Britain’s colonial files to be released

Lord Howell confirmed this for the first time last night, saying that the Foreign Office holds 8,800 files from 37 former British administrations, including the Bahamas, Ceylon, Cyprus, the Gold Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaya, Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Palestine, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

He also confirmed that it was “general practice for the colonial administration to transfer to the United Kingdom . . . before independence, selected documents held by the Governor, which were not appropriate to hand on to the successor government”. Historians say that the Government could face countless lawsuits, similar to that brought by the Mau Mau claimants, relating to the last days of the British Empire.

Lord Howell said that the Government planned to make “as much of this material as possible available to the wider public”, but he noted that the files would be “reviewed”, in a process that “may take some years”.

Last night David Anderson, Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford, said: “The astonishing statement from Lord Howell confirms what some of us had long thought to be the reality. In effect, [he] has admitted that the British Government has held more than 8,800 files from its former colonial dependencies for some 50 years, failing to declare these holdings under the Public Records Act of 1958.”

The Government’s decision to release potentially incriminating documents came as Archbishop Desmond Tutu accused Britain of abdicating moral responsibility for abuses that took place during the Mau Mau rebellion.

“In my view, the British Government’s attempt to pin liability on Kenya for British colonial torture represents an intolerable abdication of responsibility,” Mr Tutu, the South African cleric and veteran opponent of apartheid, said.

Four elderly Kenyans are suing the Government in the High Court, claiming that they were abused and tortured during the rebellion, but the FCO is denying legal liability. The case opens tomorrow.

The Mau Mau insurgency between 1952 and 1960 prompted a draconian response from the British colonial government in Kenya, and more than 20,000 people died in the period.

The development came as David Cameron set off a controversy at home after telling an audience in Pakistan that Britain is to blame for conflict in many of the world’s trouble spots, including Kashmir.

The Prime Minister was speaking to students at the Islamabad Institute of Information Technology when he was asked what the UK could do to help end Pakistan’s long-running stand-off with India over the disputed territory.

“I don’t want to insert Britain into some leading role,” Mr Cameron replied. “As with so many of the problems of the world, we are responsible for their creation in the first place.”

There was warm applause from his overseas audience at this assertion that the British Empire left a legacy of trouble around the globe.

His words were criticised by some historians and politicians in Britain, however. Several expressed surprise that Mr Cameron, who has portrayed himself as a British patriot and has criticised Labour for issuing apologies for historical wrongs, should himself turn apologist.

Tristram Hunt, the Labour MP, historian and former television presenter, said: “To say that Britain is a cause of many of the world’s ills is naïve. To look back 50-odd years for the problems facing many post-colonial nations adds little to the understanding of the problems they face.

“David Cameron has a tendency to go to countries around the world and tell them what they want to hear, whether it is in Israel, Turkey, India and Pakistan.”