Office of the Historian

745R.521/12–1952: Airgram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Consulate General at Nairobi

secret
Washington, December 19, 1952.

A–23. Information indicates that of the principal persons who are known to have attempted to join the defense of Jomo Kenyatta, Kola Balogun, Nigerian lawyer and secretary of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons, H. O. Davies, leader of the Nigeria People’s Congress, and D. N. Pritt, Q.C.,1 a member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, are believed to have Communist contacts and sympathies.

An agency of the Government is interested in receiving on an urgent basis as much information available in reply to the following:

1.
What is the opinion of Kenya government and police officials regarding the persons associated in Kenyatta’s defense?
2.
Are there any indications that Kenyatta’s counsel have made contact with local Africans or Indians outside the course of their normal duties?
3.
What was the factual basis for a statement of the British Colonial Secretary to the effect that an attempt was being made to convert Kenyatta’s trial into a political forum? (Made in House of Commons debate—London Times, December 5, 1952)
4.
Has any Communist propaganda in Kenya or elsewhere yet taken advantage of the possibilities posed by Kenyatta’s trial?2

Bruce
  1. Denis Noweli Pritt, Q.C., was a Labour Member of Parliament from 1935 to 1940 and thereafter, a Labour (Independent) Member from 1940 to 1950. He had a long history of representing African nationalists having carried I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson’s appeal of his sedition conviction in the Gold Coast to the Privy Council in 1938.↩
  2. Four days earlier, in telegram 44 to Nairobi, not printed, Bruce asked whether the press epithet “Moscow-trained”, as it applied to Kenyatta, was justified and sought information as to the length and date of his stay in Moscow. (745R.521/12–1552) Dorsz replied on Dec. 24 in telegram 72, not printed, that the CID placed Kenyatta in Moscow between 1929 and 1933, but though he registered for some courses at the University, he was not considered “Moscow-trained”. (745R.521/12–2452) At his trial, Kenyatta testified that he toured Russia in 1929 and then had spent the years 1932 to 1934 there. Such was reported in despatch 256 from Nairobi, Feb. 4, 1953, not printed. (745R.521/2–453)↩