Even before the judgment had been formally handed down at the royal courts of justice, however, and the claimants and their families informed of their achievement, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had decided on its response: it was going to appeal the decision, one more set-back for those old people who had already been battling through the courts for more than three years.
There was widespread dismay among many who had been observing the case. The FCO's lawyers had already conceded in court that the accounts given by the three Mau Mau veterans – of castration, rape and savage beatings – had been honest accounts, and that senior British and colonial officials had been aware of the ugly truth about daily life in the prison camps of 1950s Kenya. So why was the government continuing to resist their claim for compensation, and an apology?
Some wondered whether the FCO was, with supreme cynicism, simply dragging out the process, waiting for these troublesome litigants, Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara, to die. Already a fourth claimant, Susan Ciong'ombe Ngondi, had passed away, aged 71.
A explanation is to be found in the FCO's own statements after its decision was announced.
While stressing that they "understand the pain and grievance" felt not only by detainees but also those who suffered the terrible violence that the Mau Mau inflicted upon others, the FCO described the ruling as disappointing. "The judgment has potentially significant and far-reaching legal implications. The normal time limit for bringing a civil action is three to six years. In this case, that period has been extended to over 50 years despite the fact that the key decision-makers are dead and unable to give their account of what happened. Since this is an important legal issue, we have taken the decision to appeal."
But having already conceded the use of torture during the seven-year counter-insurgency operation in Kenya, what would the FCO have to fear from the legal implications of a ruling that has allowed a claim for compensation from Britain's recent colonial past?
The three Mau Mau veterans won their case, in part, because last year their claim exposed the existence of the Foreign Office's secret annals of the end of empire, an archive stuffed with many of the documents that recorded how confused and bloody the withdrawal had been (but not all, as some of the most damning colonial-era papers were destroyed).
The foreign secretary, himself a historian, has to his great credit pledged that every surviving document will be transferred to the National Archives at Kew. But could it be that FCO officials have reason to believe that this archive, hidden from view for decades, may contain more documentary evidence of abuses that could result in claims through the high court?
Is there a realisation at the FCO that the tortures inflicted on the Mau Mau – largely concealed at the time through official secrecy and ministerial lies – then migrated to Cyprus during the Eoka insurgency, where they were brutally applied and always similarly denied? Or that they then travelled to Aden, where they were during the four years of conflict that preceded British withdrawal in 1967? More
