Ray,
You have made my Christmas!
On the other hand, your contributions frequently make my day.
Indians appreciate the land problem better than any other group. When all the words have been discarded, when all the posturing is done, the white men wanted Indian land - and still do. They were themselves landless. The Europe they left was completely owned, though mostly unused.
There was a remarkably parallel situation in Kenya. I met two African envoys to London from Kenya - Koinage and Oneko. This was about 1950. The British Kenyans held all the best land. The temperate area of Kenya was known as the White Highlands. This most desirable land was entirely owned, though it was 86% unused.
The native Kenyans were restricted to their limited reservations, even though population increased. This was a useful source of Kenyan labor for the Brits. The natives were forced to leave the reservation to find work.
The original Kenyan settlers - you see them represented in "Out of Africa" and suchlike - were aristocrats and retired army. Their testimonies to the Royal Commission "Inquiry into the Shortage of Native Labor" (I think 1912) were given before the days of PR and were incredibly candid.
For example, Lord Delamere (a character in "Out of Africa" played by Nigel Davenport) advised: "Restrict them to reservations and before long the native labor shortage will take care of itself."
These people weren't particularly racist - simply people of quality. They openly opposed immigration by common English people for fear their "cockney" presence would diminish their gloss as superior white people.
However, the less noble English did get to Kenya - and were as landless as the Kikuyu.
That's the background to the visit from Koinage and Oneko. I found them pretty nice people. They came to visit the Home secretary to protest the "alienation of reservation land by whites". The landless settlers were occupying reservation land because they had no access to other land - long since taken by the white nobility. (Large landholders pretty quickly ennoble themselves.)
One's first thought is anger, but in my case it was replaced by poignancy. That these invaders were so driven by the human need for land that they were stealing reservation land, while enormous areas of first-class Kenyan land went unused.
The Home Secretary refused to see Koinage and Oneko.
Before long came the Mau-Mau uprising. This was pretty bestial. The people who suffered most were their fellow Africans - at the hands of the Mau-Mau. You joined, or you were tortured or killed. When the white reaction bloomed, native casualties were horrendous. The combination of black and white violence killed tens of thousands of Africans. I've seen 50,000 mentioned, but I suspect it's a guess.
Of course, there were white deaths - 32 of them.
At the time I was in my 20's - Chairman of London's Young Liberals - but beginning a life of causing trouble. I made a speech in which I said, in part: "You can expect the Africans to act like Africans and not like the ladies of West Kensington."
This was the only time I've appeared in a front page editorial in a national newspaper. It happened in the (then) Conservative Daily Mail.
They castigated me for my foolish remarks that "will be used to incite further violence in Africa".
I milked this for weeks, painting the picture of the depths of the jungle. War-painted Mau-Mau are dancing around a mimeograph, where they are churning out Pollard's speech for distribution and incitement.
With its peculiar African overtones, it seems awfully close to what had happened to the Indians some two centuries earlier.
As I've spent a little time on this and didn't have the advantage of a mother who taught me to type fast and well, I think I will send this to our friends.
They might find it interesting.
Harry
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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