The situation in India was grim.
The new GG was in a position of attempting to broker a deal between two totally opposing viewpoints. Nehru was now on record as stating he believed Indian independence would be achieved by the end of the 1940s. Domestically, the opposition were showing increased hostility to the moves of the government to shift the Indian question into the long grass. On top of this, Jinnah was calling for partition of India into two states he called Hindustan and Pakistan once independence was agreed upon, a move strongly opposed by the majority of Indians. Stansgate as a result asked and received more troops from Britain to keep order in the sub-continent, a move which was called by Eden “a drop of water in an ocean” of people.
India, however was not the only part of the Empire where trouble was flaring up. In Kenya, the Kikuyu had over the past decade, been in a spiral of misery, their income falling, their people unemployed. It was under these circumstances that a Kikuyu called Jome Kenyatta made an open plea to the government in London to take more seriously the issues of land management in the colony, his people having effectively now been dispossessed of their land by the settlers.
Having been ignored, he returned to his homeland to begin the campaign to free Kenya. Within a week, however, he was under arrest, on the charge of attempting to get 10,000 rifles into the colony. Feelings were running high in Nairobi and the Kenya Police were patrolling the streets of the city in force. This did not, however stop a huge crowd breaking into the gaol where Kenyatta was held and breaking him out, to escape to an unknown location to begin what he saw as the independence struggle.
The Kenyatta rising had begun.
Domestically, the most major bill yet was put forward to Parliament by introducing the National Insurance Act. This openly split the opposition parties, the Liberals being in favour, and the Conservatives opposed. It was put to the house by Attlee himself. His aim was clear, “Cradle to the grave welfare.”