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This long rant concerns a month-old article which prompted me to sign up to Mailwatch:

The grab is typically bathetic: an innocent man in his pyjamas is hacked to death in Africa by “rampaging raiders”, together with his pregnant wife, their son and their, um, servant. This being the Mail, though, there are extra details to draw our sympathy: the victims were white and middle-class (a doctor, no less); the attackers were black, numerous (“30 of them”) and so exotic that even their weapons need a translation (“sharp pangas, or machetes”).
The Mail's article on the Mau Mau is typical of its approach to history: emotional, manipulative, disproportionate, and whiny. Having established the central dynamic of the piece – innocent white victims; anonymous vicious black assassins – the author, Tony Rennell, then adds a political twist to the description:
“Kenya’s rebels — today hailed as freedom fighters against a repressive colonial British administration — had claimed four more victims in their fight for independence.”
The key words in this sentence are Fail favourites “today” and “hailed”. “Today” suggests that, over time, our understanding of what took place in 1950s Kenya has been distorted, and the readership was quick to fill the gap shrewdly left open by the article itself:





“Hailed” raises the question, “by whom?” Again, the article leaves us to form our own conclusion, although the expression “freedom fighters” and the adjective “repressive” to describe the British administration point us in an obvious direction. Several of the comments make a connection with Mugabe.
However, even the Daily Mail can't ignore the atrocities committed by the British in Kenya. What it can do is couch them in concessionary subclauses which make it sound as though the British have already done enough soul-searching. Particularly telling is the use of distancing words (I suspect inserted by a sub-editor, given how many of them there are) to cast doubt on the Kenyans' accusations:
“The British crackdown was brutal and almost certainly what today would be termed a disproportionate response… Beatings are said to have been a daily occurrence…[Kenyan claimants] who say they were tortured…” Best of all, there's a paragraph straight out of the Tony Blair manual for how to appear to acknowledge criticism while brushing it aside and moving on to your point:



Linguistically, this section is utterly weasely. Any time a politician says “Let's be clear”, I squirm a little. When journalists use it, it's even worse. The choice of the passive form — “are to be condemned” — is instructive too in its vagueness and exteriority. And the Majorisms of the next sentence — “not pretty”, “not Britain's finest hour” — seem rather understated to describe a reaction that led to a thousand executions and the internment of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans in what were essentially concentration camps, most of them without trial or evidence.
But, as Rennell is eager to point out: “There is another side to the coin of British brutality — that of the horrors inflicted by the Mau Mau.” The rest of the article — about two-thirds of it — will be taken up graphically describing the “savagery” of the “barbaric” rebels (admit it, you knew those words were coming), and this time without a hint of “said to be” or “supposed”. (The British atrocities are not recounted descriptively.)
Towards the end of the piece, Rennell gives the casualty figures: 32 European farmers and 90 white soldiers died during the uprising, and “shockingly” more than 2,000 Kenyans who were loyal to the British. Not “shockingly”, up to 25,000 Mau Mau also were killed. Yet, if you believe the Mail, it was only the whites for whom “the fear was real enough, and it was why, in the eyes of white settlers, the authorities and the Army, every black man was a suspect.” In particular the article highlights the treasonous proclivity of cooks in white family's houses. What has the world come to, eh, when you can't trust your own servants?
All this is a prelude to the article's conclusion:



Again it feels as though the very last paragraph has been hacked on by a sub-editor. Even so, there are massive problems with the conclusion. It's a classic 'What about…?' finale: the British may have been occupying an African country, detaining its people illegally, killing hundreds and failing to protect thousands … but what about our hundred or so victims? The Mail loves this kind of equality: it casts aside any concept of privilege, historical context, imbalance of power. Quite simply, if we have to say sorry for occupying your country, then you must say sorry, too, for booting us out. (As a footnote, it's interesting that in the final paragraph the point of view becomes explicitly “we British” rather than “the British” or “the whites” as used in the rest of the piece.)
A lot of straw men pop up too: are even Mail readers blinkered enough to imagine that the other European powers don't get “called to account” over imperialism? But the patronising line about there being at least two sides to every story is what this article really wants to show. More than that, those multiple sides must always be equal; and whenever our side gets more attention than the others, it's because of:


and


The Mail effortlessly gets the reactions it was digging for, such as this from the inevitable Costa del Sol:



The real story, which you won't find on the Mail, is that the Foreign Office “mislaid” a bunch of incriminating documents relating to Mau Mau for fifty years. Recently they have been “found” again and, as a result, four Kenyans are suing the British government. “If they are victorious,” notes the Mail, “they could set a precedent for an avalanche of other claims from Kenyans which might cost British taxpayers millions.” Could, might, avalanche… bollocks. (I'm slightly disappointed that the Taxpayers' Alliance wasn't contacted for a quote here.)
The “recovered” documents show that “castration, sodomy, rape and beatings were everyday weapons in its unremitting defence of the rights of the white settlers.” The 'expert' historian briefly quoted in the Mail's article as saying “Neither side emerges with glory” has in fact been leading the analysis of the documents. He has attacked the government's defence for its “inaccuracy” and revealed details of “systematic torture and abuse” by the British, including forced labour and the burning alive of rebels. This was known to, and covered up by, “officials at the highest levels” including the governor and the minister for colonies.
I don't see that there are “two sides” to this story. We have known about the white doctor's family and Mau Mau brutality for more than 50 years. These new documents reveal information (or confirm suspicions) about British imperial violence that has been hidden from the record. That is news. Why won't the Mail won't report it as such?

PS Who is Tony Rennell, the author of this piece? “I am essentially a journalist - that's what I've been for most of my working life - though I'm trying now to become a historian and hoping in due course to be a biographer.” Keep trying, Tony!

More on relatives of the Mau Mau suing for compensation:



Estimated casualties in the conflict:
White civilians killed by Mau Mau: 32
African civilians killed by the British: 2,000
Africans hung by the British: 1,090
White military deaths: about 40
Mau Mau deaths: at least 25,000

And that's without tackling the detention camps, attempts to starve the population, or the simple injustice of colonial occupation.

I know it doesn't make much difference in terms of the imbalance of numbers, but to be complete you need to include in that list Africans killed by the Mau Mau. I can't find the numbers but it was quite substantial.

It does, but Mail readers are not demanding compensation for dead Africans. That's a two-edged sword anyway — the families of some harkis, the Algerians who fought on the French side during the war of independence, have ended up suing the government of France for failing to take care of them. I fear the Mail's sympathy for Kenyan victims of the Mau Mau would evaporate if they ever asked the UK for compensation.

You guys fail to realise that History is composed of lists and dates, not analysis and facts.

Well, you see Bones, there's really several schools of thought on that one.

One theory goes that History is all about analysis of the past and drawing lessons from it so as to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Another thory says that it's about weighing up arguments and evidence, and constructing hypotheses; and the teaching of these skills in an interesting and even entertaining context, but the skills are useful in any walk of life.

Some people even claim that it's a bit of both. And then there are some who say that the important thing is to gain an appreciation of the sheer range of human activity over the milennia, and appreciate the myriad achievements of the peoples of this one small planet we call Earth.

These people are all wrong.

History is about learning by rote lists of occasions on which English people killed foreigners, preferably in a war. That is all that is important ever.

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

That might be tricky. Cromwell has been somewhat indisposed for 353 years.

If Robby mentioned elections or universal suffrage to Oliver Cromwell he'd be hanging, earless, from a convenient tree faster than he could say 'E E EDL'.

Neither was he terribly fond of catholics, many of whom voted with robby's friend Nadine Dorries.

And he was even ahead of Birmingham City Council when it came to BANNING CHRISTMAS!

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Ten seconds... the pain begins.

Fifteen seconds... you can't breathe.

Twenty seconds... you give up and turn off the Jeremy Vine show.

The modern massacre that shames the French: The police slaughter of Algerian immigrants (just 50 years ago) that's been airbrushed from history

Modern? 1961? If you say so…

And it's been "airbrushed from history" to such a degree that, erm, it gets taught in schools. What is still contested is whether the violence was premeditated, and if so, where the orders came from. This has become a party-political matter. For instance, the Pont de Neuilly was the scene of some of the most appalling crimes: dozens, possibly hundreds of Algerian protestors were thrown off the bridge into the river Seine after being sprayed with tear gas. At present, there is a plaque commemorating the victims on one side of the bridge, in Nanterre (which has been run by the Communist party for as long as anyone can remember), but not on the other, in Neuilly (a posh right-wing area whose former mayor is one N Sarkozy). Last week Nanterre gave the green light for a demonstration to mark the 50th anniversary of the massacre, but Neuilly refused and the bridge was closed.

The Right stresses that the incident was part of the war of Algerian independence, and is therefore covered by the amnesties relating to that war. As a result, any investigation could not lead to a prosecution and is, by extension, a waste of time and money. On the opposite side, Algerian veterans' groups and, in particular, the French Communist party, have pushed for an enquiry in the name of 'closure'.


Well many of them have been in France for two or three generations, and they've been awfully sluggish about it so far. Oh, and there may be 7 million Muslims in the US, so there'll be plenty of opportunities for hatemongering in your own country, Casey.

Not just a FACT, but a historic one too! And almost true.

1961 is modern history.

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Because they're all the same, these Muzzies.

It can surely only be a matter of time before our Bengalis are joining hands with France's Algerians, Germany's Turks and Scandinavia's Iraqis on a "hate whitey" ticket.

Turks, Bengalis and Somalis in the East End don't particularly like each other, I've noticed. If you can't get a "grand alliance" going in one borough, I think Eurasia is a bit of a long shot for now.