Bad Manners
THE Secretary of State for the Colonies seems I to have treated the leader of the African elected members of the Kenya Legislative Council. with, some discourtesy. (No doubt, Mr. Tom Mboya was similarly ill-mannered in leading his followers out of the council chamber in Nairobi while the Governor was speaking, but, as any upholder of white superiority will agree, Mr. Lennox-Boyd ought to know his manners better than Mr. Mboya.) The African members asked in July for a round table conference on the consti- tution; the request was passed to the Colonial Office certainly before August 22; Mr. Mboya left Kenya on November 23, to see Mr. Lennox-Boyd, and with Mr. Lennox-Boyd's agreement; and it was on November. 27, while Mr. Mboya, was on his way, that the .Secretary of State published his rejection of the African members' constitutional proposals and their request for a conference.
Meanwhile, Kenya settlers are displaying some disquiet at the birth of a new secret society, Kiama Kia Muingi, which might turn out to be a new Mau Mau. The African elected members have condemned violence in general, and KKM in par-, ticular, but Mr. Lennox-Boyd is surely strengthen- ing its appeal to Africans when he rejects the proposak put forward by their responsible repre- sentatives, and treats them as brusquely as he seems to have treated Mr. Mboya. The Kenya Government runs the same risk in continuing to frustrate peaceable political meetings by applying emergency regulations that should have been re- pealed long ago. What cannot be expressed demo- cratically may sooner or later be expressed more violently. If, as Mr. Mboya said after his meeting with the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Lennox-Boyd is selling out to the settlers, it would be wise for the settlers to tot up exactly what they are eventually going to have to pay, and to whom.
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