Jomo Kenyatta and Kenya. To Edna, he stated that he felt "like a general separated by 5000 miles from his troops". While in Sussex, he wrote an essay for the United Society for Christian Literature, "My People of Kikuyu and the Life of Chief Wangombe", in which he called for his tribe's political independence. He also began—although never finished—a novel partly based on his life experiences. He continued to give lectures around the country, including to groups of East African soldiers stationed in Britain. Kenyatta and other senior IASB members began planning the fifth Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester in October 1945.
Jomo Kenyatta attitude that tribalism was backward and retrograde; his positive attitude toward tribal society frustrated some of Kenyatta's Marxist Pan-Africanist friends in Britain, among them Padmore, James, and Ras T. Makonnen, who regarded it as parochial and un-progressive. Assensoh suggested that Kenyatta initially had socialist inclinations but "became a victim of capitalist circumstances"; conversely, Savage stated that "Kenyatta's direction was hardly towards the creation of a radical new socialist society", and Ochieng called him "an African capitalist". When in power, Kenyatta displayed a preoccupation with individual and "mbari" land rights that were at odds with any socialist-oriented collectivisation. According to Maloba,