| Chapter 2: | Background to Constitution Making and Decolonization in the 1950s |
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down to “the supineness of the colonial government under a supine Colonial Office,” would not be repeated in East Africa. This attitude caused concern in London given that Moore had felt it necessary to appoint increasing numbers of settlers to various boards created to implement wartime policies.7
Reviewing the situation for Lord Cranborne on May 1, Dawe maintained that “under the stimulus of war time conditions there is a move in Kenya to push the British Government into such a position that it will have to recognize that Closer Union is inevitable.” This was likely to raise huge difficulty in parliament. Dawe thus called for a meeting of the SofS and his senior advisers to discuss the issue.8
The discussion took place on June 10. Besides Lord Cranborne and Dawe, the parliamentary undersecretary of state, Harold Macmillan, the permanent undersecretary of state, then Sir George Gater, and other permanent officials were present. Discussion quickly moved to the “real problem.” This was: “the control of affairs which the white settler community was rapidly acquiring under cover of an ad hoc wartime organizationwould almost certainly create a situation that would lead directly, at the end of the war, to the creation of an East African dominion or quasi dominion.” A particular danger foreseen was that the British government might be faced with a fait accompli; this made it necessary that steps might have to be taken during the war. Dawe then took the lead to discuss “the ultimate goal of East African policy.” This was, he felt, to aim “at an eventual self governing dominion under white settler control.”9
Dawe justified this decolonization scenario, first of all, by arguing that Kenya’s settlers had never been happy under CO control. More important for Britain was the fact that what the metropolitan power most wanted in terms of decolonization was to retain and rely on “the loyalty of the governing classes in the new dominion” even after Kenya became a self-governing state. This would be ensured with Kenya’s whites, given their often proclaimed loyalty to the British Crown. There were negatives with this decolonization scenario, Dawe admitted, but it appealed to him as the best way to solving the immediate threat of a settler takeover of the colonial state. Even more, it provided a most attractive solution to