two punctures in the top of his right ear.” Kenyatta wanted to express his solidarity with the British working class and spoke thus; “Members of the working class, the workers of Kenya colony greet you. We are workers the same as you. The capitalist system chooses to kill you and me in war. Although we look different we all live the same.”²⁵ In World War I African workers in Kenya had gone to war because they “were promised freedom.” But at the end of the war they received no freedom. Their living conditions had deteriorated leading them to go on strike in which “over a hundred were shot down with bullets in their chests.” In conclusion, Kenyatta again appealed to the solidarity of the working class. “We are all the same and we must stop capitalist war. We get nothing for fighting only big debts to pay for war. Unite workers of the world.”²⁶

On December 28, 1935 at Essex Hall, Essex Street, just off the Strand in London, Kenyatta addressed a meeting of the Indian National Congress of Great Britain. The report on his speech, which was supposed to last only 5 minutes, indicated that he had tried to draw a parallel between India’s struggle for national liberation and Africa’s desire to overthrow colonial rule. “The only way I can see independence being obtained in either of these countries,” Kenyatta stressed, “is by the rising of the native peoples, casting aside their chains and driving their common enemy from their land, if need be by use of bombs, machine guns and such things.”²⁷ The Special Branch agents present at this meeting were careful to mention to their superiors that this remark by Kenyatta about bombs and machine guns “was not taken seriously by the audience, who regarded Kenyatta more as a comedian than a serious speaker.”

Many established and non-radical organizations continued to invite Kenyatta to address their members on social and moral questions related to Africa. On May 4, 1934 the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene invited him to talk about a sensitive topic: Tribal customs and the position of African women. This Association was very much “concerned with regard to conditions affecting women which are alleged to prevail in conditions, amounting in some places to a state of slavery.” It was the Association’s understanding that these dreadful conditions were “due to tribal customs, while others appear to be brought about not by the native customs in themselves but by the impact of an industrial system and a money economy upon native peoples almost entirely unprepared for such changes and rapidly becoming detribalized as a result of the new conditions.”²⁸

The Association lacked “sufficient information or experience in this particular field to enable it to assess the real position” on this question and it is for that reason that Kenyatta had been invited. In its preliminary “considerable enquiry,” the Association had found evidence which suggested some very disturbing trends that included: “That there is arising in Africa among native peoples a trade in wives which is not merely the giving of cattle in token of a properly arranged and duly recognized marriage, entailing all mutual responsibilities of such marriage, but it is more akin to slavery or to traffic in women for immoral purposes; that the hiring out by men of their wives to other men is a common practice; that among the native peoples affected by industrial development prostitution is developing and the position of women worsening.”²⁹ At a private meeting, the Association wanted Kenyatta to provide more information on this matter and was prepared to “hear different and perhaps opposing points of view.” On May 10, 1934 Col. Sir Vernon Kell , duly reported Kenyatta’s participation in this meeting to the Colonial Office.

F.S. Livie-Noble, the Honorary Secretary of the London Group on African Affairs, made a special request to Kenyatta to attend the organization’s meeting on June 8, 1934 at “Friends House, Euston Road, NW 1.” The matter to be discussed, the Honorary Secretary indicated in the invitation, “might be of great importance.” As expected, Kenyatta’s attendance at this meeting was noted and reported by MI5 to the Colonial Office.

The League of Coloured Peoples invited Kenyatta to address its members “on East Africa,” on July 11, 1934. This organization was formed by Harold A. Moody, a medical doctor from Jamaica in 1931, with these objectives: “To promote and protect the Social, Educational, Economic and political interests of its members; to interest members in the welfare of Coloured Peoples in all parts of the world; to improve relations between races; to cooperate and affiliate with organizations sympathetic to the Coloured People.”³⁰ Moody and the League “tried to solve the race problem through the application of Christian principles.” He held on to this position “throughout his life … despite growing evidence” that these principles alone had repeatedly been unable to make the British public “come to love their black brothers.”³¹ Kenyatta’s address to this organization was also reported by MI5 to the Colonial Office.

One of the most important organizations that Kenyatta belonged to during this period was the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA) . It was founded by C.L.R. James , the veteran “writer, historian, and Pan-African Marxist theorist.” The organization was founded “in response to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia .” Its specific charge was to “educate British and international opinion to agitate against the imperialist plans for Africa.”³² Kenyatta served as an Honorary Secretary to the organization whose meetings were often held at “a restaurant in London’s Oxford Street, run by Mrs. Marcus Garvey .” The Ethiopian question was difficult and sensitive for the British Government. Although Emperor Haile Selassie had trusted Britain and France in the period leading to the Italian invasion, neither country was willing to militarily confront Mussolini over Ethiopia. Instead, both countries “preferred to see Ethiopia dismembered than risk a war on her behalf.”³³

The mobilization of international opinion against Mussolini’s aggression was, to a large degree, left to several black-led organizations around the world. Besides the IAFA, there was “the Young Peoples Progressive League of Ohio.” It sent a letter of protest to the League of Nations in 1934. This was followed by the formation of similar organizations in many parts of the world. It is these organizations that were largely responsible for provoking “a wave of universal sympathy and solidarity toward Ethiopia.”

Why was the Ethiopian question so important to black people? The invasion itself, coupled with details of horrific brutality, including massacres of Ethiopians, aroused a strong emotional and nationalist response in the black world. “Ethiopia’s destruction symbolized the ‘final victory’ of the White man over the Black. Haile Selassie seemed to be defending Negro self-respect everywhere.”³⁴ Ethiopia was universally seen in the Pan African world as the “last symbol of African independence and black achievement.” It is therefore not surprising that the fascist invasion “shocked and outraged not only politically conscious Africans at home and in Europe but also black people throughout the whole world and especially in the United States and the West Indies.”³⁵

This solidarity cut across ideological lines. Many black Marxists spoke and organized on Ethiopia’s behalf. James W. Ford, the “most prominent African American member of the U.S. Communist Party” spoke at a mass protest meeting in New York in March 1935, and urged “all men and women of African descent and all allies of the freedom of Abyssinia to stand together for the defense of the Ethiopian people. The imperialists are determined to destroy Abyssinia. I, as representative of the Communist party,” he continued, “am expressing opinion of our Party when I say that the watchword and the keynote of this gathering tonight should be united action against the enemies of the Negro people, that is, the imperialists, who everywhere grind the Negroes under their heels.”³⁶

The notable exception to this wave of support for Ethiopia was Marcus Garvey , the veteran black nationalist, who had relocated to London in 1935 and established a new publication, The Black Man: A Monthly Magazine of Negro Thought and Opinion. Garvey’s sensibilities were thoroughly offended when, upon his arrival in London, Emperor Haile Selassie apparently “made it known that he wanted nothing to do with Negroes.”³⁷ Haile Selassie did not agree to meet with Garvey’s delegation. In The Black Man, Garvey ridiculed and poured scorn on the Emperor. “It is a pity,” he wrote, “that a man of the limited intellectual calibre and weak political character like Haile Selassie became Emperor of Abyssinia at so crucial a time in the political history of the world. Every Negro who is proud of his race must be ashamed of the way in which Haile Selassie surrendered himself to the white wolves of Europe.”³⁸

The IAFA was, however, strongly represented at Waterloo station to greet the Emperor when he arrived in London in June 1936. Kenyatta was part of this delegation. Dispensing with protocol, Kenyatta reportedly “broke through the polite cordon of officials” and embraced Haile Selassie; “man to man, African to fellow African.”³⁹ Many years later, according to Ras Makonnen , who had been part of the IAFA delegation at Waterloo, Haile Selassie “was to record during a visit to Kenyatta in Kenya that he had been extremely touched by the welcome he had felt from Africans and other groups in the London of that day.”⁴⁰

All of Kenyatta’s activities on behalf of the IAFA were closely monitored and relayed to the Colonial Office. This included speeches that he gave to organizations with aims similar to those of the IAFA. On November 19, 1935 Kenyatta gave a speech at “a meeting held under the auspices of the Union of Democratic Control at the Livingstone Hall, Westminister.” The object of the meeting was to “protest against the treachery of the present National Government in its betrayal of Abyssinia.” In his remarks, as reported, Kenyatta stated that “the Abyssinians were quite able to look after themselves and did not want any interference from outside countries.”⁴¹

Kenyatta’s education, broadly defined, was also of special interest to the intelligence services. His entry point to British higher education was at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, where he enrolled to “brush-up on his primary and secondary education in order to prepare himself for higher courses” at universities.⁴² Later, from 1933–1936, he was employed “in the department of African Phonetics on a study of the tones and phonetics of the Kikuyu language.”⁴³ Through this work, he “was able to make a small income.”

The most important part of his intellectual growth in Britain was, without doubt, studying anthropology under Professor Malinowski at the London School of Economics (LSE) . Malinowski was, at the time, “the most sought-after anthropologist in Europe, perhaps in the western world.” Kenyatta’s successful enrollment in this 3-year diploma program was a testament to his considerable intellectual abilities. During this period, Kenyatta spent a lot of time at the British Museum library. MI5 agents noted that he read almost exclusively “books dealing with the problems of the coloured races.” Kenyatta attained two valuable things from LSE; a University of London Diploma and the writing of a manuscript that would later be published as Facing Mt. Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (1938). He had been able to interact, argue, and share ideas with some of the best minds in anthropology and he was now a published author. In the “Introduction,” Malinowski praised the book’s originality, depth of thought, and sound analysis. He concluded that the book would “rank as a pioneering achievement of outstanding merit.”

These accomplishments were noted in both London and Nairobi. “A paragraph on native affairs in the Kenya Intelligence Report” of May 7, 1938 stated that, “Johnstone Kenyatta, the Kikuyu tribesman at present in England, is reported to be publishing a book on Kikuyu religion, its title being: Facing Mount Kenya.”⁴⁴ Kenyatta himself was able to relay news of his academic and intellectual achievements to his old KCA comrades. On August 4, 1938 the Kenya Police Intelligence Report noted that, “A leaflet dated 18th June 1938, containing the reproduction of a letter from Johnstone Kenyatta, now in England, and another by George K. Ndegwa, the Acting General Secretary, has been published by the KCA.” In the letter, Kenyatta assured members of the KCA, “he was still working for his country,” and that he had recently forwarded “complaints from Wakamba tribesmen in Kenya regarding compulsory seizure and sale of their cattle,” and the matter was “receiving attention.”⁴⁵ In this leaflet, Kenyatta proudly informed the KCA members of the publication of his book, and urged them to purchase it. These accomplishments served to enhance his status in Kenya during this period, which in turn increased the fear and nervousness of the colonial government and its security forces about him.

Scarcity of financial resources haunted Kenyatta throughout his stay in Britain. Jeremy Murray-Brown has provided some vivid details of the indignities that Kenyatta suffered during this period. “There were occasions when he had to lie up in his room for days, shivering from cold and waiting for the mail from Kenya. By selling the stamps he could then buy himself a penny bun. He had to walk to save bus fares, allow girlfriends to pay for an evening’s outing, and stay in his room while his one shirt dried on the radiator. Sometimes his down-at-heel appearance shamed his friends and they were forced to replace his tatty garments.”⁴⁶

These financial difficulties were well known to both the intelligence services and the Colonial Office. On September 8, 1936 the Colonial Office wrote to The Secretariat in Nairobi to inquire about Kenyatta’s finances and the possibility of the KCA providing funds for his return to Kenya. Kenyatta’s landlord, “A certain Mr. S. Hosken, of 95, Cambridge Street, Victoria, S.W.1,” had gone to the Colonial Office complaining about prolonged non-payment of rent. Due to this delinquency on the payment the landlord had moved Kenyatta “from the first floor to the attic and gets no meals.”⁴⁷ The landlord also reported that Kenyatta was “still well dressed and well fed and goes abroad at times.” Perhaps he had a secret source of funds! In response, A. de V. Wade from The Secretariat, informed the Colonial Office that, after making enquires, it had been determined that “the Kikuyu Central Association is in fact endeavouring to collect £400 for the purpose of returning him to Kenya, and it is believed that about £325 had been contributed by the Association and relatives of Kenyatta.”⁴⁸ The Secretariat also knew that Kenyatta had received a salary of £10 a month for “helping to demonstrate phonetics” at the School of Oriental Studies (SOAS), although “this may only have been a temporary job.”

There were occasions when MI5 blocked Kenyatta from holding specific positions of employment in Britain. The most notable of these concerns Kenyatta’s hire by the Gramophone Company. On February 28, 1940 the Secretary of SOAS wrote to Kenyatta regarding a job offer by the Gramophone Company. During World War II the School had “been approached by several companies to give them assistance in vetting records as free from propaganda.” The Secretary had forwarded Kenyatta’s name as a member of staff of the School. He was to work on vetting records in Kikuyu, and was to be paid “at the rate of 10 Shillings per hour for the time taken up listening to records, preparing reports,” MI5 immediately knew of this offer through “a rather delicate source” and sprang into action.⁴⁹

In a letter to the Colonial Office MI5 sought to demonstrate that Kenyatta was not the appropriate person for this position. “Kenyatta so far from being a satisfactory Censor of gramophone records is likely to be the author of seditious propaganda in Kikuyu.” MI5 wanted the Colonial Office to discuss this matter with SOAS. In the future MI5 now wanted SOAS to submit to it “any further candidates for this type of Censorship before actually putting their name forward for employment.”⁵⁰ In the meantime Kenyatta had started working for the Gramophone Company. On March 21, 1940 the Company expanded his charge to include records in “Jaluo and Luganda” languages. In the end, Kenyatta lost the position. The Gramophone Company complied with the government’s request, and pledged that it would be “happy as an additional check in case of obscure dialects, to send samples of the first pressings for censorship purposes to whatever Government official in the Colony may be nominated by you.”⁵¹ On April 19, 1940, Malcolm MacDonald of the Colonial Office provided the last word on this matter; “the services of Mr. Kenyatta have … been dispensed with and it is understood that the Company will in future employ Mr. Eliud Mathu, a student at Balliol College, Oxford.”⁵²

The intelligence services also followed, with keen interest, Kenyatta’s social contacts, especially with white women. The matter of interracial coupling, while not illegal in England, still aroused resistance in many quarters in the general population. It was still problematic. In his memoirs, Ras Makonnen provided us with a glimpse into this world of relationships between white women and non-white men. “Sometimes if you were walking down Piccadilly with a white girl, some drunk would shout ‘white bastard’ at her. Some people also would immediately identify this white woman who was walking with you as someone loose, because no outstanding woman would be seen with a nigger.”⁵³ Quite often, when in public, black men with white women took what Makonnen calls “a defensive attitude,” by letting “the woman be a little in front of you—the excuse being that Piccadilly was full of people!”

In Kenyatta’s case, the interest of the intelligence services was triggered not just by this residual racism, but more especially by the political (ideological) nature of these relationships. On December 12, 1933, Col. Sir Vernon Kell wrote to the Colonial Office about Kenyatta’s relationship with Nancy Cunard . He noted that she had “recently been associating, apparently with considerable satisfaction to herself, with Johnstone Kenyatta.”⁵⁴ Nancy Cunard was, of course, well known to the intelligence services on account of her radical politics, estrangement from her famous family, and then the publication of her massive edited volume, Negro Anthology (1934), in which Kenyatta’s article, “Kenya,” appeared.⁵⁵

In June 1938 Kenyatta had several meetings with Mrs. Hilda Rijaudias-Weiss, described by the intelligence services as “formerly a Communist in Germany and now a prominent member of the Seine group of the French Socialist Party.” While in London, she “had dined with Johnstone Kenyatta with whom she discussed recent events in Jamaica.” She planned to shortly “visit Cincinnati, America, and hopes in the course of the trip to investigate conditions of the coloured workers in the West Indies, especially in Jamaica, Barbados, and to forward information on the coloured races to Kenyatta.”⁵⁶

It is, however, Kenyatta’s relationship with Dinah Stock that would dwarf all others and loom large in his life in both Britain and Kenya. He met her at a rally in Trafalgar Square, in May 1937. A graduate of Oxford University, she was by this time a veteran activist in left-wing politics, serving among other things as Secretary of the British Center Against Imperialism. Makonnen described her as a “specialist in English Literature,” although by this time she worked as a “WEA lecturer.” According to her biographer, “about August 1937, Kenyatta moved into Dinah’s Camden Town flat.”⁵⁷ They formed a very close relationship, which contributed favorably to Kenyatta’s intellectual/political and emotional needs. Dinah Stock’s biographer found it necessary to add that this unique and very close relationship “was a working, not a romantic relationship.” Whether or not this was also a romantic relationship, there is no doubt that it provided Kenyatta with agreeable intellectual/political and emotional rejuvenation. Dinah Stock, according to Jeremy Murray-Brown, “made no emotional demands on him but was a loyal and diligent collaborator.” Much later, after returning to Kenya, Kenyatta was accused of masterminding and then leading the Mau Mau peasant revolt. Dinah Stock was convinced that this could not have been true; for after all, “she thought she knew Jomo better than any other European did, and he trusted her more, and not entirely as his instrument…‘I don’t find it remotely possible that he could have been organizing Mau Mau’.”⁵⁸

Dinah Stock’s first impact on Kenyatta’s life was to edit his book manuscript, apparently in “about three weeks.” When the book, Facing Mt. Kenya, was published in 1938, Kenyatta received “a sum larger than anything he had ever received for work since he left Kenya.”⁵⁹ The Special Branch took note of the publication of the book and also of Kenyatta’s new address: “15 Cranleigh House, Cranleigh Street, London, N.W.1. Also residing at the same address is Miss Amy Geraldine Stock, known to the Special Branch as a Labour Party speaker, in whose company Kenyatta is frequently to be seen.”⁶⁰

Beyond the book, Kenyatta also published articles in newspapers and periodicals throughout his stay in Britain. Each contribution was noted by the intelligence services. In the case of publications in newspapers, clippings of the article were attached to reports in the many files maintained on his activities. In March 1930, on his first trip, Kenyatta wrote a letter to The Times, in which he reiterated many of the major points contained in the petition he had brought to the Colonial Office.⁶¹

On May 1, 1934 his letter to the editor was published in the Manchester Guardian. Kenyatta wrote the article to protest against the “appointment of two nominated unofficial members to represent native interests in the Legislature in Kenya instead of one.” Of particular concern to him was the fact that the “appointment seems limited to Europeans, of whom one is likely to be a missionary.” This development was clearly unsatisfactory on many levels. “No one can better represent our interests,” Kenyatta wrote, “than one of our race. We have demanded not representation by white men but the right to be represented in the Council by Africans. Until this representation of Africans is justly settled, there can be no peace or prosperity in Africa.”⁶² In this article he also touched on questions of social justice and representation. “Obedience to laws,” he pointed out, “can only be justly enforced when those who are called upon to obey them have had either personally or through their representatives, an opportunity to enact, amend, or repeal them.” Africans were expected to obey laws in which they had no role at all in their formulation. Europeans, whatever their profession may be, are ill qualified to represent Africans, for after all they are not “subjected to the same laws and regulations as those under which Africans suffer” and they “do not know the home conditions under which the Africans are forced to live.” At best, such Europeans only “know Africans superficially” and should not therefore speak on their behalf.

Kenyatta’s most radical publications appeared in periodicals and book anthologies. The intelligence services knew of each of them. His article, “Kenya,” appeared in Nancy Cunard’s voluminous Negro Anthology. In this article he touched on the familiar theme of Africans having been “robbed of their best land” and were now “reduced to the status of serfs.” British imperialism in Kenya was “parasitic.” This ensured that “the wealth which the Kenya Africans produce goes to the coffers and stomachs of these British imperialists and the white landlord settlers, instead of being used for the development of the people which provides it. This is the kind of parasitism which prevails in Kenya!”⁶³ Kenyatta also saw the apparent disunity of Africans in Kenya as the result of a deliberate imperial strategy. “It will be remembered that the policy of the imperialists is ‘divide and rule’, thus they have been able to create hatred between various tribes, and thereby they have been able to rob and oppress us separately. Therefore, let us unite and demand our birthright,” he concluded.⁶⁴

Between 1931 and 1937 Kenyatta published several articles in Negro Worker. The intelligence services kept a very close eye on him and his associates, especially George Padmore , during this time. The Negro Worker was without any doubt one of the most radical publications anywhere dealing with black issues during this period. In this respect, it can legitimately be compared to the Crusader, edited by Cyril V. Briggs.⁶⁵ The Negro Worker, edited by George Padmore , was the “official organ of the International Trade Union Committee of the Negro workers,” which in itself was part of the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). The Profintern, according to George Padmore, was “the only international which conducts a consistent and permanent struggle against white chauvinism, for equal rights for the labour movement in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, for the correct solution of the national-race problem.”⁶⁶ The Profintern, as is now well known, was a “Comintern organization established in 1926 to compete against social-democratic trade union movements, such as the International Federation of Trade Unions.”⁶⁷

George Padmore occupied a unique position within the Profintern, and even the Comintern. Both James Ford of the US Communist Party and Padmore “played leading roles in the formation of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, which became the most important formal agency for promoting revolution among Negro populations around the world.”⁶⁸ Before the age of 30, Padmore’s “ascent in world communist circles was nearly dizzying: arbitration of internal factional conflicts in the Chinese Communist Party, election to the Moscow Soviet, carrying funds to overseas parties,” all while also actively involved in the Negro Worker and the International Trade Committee of Negro Workers.⁶⁹ Later, as is now well known, Padmore broke with the Comintern in 1933 “probably triggered by cutbacks in clandestine funding and perhaps also cuts in arming colonial unions and leftist organizations.” For many years after this break with the Comintern, Padmore held on to the position that the reasons for his “involuntary departure from the party” were due to his “insistent emphasis on the struggle against colonialism” at this time.⁷⁰

The starting point for many of the articles in the Negro Worker was that “The Negro workers, however, exploited and oppressed by the imperialists, have not received the necessary support of the organized labour movement. The white worker, in many cases even today, still regards the Negro as a pariah, and scornfully refuses to stretch out a helping hand to his black brother. Even in the ranks of the revolutionary workers numerous examples of white chauvinism can be recorded.”⁷¹ Therefore, one of the major aims of the Negro Worker was “to discuss and analyze the day to day problems of the Negro toilers and connect these up with the international struggles and problems of the workers.”⁷² It was hoped that at critical points “the most conscious section of the white workers show, by action, that they are fighting with Negroes against all racial discrimination and persecution.” By August/September 1933, Kenyatta was named as a member of the editorial board of this radical publication, with responsibility for East Africa.

In his article, “The Situation in Kenya,” Kenyatta outlined some of the details of British oppression in Kenya, observing that “in no part of the Empire, with the possible exception of South Africa do we find such outrageous manifestations of imperialist oppression, as in Kenya.”⁷³ In another article, “An African Looks at British Imperialism,” Kenyatta dismissed the value of several Imperial Commissions appointed to deal with the land question in Kenya. “We have seen Commission after Commission appointed to deal with the land questions, etc., but with all the reports of the Committees and Commissions, the robbery of the African lands and exploitation have not been stopped. What Africans want now is not Commissions but restitution of their land.”⁷⁴

At a “Negro” Conference held in London in 1934, Kenyatta gave a speech entitled, “British Slave Rule in Kenya.” This speech was later published as an article in the Negro Worker. He chose to emphasize the degrading and dehumanizing nature of the Kipande identity cards. What was a Kipande card and why did Africans regard it as a badge of humiliation? It is “a piece of tin about three inches long and two inches wide. The names and particulars are taken together with the finger prints of the African, and the African has to carry this tied with a string around his neck … I sometimes marvel,” he continued, “when I hear some of our English patronizing friends say that there is no slavery under the Union Jack—when every African is forced to wear that dog collar around his neck, and the law says he must produce it to any policeman, or any employer of labour; and if he fails to do so, he is liable to be arrested and be charged as a criminal.”⁷⁵

The appearance of these articles in very radical publications fueled the seemingly permanent interest in, and speculation about, Kenyatta’s linkage to Communism . He was also enrolled for study in the Soviet Union from 1932–1933. These two factors provided ammunition to his colonial detractors, who were eager to believe their own speculative conclusion, that Kenyatta was in fact a trained Communist saboteur and revolutionary; a committed and dedicated Communist. But was he? What do we know about his studies in Moscow?

Recent scholarship has revealed that Kenyatta, who also attended the Lenin School, “enrolled at KUTV in autumn of 1932, having first visited Moscow in August 1929, possibly in the company of George Padmore .”⁷⁶ KUTV was the Communist University of the Workers of the East.⁷⁷ This institution has also been referred to as “Stalin’s Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV).” The KUTV was part of a series of educational institutions founded and funded by “the Communist International, an international communist organization which united and directed activities of the overwhelming majority of communist parties throughout the world from 1919 until 1943.”⁷⁸ It was expected that students selected to enroll would be “fully literate in their native language or in any one of the European languages.”

There were students already affiliated with Communist parties in their home countries, while some had no such affiliation, “particularly those who came from countries where there were no communist parties.” There does not seem to have been any fixed duration of stay for all students at KUTV . “‘The normal course’ lasted for 20 months which consisted of 16 months of studies (in some cases including 3 months of internship at factories), 1.5 months of military camps and 2.5 months of rest and excursion. The ‘short course’ lasted 10 to 12 months which included 8 to 9 months of studies, 1.5 months of military camps, and 1 month of rest and excursions.”⁷⁹

The curriculum followed at the KUTV included: political economy, history of the Union (Communist International), Leninism, historical materialism, party building, military science, current politics, English language.⁸⁰ This curriculum underwent several changes over the years. Indeed, the curriculum that was followed by the time Kenyatta enrolled “excluded … a course on underground work,” and emphasized these subjects: Introductory course, language, Arithmetic, Geography, Natural Science, Political Economy, History of the Revolutionary Movement and of the Communist International, Leninism, Party and Trade Union building, Problems of the Native Country, Current Events, VII Congress of the Communist International.⁸¹

Kenyatta was one of the black students enrolled at KUTV , a group that also included African Americans (from the USA) and blacks from the Caribbean islands. The number of African students at KUTV remained very low “compared to the numbers of students from Europe, Asia and the Americas.” The majority of the African students and “West Indian blacks,” who studied at KUTV and the International Lenin School “in 1925–1938, had graduated from secondary school and coped satisfactorily with the Moscow curriculum.”⁸²

What attracted Africans and African Americans to the Comintern schools in the Soviet Union at this time? These reasons can safely be summed up as “the quest for dignity and opportunity.”⁸³ To be sure, the Soviets had their own underlying ideological agenda for recruiting and offering education to these students from all over the world. “The political leadership intended to train fresh cadres in the struggle against colonialism and imperial domination.”⁸⁴ Still, most of these students were attracted by the unprecedented free educational opportunities and also a chance to live, work, and study in a society where they were treated with dignity. “What has most impressed Negroes about Russian society,” Allison Blakely has written, is “the absence of institutionalized racism. There may be racist individuals; but if detected these persons are subject to crushing public opprobrium.”⁸⁵ These black students were quick to notice that within the Comintern schools in the Soviet Union, “racial problems almost always involved foreign whites, especially Americans, Canadians, and Britons, who not infrequently verbally abused black students and sometimes lashed out at them physically.”⁸⁶

What was so evident was that the Soviet government and the ruling Communist Party “unequivocally condemned racism and racial discrimination.” For these students, this was a new, pleasant experience of living in a society, a white society, whose leadership, institutions, and ideology condemned racial discrimination. They were studying in a country in which, in spite of its many problems, they did not have to suffer and painfully endure “discrimination and humiliation because of their skin color.” This kind of treatment did not exist anywhere for black students at this time. Thus, “so far as the Comintern schools were concerned, the atmosphere for blacks, if far from ideal, ranked as the best anywhere in the world from both the educational and personal standpoint. No other country then offered blacks such opportunities.”⁸⁷

The education offered at the KUTV was also of superior quality, certainly “more advanced than in many other educational institutions, particularly those few institutions which were accessible at that time for Africans from British territories.”⁸⁸ It is worth pointing out that the curriculum followed at KUTV pioneered several fields of study that would later be incorporated into related curriculums of Western and African institutions. These included courses/fields such as: “Introduction into the Study of Problems of Negro Countries in Africa,” which introduced concepts including “covert and overt forms of forced labour,” and covered “slavery, contract labour and the emergence of an African proletariat … living conditions of workers, women, child labour, food, housing and even ‘labour aristicracy’.”⁸⁹ The educational (and political) needs of the curriculum at the KUTV led to several pioneering efforts in the study of history, especially colonial history. It is at KUTV, Irina Filatova concludes, that “the study of some of the most important problems of contemporary history originated. Colonialism and anti-colonialism, a class approach to pre-colonial history, history of labour movement and left political parties.”⁹⁰

As for Kenyatta’s tenure at KUTV , there is no evidence that he joined the Communist Party.⁹¹ Even his training seems to have excluded conspiratorial work. “Because he was simply too well known—and too independent—for underground work, he evidently received very little conspiratorial training.”⁹² He apparently “rejected very close cooperation with the Comintern.”⁹³ One of his classmates at KUTV later described him as “the biggest reactionary I have ever met.”⁹⁴ Kenyatta seems to have “made use of the Soviet Communists” and once he had “achieved his purposes he left their care” and “had nothing more to do with them.” A large part of the explanation for this outcome is that he remained a “bourgeoisie nationalist to the core.” Later, in London, Kenyatta would become known “at least among friends” for being “rather stridently anti-communist.”⁹⁵

Another explanation is linked to the reaction of the Colonial Office and the colonial government in Kenya to his first trip to Moscow in 1929. At that time, he was forced to write to Dr. Shiels of the Colonial Office asking him to intercede on his behalf with the colonial government in Kenya. “There are rumours in Kenya that the police may try and find some excuse for putting me in prison or deporting me. It is true, as I have told you,” Kenyatta wrote to Dr. Shiels, “that I visited Russia without any bad intentions and perhaps the people there may write to me although I have made no arrangements of any kind with them to do so. This might be used,” he continued, “as a reason for getting me into trouble, but I am quite willing to let the Kenya Government see anything from Russia if anything is sent. I should be very grateful to you if you will do anything you can to see that I am allowed to reach my home and family and to resume my work among my people without being molested.”⁹⁶ It was evident to Kenyatta that since he intended to return to Kenya and play a leading role in the nationalist movement, he had to avoid being labeled Communist. He could be radical without being Communist. As his letter to Dr. Shiels indicates, Kenyatta was aware of the “stigma attached to his Moscow trip.”⁹⁷ In the unforgiving eyes of the British intelligence services and the colonial government in Kenya, “Kenyatta’s tenure at KUTV and the Lenin School marked him with the indelible sign of the Comintern.”⁹⁸

MI5 closely followed Kenyatta’s stay and study in Moscow. On May 10, 1933 Col. Sir Vernon Kell informed the Colonial Office that, “Johnstone Kenyatta is now in Moscow, presumably studying at the Lenin School. It is said he will shortly be going back to Kenya.”⁹⁹ In Kenya, the colonial security forces were quite worried about Kenyatta’s presence in Moscow. What were the practical implications for the colonial settler colony? It is therefore not surprising that these colonial security forces were in constant communication with MI5 over Kenyatta. On January 18, 1934 Kell wrote to the Commissioner of Police in Nairobi about Kenyatta’s stay and activities in Moscow. “We heard in May,” Kell stated, “that he was in Moscow ‘studying’ and it was presumed that this meant working at the Lenin School.” Kell also relayed to the police authorities in Nairobi that Padmore had now “fallen out of favour with Moscow.”

Unable to get any of the desired precise information on Kenyatta as a direct political threat at this time, the British intelligence services resorted, quite frequently, to speculation. This was especially true regarding Kenyatta’s alleged instructions from Moscow toward the establishment of revolutionary organizations in Kenya. On February 28, 1934 Kell wrote to the Colonial Office on Kenyatta’s possible future plans in Kenya. “There have been a bare indication,” Kell stated, “that Johnstone Kenyatta may shortly be returning to Kenya with instructions for work, presumably among Trade Unions and similar organizations.” However, since the information was imprecise Kell recommended to the Colonial Office that, “perhaps no definite action had better be taken on it at present, particularly as it comes to us from a specially secret source.”¹⁰⁰ He would nonetheless “endeavour to look out for anything further” on this matter and relay it to the Colonial Office.

Relying on the recollections of a Special Branch informant who apparently had had access to Kenyatta, Kell outlined to the Kenya police what he called Kenyatta’s instructions from Moscow. These “instructions were to work to get the various colored organizations under one control, and to cause to be removed from office any white man who may have interested himself in such organizations and so obtained an official position. Kenyatta stated that his greatest barrier to success in this lay in the number of religious coloured societies.”¹⁰¹ Kell also speculated that “Kenyatta may have it in mind to succeed the functions of George Padmore on the Negro Workers Committee” as the “International Comrade.” There was however, “no actual proof … that Kenyatta has succeeded him.” What was certain, according to Kell, was that Kenyatta was in touch with “African Natives Association in London, the League Against Imperialism and, through Miss Nancy Cunard , a number of Anglo-American Societies, some Communist, for the rehabilitation of Negroes.”

MI5 , in order to closely monitor all of Kenyatta’s activities and under the direction of Kell, ordered the “Postmaster-General and all others whom it may concern … to obtain, open and produce for my inspection all postal packets and telegrams addressed to Johnstone Kenyatta, 95 Cambridge Street, London … or to any name at that or any other address if there is reasonable ground to believe that they are intended for the said Johnstone Kenyatta.”¹⁰² As a result of this order, almost all of Kenyatta’s mail from the fall of 1933 was intercepted and read by MI5. Between November 29, 1933 and December 12, 1933 alone, MI5 read more than 30 letters addressed to Kenyatta. For each letter MI5 noted the sender and the letter’s origin/postmark.

The security forces in Kenya remained almost obsessed with Kenyatta’s political intentions. Was he coming back, if so, when? What were his political plans upon returning to the colony? How about his local political contacts? Partly to answer some of these enduring concerns, the Kenya Police formerly asked Kell in August 1939, to “secretly intercept such correspondence in London with a view to keeping a check on his activities and informing this office of any matters which might be considered of public interest to us.”¹⁰³ In response, Kell assured the Kenya police that he had “arranged for a check to be kept on Kenyatta’s correspondence and will let you have any interesting information that I obtain.” In February 1940 Kell again reassured the Kenya police that Kenyatta’s activities in Britain were under constant surveillance.¹⁰⁴

As early as 1933, Kenyatta was aware that he was under surveillance by the British intelligence services and, more specifically, that they were intercepting his mail. It is also evident that these intelligence services were also intercepting George Padmore’s mail. This can be seen in an extract from an intercepted letter from Padmore in Paris to Arnold Ward in London in May 1933 in which Padmore writes about Kenyatta. “About Kenya: we have the names and addresses of many people there, but never get replies. Kenyatta says that all letters from Germany are opened only those from London are safe, so you should at least register one in order to see if it will be delivered. Send us some more news of this new organization in Kenya. As you know K is in M. studying. This is to be kept secret. He will soon be going back.”¹⁰⁵ In another note, the intelligence services provided a summary of Padmore’s intercepted letter to Nancy Cunard . Padmore wanted Cunard to “give his letter to Kenyatta, who knows has all his mail opened.” This letter to Cunard also talked about “Padmore’s expulsion from the Communist Party on account of his Trotskyist tendencies.”¹⁰⁶

The British intelligence services also spied on the political activities of the IASB, of which they had an intimate knowledge, for example they knew of the IASB’s internal squabbling over finances. On March 8, 1939 MI5 wrote to F.G. Lee at the Colonial Office about IASB’s financial and administrative problems. “You may like to know,” the note stated, “that there have been further squabbles about money among the organisers, as a result of which the Nigerian Edward Sigismund alias Babalola Wilkey has started an office of his own at 41 Grafton Way, W.1., known as the Negro Cultural Association. Wilkey is little more than a rather ineffective crook, but his organisation is affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties and is therefore of some interest.”¹⁰⁷ In this note, MI5 also pointed out to the Colonial Office that the IASB was now “accommodated at 35 St. Bride Street, E.C.,” which was the “headquarters of the Independent Labour Party.” Further, the intelligence services confirmed that, Padmore “was in command, assisted by Kenyatta and Chris Braithwaite alias Jones.” MI5’s conclusion was that “Padmore had been drawing closer to the ILP during the last few months and is now virtually in charge of their Negro activity.”

This elaborate and sustained surveillance of Kenyatta provided evidence of the fear, sometimes panic, that Communism as an ideology continued to arouse among the ruling elite in many Western countries. The rise of Communism, and its later direct association with Leninism and the Soviet Union, “threw down an open challenge to the existing social order and attacked liberal democracy root and branch, not merely exposing its shortcomings and pressing for them to be remedied, but rejecting its fundamental principles and ideals.”¹⁰⁸ Perhaps even more alarming for the Western imperial countries, was the realization that communism also appealed to the colonized people. Some of these colonized people started exploring the possibility of embracing Communism as a guide to their national liberation and the reformulation of their exploited and oppressed societies. Internally, within the imperial countries, Communism appealed not only to the working class but also to minority groups historically exploited and discriminated against on account of “their skin color” or gender. The appeal of Communism to groups and classes traditionally oppressed, exploited, and discriminated against was in part due to its deep “ethical concern for social justice, for equality between man and man in the sense of non-discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, colour and class.”¹⁰⁹

These complexities have, for the most part, been either neglected or given flippant attention in the dominant narrative in Western scholarship about the Soviet Union. This narrative has, for a long time, and even more so since 1991, concentrated on “Joseph Stalin’s purges and draconic measures to compel his nation’s growth and development.” This emphasis has served a definite ideological agenda. What has been lost in this streamlined, and therefore predictable, narrative is the complexity of the appeal that the Soviet experiment had on minority populations in Western countries; specifically, African Americans in the USA, and then the colonized peoples under Western imperial rule. “Little known,” Jay Gleason Carew has recently observed, “are the special international relations in the 1920s and 1930s that brought the Soviets and blacks together. Frustrated with the limitations of a racist United States and escaping their own arenas of terror, a number of blacks went to Russia in search of the Soviet promise of a better society. These sojourners were intellectuals, writers, and outstanding figures in the arts and entertainment; they were also farmers and engineers and people with other skills. In the Soviet Union, they discovered a country that welcomed them and their talents when the United States did not.”¹¹⁰

Thus, not all blacks, especially African Americans, who went to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the 1930s were students at KUTV . There were a significant number of African Americans who lived and worked in the Soviet Union during this period on account of their needed and valued expertise. “They came from the industrial centers in the North and the agricultural regions of the South; they were artists and recent college graduates. Although a certain segment went for political reasons, particularly in the 1920s, most went in the 1930s for economic opportunities and a chance for personal fulfillment. In the process, many lent their talents to the development of Soviet industrial and agricultural innovations.”¹¹¹

Africans and African Americans also benefited in the long run from the Soviet Union’s consistent and forthright advocacy for racial justice and national liberation. Allison Blakely, in his highly regarded book, forcefully observed thus: “the fact remains that, regardless of Soviet motives, their championing of Negro rights and those of colonized peoples on the international level as well as at home has brought benefits to the Negro. A good example of this is the pressure this placed on the United States government to show better progress in making Negroes full citizens.”¹¹² This factor, as is well known, also applies to the decolonization struggle, especially after World War II, in Africa.

The enduring suspicion about Kenyatta’s political beliefs, and especially his alleged allegiance to the Comintern, have to be seen against the backdrop of the power of the appeal of Communist ideology in Western Europe during the 1920s, and even the 1930s. Certainly, a colonized person who had studied at KUTV , was a leader of a nationalist movement, published radical articles critical of settler colonialism, and actively associated with established radical activists in Europe, was seen as being doubly dangerous. There was a deep-seated fear within the British intelligence services, the Colonial Office, the colonial government, and settlers in Kenya that maybe Kenyatta had been recruited by the Comintern to establish a Communist state in Kenya (and maybe elsewhere in Africa). This all-consuming fear was unfounded since no such secret mission ever existed.

Kenyatta’s travels in several European countries, enrollment at KUTV in the Soviet Union (the “forbidden land”), participation in radical Pan African activism, successful enrollment at LSE, all exposed him to intellectual, political, and social experiences that few white settlers in Kenya, and even colonial government officials, were competent to comprehend at this time. He had, through these varied and fascinating experiences, become a “new man”; an African who knew more of Europe, European politics, not to mention nationalist movements, than the vast majority of the white settlers and colonial administrators in Kenya. In brief, “he was in a class by himself.” This distinction aroused fear and anxiety about him in both London and Nairobi.