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Above, and 3rd from bottom: 1920s Punjab - Sikh freedom fighters were tied to cannons and blown up by British officers. Below, 2nd from bottom: similarly, prisoners being blown up with cannons by British soldiers in China.

Partition

Britain Systematically Destroyed Records Of Its Colonial Crimes

by IAN COBAIN, OWEN BOWCOTT & RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR

 

 

 

Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.

Those papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.

The archive came to light last year when a group of Kenyans detained and allegedly tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion won the right to sue the British government. The Foreign Office promised to release the 8,800 files from 37 former colonies held at the highly-secure government communications centre at Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire.

The historian appointed to oversee the review and transfer, Tony Badger, Master of Clare College, Cambridge, says the discovery of the archive put the Foreign Office in an "embarrassing, scandalous" position. "These documents should have been in the public archives in the 1980s," he said. "It's long overdue."

The first of them are made available to the public on Wednesday, April 18, 2012, at the National Archive at Kew, Surrey.

The papers at Hanslope Park include monthly intelligence reports on the "elimination" of the colonial authority's enemies in 1950s Malaya; records showing ministers in London were aware of the torture and murder of Mau Mau insurgents in Kenya, including a case of a man said to have been "roasted alive"; and papers detailing the lengths to which the UK went to forcibly remove islanders from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

However, among the documents are a handful which show that many of the most sensitive papers from Britain's late colonial era were not hidden away, but simply destroyed. These papers give the instructions for systematic destruction issued in 1961 after Iain Macleod, secretary of state for the colonies, directed that post-independence governments should not get any material that "might embarrass Her Majesty's government", that could "embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others eg police informers", that might compromise intelligence sources, or that might "be used unethically by ministers in the successor government".

Among the documents that appear to have been destroyed were: records of the abuse of Mau Mau insurgents detained by British colonial authorities, who were tortured and sometimes murdered; reports that may have detailed the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaya by soldiers of the Scots Guards in 1948; most of the sensitive documents kept by colonial authorities in Aden, where the army's Intelligence Corps operated a secret torture centre for several years in the 1960s; and every sensitive document kept by the authorities in British Guiana, a colony whose policies were heavily influenced by successive US governments and whose post-independence leader was toppled in a coup orchestrated by the CIA.

The documents that were not destroyed appear to have been kept secret not only to protect the UK's reputation, but to shield the government from litigation. If the small group of Mau Mau detainees are successful in their legal action, thousands more veterans are expected to follow.

It is a case that is being closely watched by former Eoka guerillas who were detained by the British in 1950s Cyprus, and possibly by many others who were imprisoned and interrogated between 1946 and 1967, as Britain fought a series of rearguard actions across its rapidly dimishing empire.

The documents show that colonial officials were instructed to separate those papers to be left in place after independence – usually known as "Legacy files" – from those that were to be selected for destruction or removal to the UK. In many colonies, these were described as watch files, and stamped with a red letter W.

The papers at Kew depict a period of mounting anxiety amid fears that some of the incriminating watch files might be leaked. Officials were warned that they would be prosecuted if they took any any paperwork home – and some were. As independence grew closer, large caches of files were removed from colonial ministries to governors' offices, where new safes were installed.

In Uganda, the process was codenamed Operation Legacy. In Kenya, a vetting process, described as "a thorough purge", was overseen by colonial Special Branch officers.

Clear instructions were issued that no Africans were to be involved: only an individual who was "a servant of the Kenya government who is a British subject of European descent" could participate in the purge.

Painstaking measures were taken to prevent post-independence governments from learning that the watch files had ever existed. One instruction states: "The legacy files must leave no reference to watch material. Indeed, the very existence of the watch series, though it may be guessed at, should never be revealed."

When a single watch file was to be removed from a group of legacy files, a "twin file" – or dummy – was to be created to insert in its place. If this was not practicable, the documents were to be removed en masse. There was concern that Macleod's directions should not be divulged – "there is of course the risk of embarrassment should the circular be compromised" – and officials taking part in the purge were even warned to keep their W stamps in a safe place.

Many of the watch files ended up at Hanslope Park. They came from 37 different former colonies, and filled 200 metres of shelving. But it is becoming clear that much of the most damning material was probably destroyed. Officials in some colonies, such as Kenya, were told that there should be a presumption in favour of disposal of documents rather than removal to the UK – "emphasis is placed upon destruction" – and that no trace of either the documents or their incineration should remain. When documents were burned, "the waste should be reduced to ash and the ashes broken up".

Some idea of the scale of the operation and the amount of documents that were erased from history can be gleaned from a handful of instruction documents that survived the purge. In certain circumstances, colonial officials in Kenya were informed, "it is permissible, as an alternative to destruction by fire, for documents to be packed in weighted crates and dumped in very deep and current-free water at maximum practicable distance from the coast".

Documents that survive from Malaya suggest a far more haphazard destruction process, with relatively junior officials being permitted to decide what should be burned and what should be sent to London.

Dr Ed Hampshire, diplomatic and colonial record specialist at the National Archive, said the 1,200 files so far transferred from Hanslope Park represented "gold dust" for historians, with the occasional nugget, rather than a haul that calls for instant reinterpretation of history. However, only one sixth of the secret archive has so far been transferred. The remainder are expected to be at Kew by the end of 2013.

 

[Courtesy: The Guardian]

April 21, 2012

 

 

 

Conversation about this article

1: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), April 21, 2012, 8:24 AM.

I am in the middle of researching my own extraordinary family history in which my forefathers were in the Shaheedaan Misl and one of them was honoured by the great Emperor Ranjit Singh himself! ... And what I am finding is a systematic attempt by the British to obliterate Sikh influence, power and suzerainty in order to secure their Raj. They wrested control of the gurdwaras (just like in India today by the government), step by step wiped out Ranjit Singh's blood-line, carried out massacres whenever expedient, without the least compunction ... Many historians estimate that the toll of their atrocities - not counting the "wars" - since their arrival in Asia in the 1600s to their departure in the mid 1900s, easily exceeds 10 million! This may be one reason why Britain today is reluctant to criticize India for the latter's ongoing gross human rights violations. Britain would rather turn a blind eye and won't risk being reminded of its own crimes.

2: Amarjit Singh Chandan (London, United Kingdom), April 21, 2012, 1:36 PM.

Re 1920s Punjab - Sikh freedom fighters were tied to cannons and blown up by British officers. This painting made in 1884 by a Russian painter Vassili Verestechagin has wrongly been attributed to Namdhari Kuka Singhs' massacre in Malerkotla in 1872 - carried out in a similar manner by the British. Official Namdhari historians assert that the painting depicts Wahabi rebels.

3: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), April 21, 2012, 3:16 PM.

The irony of the British Empire is the fact that the British sought for themselves to possess a "moral" empire. In the case of India they justified their rule not as conquerors, but as "mentors" to allow India to "regain" her dignity lost after the collapse of vedic institutions. Of course it was nothing more than a front for the complete destruction of an entire subcontinent's economy with the British raking in millions through taxation of the poor populace. The sickest thing about British imperialism is the vast swathe of people who still believe that the British were responsible for "civilizing" other people and that British rule was intrinsically good. I don't doubt for a second Baldev Singh's assertion that close to 10 million people were wiped out as a direct result of British atrocities. I would argue however that 10 million is a low estimate, if you take the total toll ... the famines alone which occurred in India under British rule through their free market policies, the death toll could easily be 10 million. When factoring in things like the complete destruction of the Muslim population of Delhi after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, blowing people tied to the mouths of cannons for not accepting British hegemony, etc, the death toll sky-rockets. The British themselves were not repentant for their actions during the period of colonialism. They argued that "eastern peoples' were not used to democratic rule and that it was in their nature to accept and obey despotic rule. Unfortunately these things have not filtered into the legacy of the British Raj or the British Empire as a whole as westerners continue to fool themselves that they were incapable of cruelty or harm precisely because they were westerners ... or worse, because they were Christians!

4: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), April 22, 2012, 12:48 PM.

On U.K. television last week, at around 2:00 am! (to keep it away from peak time when millions could be watching, I guess), there was a 'latest', brutally truthful documentary about the Partition of Punjab and India ... it stated that 20 million people were displaced across the new boundaries and aerial film footage showed the extraordinary scale of the movement, especially the train-loads with thousands on top of the trains and clinging onto the sides!. The previous figures of displacement were 14 million, so the truth is coming out, slowly and surely. Sikhs have every right to debate the return of lands taken away from Sikh families with no recourse to any rights or justice. And, of course, we need the rekindling of the legacy of the great Emperor Ranjit Singh, who ended a 1000 years of foreign rule in Punjab.

5: Karamjeet Singh (Chicago, Illinois, USA), December 24, 2013, 11:56 PM.

History is replete with such atrocities the 'haves' of power commit on the 'have-nots'. The majority overwhelms the minority. What is most frustrating is the ones who have suffered these atrocities do the same when they get in power. India, having suffered these excesses, now continues to perpetuate them on its own people. What lessons did we learn, what history are we teaching? If Britain is silent, how can India speak for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or for the Burmese civilians? It is a vicious circle. Atrocities continue ...

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