ABSTRACT
The election of a Labour Party government in Britain in 1945 had an important impact on industrial and labor policy in the colonial territories. During the period between the end of the war and the Mau Mau Emergency, the reformist themes in the Labour Department’s policies were largely thwarted. The Labour Department was also the institutional base for those who saw expanding demand as the key to continued economic development, the perspective of international business in Kenya, but hardly that of the European settlers. In Kenya, there was great hostility to the possibility of African trade unions. Up until 1947, the government resisted the appointment of an advisor for trade unions as was becoming common in other colonial territories. Unionism was seen as desirable along the same line of thinking that favored the high-wage economy. The more successful examples of nonpolitical unions during the 1945–1952 period developed with little direct assistance from the Labour Department.
