British colonial files released following legal challenge

Secret files from British colonial rule - once thought lost - have been released by the government, one year after they came to light in a High Court challenge to disclose them.

Some of the papers cover controversial episodes: the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the evacuation of the Chagos Islands, and the Malayan Emergency.
They also reveal efforts to destroy and reclassify sensitive files.
The Foreign Office says it is now releasing "every paper" it can.
But academics say the Foreign Office's "failure" to deliver the archive for decades has created a "legacy of suspicion".
In particular, the first batch of papers reveal:

• Official fears that Nazis - pretending to catch butterflies - were plotting to invade East Africa in 1938
• Detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels in the 1950s
• Secret plans to deport a Greek Cypriot leader to the Seychelles despite launching talks with him to end a violent rebellion in Cyprus in 1955
• Efforts to deport Chagos islanders from the British Indian Ocean Territories
• Concerns over the "anti-American and anti-white" tendency of Kenyan students sent to study in the US in 1959 - the same year Barack Obama's Kenyan father enrolled at university in Hawaii

In January 2011 - following a High Court case brought by four Kenyans involved in the Mau Mau rebellion - the government was forced to admit that 8,800 files had been secretly sent to Britain from colonies, prior to their independence.
It said the files had been held "irregularly".
Professor David Anderson, an adviser to the Kenyans in the case and professor of African History at Oxford University, said progress had been made retrieving "the 'lost' British Empire archive", but added there was still a "lurking culture of secrecy" within government.
"The British government did lie about this earlier on... this saga was both a colonial conspiracy and a bureaucratic bungle."
He added that the release of the files would help "clear the air on Britain's imperial past".
'Migrated' files The 1,200 records being released are the first of six tranches to be made public at the National Archives by November 2013.
They cover the period between the 1930s and 1970s and were physically transferred or "migrated" to the UK.
The archive contains official documents from the former territories of Aden, Anguilla, Bahamas, Basutoland (Lesotho), Bechuanaland (Botswana), British Indian Ocean Territories, Brunei, Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, Sarawak and the Seychelles.
The archive released on Wednesday details how British colonial officials selected files for secret "migration" back to Britain - using criteria set out in a 1961 memo by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Iain Macleod.
'Burned and destroyed' They were instructed to keep papers that might embarrass the UK government, other governments, the police, military forces or public servants; might compromise sources of intelligence; or might be used unethically by ministers of successive governments.
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