A year to independence, secret records from the British colonial goverment indicate, British people were keen to continue keeping Kenya as a strategic partner.
But therein lied difficulties which they needed to handle with care. Their main concern was a coalition between Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
In their records, the two were extremists who could antagonise the British once Kenya achieved independence. This informed plot to stop the pair.
According to a brief prepared by Colonial Secretary Reggie Maudling on the eve of the second Lancaster Conference that ran between February 15 to April 6 1962, Kenyatta and Odinga were extremists of KANU and would undoubtedly turn out tribal to the core.
“I think it is fair to say that their approach is essentially tribal in character and if they come to power (and I would expect them to use any means of doing so) we can expect a determined effort to assert Kikuyu domination under Kenyatta’s leadership throughout Kenya,” he wrote.
According to the secret missives reproduced in Kyle’s book, Tom Mboya was deemed more national but could not be sold out well without merging him with KADU elements like Ronald Ngala.
Michael Cary, Macmillan’s Deputy Private Secretary held similar views. He considered Kenyatta and Odinga “dangerous and unreliable” and recommended that “it would be much easier for us, both before and after independence to work with the government of the centre under Mr Mboya.”
Kyle says in their assessment of personalities, the British had reached a halfway point in the swing of the pendulum. They had started aiming to separate ‘moderates’ like Ngala from the ‘extremist’ Mboya and now they were trying to split the ‘moderate’ Mboya from ‘extremist’ Kenyatta and Odinga.
But the plot could not yield results with Ngala refusing to work with Mboya. The two had internal differences with Ngala accusing Mboya of being a dictator.
In the long run, Jomo Kenyatta ended being President and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga as his Vice President. The two however, parted ways in 1966.