Four (Uganda) KAR on the ranges with Bren light machine guns. While the askaris were happy with small arms, they were less confident with mortars. The Mau Mau was a secret society confined almost entirely to the Kikuyu tribe who inhabited parts of the Central Highlands Kenya's Bloody Conflict: The Mau Mau Uprising
Home Guard and a police officer escort four captured Mau Mau. The Mau Mau had suffered badly from the introduction of British colonialism in the late 19th Century and had lost grazing grounds and homesteads to white farmers, many from the British upper classes The Mau Mau was a secret society confined almost entirely to the Kikuyu tribe who inhabited parts of the Central Highlands. The Mau Mau uprising was a military conflict which took place in British Kenya between 1952 and 1960. Kikuyu hostility first emerged after the First World War and developed into a political movement that was first proscribed for subversive activities in 1940. They had suffered badly from the introduction of British colonialism in the late 19th Century and had lost grazing grounds and homesteads to white farmers, many from the British upper classes. Independence was not widely supported by other Africans, many of whom retained loyalty to the colonial authorities. So extremists formed the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), which became known as the Mau Mau. As tension increased in 1952, the State of Emergency was declared in 20 October and the 1st Lancashire Battalion was sent from Egypt. Britain dealt with the Mau Mau by seeking to confine them to the Prohibited Areas around Mount Kenya. Various war crimes took place on both sides including the Chuka Massacre where members of King's African Rifles B Company killed unarmed people suspected of being Mau Mau fighters. The people executed belonged to the Kikuyu Home Guard — a loyalist militia recruited by the British to fight the guerrillas. British interrogation techniques also involved torture while Mau Mau militants carried out the Lari massacre where they herded Kikuyu men, women and children into huts and set fire to them. According to David Anderson in Histories of the Hanged (2005), Mau Mau attacks were mostly well organised and planned - contrary to British propaganda.
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