First Visit to London and Moscow
In the year 1929, KCA put in its request to the colonial administration a demand to send its secretary, Kenyatta, to London. Canon Leakey of the CMS, Grace’s old teacher, had tried to dissuade Kenyatta from this plan but the Association was insistent. They had stated that they would bear all the expenses and that certain West Africans had promised support for Kenyatta in England. On 4th February, the British authorities in Nairobi warned Kenyatta that his trip was a waste of time and money. However, they could not refuse him but they did write to the President of KCA, stating that the Association was an unofficial body and that the Secretary of State would be unable to grant an interview with Kenyatta. But Kenyatta’s mind was made up. He had already booked his passage and was due to sail from Mombasa on 17th February.
Kenyatta arrived in London on 8th March, 1929. He had with him the name of the West African organization which had promised the KCA to provide hospitality. Their leader was a Nigerian, Ladipo Solanke, a Yoruba law student and the Founder of the West African Students Union. When Kenyatta met Solanke, the Nigerian was about to embark on extensive tours of West Africa to raise funds for and spread interest in the organization he had founded. For the first time Kenyatta met Africans of higher intellectual attainments than could be dreamed of in his own part of the continent. Among those barristers and writers from Nigeria and the Gold Coast, Kenyatta was at a disadvantage: they had no common experience so the others barely took him seriously and charged him a high price for his board and lodging. So Kenyatta turned to W. McGregor Ross who had retired to England after being Kenya’s Director of Public Works from 1905-1923, for help.
After Kenyatta’s arrival in England, he prepared the Kikuyu case for the Colonial Office and sent a memorandum to the Secretary of State, as well as making contacts with Members of Parliament. This was followed by negotiations that led to the publishing of a White Paper indicating that the Government had decided that Africans would no longer be alienated from their own lands. In the discussions, permission was also given to the KCA to establish schools, so, from about 1930; the Kikuyu Independent Schools and the Karing’a ISA came into operation.
While Kenyatta was still in London, he contacted other names on his list: these included members of the League against Imperialism, an international organization founded in 1927 and composed mostly of communists, but also with Fenner Brockway of the Independent Labor Party and Kingsley Martin on its list.
Through the networks he had established through the League Against Imperialism, Kenyatta travelled to Moscow, Russia, on 24th August against the advice of the British.
Most thought that Kenyatta’s move to Russia would be the end of him, but he survived and arrived back in England on 4th October 1929. On 27th October, he wrote a long article entitled ‘GIVE BACK OUR LAND’ for the communist newspaper, The Sunday Worker. The article reported unrest in Kenya, which Grigg, back in the colony, labeled as being seditious propaganda. Kenyatta’s comments were in the form of an interview, highlighting how the British had stolen native land; it described the troubles of the natives where they were often engaged in forced labor for the profit of the ‘interloping imperialist bosses.’ It also reported the general discontent among the natives, ‘which will be so until they govern themselves.’ For the next thirty years, this remained substantially the basis of Kenyatta’s political message. Kenyatta followed this with two more articles in the New Daily describing the events which led up to Harry Thuku’s arrest in 1922. The headlines were bold: ‘AN AFRICAN PEOPLE RISE IN REVOLT’ and ‘A GENERAL STRIKE DROWNED IN BLOOD.’ In the article, he did not claim to take part in Thuku’s organization but said he present when the firing took place.
On 23rd January 1930, McGregor Ross took Kenyatta to see Dr Drunnond Shiels, Undersecretary of State at the Colonial Office. Shiels stressed the need for steady constitutional progress and said it could only come through an educated democracy, to which, Kenyatta agreed. Back home, things were not as sympathetic: Grigg, for example, intended to burn all money collected from natives for political associations, thus cutting the funds for Kenyatta and for his associates in Nairobi. He also intended to suppress vernacular newspapers. In the months that followed, Kenyatta wanted to return to Kenya but he was afraid that the government would find some reason to put him in jail. Meanwhile, Ross and his family coached Kenyatta by introducing him to discussion groups, by helping with his appointments and by lending him money. Ross also sent him to Transport House to get advice on the running of unions and especially how union finance was organized, brought into account and audited. On 2nd September 1930, the Ross’s saw Kenyatta off to Kenya
Kenyatta landed at Mombasa on 24th September 1930. He lay low for a while in order to bring himself up to date on all that was happening in Kikuyuland. At the end of the month, he made his way to Nairobi where Grace was waiting with leaders of KCA. During the period that followed, Arthur tried to bring Kenyatta back to the Church; they also had several meetings to discuss the issues of education and female circumcision, which were causing a lot of controversy. These meetings, however, were not conclusive.
By 22nd May 1931, Kenyatta was back in London, this time accompanied by Parmenas Mackerie Githendu, a teacher. Kenyatta was to represent the views of the KCA to the joint parliamentary committee, about closer union of the East African Federation. This mission also turned out to be a failure as the British government denied him an audience. With his return to London, he lost no time in picking up his old contacts, but by the end of May, Ross concluded that Kenyatta was not doing much in England. He, therefore, asked him to name his information sources and when this was not forthcoming, he checked on them himself through his own sources. To Ross, KCA was losing credibility and if this continued, Kenyatta would end up in jail and so he took it upon himself to advise Kenyatta to return to Kenya. Towards the beginning of August, Ross received an unaddressed letter from Kenyatta stating that he had moved; this was followed by silence.
