ABSTRACT
Political Developments The declaration of the Emergency on 20 October 1952 and the arrest of the K.A.U. leadership had profound effects both on the colony and on its nascent labour movement. Two main themes can be discerned. The first theme, mostly at the national level and in particular in Nairobi and the Central province. was the gradual creation of the military and administrative structure designed to contain and destroy the revolt. This led to the appointment in 1953 of General Sir George Erskine as Commander-inChief and to the appointment of a series of committees culminating in 1954 in the creation of a small War Council composed of the new Governor. Sir Evelyn Baring. his deputy. the Commander-in-Chief. and the leader of the European community. Blundell. The inclusion of Blundell was mistakenly seen in some quarters as a return to an older style of Kenya politics when the settlers secured significant political advances through their representation on similar committees. There was certainly no lack of settler spokesmen who hoped to utilize the Emergency in this manner. However. it transpired that the colonial establishment co-opted Blundell. rather than the reverse. Blundell not only wanted the efficient prosecution of the military campaign but came to believe that Mau Mau could only be killed by social reform and ultimately that the future for the Europeans lay in a multi-racial Kenya-views that were shared by many of the senior officials of the colonial establishment. This liberalism gradually led to an estrangement between Blundell and the majority of his European supporters which resulted in the creation of a series of rightwing settler political parties. and finally in a bitter election campaign against Cavendish-Bentinck in the Rift Valley in 1961.
