Britain and Kenya’s Constitutions, 1950–1960 By Robert Maxon

been accepted that the British response to the rebellion included political reform as well as economic.²⁷ It can be argued, for example, that the first Lancaster House conference represented the fulfillment of British constitutional policy for Kenya announced by the SofS in 1951. Nevertheless, the conference itself, including the long talks and eventual outcome, is inexplicable without reference to what happened during the years of the rebellion and the state of emergency. Similarly, it is impossible to fully appreciate the implementation of the Lyttleton and Lennox-Boyd Constitutions without understanding the context of violence in Kenya and its impact on the colony’s varied racial and ethnic communities.

Also very influential in constitution making was the rising tide of African nationalism that impacted parts of Kenya beginning in the mid-1950s. This was the result of the rural policies associated with the emergency. These policies provoked strong opposition, particularly in western Kenya, and produced an atmosphere conducive to the emergence of rural radicalism that sharply challenged the continuation of colonial rule. The opposition and nationalist sentiment generated the victories of rural radicals in the western Kenya constituencies during the first African elections of 1957.

One significant result of the rebellion and rising nationalism was to reinforce the barriers that existed between racial groups prior to 1952. The rebellion made contact between racial groups and the political leaders representing them even more difficult. Direct negotiations between them were hard to arrange and, as this study illustrates, impossible to bring to any successful outcome. This is an important truism of the era of constitution making and decolonization. It has for long been maintained, by Donald Rothchild and Gary Wasserman in particular, that this era was characterized by interracial bargaining that led to acceptable compromises, especially as regards the Europeans and Africans, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.²⁸ Whereas this may have been the case with regard to land issues, it was most certainly not the case with regard to Kenya’s constitutions. As this study indicates, there was some bargaining but no agreement. Thus, all the constitutional initiatives of the period 1954–1963 were imposed by Britain.