PROFILE Michael Blundell, Realist Or Judas In Kenya

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29162, 24 March 1960, Page 19

PROFILE Michael Blundell, Realist Or Judas In Kenya

(By SIMON KAVANAUGH]

As urgent as the patter of the talking drums, the black giant of Independence is striding across the continent of Africa. Towards Tanganyika, Somalia. Belgian Congo, Nigeria . . . The giant is inexorable. Soon the big white-run lands of the African south will look north on a wide trail of independent black States stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. In some parts of Africa, colonialism resists with force. In others the only action is verbal; the moderate David has caused the giant to hesitate with his reason. Such a place is Kenya. Such a man is Michael Blundell. The setting came straight from the British Empire’s greatest days. In the white-and-gold magnificence of London’s Lancaster House, backing the Mall, sat smiling Africans, waving their cow-tail switches, Arabs in kaffiyehs, bronzed European settlers . . . But if the scene was imperial, the purpose of the mixed gathering was not.

Britain’s capable new Colonial Secretary, Mr lain Macleod, had just taken the first cautious steps in guiding the large (twice Britain’s size), complex colony of Kenya along the rocky path to full democratic manhood

Much Accomplished The delegates rose from around the Long Gallery table, most of them grinning their relief. In the face of racial chasms and initial setbacks the talks had opened with a 14-man African boycott they had accomplished much.

After all who, six „ *ars ago at the climax of the nightmare Mau Mau uprising, would have dared to forecast the first gleaming of political maturity for Kenya by 1960?

But if much of the credit was due to the negotiating skill of Mr Macleod, just as much was due to the moderation of the husky white settler from Kenya —Michael Blundell, aged 52. blunt, ambitious leader of the New Kenya Party. The man who. in his own words.

asks: “Isn’t it better for us to let the African take the wheel of the bus as long as we can sit by his side and read the map, rather than wait until he throws us out?” Blundell’s moderation, however, pleases few in Kenya’s uneasy transitional stage. This week he flew home to bitter recriminations from his outnumbered (by 93 to 1) European fellow settlers, and to suspicion among the hustling leaders of the colony’s six million Africans who prefer to operate against the. European extremists. Only against the ultras, they believe, do they know where they stand. No sooner had he stepped from his aircraft at Nairobi than a settler’s cry of “Judas!” split the air and a shower of 30 silver coins splattered around • his feet. Cried another: “You have sold your own people!” They were only forerunners of what is to come from Kenya’s 65,000 Europeans, many of whom fiercely resent the prospect of African farmers “invading” their preserves. Realistic Stand

In fact, Michael Blundell’s stand is a simple and realistic one. He asks, bluntly, that the settlers recognise the march of African nationalism and accept the inevitability of being a minority with minority rights. He asks them to safeguard their future by coming to terms with the Africans and accepting a single Kenyan citizenship with no racial privileges. He asks them to put their faith in Colonial Office rule for as long as it takes the Africans to prepare for political maturity. Blundell himself is a bluff, friendly, engaging man with a boyish energy and a rousing school-prefect manner. He has a well-developed sense of humour, lacks pomposity, and his frankness in conversation is not aggressive.

He was educated at Britain’s Wellingon College and was expected to prepare at Oxford for partnership in his father’s London legal practice. Instead, at 18, he grabbed the chance of becoming an apprentice farmer in Kenya and sailed the same year with £lOO and a shotgun presents from his surprised father

Even then, as later (when 26 he studied lieder singing under von Warlich in Salzburg) his secondary passion was music. And even then, as now, his thinking ran on moderate lines. Leftwingers bored him, but so did his father’s “gun-boat” Toryism. He was disconcerted, but not furious, when he saw that same Toryism applied to the Kenya Africans in 1925. Blundell threw himself into farming, starting at £3 a week and slaving until he had earned his promised partnership. But in 1940 came his first test of leadership. He was suddenly hoisted to the command of an African Engineers unit which had mutinied in Kenya. Within a year his personality had restored morale. Later he led them with distinction in the Abyssinian campaign. At the war’s end, Blundell married and with his war gratuities bought his present 1.250-acre farm in the Subukia Hills, where the roses bloom all the year round. His farm prospered and today he is East Africa’s largest producer of asparagus. His private prides are his wife (also born in England), his daughter and his fine collection of “Doctor Wall” period Royal Worcester porcelain. Then after 23 years of self-con-tained contentment in Kenya, Blundell entered politics. His entry was as casual as were his views. He simply decided to stand as a new settlers’ representative because “I wanted to see what was on the other side.” But opportunities for real, robust leadership were to come thick and fast. Inside three years he was settlers’ leader in the legislative voicing their views (in effect, uncontested white supremacy).

His liberalism, in fact, lay close beneath the surface. The tone of his speeches soon changed. And when Mau Mau sprang into hideous activity, Blundell found himself threatened on two sides: He became Mau Mau’s Public Enemy No. 1 (his insurance premium was raised seven times; for three years he never moved without an armed guard) and angry white settlers, nettled by his liberalism, opposed him to the degree of “cutting” him at his club. This situation persisted in varydegrees until, in April 1959, he resigned from the Government and took up the reins of the New Kenya Party, Parliament’s new majority group. He had recognised early that African politicians were moving towards a new showdown. He had seen the signs of fright among the settlers and the makings of militant defiance. Can Blundell’s wide shoulders act as a buffer between these two forces? This week he was squaring those shoulders with impressive results. (Express Feature Service).