With much of the senior political leadership of the Nairobi Central Committee under arrest, several of the NCC’s military leaders took refuge in the wilderness where fighters allied to them were too entrenched to be uprooted by mass arrests. Under the encouragement of military leadership, local rebel committees made decisions to strike back over the next few weeks, and there was an abrupt rise in the destruction of European property, as well as attacks on African Loyalists. A section of Settlers treated the declaration of Emergency as a license to perpetrate excesses against anyone they suspected of being Mau-Mau.
The Nairobi Central Committee reconstituted its senior ranks and renamed itself the Council of Freedom; they decided to launch a war of liberation. In contrast to other liberation movements of the time, blue-collar workers that lacked a Socialist element dominated the urban Kenyan revolt. The network of secret committees was re-organized into …
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