3 Mar 1959 — Eleven detainees refuse forced labour at Hola camp. Guards beat them to death and badly injure dozens more. The attempt to cover up the killings fails, and they shake the British Parliament. Remember them.
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3 MARCH 1959 · TWO ROADS TO INDEPENDENCE: HAITI 1789–1838 AND KENYA 1895–1978
The moment in context
Britain initially pursued the rebellion's alleged leaders and the men in the forests. From December 1952 to April 1953 Kenyatta and five KAU leaders stood trial at Kapenguria, a remote schoolhouse chosen to keep crowds away. They received seven years' hard labour. A key witness later swore that he had been bribed to give his evidence.
Why it happened — An insurgency rooted in land. Land and freedom were not abstract demands for the people who supplied the forest armies. In the 1940s squatters had been pushed off farms, young…
The turn — Hola camp, 3 March 1959. By 3 March 1959 Britain had won the forest war, but eleven detainees died at Hola when guards carried out a prisons department plan to force men…
What it changed — The Emergency ends and the talks begin. The Emergency ended on 12 January 1960, after the forest war and the discrediting of the camps. The first Lancaster House conference opened in…
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