Mau Mau Claims (Settlement)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I appreciate that these are extremely sensitive matters, but we have a heavy schedule, so we need to speed things up somewhat.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement, but I was a bit surprised when, towards the end of it, he said that the British Government “continue to deny liability” for what happened. It is very strange that the Government should arrive at a settlement with Leigh Day and offer compensation, and at the same time deny liability.

Liability was well known in the 1950s. Fenner Brockway, Barbara Castle, Leslie Hale, Tony Benn and many other MPs raised the issue in Parliament during the 1950s. It is only the steadfastness of people in Kenya who stood for justice and against the use of concentration camps, torture, castration, and all the vile things that were done to Kenyan prisoners by the British forces that has finally brought about this settlement. I met many of those victims last year when they came here to go to court, and I pay tribute to them, and to Dan Thea and others who have organised the campaign that has finally brought this day about.

There are serious lessons to be learnt. When we deny rights and justice, when we deny democracy, when we use concentration camps, our actions reduce our ability to criticise anyone else for that fundamental denial of human rights. That lesson needs to be learnt not just from Kenya, but from other colonial wars in which equal brutality was employed by British forces.

[Mr Hague]

I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s extensive knowledge. He is right to speak about the terrible nature of some of the things that happened, and also right to speak—as I did a few moments ago—about the importance of upholding our own highest standards, expressing that very clearly to the world, and ensuring that we do it now.

The hon. Gentleman asked, in particular, about the consistency between recognition of those things and the Government’s continuing to deny liability. What we are making clear—as the last Government did when contesting these claims in the courts in 2009—is that we do not agree with the principle that generations later, 50 or 60 years on in the 21st century, the British taxpayer can be held liable for what happened under colonial administrations in the middle of the 20th century. However, while we cannot accept that as a principle, we have reached a settlement in this case, and I am pleased that it has been welcomed in the House.